Listen to or download this week’s radio program:
© 2016 Don Pinson / To Download, right-click here: [Download]
A powerful blow of the mallet forces the spike through Jesus’ crossed feet. His body contorts and His quivering lips reveal the pain He’s absorbing—yet no sound is heard from His lips save the gasps of quickly taking in air as a reflex to the impact of the nails. His blood is now running onto the ground at a steady rate—the earth soaking up the 
blood of its Creator.
Yet in all this word-defying scene of horrendous torture, there is an unmistakable presence of peace surrounding this middle cross. Though unseen, it is undeniable. This Man is like no other that has ever hung on a cross. There is a Presence about Him. In spite of the cruelty, the ghastly sight of blood, and the stark disregard for human life, dignity pervades this scene! Something is happening here which defies description. A transaction is taking place between heaven and earth that will profoundly affect all of history.
Suddenly, as He looks to heaven, Jesus breaks his silence,
“Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.”
All eyes quickly turn toward Him. What did He say? “Father, forgive them?” Forgive those who had driven nails through His body? Forgive those who had ripped His flesh with the whip? Forgive those who were wasting His very life’s blood on the ground! Forgive them? Did they really hear Him right? Yet, the words were unmistakable. He was asking God to forgive the very ones who were torturing Him. Continue reading
hardest part of this hideous work would be done. One more…
Jesus has just received the tremendous beating with a whip called a “cat o’ nine tails”, so named for the ripping effect it had on bare skin. In His heart Jesus now cries to His Father for strength to get up and finish this course. By a miracle he struggles to His feet and stands woozily, trying to regain His sense of balance. The soldier points commandingly to the cross prepared for Him. Jesus staggers to it, drops to one knee and—embraces the crude, wooden structure destined to bring Him to death. Straining to rise, He lifts the cross and begins to stagger in His weakness out into the street. Dragging His instrument of death, He sets His course for a hill outside of Jerusalem known as Golgotha, “the place of the skull”. The hill was so named because from a distance it bears some resemblance to the side view of a human skull. As if prophetically named, it would be the place Jesus’ head would finally hang in death.
While feeling the intense pressure, Jesus is doing what He has done all through His life—He is, with each new attack, turning to the Father and, in His heart, is drinking in the Father’s life. That life has strength and sanity in it, which preserves Him throughout this horrendous night. Make no mistake about it. When those accusations first hit His mind, He felt the same as you do when the enemy is attacking your mind. He felt the blows to His body just like you would feel them. The difference was that, as soon as He felt them, He would—in that instant—look to the Father for another drink of His strength, His life that flows as a river from the throne of God (Revelation 22:1). This was the way He had always lived, and He was showing us now, in the very worst mental and physical suffering, that we could still drink of the River of Life—indeed, we could have it flowing through us so that God’s life could also be viewed in us.
pounded into His head. And while everything in His body and mind told Him to run away from tomorrow, something deep in His spirit witnessed that He must submit to this death—that He must trust when He couldn’t see. And ultimately, though deserted by those closest to Him in this darkest hour of need, He chose what He had always chosen: To do the will of God. He chose to not just submit to, but embrace the will of His Father. And when He did, strength came. A special messenger from the Father appeared and touched Him, releasing strength into His weakened body and embattled mind. Now, though He had sweat blood due to the emotional pressure, His body felt much better. His mind was now at peace, as always comes with a surrender to the will of God. Joy—small, but strong—began to course through His being. He was now ready. And the time had come.
cross, His disciples weren’t thinking about His long-range mission: They were too busy enjoying the recognition they were receiving from the crowds from being associated with Jesus. They were “flying high”! But Jesus had not come to cater to our selfish desires. He would not play the world’s game of trying to build our own self-image by gaining the acceptance of others—neither will He allow His followers to do it. He must bring these disciples to the awakening of who they really were, of why they were here on this earth. All this “acceptance” would shortly meet an abrupt end.
By miracles in the Revolutionary War, a basically Biblical government was re-established in America. And, over the next eleven years, they would work with that government to make it better. The end product, our national Constitution (written in 1787 and approved by the states by 1789), was no less of a miracle. Many of our Founders would speak of the miracle that brought our national Constitution into being. George Washington would acknowledge God’s hand in that Constitutional Convention in a letter to his good friend, Jonathan Trumbull, then Governor of Connecticut. He wrote,
I have hope for our land because I am seeing more and more people beginning to pray. Some are praying for revival. Some of them are beginning to see the necessity of repentance if our prayers are to be heard. Some don’t yet know enough of God’s truth to know to pray for revival, they are just praying that God will help us in America and do something to change the direction in which our nation is headed. Some know the Lord so well that they are crying out to Him in very specific prayers, the particular revelations of which would amaze most of us if we knew just how specifically God is leading them in prayer. I am so grateful for all who are praying for us, be they a citizen here or a citizen elsewhere. I recently heard a group of South Koreans praying for us with such appreciation for America and such intensity in their cry for Revival and Transformation for us that I was brought to tears. I knew God was listening intently to their praying.
just like all other men. He laughed and wept just as all humans have since the dawn of creation. He had to manage money and relate to relatives. Yet the peace and confidence with which He did it all was amazing. It was as if He wasn’t weighted down as others were. He talked about His Father and His Spirit in such a familiar way that They seemed close, not far off in an unreachable heaven. His followers would later come to recognize this uniqueness as the very fulfillment of what God intended man to be all along. In short, they would come to know they had seen God’s presence living in a human body (2 Corinthians 5:19).