Bible Study Blog for Monday, August 8, 2011
2Chronicles 34-36; John 19:1-22
I have a confession to make. I cry at movies-right there in the theater or sitting at home, it matters not in whose company. I bring tissues in my purse so I can, hopefully, quietly blow my nose and wipe my eyes. But there is one movie that I could never watch in public again and would need a box of tissues to watch it at home. The film was Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ in 2004. Of course, I would have to see it on Good Friday! (a glutton for suffering) The movie theater was sold out and there was not a dry eye in the entire audience. If you have never seen this movie, see it once. Also, remember, as dramatic and explicit as the movie is, it only tells half the story.
Here was the Son of God, who walked on water; made the blind see;
cleansed lepers; drove out demons in the possessed; healed diseases of all kinds; brought three people back to life after dying; fed thousands supernaturally; whom even the wind and waves obeyed! Jesus could just as easily have called forth a legion of angels to save him. Yet, he chose to endure the cross!
He did it for me!…
He did it for you!…
He did it for us all!
Thinking about the crucifixion brings it all back again, and it still brings tears to my eyes. Gotta go and get a tissue.
A very Blessed week to all of you.
Tags: 2 Chronicles, Bayside Church Woodland, Bayside Woodland, Bible Study, John
Hollywood! Those guys never get exactly right. The movie can’t do full justice via its depiction of the whippings, beatings and suffering at the crucifixion. He looks too good at the end of the beatings in the movie. And even though the physical pain was worse than Hollywood can imagine, the emotional and spiritual pain was even worse as Christ endured the agony of the reality of spiritual death to which God referred to in Genesis when He told Man that he would die when he sinned. The pain of that death is an awareness of separation from the Light and relationship with the Father. He intended for all of Man to have that relationship with Him from the beginning. The Father paid the same price as the Son when the separation was made complete, and the worst suffering of the whole crucifixion process isn’t visible to our eyes. Hollywood couldn’t show us anything of that part of the punishment even if they understood even a fraction of the whole Truth.
We who have been gifted by the Holy Spirit with the capacity to understand a bit of the true price paid for our salvation have a greater appreciation of what was accomplished than Hollywood, too.
It’s not OK with us that 97% of the town doesn’t understand what was done for them on the cross and doesn’t claim Jesus as Lord. It’s our calling to preach the Gospel and sometimes, when it’s necessary as a last resort, to use words.