Divine Vandalism: And the moment arrived and the Sun stopped shining, and then suddenly the curtain of His temple was shredded into two halves. Luke 23:44-46

Luke 23:44-46 New International Version

The Death of Jesus

⁴⁴It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, ⁴⁵for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. ⁴⁶Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”^[a] When he had said this, he breathed his last.

Word of God for the Children of God

Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen.

As Jesus’ ministry progressed, one of the great concerns of the Jewish religious establishment was that He had, it appeared, claimed that He would destroy the temple and raise it again in three days (John 2:19).

Indeed, this was one of the main charges brought against Him (Mark 14:58).

When Jesus was on the cross, then, passersby’s mocked, spit and ridiculed Him, shouting, “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself!” (Matthew 27:40).

But there He remained, hanging on the cross, in the darkness.

And then, in the midst of the darkness and the upheaval of the crucifixion, all of a sudden something completely mysterious and utterly unexpected happened: it was God Himself desecrated the temple, earthquake shaking its foundations.

“The curtain of the temple was torn in two,” Luke tells us.

This was the very curtain that hung in the temple to symbolically bar the way into God’s presence.

It was the great sign that imperfect people could not be in the same space as the holy God.

All through the Old Testament, anyone who had presumed to come into God’s presence without observing the ceremonial cleansing rituals and making the necessary sacrifices had died (for instance, Numbers 3:2-4).

But now, suddenly, as Jesus was on the very verge of death, this symbol of restrictive exclusivity was destroyed right down the middle.

By destroying it, God declared that the old priestly ritual for entrance into His presence had been abolished and the barrier of sin dividing humanity from their Maker had been obliterated.

There is no longer any need to keep our distance from God. Instead, “we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain” (Hebrews 10:19-20).

Our access to God isn’t restricted to a temple or a church or any other building, nor must it be through a merely human priest or a guru.

No, 2,000 years ago God broke into history of humanity to establish, directly, unhindered access to Himself through Jesus.

Now there is “one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Timothy 2:5-6).

The temple curtain being torn in two was divine vandalism on our behalf!

You don’t have to be sidetracked by priests and rituals anymore.

They can be nothing but pointless. Instead, you can come to God, just as you are, confident of divine welcome and mercy and help, all because of Jesus.

A Confident Christ Dies

Luke 23:46-49 New International Version

⁴⁶Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”^[a] When he had said this, he breathed his last.

⁴⁷The centurion, seeing what had happened, praised God and said, “Surely this was a righteous man.” ⁴⁸When all the people who had gathered to witness this sight saw what took place, they beat their breasts and went away. ⁴⁹But all those who knew him, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.

In his words from the cross, Jesus demonstrated that he knew how to live, because he knew how to die.

We hear it in the first word he uttered in this saying: “Father …” Then, in effect, the faithful Son confidently declared, “I’m coming home!”

In those days, the words Jesus used were often taught to children as a bedtime prayer: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (see Psalm 31:5).

They signify entrusting all of one’s being to God for safekeeping. (Psalm 23)

What a comfort it is to be able to entrust our whole lives and all our joys and concerns to God!

And Jesus said these words not secretly or silently but with a loud voice.

He was saying, in effect, “Father, I’m coming home. My mission is complete. I love you. I trust you. As always, I commit my spirit to you.”

Doing the same, we can live and die in the confidence of knowing we will go home to our Father when he calls. We can say confidently, in words adapted from an old confession, “My ‘only comfort in life and in death’ is that I belong … to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ’” (Heidelberg Catechism, Q&A 1).

Jesus ended his time on earth with confidence in the Father.

Can you and I step up our faith, hope and love to do exactly that too?

In the name of God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,

Praying …

31 ^1-2I run to you, God; I run for dear life.
    Don’t let me down!
    Take me seriously this time!
Get down on my level and listen,
    and please—no procrastination!
Your granite cave a hiding place,
    your high cliff nest a place of safety.

^3-5You’re my cave to hide in,
    my cliff to climb.
Be my safe leader,
    be my true mountain guide.
Free me from hidden traps;
    I want to hide in you.
I’ve put my life in your hands.
    You won’t drop me,
    you’ll never let me down.

^6-13I hate all this silly religion,
    but you, God, I trust.
I’m leaping and singing in the circle of your love;
    you saw my pain,
    you disarmed my tormentors,
You didn’t leave me in their clutches
    but gave me room to breathe.
Be kind to me, God—
    I’m in deep, deep trouble again.
I’ve cried my eyes out;
    I feel hollow inside.
My life leaks away, groan by groan;
    my years fade out in sighs.
My troubles have worn me out,
    turned my bones to powder.
To my enemies I’m a monster;
    I’m ridiculed by the neighbors.
My friends are horrified;
    they cross the street to avoid me.
They want to blot me from memory,
    forget me like a corpse in a grave,
    discard me like a broken dish in the trash.
The street-talk gossip has me
    “criminally insane”!
Behind locked doors they plot
    how to ruin me for good.

