Reflective Bible Study

As we continue forward in our year focusing on prophecies and connection points between the Old Testament and Jesus’ ministry, we arrive at a set of passages in the Old Testament that are easy to skim over, but ones that speak out for Jesus being the Messiah in an amazing way. While a number of our previous prophecies could be claimed as simply being phrases Jesus chose to use while teaching, preaching, or sharing God’s message, what we will read about in this episode’s passages is something that would be entirely outside of Jesus’ control.

To set the stage for the amazing detail Jesus’ life fulfilled, let’s first turn our attention all the way back to near the end of the time the Israelites were slaves in Egypt. In the Old Testament book of Exodus, chapter 12 we discover the last plague God sends on the Egyptians, as well as the origins of one of the greatest celebration feasts in the Jewish calendar. Reading from the New American Standard Bible, and starting in verse 43:

⁴³ The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “This is the ordinance of the Passover: no foreigner is to eat of it; ⁴⁴ but every man’s slave purchased with money, after you have circumcised him, then he may eat of it. ⁴⁵ A sojourner or a hired servant shall not eat of it. ⁴⁶ It is to be eaten in a single house; you are not to bring forth any of the flesh outside of the house, nor are you to break any bone of it.

In this brief description of the Passover sacrifice and the Passover meal, one key description of the lamb that was sacrificed and eaten is that none of its bones were to be broken. While this description also points forward to Jesus’ disturbing challenge regarding eating His flesh that is found in John’s gospel, when we frame Jesus’ words as referring to Himself being the Passover sacrifice, we can understand that He came to fulfill what the Passover sacrifice pointed forward to. In an amazing way, the Passover both looked back in remembrance of God freeing the Children of Israel from Egypt, but it also pointed forward to the Messiah freeing God’s children from the penalty of sin.

To also emphasize the symbolic nature of the Passover Lamb not having any of its bones broken, we move forward to the book of Psalms. In Psalm, number 34, starting in verse 15, David writes:

¹⁵ The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous
And His ears are open to their cry.
¹⁶ The face of the Lord is against evildoers,
To cut off the memory of them from the earth.
¹⁷ The righteous cry, and the Lord hears
And delivers them out of all their troubles.
¹⁸ The Lord is near to the brokenhearted
And saves those who are crushed in spirit.

¹⁹ Many are the afflictions of the righteous,
But the Lord delivers him out of them all.
²⁰ He keeps all his bones,
Not one of them is broken.
²¹ Evil shall slay the wicked,
And those who hate the righteous will be condemned.
²² The Lord redeems the soul of His servants,
And none of those who take refuge in Him will be condemned.

In this psalm, it is interesting in my mind that David includes a description of bones being kept intact, and that not even one bone would be broken. While the immediate context of this psalm is that this is describing those who are righteous, a technical look at this framing results in the ultimate conclusion that the only truly righteous person is Jesus. This then means that even if David is describing a larger group of God’s people, included within those he describes would be the Messiah.

Moving forward to the New Testament, and to the point after Jesus has taken His last breath, we discover how Jesus came very close to failing this prophecy. After Jesus had died, as the day was nearing its end and the Sabbath was about to begin, we read about some of the religious leaders wanting to speed along the deaths of those who were hanging on the crosses that day.

In John’s gospel, chapter 19, starting in verse 31, we read:

³¹ Then the Jews, because it was the day of preparation, so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away. ³² So the soldiers came, and broke the legs of the first man and of the other who was crucified with Him; ³³ but coming to Jesus, when they saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs. ³⁴ But one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out. ³⁵ And he who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you also may believe. ³⁶ For these things came to pass to fulfill the Scripture, “Not a bone of Him shall be broken.”

In this passage, John, who was an eyewitness to the crucifixion, shares the detail that while both of the other crucified men had their legs broken to hasten their deaths, when the soldiers came to Jesus to do the same thing to Him, they chose not to, on account that He was already dead.

It is amazing in my mind that under any other set of circumstances, Jesus’ legs would have been broken. If the religious leaders had requested this sooner, or if Jesus had lived even a little longer, it is not a stretch for me to picture Jesus’ legs being broken. However, while I imagine that Satan wanted to do everything he could to break Jesus out of matching prophecy, God’s timing in this event succeeded.

Jesus gave His life as a sacrifice, and after He had breathed His last breath, His bones remained unbroken. Jesus’ death ultimately becomes the perfect Passover sacrifice because Jesus’ life and body fulfills the requirements of the Passover sacrifice. Jesus is the only individual to have avoided being stained by sin and Jesus’ bones were not broken after the point of His death.

