5 April 2014 - no one has ever spoken like this

5 April 2014 - no one has ever spoken like this

Some of them even wanted to arrest him,
but no one laid hands on him.
They didn't lay a hand on him because, as at an earlier time when "they tried to seize him" they could not "because his hour had not yet come."

Nothing can happen to Jesus except as part of God's plan for him.  In these circumstances he can say:

A shield before me is God,
who saves the upright of heart;

God specifically shields him from these people trying to arrest him, trying to seize him, when they try to throw him from a cliff (cf. Luk 4:29-30) and when they tried to stone him (cf. Joh. 8:59).  It is not yet his time, not yet his hour.

Which is not to say that he is destined for a life of ease and comfort, as we know.  The point is that God will not let any circumstances deter us from fulfilling his purpose for our lives.  Yet we can turn aside into these circumstances.  We don't have to "pass through their midst", instead choosing to be entangled by them. 

How do we know if God is shielding us from a circumstance and calling us to pass through unencumbered?  We listen to him.  We need not over-complicate things as do the crowd with their debates about where Jesus is from.  This is what we often do with our thoughts, which may be from ourselves, may be from other sources, and which may be from Jesus.  Yet "Never before has anyone spoken like this man."  His words within us are not like our own words.  We experience them as effects with no natural cause.  We have to be attentive, but when we are we hear these words coming, as it were, from nowhere, just as it is said that no one will know where the messiah is from.

Jesus telling us to pass through the midst of our circumstances feels very different from our flesh telling us to take an easy way out.  It does not feel like sloth, but instead like protection and love.  The words do not come from ourselves.  Even when we try to turn our minds from words like these they persist in our hearts.

God really wants to give us direction.

I knew their plot because the LORD informed me;
at that time you, O LORD, showed me their doings.

But again, it isn't always hugs and puppies.

Yet I, like a trusting lamb led to slaughter,
had not realized that they were hatching plots against me:
“Let us destroy the tree in its vigor;
let us cut him off from the land of the living,
so that his name will be spoken no more.”

We are all called to lay down our lives.  When the LORD shields us and protects us he is helping us on the trajectory which he has for us.  We don't spend our lives wrongly so that we can use them for the kingdom.  But as we see him faithfully guide us in smaller things we will trust him to bring us even from death to life.

But, you, O LORD of hosts, O just Judge,
searcher of mind and heart,
Let me witness the vengeance you take on them,
for to you I have entrusted my cause!