Centurion at the Cross

Centurion at the Foot of the Cross

   “Then they struck Him on the head with a reed and spat on Him; and bowing the knee, they worshiped Him. And when they had finished mocking Him, they took the purple off Him, put His own clothes on Him, and led Him out to crucify Him. And they brought Him to the place of Golgotha, which is translated, Place of a Skull. And when they crucified Him, they divided His garments, casting lots for them to determine what every man should take.” (Mark 15:19-20, 22, 24, NKJV)

 Pastor and author Max Lucado, tells a great story about what it must have been like for the centurion that was in charge of killing Jesus on Good Friday:

“The day began as had a hundred others---dreadfully. It was bad enough to be in Judea, but it was hell to spend hot afternoons on a rocky hill supervising the death of pickpockets and rabble-rousers. Half the crowd taunted, half cried. The soldiers griped. The priests bossed. It was a thankless job in a strange land. He was ready for the day to be over before it began.

He was curious at the attention given to the flatfooted peasant. He smiled as he read the sign that would go on the cross. The condemned looked like anything but a king. His face was lumpy and bruised. His back arched slightly and his eyes faced downward. ‘Some harmless hick,’ mused the centurion. ‘What could he have done?’

Then Jesus raised his head. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t uneasy. His eyes were strangely calm as they stared from behind the bloody mask. He looked at those who knew him---moving deliberately from face to face as if he had a word for each.

For just a moment he looked at the centurion—for a second the Roman looked into the purest eyes he’d ever seen. He didn’t know what the look meant. But the look made him swallow hard and his stomach feel empty. As he watched the soldier grab the Nazarene and yank him to the ground, something told him this was not going to be a normal day.

As the hours wore on, the centurion found himself looking more and more at the one on the center cross. He didn’t know what to do with the Nazarene’s silence. He didn’t know what to do with his kindness.

But most of all, he was perplexed by the darkness. He didn’t know what to do with the black sky in mid-afternoon. No one could explain it…No one even tried. One minute the sun, the next darkness. One minute the heat, the next a chilly breeze. Even the priests were silenced.

For a long while the centurion sat on a rock and stared at the three silhouetted figures. Their heads were limp, occasionally rolling from side to side. The jeering was silent….eerily silent. Those who had wept, now waited.

Suddenly the center head ceased to bob. It yanked itself erect. Its eyes opened in a flash of white. A roar sliced the silence. ‘It is finished.’ (John 19:30 NIV) It wasn’t a yell. It wasn’t a scream. It was a roar….a lion’s roar. From what world that roar came from the centurion didn’t know, but he knew it wasn’t from this one.

The centurion stood up from the rock and took a few paces toward the Nazarene. As he got closer, he could tell that Jesus was staring into the sky. There was something in his eyes that the soldier had to see. But after a few steps, he fell. He stood and fell again. The ground was shaking, gently at first and now violently. He tried once more to walk and was able to take a few steps and then fall….at the foot of the cross.

He looked up into the face of this one near death. The King looked down at the crusty old centurion. Jesus’ hands were fastened; he couldn’t reach out. His feet were nailed to the timber; they couldn’t walk toward him. His head was heavy with pain; he could scarcely move it. But his eyes…they were afire.

They were unquenchable. They were the eyes of God!

Perhaps that is what made the centurion say what he said. He saw the eyes of God! He saw the same eyes that had been seen by a near-naked adulteress in Jerusalem, a friendless divorcee in Samaria, and a four-day-dead Lazarus in a cemetery. The same eyes that didn’t close upon seeing man’s futility, didn’t turn away at man’s failure, and didn’t wince upon witnessing man’s death.

‘It’s all right,’ God’s eyes said. ‘I’ve seen the storms and it’s still alright.’

The centurion’s convictions began to flow together like rivers. ‘This was no carpenter,’ he spoke under his breath. ‘This was no peasant. This was no normal man.’

He stood and looked around at the rocks that had fallen and the sky that was blackened. He turned and stared at the soldiers as they stared at Jesus with frozen faces. He turned and watched the eyes of Jesus lifted and looked toward home. He listened as the parched lips parted and the swollen tongue spoke for the last time.

‘Father, into your hands I entrust my spirit.’ (Luke 23:46 NIV)

Had the centurion not said it, the soldiers would have. Had not the centurion said it, the rocks would have---as would have the angels, the stars, even the demons. But he said it. It fell to a nameless foreigner to state what they all knew.

‘Surely this man was the Son of God.’ (Matthew 27:54 NIV)”

From the book “This is Love—The Extraordinary Story of Jesus by Max Lucado (Thomas Nelson, 2011)

PRAY

1.     Lord thank you for dying on that cross for me and taking the sins of the world upon your shoulders.

2.     Thank you for allowing everyone who calls upon Your name and believes that You are the Son of God can become one of Your adopted children.

3.     Help me to tell Your story to anyone who will listen to me and about how You have change my life and given me joy and peace now, and for eternity.