While some people might look at the requirements placed on the Passover sacrifice and claim that they are impossible to reach, these requirements were put in place because there was only ever going to be one Person able to reach them. That person is Jesus, and His life fulfilled the foreshadowing of the Passover for all of God’s people.

Like we’ve touched on in our last several episodes, Jesus came to solve the sin problem in this world. Sin became a problem for humanity before you and I ever took our first breath, and Jesus came to solve the problem sin created also before our first breath. The choice is now up to us whether we will choose sin and all its penalties, or whether we will move forward in our lives leaning on Jesus and actively stepping forward into eternity with Him.

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, intentionally seek God first in your life and choose to lean on Jesus for the strength to move forward in life. Place your faith, hope, trust, and belief in Jesus and His sacrifice to be your solution to the problem of sin in the world.

Also, continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself, to learn and grow closer to God each and every day. Through regular prayer and Bible study, discover who Jesus is and just how much He loves you and wants you with Him in heaven.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or drift away from where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

As we continue moving forward through Luke’s gospel, we arrive at an illustration Jesus shares that is powerful for us to pay attention to, and in this illustration, Jesus shares a key to having a prayer life that works. In this event, we discover a powerful truth that should impact our prayers to God if we have been feeling our prayers are ineffective.

Let’s read our passage and then unpack some big things we can learn from what Jesus shared. Our passage is found in Luke’s gospel, chapter 18, and we will read from the New International Version of the Bible. Starting in verse 9, Luke tells us:

⁹ To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: ¹⁰ “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ¹¹ The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. ¹² I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

¹³ “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

¹⁴ “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

In this passage and in Jesus’ illustration, we discover a powerful truth about prayer. Within the picture of these two prayers, we see two different ways of perceiving what God wants. In one prayer, we see someone directing God to look at how good they are in relation to the standard they have in their mind. In the other prayer, we discover someone who simple acknowledges where they are and that they need God.

However, too often we disconnect these two prayers from the reason Jesus shared this illustration, while also disconnecting the lesson Jesus shares from the parable itself.

Our passage opens with the clear reason Jesus shared this parable. Verse 9 opens this event by saying, “To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable”. The specific context for this parable was Jesus witnessing some people who were confident that they were righteous while looking down on others.

We should look at this parable through this window. However, as I wonder about this, which piece of the picture Luke describes is the negative? In Jesus’ eyes, was it wrong for the people He shared this parable with to be confident of their own righteousness, or was is simply wrong to look down on everyone else?

This is an interesting question. While we all could easily agree that it was likely wrong to look down on others, is it wrong to live confident of our own righteousness?

From the context of what Jesus shares in the parable and key point Jesus shares afterwards, I suspect that both looking down on others and being confident of our own righteousness are equally wrong in God’s eyes. This is because the best we can do and be isn’t enough. Even if we lived perfectly sinless from this point in our lives forward, there would be enough sin in our past to cancel out our current perfection.

Jesus finished this illustration off with a truth at the end of verse 14: “For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” While it is easy to take this truth and disconnect it from the parable Jesus shared, let’s instead keep this truth attached to the context of Jesus’ prayer illustration. While it is easy to say this statement is a universal truth that is applicable to every area of life, Jesus’ shared this truth in Luke’s gospel with a very specific, very narrow context – specifically in the context of our prayers.

In the context of this passage, we can conclude that exalting ourselves before God in prayer will never end well. Praying prayers that emphasize how good we are might be asking for God to humble us.

In contrast, when we come before God with a humble spirit, God promises to lift us up and to bring us glory. The powerful truth of this entire parable is that we should never be confident in our own perfection because we are not perfect. We have sinned, and because of this, we have fallen short of God’s perfection.

While there are some who say that since no one can achieve the standard we should all either move the standard lower or give up on trying, God gives us a different solution that doesn’t lower His standard, but one that gives us a glimpse of hope.

To solve the dilemma of sin, Jesus stepped into the world. Jesus lived the perfect life we could not live because we have sinful hearts and minds. Jesus proved that God’s demands were not impossible, impractical, or unwise. Jesus showed us God’s ideal for our lives through how He lived.

Jesus also showed us how much God loves us. Jesus could have written any type of death into prophecy before the creation of the world, but He chose a death that was humiliating, painful, and very public. Jesus did not deserve death, because His perfect, sinless life contained nothing that deserved death.

