24. The Divine Schedule is Flawless
The Divine Schedule Is Flawless
There is a definite moment at which the seed is ripe for being liberated. … All prepared are the hooks or spikes or gummy secretions needed to anchor it to the ground, and so to give purchase to the embryo shoot when the time comes for it to heave its tombstone and come out into the light.
Even its center of gravity is so adjusted that, in falling from the sheath, the germ is in the very position for its future growth. If it is torn out of the husk a day too soon, all this marvelous preparation will be wasted and come to naught.
WHEN SATAN ACCOSTED JESUS IN THE WILDERNESS he set before Him three temptations, in each of which lay the possibility of good or evil (could the spotless Son of God have been tempted by pure and unmitigated evil? “I do not believe that the Son of God could be tempted with evil, but I do believe that he could be tempted with good—to yield to which temptation would have been evil in him and ruin to the universe” [George MacDonald: Unspoken Sermons, Longmans, Green, and Co., London, 1906, p. 1341]). The third was perhaps the most powerful of the three temptations. Jesus was offered possession of all the kingdoms of the world and their magnificence if He would worship Satan. What might He not have done with such power? Grand thoughts of replacing a corrupt government with a righteous one, filling the world with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea, wiping away all tears, preaching good news to the poor, releasing captives, recovering sight to the blind, setting at liberty the oppressed—all this might have tempted him to take up the offer, but it was not the way appointed. He had arrived in our world in utter weakness. He would be limited by time and space as any of us are limited. He would walk its roads as anyone walks, be tired and thirsty, misquoted, misunderstood, scorned, rejected, and hated. He would be captured, bound, slapped, flogged, blindfolded, crowned with thorns, stripped, and nailed—in weakness, Scripture says (2 Cor 13:4)—to a cross.
All this He might have avoided by accepting Satan’s offers. Why should anyone choose the pathway of suffering if another way is offered? Jesus had come for one reason and one only—to do the Father’s will—and He set His face like a flint to do just that, in perfect harmony with that will, seeking not to sidestep or skip any part of it nor to find a quicker, easier route. He would, like the seed with its center of gravity perfectly adjusted, quietly awaiting the perfect moment for its work, abide faithfully by God’s way and God’s timing.
His followers understand this.
Paul Schneider, a German pastor born in 1897, refused to fall in with the course of Hitler’s regime and after repeated threats and arrests, was taken to Buchenwald, leaving behind his wife and six children. On account of his refusal to salute the swastika he was placed in solitary confinement in the infamous “Bunker.” A year of unbroken torture killed him in 1939. Before he was taken to Buchenwald he wrote to his wife that the die was cast and he had been sentenced to a concentration camp. A friendly jailer allowed him to write a last letter.
“As we have done until now, so in the future we want to trust God alone, in lowliness and patience to expect from Him alone everything good, and Him alone love, fear, and honor with our whole hearts. Thus God will be with us, and we will not be brought to shame in our hope. Be comforted and faithful and do not be fearful. I keep you all close in my heart. In God we are not separated. Be heartily thankful for all the love after this. We want to be thankful for this beautiful time of preparation for harder tests. New sufferings should bring us new experiences of our God and new splendors.
Christ speaks: “I am with you every day, always …,”
In love, your Paul.”
Those who, like Paul Schneider and his Master, fling soul and body down in joyful abandonment to whatever choice the Father may make for them, rest in the confidence that God will make no errors, in timing or anything else. Jesus was aware when He was at the wedding in Cana that his hour had not yet come. He knew when it did come. Just after His entrance into Jerusalem He said it was time for the Son of Man to be glorified—to become, not the king the crowds had hailed with hosannas but a grain of wheat that must die. In Gethsemane He said to the weary disciples, “The hour has come. The Son of Man is betrayed to sinful men. Up, let us go forward; the traitor is upon us” (Mt 26:45-46). He made no effort to escape. When the mob, led by Judas, came after Him with swords and clubs He walked straight up to them and asked who it was they wanted.
“Jesus of Nazareth” was the answer, which so stunned them that they fell to the ground. Day after day, when He had been with them in the temple, none had laid a hand on Him. But the moment had arrived, “the hour when darkness reigns” (Lk 22:53).
And so it was, in the fullness of time, at a particular moment in human history, on a particular Friday when one Pontius Pilate was procurator of Judea, that His work on earth culminated on a particular hill outside the wall of Jerusalem. As there is a definite moment at which the seed is absolutely ready for its fall, its hooks prepared, its center of gravity adjusted, everything done in cooperation with the forces of nature, so the death He was to die, as though He were a common criminal, took place in political and religious circumstances over which His Father had sovereign control. Darkness was allowed to reign.
Christ’s YES to Satan’s offer in the wilderness would have meant a quick and easy pathway to one kind of glory. It would also have meant NO to the Father’s will. YES to His will and NO to Satan meant a pathway straight to the Cross. The prophet Isaiah, centuries earlier, described that pathway:
Without beauty, without majesty (we saw him),
no looks to attract our eyes;
a thing despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering,
a man to make people screen their faces;
he was despised and we took no account of him.
And yet ours were the sufferings he bore,
ours the sorrows he carried.
But we, we thought of him as someone punished,
struck by God, and brought low.
Yet he was pierced through for our faults,
crushed for our sins.
On him lies a punishment that brings us peace,
and through his wounds we are healed.
We had all gone astray like sheep,
each taking his own way,
and Yahweh burdened him
with the sins of all of us.
Harshly dealt with, he bore it humbly,
he never opened his mouth,
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter-house,
like a sheep that is dumb before its shearers
never opening its mouth.
By force and by law he was taken;
would anyone plead his cause?
Yes, he was torn away from the land of the living;
for our faults struck down in death.
They gave him a grave with the wicked,
a tomb with the rich,
though he had done no wrong
and there had been no perjury in his mouth.
Yahweh has been pleased to crush him with suffering.
If he offers his life in atonement,
he shall see his heirs, he shall have a long life
and through him what Yahweh wishes will be done.
His soul’s anguish over
he shall see the light and be content.
By his sufferings shall my servant justify many,
taking their faults on himself.
Hence I will grant whole hordes for his tribute,
he shall divide the spoil with the mighty,
for surrendering himself to death
and letting himself be taken for a sinner,
while he was bearing the faults of many
and praying all the time for sinners. (Is 53:2-12, JB).
The pathway of self-obliteration led to a glory and a majesty that Satan with all the power he had offered to Christ in that wilderness scene could never have counterfeited.
“That is why God has now lifted Him to the heights, and has given him the name beyond all names, so that at the name of Jesus ‘every knee shall bow,’ whether in Heaven or earth or under the earth. And that is why, in the end, ‘every tongue shall confess’ that Jesus Christ is the Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2:9-11, JBP).