Acts Day 28 - Cheerful In Trouble?

2:22 “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a Man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves also know— 23 Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death; 24 whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it. 25 For David says concerning Him:

"I foresaw the Lord always before my face, for He is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken.

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Therefore my heart rejoiced, and my tongue was glad; moreover my flesh also will rest in hope.

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For You will not leave my soul in Hades, nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption.

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You have made known to me the ways of life; You will make me full of joy in Your presence.""

Was David speaking about Jesus? Of course he was. When David wrote "You will not suffer your Holy One to see corruption" he was certainly not speaking about himself. David might have been better than the average but he was far from Holy. An adulterer, murderer, and savage warrior, when he asked God if he could build the Temple God told him no because there was "too much blood on his hands".

David was not the first to write about Jesus in the Old Testament either. Jesus was the Seed promised to Eve who would crush the serpent. The animal who died so that the nakedness and shame of Adam and Eve could be covered was Jesus. Every lamb on every altar from Abel on down represented Jesus.

Consider what the prophet Isaiah wrote over 700 years before Jesus was born:

53:1

Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

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For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; and when we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him.

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He is despised and rejected by men,

A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.

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Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.

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But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.

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All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

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He was oppressed and He was afflicted,

Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth.

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He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgressions of My people He was stricken.

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And they made His grave with the wicked— But with the rich at His death,

Because He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth.

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Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him;

He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.

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He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many, for He shall bear their sins.

When John the Baptist introduced Jesus to the people he said "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the whole world."

The instant Jesus died the curtain inside the Temple tore from the top to the bottom. That curtain or veil was 75 feet high and 6 inches thick. No human hand touched it. It tore as evidence that the whole system of sacrifices was over for the True Sacrifice had come.

His death should never have come as a tidal wave to His followers. No disillusionment was necessary. In reality it should have been fully expected. It makes a great difference when we are mentally and emotionally prepared for difficult events. They weren't prepared at all. Why? Because they were raised under lies and deception. The picture painted for them from birth was nothing like the truth told in the Story from Genesis to Malachi. They were taught to expect another king David, an Alexander the Great, a mighty warrior and king. It never entered their minds to expect a Lamb.

We do ourselves great harm when we don't know His Word. How many times are we blindsided by tragedy as if we expected to sail through this life unscathed? Jesus never painted such a picture. He plainly said "In this world you WILL have trouble but be of good cheer for I have overcome..."

Cheerful in trouble? No not necessarily. Jesus was certainly not cheerful in Gethsemane or on the cross. Our cheerfulness is not rooted in our troubles. That's crazy. Our cheerfulness comes from knowing "the rest of the Story" and we'll talk about that tomorrow.