Hosanna in the highest!

   Soon we will celebrate  Palm Sunday, the beginning of the last week in Jesus human life on earth, the earth He had help create. “All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.”(John 1:3) Let us look at what the Apostle Matthew said about what happened on this special day in history:

  “Now when they drew near Jerusalem, and came to Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them,  ‘Go into the village opposite you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Loose them and bring them to Me. And if anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord has need of them,’ and immediately he will send them.” (Matthew 21:1-3)

   “All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet saying: ‘Tell the daughter of Zion, Behold, your King is coming to you, Lowly, and sitting on a donkey, A colt, the foal of a donkey.’ (Matthew 21:4,5)

  The Apostle Matthew was quoting the Scripture found in Zechariah 9:9 where the prophet spoke of the coming Messiah, hundreds of years before the coming of Christ.

     “So the disciples went and did as Jesus commanded them. They brought the donkey and the colt, laid their clothes on them, and set Him on them. And a very great multitude spread their clothes on the road; others cut down branches from the trees and spread them on the road. Then the multitudes who went before and those who followed cried out, saying: 

     “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD! Hosanna in the highest!’ (Matthew 21:6-9)

     What an exciting scene is painted for us by Matthew! We can picture the palm branches being waved and the people throwing their cloaks on the ground as Jesus descends the path down from the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem.  (Can you remember a time in your youth, as I can, when your church had palm branches and celebrated Palm Sunday by waving them and singing praises to the King of kings and Lord of lords?) 

    However not everyone was rejoicing. Luke in his gospel tells us that:

    “And some of the Pharisees called to Him from the crowd, ‘Teacher, rebuke Your disciples.” But He answered and said to them, ‘I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out.’” (Luke 19:39-40)

  Are you rejoicing today? Are you allowing the Holy Spirit to fill you and to show your thankfulness to the God who made you in His image? Or are you burdened by the cares of life and have allowed them to overcome you? Today is a day to remember that Jesus is the King of kings, and Lord of lords, and He deserves to be worshiped and obeyed. Did you notice what Matthew said Jesus disciples did in Matthew 21:6? Read it again: “So the disciples went and did as Jesus commanded them.”

    That is what we who call ourselves disciples are required to do. We are to do all that He has commanded us! Let us celebrate this day by showing our love for Him and our desire to show gratitude for our wonderful salvation by being obedient, and to pray for the lost this week and to pray for many to come to our Easter service and to come to know the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ.

PRAY

1.     Lord, fill me with Your Spirit today! Bring to my mind the people in my family, my neighborhood, work, school, church, who need to be saved or just need to be in church this Easter so that they can hear of Your love and sacrifice for them.

2.     Lord I pray that you will keep me faithful throughout this week to spend time with you in Your Scriptures and in prayer for those you place on my heart.

3.     Lord, thank you that I can have a small part in building Your kingdom by praying for the lost and those who are going through tough times.

Tortured for Christ

“Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. Still others had trial of mockings and scougrings, yes, and of chains of imprisonment. And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise,” (Hebrews 11: 35,39)

   Pastor Richard Wurmbrand is a man who understands what it means to suffer for Christ. As a pastor in Romania during the occupation of the Nazis in World War II and under the communist government that took over after the war, he suffered greatly as did his family and thousands of other Christians for their faith in Christ. He spent 14 year total in prison for his work with the underground church, many of those years in solitary confinement. Every time he would be released after years of torture and abuse he would still continue to share the gospel with all who God directed him to tell, even Russian army officers and prison guards after a torture session.

      In 1966 he was able to leave Romania with his family after a Christian organization paid a $10,000 ransom for him to leave on the condition that he would not tell the outside world about how Christians were being treated behind the Iron Curtain. He did not agree to be quiet but miraculously they released him anyway. He became the founder of The Voice of the Martyrs and has worked tirelessly to help Christians enduring persecution around the world. This year is the 30^th anniversary of his book, “Tortured For Christ,”  in which he told the world of the suffering Christians were enduring behind the Iron Curtain, and are still enduring in China, Indonesia, and countries of the Middle East.

     In his book, Pastor Wurmsbrand tells how Christians could effectively witness to those who had been brainwashed by the communists that there was no God:

   “They prove that eternal life exists. I heard one pleading with an atheist: ‘Suppose that we could speak with an embryo in his mother’s womb and that you would tell him that the embryonic life is only a short one after which follows a real, long life. What would the embryo answer? He would say just what you atheist answer to us, when we speak to you about paradise and hell. He would say that the life in the mother’s womb is the only one and that everything else is religious foolishness. But if the embryo could think, he would say to himself, ‘Here arms grow on me. I do not need them. I cannot even stretch them. Why do they grow? Perhaps they grow for a future stage of my existence, in which I will have to work with them. Legs grow, but I have to keep them bent toward my chest. Why do they grow? Probably life in a large world follows, where I will have to walk. Eyes grow, although I am surrounded by perfect darkness and I don’t need them. Why do I have eyes? Probably a world with light and colors will follow.’