However, Jesus offered His life up in death so that we could accept His life as a gift in exchange for ours. God offers to trade us our sinful, sin-filled lives for Jesus’ sinless sacrifice. When we trade with God, accepting Jesus’ gift, we have a clear change of focus. With Jesus’ sacrifice as God’s gift to each of us, we should live confident in Jesus’ righteousness instead of our own and 100% aware of our continual need for Jesus to be our Savior.

Being confident in our own righteousness is never wise, because it tells God that we don’t need Him or Jesus. If we push Jesus away believing we don’t need Him, we ultimately will die because of our sins. Instead, we should humble ourselves, accept the gift God offers us through Jesus’ life, and live confidently in what Jesus has done for us and continually thank God for taking our sin-filled lives and giving us a Savior to take the punishment we deserve! When we accept Jesus’ life in place of our own, we have the assurance of eternal life, and the eternal life God gives us through Jesus’ life is one that extends into eternity!

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, intentionally seek God first in your life. If you have not humbly accepted God’s gift through Jesus’ sacrifice, I invite you to do so today. Choose to humbly come before God and ask Him to take your sin-filled life and your sin-stained past and replace it with Jesus’ life. When we intentionally trade lives with Jesus, we have the assurance of salvation.

Also, continue to pray and study the Bible for yourself to learn and grow closer to God each and every day. Filter everything you hear, see, and read through the lens of the Bible to discover whether it is something that is truly worthwhile from eternity’s perspective. God has shared the big picture with us in the Bible, and He has kept His truth safe for thousands of years. If we trust God to keep us safe for eternity, trust also that He will keep His message of salvation safe through a few thousand years of sin-filled human history.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or wander away from where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

Over our past several podcast episodes, we’ve been focusing our time on Jesus hanging on the cross, and specifically on places in the Old Testament where we can see foreshadowed descriptions of the Messiah’s time on the cross. In this set of episodes, we come to the point where Jesus is ready to take His last breath.

Turning our attention onto another one of David’s psalms, we discover several verses that also point to Jesus’ time on the cross, and a cry out to God that the Messiah would ultimately make immediately before taking His last breath. Let’s read what David wrote.

Our passage for this episode is found in Psalm, number 31, and we will read it using the New American Standard Bible. Starting in verse 1, David writes:

¹ In You, O Lord, I have taken refuge;
Let me never be ashamed;
In Your righteousness deliver me.
² Incline Your ear to me, rescue me quickly;
Be to me a rock of strength,
A stronghold to save me.
³ For You are my rock and my fortress;
For Your name’s sake You will lead me and guide me.
⁴ You will pull me out of the net which they have secretly laid for me,
For You are my strength.
⁵ Into Your hand I commit my spirit;
You have ransomed me, O Lord, God of truth.

⁶ I hate those who regard vain idols,
But I trust in the Lord.
⁷ I will rejoice and be glad in Your lovingkindness,
Because You have seen my affliction;
You have known the troubles of my soul,
⁸ And You have not given me over into the hand of the enemy;
You have set my feet in a large place.

⁹ Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress;
My eye is wasted away from grief, my soul and my body also.
¹⁰ For my life is spent with sorrow
And my years with sighing;
My strength has failed because of my iniquity,
And my body has wasted away.
¹¹ Because of all my adversaries, I have become a reproach,
Especially to my neighbors,
And an object of dread to my acquaintances;
Those who see me in the street flee from me.
¹² I am forgotten as a dead man, out of mind;
I am like a broken vessel.
¹³ For I have heard the slander of many,
Terror is on every side;
While they took counsel together against me,
They schemed to take away my life.

¹⁴ But as for me, I trust in You, O Lord,
I say, “You are my God.”
¹⁵ My times are in Your hand;
Deliver me from the hand of my enemies and from those who persecute me.
¹⁶ Make Your face to shine upon Your servant;
Save me in Your lovingkindness.

Let’s stop reading the psalm here. In this psalm, we get another glimpse of the Messiah’s opposition and on how wholeheartedly the Messiah trusted in God. While hanging on the cross, Jesus was insulted from every angle, and I’m sure that Satan would have pressed feelings of abandonment and rejection onto Jesus as best as he could.

However, tucked within this psalm is a powerful phrase, and in this phrase is a promise that we can lean on when times are tough. This phrase is what Jesus cries out immediately before taking His last breath.

