‘Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus / Louisa M.R. Stead / William J. Kirkpatrick
Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Thee!
How I’ve proved Thee o’er and o’er
Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus!
O for grace to trust Thee more!
I prayed, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” Then, I read Matthew 27-28: (quoting chapter 28):
The Resurrection
1 After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.
2 There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3 His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. 4 The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.
5 The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. 6 He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. 7 Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.”
8 So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9 Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. 10 Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”
The Guards’ Report
11 While the women were on their way, some of the guards went into the city and reported to the chief priests everything that had happened. 12 When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, 13 telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ 14 If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” 15 So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.
The Great Commission
16 Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
My Understanding: As I read these chapters in Matthew, I prayed for the understanding that the Lord would want me to receive from them today. I knew, by the words to the song, that the Lord wanted me to focus on the subject of trust/faith and the need to trust Jesus more. So, I read chapter 28 again, and the Lord began to open my eyes to see the message he had for me today. I sought the Lord concerning the approach he wanted me to take with this, and then he gave me the title, “Hindrances to our Faith,” so I pray the Lord would open my mind and heart to hear from Him and His Word today the message he wants me to receive from Him and to share. These are the hindrances that I believe He is showing me:
Hindrances to our Faith:
Death of a Dream
Jesus had his ministry on the earth for 3+ years. He had walked and talked with, and had taught his disciples daily for that period of time. They expected him to rescue them and to set up his kingdom on the earth and to be their king, so when he died, their world fell apart. Their hopes were dashed! Where would they go from here? They had given their lives to follow him. The reason they were so disillusioned is that they didn’t truly get what Jesus had been telling them about who He is, what He was about, what He came to do and ultimately where all that would lead, even though he had told them time and time again. They had their own concept of Jesus and his mission, and it was that dream that had died.
So, when the two Marys went to the tomb, they were not expecting him to be risen, even though he had told them ahead of time that he was going to rise from the dead. So, they needed a revelation from God, i.e. they needed to be awakened and to have their eyes opened to the truth of who Jesus is/was. So, when I read that “an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it,” I immediately thought about how that stone not only represented death to a dream but how it represented the blinding of eyes to the knowledge of the truth. So, when the angel rolled back the stone, he was revealing the truth to the women of who Jesus truly was/is, i.e. that he was/is God and that he was/is alive, not dead.
I think a lot of times that we get false ideas fixed in our minds of who Jesus is and so we expect the Jesus we have created (or others have created for us) to act like we imagine, and when he doesn’t, then we get disillusioned, not because Jesus is false or that faith in Jesus Christ is false, but that our concept of him is not true (or partially not true). That is why people will sometimes get angry with God when he doesn’t act like they expect him to act, because they misunderstand who He truly is. So, false concepts of who Jesus/God is can lead to death of a dream when God/Jesus does not act like we think he should, and thus our false belief systems can lead to our dreams dying and can be hindrances to our faith.
Fear of the Unknown
When the women went to the tomb, there was a violent earthquake and the stone was rolled back and an angel of God sat on the stone. The guards were afraid. The angel told the women not to be afraid, so perhaps they were also gripped with fear. Then the angel told the women the good news that Jesus had risen from the dead and he instructed them that they were to go tell his disciples that he had risen from the dead and that he was going ahead of them into Galilee and that they would see him there.
There were several “unknowns” here: 1) A stone to a tomb (grave) rolled back and an angel sitting on the stone, 2) An empty tomb and a risen Lord, and 3) Instructions to go tell the good news and insecurity, perhaps, concerning what kind of a response the women would get. The scripture says that the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Immediately what came to my mind was “Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway,” a secular book I read several years ago when I was going through a particularly difficult and fearful time in my life. The feeling of fear did not hinder these women from going. The unknown did not keep them from going. They went “with joy.”
I think sometimes that the fear of the unknown hinders us in our faith. We, like Thomas, want to see the nail prints in Jesus’ hands before we will believe. We forget that the Bible says that faith that is seen is not faith at all but if we hope for what we do not see, that is true faith. We oftentimes allow our circumstances or the fear of how people will respond to us to keep us from obeying the Lord. We are afraid to step out in faith because we fear that we will look foolish or that people might reject our message or we fear that maybe we didn’t really see what we saw because it was something outside the norm and so we self-doubt our way into unbelief through intellectual discourse over what we saw.
The women saw Jesus when they were on their way, and Jesus will often reveal himself to us while we are “on our way,” as well, i.e. as we step out in faith and we trust the Lord and we do what he says even in the face of fear, he will reveal himself to us and he will encourage us to not fear and will reinforce our call to “go and tell” the Good News. I can’t begin to tell you the number of times I have sat down to write with a pounding headache or with a foggy brain or with fears and doubts fighting against me or even lack of desire to write warring against me, and as I went, i.e. as I stepped out in faith and obeyed the Lord, the headaches disappeared, the doubts dissipated, and the fears diminished, and instead the Lord took over and he filled me with His joy and His strength.
Opposition and False Reports
The scripture says that “While the women were on their way…” and then it tells us how the guards reported what had happened and how the priests and elders had devised a plan to pay the soldiers to tell a lie and to spread a false story to counteract the truth of the gospel. And this will happen to us, as well. When we step out in faith and obedience to our Lord, we should expect opposition. We should expect that there will be people along the way who will try to discredit Jesus and our faith in Him and they will make up lies or they will repeat lies they have heard in order to try to discourage us and to get us to not believe or to not go and tell others. So, opposition and false reports about Jesus and about faith in Jesus Christ can lead to our faith being hindered, to self-doubt and to discouragement. We must, like the women, go and tell the Good News – “afraid, yet filled with joy!”
Our own Doubts
This passage of scripture says that Jesus met his disciples in Galilee, at the mountain where he had told them to go. It says that “When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.” So, even though they saw Jesus face to face, still some of them doubted that he had risen from the dead. We may find this hard to believe, but I think that often we do the same thing. Jesus gives us assurance after assurance of who He is, of his working in and through our lives, of his miracles of love and grace, and yet when we are faced with difficult situations, we will revert right back to doubting again. So, sometimes our own worst enemy can be ourselves and our own self-doubts. Jesus’ disciples often saw him work great miracles and then turned right around and doubted or lacked faith again. And, we do that, too.
Yet, it is not in our own power or in our own strength that we “go and tell” the Good News, that we make disciples, and that we teach obedience to our Lord. Jesus said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing… and teaching them to obey everything I commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” We go in the authority of the name of Jesus, in the authority of His Word, in his power, in his strength and with his abiding presence with us always. That is how we combat these hindrances to our faith.
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