Reading
SAA Notes
These religious people believed that if Jesus was truly God’s Son then He could never die – God would stop it. We Australians are the same today – we get upset with God over unjust suffering. God takes Jesus’ willing though unjust suffering and uses it to break the power of sin – death itself!
SJA Notes
* Dear Lord God, please help us understand You a little better today, as we read of Your death on a cross to save us.
“And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots.”
Matthew gives us here a multitude of horrible decisions and cruelty all wrapped up in a few verses.
The soldiers, the robbers, the chief priests, the scribes, the elders. They all mocked Jesus.
If He was so powerful, why can we kill Him?
They thought Him beaten and crushed (and He was) – But they didn’t understand what that meant, the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world.
They feared His power with the people, and knew their own fragile grip on power over the people could be gone in a moment.
They thought death would rid them of this pretender to their man-made thrones.
C.S. Lewis writes of Aslan and the White Witch in a very fitting mirror of the passage today,
“It means that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.”
We have a King who saves us by bringing new life, we can be born again into a life hidden in Him (our King).
Hallelujah, what a Saviour!
* Gracious Father,
Thank You that though there is great sin in this passage, we see Your grace and mercy greater still – Salvation for the sinner.
Thank You for sending Yourself, the Person of the Son, Jesus – Who was without fault yet took our punishment, laid on His shoulders.
Thank You for saving us.
Amen.