thorities were troubled by the dis appearance of His body. Christ is still the most disturbing personality in human history. Do we receive Him for what He really is, or are we only looking at what He can do for us? Do we make an honest effort to un derstand just why He came in the first place? Will we bow before Him in humility and penitence, asking Him to have mercy upon us because we are sinners? Men are still asking, as they did 1900 years ago, “Will He come?” Christ is still the grand disturber. Men still resent the bold implications of His teaching. We don’t like to hear about the need to apply ideals and principles of Christ to society around us. We hear Him tell us to love our neighbors, but we have no intention of doing it, unless they are of the right race and class of people. We hear him urge us to forgive those who wrong us, but still we employ the old cliché, “I can forgive, but I can never forget.” Christ said that a man’s whole life consists not in the abundance of things that he pos sesses, yet our financial contributions to the work of the church don’t re flect such an awareness. The Lord reminded us to be pure in heart, but the books we read reveals that we are all too often won by the ways of the world and the things of the flesh. We want popularity, fame, position, pleasure and wealth, instead of Je sus Christ. People don’t want Chris tianity to disturb them. What about people who live and die in darkness without even hearing the Gospel? Does it disturb you that others don’t know Christ? We need to be chal lenged ! Men try, by all their power, to evade His cross giving it any other meaning they can. On the night of Daniel Webster's death, his doctor read him the moving hymn, “There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Immanuel’s veins.” The recita tion finished, Webster exclaimed
Christ failed to capitalize upon His opportunity to lead them against the crushing power of Rome. He actually suffered the ignominy of death by crucifixion, a form of execution Rome reserved for the worst of criminals. That such a thing should happen to their Messiah was utterly foreign to any Hebrew. The Christian faith sees prophecy fulfilled. The people of Christ’s day didn’t understand the promise of His coming. They were sorely disappointed. I t is true that Jesus Christ is dis turbing to many people today who don’t know what to do with Him. We all must make a decision about Him. You’ll either spurn and reject Him, or receive and accept Him. wherever He goes ? People will either receive and accept Him, or they will spurn and reject Him. We have this shown, as we saw in our last study, from John 11:56. Here we see how there were questions as to whether Jesus would attend Jerusalem’s Pass- over feast. The people were very much disturbed. Christ came not as the majestic, royal, conquering Mes siah, overthrowing the yoke of the Roman power, but rather as the low ly Nazarene, making His way to the cross. In the Gospels we see Christ cleansing the temple in righteous wrath, driving out the money-chang ers. He even disturbed His disciples by teaching that humility, love and service should be the controlling fac tors of His kingdom. At the Pass- over, He asked His followers to re member not just their deliverance from Egypt under Moses, but also their deliverance from sin through His sacrifice at Calvary. He dis turbed everybody who heard the startling good news on that wonder ful resurrection morning. The au- 20 C hapter S even D id you ever stop to realize that Christ brings about disturbance
Made with FlippingBook HTML5