      So, if the embryo would reflect on his own development, he would know about a life outside of his mother’s womb, without having seen it. It is the same with us. As long as we are young, we have vigor, but no mind to use it properly. When, with the years, we have grown in knowledge and wisdom, the hearse waits to take us to the grave. Why was it necessary to grow in knowledge and wisdom that we can no longer use any more? It is for what follows. So it is with us here. We grow in experience, knowledge, and wisdom for what follows. We are prepared to serve on a higher level that follows death.’”  (Tortured For Christ, by Pastor Richard Wurmbrand, p88) (Tortured For Christ is now available on DVD through TheVoice of the Martyrs)

    What are you doing to prepare for the eternity? Some of us are happy just to know that we are saved and that we have our name written in the ‘Lambs Book of Life.” Yes, and Praise God, that is the most important thing that has happened or can happen in your life, but why not reach for more? Get to know Him better! Serve Him in you family, church, and every other area of you life. Look forward to meeting Jesus in heaven and hear Him say: “Well done, good and faithful servant…… enter into the joy of your lord.” (Matthew 25:23)

PRAY:

1.     Lord thank you that I can know without a shadow of a doubt that You are my God, my Savior, and my Lord.

2.     Help me to draw closer to You every day by spending time learning about Your life and many other godly men and women who were sold out for you in Your Holy Word, the Bible.

3.     Help me to be obedient to Your commands and the leading of Your Holy Spirit that lives within me that I might be a witness of Your great love for me and all mankind.

Thank you, Reverend Billy Graham

  “How beautiful upon the mountainside Are the feet of him who brings good news, Who proclaims peace, Who brings glad tidings of good things, Who proclaims salvation, Who says to Zion, “Your God reigns!” (Isaiah 52:7)

    This past week we witnessed the passing of one of the giants of the faith; the Reverend Billy Graham, a man who, along with his beloved wife Ruth who passed away years earlier, made a big impact in the lives of millions of people for Christ. He was truly a man that brought the “good news” of salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ to people throughout the world through his evangelistic crusades, books, movies, and through the everyday living of his life totally sold out for the Lord Jesus Christ.

  Like millions of other people I owe a special debt of gratitude to Reverend Graham. I remember sitting on our family couch watching one of his televised crusades when I was fifteen and hearing for the first time in my life the clear gospel given by Doctor Graham. Although my family and I were consistent church goers, and if you would have asked me if I was a Christian I would have said yes, I had never heard that I was a sinner that had to be saved. I would like to tell you that I became a Christian that day but I did not. I said a prayer like I was asked to do but I really didn’t understand what I was saying. But, praise God, a seed had been planted.

    When I was a senior in college I had the opportunity to attend a crusade live at Madison Square Garden in NYC and I went forward at the alter call and again said the prayer and answered the questions the counselor asked me but still did not really understand what salvation was all about. But a seed had been watered, and it would bear fruit in due season. There were other people over the next eight years who tried to tell me about Jesus and the need to surrender my life to Him, to include my dad, and Pastor Charles Stanley whom my sister, DiAnne, took me to hear several times. I am sure that there were also many prayers that went up from my brother, sister and parents also that kept me heading toward the day when I would understand.

   That day finally arrived at Prince Avenue Baptist Church in Athens, GA in 1979 when Pastor Bill Rickets preached, and for the first time I understood my need for a Savior and my life has not been the same since! I repented of my sin and gave my life completely to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords to use as He chose.

    “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.  (2Corinthians 5:17)

   I was a new creation and the course of my life changed from one who was mainly interested in his own agenda to one who is interested primarily in what God wants for me. It does not mean that everything has been laughter and roses but my God radically changed me and continues to change me today, conforming me into the image of Christ little by little.

    “For whom he foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among any brethren.”(Romans 8:29)

   Therefore I must say to Pastor Graham: Thank you for planting and watering the seed of truth in my life many times as you have done for millions of people worldwide. Thank you for your faithfulness to the God that called you into His ministry and has been so faithful to you and all of us who call Jesus our Lord and Savior.

    How about you? Has there been a time in your life when you repented of your sin and surrendered to the leading of the Holy Spirit that lives within you and allowed Him to control your life? If not, do so today! If you still do not understand what I am talking about, find a Bible believing church that can guide you on the right path until you do understand. If you are a Christian already, are you planting seeds, watering seeds, and leading others to the knowledge of Jesus? If not, start today!

PRAY

1.     Thank you Lord for Reverend Graham and his faithfulness to preach the gospel throughout the long time You gave him on this planet called earth.

2.     Help me to be faithful to the job You have given me to be “Your witness” any place where you have planted me; in my family, my neighborhood, my workplace, my school, and any other place you send me.

3.     Thank You Lord for loving me first and dying on an old rugged cross and paying the penalty for my sin so that I could be adopted as your son or daughter in Your kingdom now, and for eternity.