^14-18Desperate, I throw myself on you:
    you are my God!
Hour by hour I place my days in your hand,
    safe from the hands out to get me.
Warm me, your servant, with a smile;
    save me because you love me.
Don’t embarrass me by not showing up;
    I’ve given you plenty of notice.
Embarrass the wicked, stand them up,
    leave them stupidly shaking their heads
    as they drift down to hell.
Gag those loudmouthed liars
    who heckle me, your follower,
    with jeers and catcalls.

^19-22What a stack of blessing you have piled up
    for those who worship you,
Ready and waiting for all who run to you
    to escape an unkind world.
You hide them safely away
    from the opposition.
As you slam the door on those oily, mocking faces,
    you silence the poisonous gossip.
Blessed God!
    His love is the wonder of the world.
Trapped by a siege, I panicked.
    “Out of sight, out of mind,” I said.
But you heard me say it,
    you heard and listened.

²³Love God, all you saints;
God takes care of all who stay close to him,
But he pays back in full
those arrogant enough to go it alone.

²⁴Be brave. Be strong. Don’t give up.
Expect God to get here soon.

Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen.

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Advent, A Season of Anticipation! My Time, Your Time, are in God’s Hands!

Many of us can feel as if somehow we have been demoted and overlooked by life, when in fact, every step we take and every move we make is so carefully planned; God Himself is orchestrating all our circumstances and endeavors.

We are obsessive compulsive servants, sometimes slaves, to our electronic devices; we are slaves to our watches, smart phones, i-pods, alarm clocks, and calendars. And a few of us allow these man-made gadgets to rule our days, pushing us forward hurriedly, pressuring us to do more and do it faster.

Wherever we are we find ourselves watching the clock relentlessly tick away as reminders of how far we have yet to go and how little time we have to get there. No wonder people are so impatient. Our impatience has caused companies and corporations to invent and/or create different products that are designed to “over dramatically” assist us in maintaining and managing our time each day.

Yet with these brand new pretty and shiny gadgets designed to help maximize our time God’s children still appear at times to be stumbling through life. Many of us feel as if somehow we have been demoted and overlooked by life, when in fact, every step we take and every move we make is carefully planned; God Himself is orchestrating all our circumstances and endeavors.

When we need to stop for moment to realize God is in control (Psalm 46:10-11). Recall, No matter how bad things may look at any moment—God is in control!

Psalm 31:14-16 ESV

¹⁴But I trust in you, O Lord;
    I say, “You are my God.”
¹⁵My times are in your hand;
    rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from my persecutors!
¹⁶Make your face shine on your servant;
    save me in your steadfast love!

The Word of God for the Children of God. In Excelsis Deo! Alleluia! Amen.

Here in the 31st Psalm, David is declaring that his entire life is in God’s hands. He makes it known in no uncertain terms that it is God’s timing and not his; it is God’s call upon his life goes according to God’s calendar and not his.

Notice that David says, “But I trust in you…” his life was being threatened, to have someone threatening your very life would be extremely scary, it would indeed place most of us on edge for sure—but David says I’m really worried about it because no one can harm me unless God allows it.

David seems to refer back to the 23rd Psalm a little bit when he says, “You are my God” just like you are my Shepherd, and because of this I shall fear no evil.

When we consider the all too often politically incorrect fact that our times are in God’s hands, we also need to try to understand that His time is never going to be our time. Because God often moves slower than we do, yet God always has us at the right place at the right time and absolutely nothing slips out of His hand.

With God, there is never a wasted moment—He knows beforehand what we will face and go through; He is there before we get there in order to work it out for us. This is why David was so confident, this is why he said, “But I trust in you…” What if we all could be like David in times of trouble? The answer is…we surely can. David was not the only one who knew that their time was in God’s hands.

Job 14:1-6 English Standard Version

Job Continues: Death Comes Soon to All

14 “Man who is born of a woman
    is few of days and full of trouble.
²He comes out like a flower and withers;
    he flees like a shadow and continues not.
³And do you open your eyes on such a one
    and bring me into judgment with you?
⁴Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?
    There is not one.
⁵Since his days are determined,
    and the number of his months is with you,
    and you have appointed his limits that he cannot pass,
⁶look away from him and leave him alone,^[a]
    that he may enjoy, like a hired hand, his day.

Have we ever been where Job walked? When it seems as if time is just wasting away—and we have not made the progress we thought we should have made by now? Job was suffering physically, mentally and spiritually and he had no idea what was happening to him and why it was happening to him or when it ends.

By the time we reach the 14th chapter of Job we see that Job was starting to panic. He panics not only because of what he was going through, he panics because time was passing by and there was no remedy in sight—now I did not say there was no remedy, but I did say that the remedy was not in sight. When we are walking through a dense dark valley and we do not see the Light at the end of the valley. It can and quite often does cause us to long to be in a panic.

