Laced up my hiking boots. Stepped out from my books and into the hills. Windless. Still all ’round, I thought.
A mile or so into the trek I found some fallen pines that made a kind of cove amidst some granite stones jutting from the earth. I unloaded my ruck, sat down, unzipped my ruck for a book by Paul Kingsnorth and began to read and to listen for wildlife. A few whitetails browsed grasses by a trail. Otherwise it was silent.
I looked at the trees. It’s early November and the hardwoods are exploding with their moving colors–orange, red, rust, scarlet, crimson, on and on.
Bbrrrrrrrr! A chainsaw and bulldozer, leveling the trees and making way for another cookie-cutter house, destroyed the silence of the woods. The deer scampered off. I wandered if they experienced lamentation as I did. No squirrels now. Just noise—Brrrrrrr! I could hear the trees crash upon the ground.
I tried to read but seethed instead. When will it end? Not until it’s all paved, I suppose. And perhaps a couple, sipping cocktails, will wonder aloud, “I wonder why we’re not seeing any wildlife? We paid such a handsome price for this property. Just couldn’t stand all that Atlanta traffic,” and sip again.
I walked back. Could not concentrate on the Kingsnorth book. No deer. Just the saw and bulldozer and the thrum of ladders and shovels for company.
Introduction: This evening after a supper with friends CJ and I returned home and I began reading. One of the passages I was reading was Matthew 26:36 and following. This was Matthew’s account of when Jesus prayed in Gethsemane and the events just before Judas betrayed the Lord for thirty pieces of silver. But my focus here is not on Judas. It is on Jesus. Specifically, I want to focus on the prayer of Jesus in Matthew 26. And what struck me so deeply about the Lord’s prayer in Matthew 26 is that it was simultaneously a prayer to the Father about his (Jesus’) immediate suffering and about Jesus’ willing obedience to that suffering.
In verse 39, Matthew records that Jesus fell on his face in prayer to the Father. That’s a posture of complete submission. “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (v. 39). In this posture of humilty the Lord of glory submitted obediently and perfectly to the will of God. Who among us has ever done God’s will perfectly? Not one, per Scripture. Only Christ has done that.
And in verse 42, Matthew records Jesus’ prayer again: “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.”
And in verse 44, Matthew records that Jesus prayed the same prayer a third time. For some reason, God loves threes. Three times Jesus prayed here. Peter denied the Lord Jesus three times. God is Trinitarian. On and on it goes with threes in Scripture.
But my concern here is not that; it is, rather, the peace of Jesus’ obedience. He knew the suffering that was imminent. “Friend, do what you came to do,” he tells Judas in verse 50. God’s plan for redemption would be accomplished. How? By one man’s obedience: Jesus’ obedience.
Encouragement: This is why Scripture teaches again and again that Christ is our peace, that Christ is the believer’s righteousness, that by Christ’s wounds, we sinners who repent and believe are delcared forgiven and righteous and healed from ultimate judgment. It’s all an imputed righteousness that believers have. It’s not native to us. What’s native to us is sin, disobedience, and cowardice.
Who was the One who obeyed? It was Christ. Who’s the One who prayed that God’s perfect will would be done in his life? It was Christ. In Christ alone. Solus Christus.
I’ve just begun to teach verse by verse through the book of Romans at Christ Covenant Church (3cs-canton.org). It will take me many months to teach our people, and there’s no hurry to do it. Why? Because each verse builds on the previous ones. It’s all unfolding the grand narrative of redemptive history by the Triune God–and of how God the Son, Jesus, the Christ, obeyed perfectly in all the places the first Adam failed. And that’s why Jesus is the hero of the story. It’s why Christians across the earth will celebrate the incarnation of God the Son at Christmas season. It’s the reason your calendar is dated the way it is. It’s the reason atoms hold together–the word of Christ. There’s a peace that comes supernaturally through obedience to the Lord.
I took some earned leave from work and got some miles in recently. Met some nice folks on the A.T., who appreciated the scenes and sounds and wonders as much as I. Below are a few pictures and a short video from a recent trek.
I was reading a wonderfully true book tonight, McLaughlin’s Confronting Christianity.
In the first pages she had this remarkably sapient observation from MLK, Jr.: “[T]here are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true, that they are worth dying for. And I submit to you that if a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live” (15).