In Luke’s gospel, chapter 23, Luke describes the last portion of Jesus’ time on the cross. Starting in verse 44, Luke writes:

⁴⁴ It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness fell over the whole land until the ninth hour, ⁴⁵ because the sun was obscured; and the veil of the temple was torn in two. ⁴⁶ And Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit.” Having said this, He breathed His last. ⁴⁷ Now when the centurion saw what had happened, he began praising God, saying, “Certainly this man was innocent.” ⁴⁸ And all the crowds who came together for this spectacle, when they observed what had happened, began to return, beating their breasts. ⁴⁹ And all His acquaintances and the women who accompanied Him from Galilee were standing at a distance, seeing these things.

At the moment of Jesus’ last breath, we discover that how Jesus died, and the extraordinary events that surrounded this death, prompt those present, including the officer in charge of Jesus’ crucifixion, to realize Jesus’ innocence.

However, stepping back a few verses in this passage to the last phrase Luke records Jesus crying out before dying, we discover an amazing promise. While Jesus quotes the psalm we read earlier when crying out the phrase, “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit” included in this cry that appears to end His life, we can see a promise that is kept.

When David wrote this line into his psalm, I don’t know if he was referencing something in his past, if he was being prompted by the Holy Spirit, or some of both. However, when David wrote this line, the context of this psalm is entirely trusting in God when everything in the world appears to be against you.

On the surface, this phrase might appear like a death wish, since the one crying it out is asking for God to take their spirit, which would ultimately separate it from the body. When the spirit and body separate, some would consider that death.

However, a different way of understanding this phrase is that when crying out for God to take our spirit, we are asking God to take the essence of who we are and protect it. The only reason for committing our spirit to God the Father would be because we trust that He is fully capable of keeping our spirit safe. If we didn’t trust God the Father with the essence of our life, I suspect that He would be the among the last places we would consider wanting the spirit of our lives to go.

This then means that committing our spirit to God the Father is an act of trust. In the psalm David writes, several verses after sharing this phrase, and after sharing how everything in the world appeared to be against him, we get a clear picture of where David has placed His focus. In verses 14 through 16, David writes:

¹⁴ But as for me, I trust in You, O Lord,
I say, “You are my God.”
¹⁵ My times are in Your hand;
Deliver me from the hand of my enemies and from those who persecute me.
¹⁶ Make Your face to shine upon Your servant;
Save me in Your lovingkindness.

David acknowledges that his life is always within God’s hands, and that while He is actively placing himself within God’s will, God will keep his life safe. David trusted God’s protection, and he knew that God would not let him die before God’s time for his life to end had come.

It was the same with Jesus. While there was no shortage of life-ending events throughout Jesus’ time on earth, God kept Jesus’ life safe until Jesus reached the cross, which was the point in Jesus’ life where God would receive the glory. Any death less than the cross would not have brought God glory.

This is also the same with our lives today. When we place our lives and our spirits in God’s hands, trusting that He will keep us safe as we move forward within His will, we can know and trust that with whatever happens in this life, and whenever we ultimately take our last breath, we will have given our lives to God and we will be included in the great resurrection of God’s people when Jesus returns. When we place our spirit in God’s hands, we will be a part of the resurrection of the righteous and welcomed into eternity with Jesus.

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always open these challenges by saying in one way or another, intentionally seek God first in your life. Intentionally commit your spirit into God’s hands, not because you want to die now, but that you intentionally want to trust God the Father to keep your life safe until you have accomplished everything He has placed you in this world to accomplish. While death is a challenging topic for many people, and while it seems as though some people die before they should have from our perspective, God knows eternity better than we do, and what He invites His people into is better than anything this world can offer.

Also, continue to pray and study the Bible for yourself, to grow a stronger, personal relationship with God. Don’t let other people step between you and God. God wants a personal relationship with you, and the only way your relationship with Him can be personal is if you keep other people from stepping between you and God. While other people can share ideas, take these ideas to God directly, and let Him lead you to His truth through His Spirit and His Word.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or abandon where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

As we continue moving through Luke’s gospel, we come to a parable Jesus shared that is very challenging to reconcile if we take this parable out of its context, and especially if we leave off the opening verse of this event.

In this passage, Jesus shares exactly what He wants His followers to learn from the illustration He shares, and the only way this parable makes sense is if we look through the lens that Jesus gives us to help us understand it.

With that said, let’s read this parable and discover what Jesus wants to teach us through it. Our parable and passage are found in Luke’s gospel, chapter 18, and we will read from the New Century Version. Starting in verse 1, Luke tells us that:

¹ Then Jesus used this story to teach his followers that they should always pray and never lose hope.