Although Job was in his panic mode, although he was indeed suffering he never once blamed God for his suffering and he also knew that God provided his only hope for restoration. He knew whatever it was he was going through he still was in God’s hands. We ourselves simply need to get to a place in our lives where when pain, suffering, and trouble come we do not panic when we do not find all our answers on our “smart phones”. We have to say like, “But I trust in God…”

We must trust the providence of God and we must trust His timing. We all want good things to happen in our lives, but too often we want it right now…not later. When it doesn’t happen that way, we are tempted to ask, “When, God, when?”

Most of us need to grow in the area of trusting God instead of focusing on the “when” question. If you’re missing joy and peace, you’re not trusting God. If your mind feels worn out all the time, maybe you’re not trusting God enough. If we feel moved to take things into our own hands, are certainly not trusting God.

What if Job tried to handle his situation on his own? What if he had followed his wife’s and his so-called friends foolish advice? The devil would have been given bragging rights and God would have actually lost the challenge. But God knew Job; it was God who brought Job’s name up in the first place.

Question. Can God trust you and I in the manner he trusted Job do to the right thing? We who feel that the end of time is upon us do have a tendency to push things to force things and flail and fight in an attempt to make things happen.

You remember the often told story of the little boy who was playing outdoors and found a fascinating caterpillar. He carefully picked it up and took it home to show his mother. He asked his mother if he could keep it, and she said he could if he would take good care of it.

The little boy got a large jar from his mother and put plants to eat, and a stick to climb on, in the jar. Every day he watched the caterpillar and brought it new plants to eat. One day the caterpillar climbed up the stick and started acting strangely. The boy worriedly called his mother who came and understood that the caterpillar was creating a cocoon. The mother explained to the boy how the caterpillar was going to go through a metamorphosis and become a butterfly.

The little boy was so very thrilled to hear about the changes his caterpillar would go through. With great anticipation he watched his caterpillar every day, waiting for the butterfly to emerge. One day it happened, a small hole appeared in the cocoon and the butterfly started to struggle to come out.

At first the boy was excited, but soon he became concerned. The butterfly was struggling so hard to get out! It looked like it couldn’t break free! It looked desperate! It looked like it was making no progress! The boy was so concerned he decided to help. He ran to get scissors, and then walked back (because he had learned not to run with scissors…). He snipped the cocoon to make the hole bigger and the butterfly quickly emerged!

As the new butterfly came out the boy was surprised. It had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. He continued to watch the butterfly expecting that, at any moment, the wings would dry out, they would enlarge and they would expand outward to support the swollen body. He knew that in time the body would shrink and the butterfly’s wings would expand. Except, it was not so.

But nothing happened. The butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It never had the chance to be what it was designed to be. It never was able to fly.

As the boy tried to figure out what had gone wrong he learned later from his mother that the butterfly was SUPPOSED to struggle. In fact, the butterfly’s struggle to push its way through the tiny opening of the cocoon pushes the fluid out of its body and into its wings. Without the struggle for life, the butterfly would never, ever fly. The boy’s good intentions badly hurt the butterfly—our good intentions can do the very same thing to us, when we decide to work on our time instead of God’s time. Job knew that his times was in God’s hands!

His Priestly Prayer, Jesus knew His time on earth was in His Father’s hands.

John 17:1-5 English Standard Version

The High Priestly Prayer

17 When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, ²since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. ³And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. ⁴I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. ⁵And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

Jesus knew His time on earth was in His Father’s hands. Three times Jesus prophesied that he would be betrayed, arrested, crucified and then buried. In the garden, when the soldiers came for him and Peter lopped off Malchus’ ear;

John 18:10-11 English Standard Version

¹⁰Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s servant^[a] and cut off his right ear. (The servant’s name was Malchus.) ¹¹So Jesus said to Peter, “Put your sword into its sheath; shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?”

The truth of the whole matter is that Our lifetimes are 100% in God’s hands!

Ecclesiastes 3:9-15 English Standard Version

The God-Given Task

⁹What gain has the worker from his toil? ¹⁰I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. ¹¹He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. ¹²I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; ¹³also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man.

¹⁴I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. ¹⁵That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away.^[a]

Saying, “My times are in your hands.” David was expressing his belief that all of life’s circumstances are under God’s control. Knowing that God loves and cares for us enables us to keep steady in our faith regardless of our circumstances. It faithfully, hopefully, ever so prayerfully keeps us from our sinning foolishly by taking God’s matters into our own tiny hands or “resenting God’s timetable.”

We are suppose to serve God because He is God…Not just because He heals our sickness…not because He forgives us of our sins…not because He supplies our daily needs…but just like David, Job, and God’s own Son, Jesus. We are to 100% love Him and serve Him just because He is God. We should never have to worry about being in God’s will—in times of trouble, suffering and distress being in God’s will is the absolute best place to be. And what a blessing it is to know that your times, my times, our days, and our services are all in God’s hands. Amen.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, let us now Pray,

Heavenly Father, thank You for the encouragement and lessons I can lean from the beautiful pictures of Jesus that are found in the book of Psalms. I trust in You and pray mightily that day by day my soul may rest in Christ. Thank you for being my God and my my Father, My Lord and my Saviour, Alleluia! Amen.