Journey to the Cross

Pause

Take a moment to think about how you are expressing your love and praise to God. What difference does your being a child of God make in the way you live your life together with God and others?

Listen

Then the Jewish leaders asked him, “By what authority are you doing these things? What miraculous sign will you show us?”

Jesus answered, “Destroy this temple and in three days I’ll raise it up.”

The Jewish leaders replied, “It took forty-six years to build this temple, and you will raise it up in three days?” But the temple Jesus was talking about was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered what he had said, and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

John 2:18-22

Think

The Jewish leaders question Jesus’ authority to disrupt anything in the temple. “By what authority are you doing these things? What miraculous sign will you show us?,” they ask. Jesus’ love of God, his “passion” for God’s house moved him to act in clearing the temple, but it is his knowledge of his relationship with God, his being God’s Son, that provides an answer to the leaders’ question. “Destroy this temple and in three days I’ll raise it up,” Jesus answers.

The earthly vision of the leaders and the heavenly vision of Jesus collide. While Jesus’ eyes and heart were open to the full power and glory of God, the leaders were limited in their vision, seeing only the daily grind of keeping their system of worship running smoothly. With such limitations, they could not hear his words about the miracle that was coming—the resurrection of God.

What are you missing? How are you limiting God’s actions by your interpretations? Are you ready for a resurrection in your own faith?

David Haun

Pray

God of heaven and earth, limited only by the smallness of my thinking, come largely into my life. Renew my faith; let your Spirit grow strong and sure and passionate within me. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.

Go

Go, led by the Holy Spirit, making way for God to be first with you always and your neighbor to be second, answering God’s saving love with your life, meeting the miracle of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ with the gift of your honor-filled worship, both day and night, wherever you are, forever. Amen.