I want to stop briefly and draw our attention onto this significant verse. Jesus is about to share an illustration meant for all of His followers that we should always pray and never lose hope. This is the lens we must look through when seeking to understand the parable Jesus is about to share, and this lens may be even more important for us living today than it was for Jesus’ disciples living in the first century.

Continuing in verse 2, Jesus continued saying:

² “In a certain town there was a judge who did not respect God or care about people. ³ In that same town there was a widow who kept coming to this judge, saying, ‘Give me my rights against my enemy.’ ⁴ For a while the judge refused to help her. But afterwards, he thought to himself, ‘Even though I don’t respect God or care about people, ⁵ I will see that she gets her rights. Otherwise she will continue to bother me until I am worn out.’”

⁶ The Lord said, “Listen to what the unfair judge said. ⁷ God will always give what is right to his people who cry to him night and day, and he will not be slow to answer them. ⁸ I tell you, God will help his people quickly. But when the Son of Man comes again, will he find those on earth who believe in him?”

In this parable and the follow-up verses that Jesus shares about it, we discover that we are never to give up on praying and we are to never lose hope. This tells us that we should be like the widow in this parable.

Does this mean that God is then represented as an unfair judge who doesn’t care about anyone but himself? On the surface, it may appear so, but Jesus counters this idea in His follow-up statement in verse 7, “God will always give what is right to his people who cry to him night and day, and he will not be slow to answer them.”

In this parable, we are challenged to continue bringing our requests to God day and night, God will always give His people what is right, and God will not be slow to answer them.

This brings up an interesting dilemma. When God gives us the answer of wait, or an answer that the time isn’t right yet, does this mean that He is slow to answer, or that we are being impatient?

When it seems as though God is silent, does that mean that God is really being silent or that the timing isn’t right?

In my own mind, I have to conclude that if I don’t clearly see an answer to prayer, then the actual answer is to wait and be patient, because God gives us answers quickly, and He will always give what is right to His people. God has a much bigger perspective than I can even imagine, and it is helpful to understand that God will answer our prayers most often from His perspective and not from ours.

However, if God appears silent and unresponsive to our cries for justice, does that then mean that He is like this unfair judge. Again, this might appear to be the case, however, I don’t think that the quantity of our prayers are enough to change God’s mind or God’s timing. I don’t believe that more prayers to God will wear Him down like these requests to the judge.

What if instead of the focus being on the judge, it is on the widow. What if the widow’s persistent requests actually drew her to the judge. While this sounds crazy in the context of this parable, the more we pray and the more earnestly we pray, the more we are drawn to God and the more we realize our ultimate dependence on Him.

I wholeheartedly believe that God does not withhold answers to prayers because He wants us to pray more. A good God who always gives what is right to His people would not display that type of attitude. However, God has a bigger perspective than we do and His perspective wants us with Him in heaven and sin to never return into a perfectly recreated universe.

This means that this parable, and the big message that Jesus shares in it, is applicable for everyone at every point in history, and especially for those living in the time of the end. This parable, and the challenge to continually persist in prayer never giving up hope, is Jesus’ challenge to us living near the end.

The prayer of God’s people when the world is wholeheartedly, unjustly, against them is the prayer of this widow. This widow’s prayer in verse 3 is simple: “Give me my rights against my enemy.”

This prayer is the prayer for God’s people living in the end times. When it appears as though God is silent and an unjust world has turned against us, never give up hope, never stop praying, and continually trust that God has a bigger perspective than we do and His perspective extends infinitely farther into the future than sin lasts, because God’s perspective extends into eternity!

Faith, hope, trust, and prayer draw our hearts to God, and even when times are bad, we can know and trust that God will always give what is right to His people, and that He will ultimately judge fairly all the unjustness we experienced in our lives in a sin-filled world.

As we come the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As always, continue to seek God first in your life and intentionally put your faith, hope, trust, and belief in Jesus. Never give up hope and take everything to God in prayer because prayer opens our hearts, minds, and lives up to God and prayer lets the Holy Spirit into our lives!

Also, as you continue persisting in prayer, keep studying the Bible for yourself as well. Through prayer and Bible study, discover how to open your life to God, discover how His words and His promises never fail, and ultimately learn to see your life in the big picture of His story known as history. Our lives are best looked at through the lens of what Jesus did for us, and this lens is found in the Bible, specifically in the gospels we focus this podcast on!

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or give up on where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!