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Mark 15
How hard it must have been for Jesus to silently listen to the insults and mocking of His accusers, the soldiers, and the rest of the crowd. They were so ignorant! And the irony in their words in light of the truth was significant. They were the ones destroying the temple. He was the one who would rebuild it. And He allowed Himself to be destroyed so that others, even those mocking Him, could be saved. Then they said, “Let this Messiah, this king of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe.” (Mark 15:32a).
Jesus could have done what they said and perhaps proven to them that He was indeed who He said He was. The big irony in that is, had He done that, He wouldn’t be the Messiah. Jesus did not come to prove Himself to anyone. He came to give Himself as a sacrifice so that we would have something to put our faith in that could and would actually save us. It was in not proving Himself that He actually proved Himself. He proved that there was not an ounce of pride in His heart. He proved how much He loved us. We know without a doubt that He is worthy and reliable because He stayed on that cross for us. And that’s what makes Him the Messiah.
Lam. 1-2
This is Jeremiah’s lament over his fallen nation. Describe Jeremiah’s emotions. When have you felt something like this? When have you lamented? I see the regret of hindsight in these two chapters. It’s that feeling you get when you realize that you made the wrong choice, did the wrong thing, and there is no turning back from it. You are forced to face the music, and the tune isn’t a happy one. God’s people are personified as Daughter Zion, left as a grieving widow. She turned her back on her faithful husband, God. When He finally let her go, she realized that all the ‘lovers’ she trusted abandoned her. She finally figured out that the only one who truly cared about her was the one she rejected.
In hindsight, the veil is removed; the truth is more easily seen. Daughter Zion saw what had been. “The visions of your prophets were false and worthless; they did not expose your sin to ward off your captivity. The prophecies they gave you were false and misleading. She had believed the lie of what she wanted to hear. Now she was paying the price in bitter regret.
We now have the opportunity to learn from her mistakes. We have the advantage of her hindsight and her distress to help us make a better choice with our own lives. Because our decision is the same as hers was. Do we put our trust in God, staying faithful to Him at the expense of our own desires? Or do we chase after those desires at the expense of our life? The decision seems obvious, but the blinders of the pride of the flesh are strong.