The 260 Journey

Day 68

Today’s Reading: Luke 24

It’s resurrection morning for Jesus. All of the Gospels highlight Jesus’ post-resurrection conversations with His disciples and followers, but only Luke highlights a conversation that happened seven miles outside of Jerusalem. To put it another way, a fire started seven miles outside of Jerusalem.

No building burst into flames.

No property was damaged.

No one was trapped.

No life was lost.

But two hearts caught on fire in a conversation with the resurrected Jesus. As someone once said, “Get on fire for God and men will come watch you burn.”

Fire needs no advertisement. When people hear the fire engines, people look for smoke. And seven miles outside of Jerusalem on a road heading toward Emmaus two hearts caught fire.

Let’s look at the story.

Two of them were going that very day to a village named Emmaus, which was about seven miles from Jerusalem. And they were talking with each other about all these things which had taken place. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus Himself approached and began traveling with them. But their eyes were prevented from recognizing Him. And He said to them, “What are these words that you are exchanging with one another as you are walking?” . . . And they said to Him, “The things about Jesus the Nazarene, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word in the sight of God and all the people, and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered Him to the sentence of death, and crucified Him. But we were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel. Indeed, besides all this, it is the third day since these things happened.”

He said to them, “O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?” Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures. . .

They urged him, saying, “Stay with us, for it is getting toward evening, and the day is now nearly over.” So He went in to stay with them. When He had reclined at the table with them, He took the bread and blessed it, and breaking it, He began giving it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized Him, and He vanished from their sight. They said to one another, “Were not our hearts burning within us while He was speaking to us on the road, while He was explaining the Scriptures to us?” And they got up that very hour and returned to Jerusalem, and found gathered together the eleven and those who were with them, saying, “The Lord has really risen and has appeared to Simon.” (Luke 24:13-17, 19-21, 25-27, 29-34)

I have been reading a sermon a day for almost thirty years. It’s a practice I picked up when I started pastoring. One of my favorite preachers is the great Baptist, Vance Havner. In one of his sermons based on this story, Havner gives four characteristics that happen to someone who has a genuine experience with God.

First, their experience is based on the Scriptures. As Luke 24:27 tells us, “He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.” Men who part company with the Old Testament also part company with Jesus. Moses wrote Genesis. Jesus promoted Genesis.

Second, it stirs their hearts. Luke 24:32: They said to one another, “Were not our hearts burning within us while He was speaking to us on the road, while He was explaining the Scriptures to us?” A genuine experience with God has its foundation in the Bible, not in our feelings, although that does not mean our feelings aren’t affected. We are not saved because we feel saved, but being saved makes us happy. As Havner said, “There was never a real revival that did not produce heartburn and hallelujahs."

Third, Jesus shows up at their house: “They urged Him, saying, ‘Stay with us, for it is getting toward evening, and the day is now nearly over.’ So He went in to stay with them. When He had reclined at the table with them, He took the bread and blessed it, and breaking it, He began giving it to them” (Luke 24:29-30). Men stop at the Bible or they stop at feelings. If it’s real, it goes home with you. A genuine experience with God affects your home life, not your church life.

Fourth, it sends them back out to tell others. Read how the two men responded after Jesus disappeared: “They got up that very hour and returned to Jerusalem, and found gathered together the eleven and those who were with them, saying, ‘The Lord has really risen and has appeared to Simon.’ They began to relate their experiences on the road and how He was recognized by them in the breaking of the bread” (Luke 24:33-35).

And as they told the story, He showed up again: “While they were telling these things, He Himself stood in their midst and said to them, ‘Peace be to you’” (Luke 24:36).

What a great grid for a genuine experience with Jesus:

• Scripture based
• Heart stirring
• Home-life affected
• Can’t stop talking about it

People need to experience Jesus, not church. As Havner said, "Sunday-morning Christianity is the greatest hindrance to true revival.”

I think it was all God’s plan that those two men’s hearts burned seven miles outside of Jerusalem. Not in the temple, not in a church, not in the mecca of Judaism and birthplace of Christianity. But seven miles outside a fire burned, meaning God can set us on fire anywhere.

Day 67

Today’s Reading: Luke 23

Today we come to the last solemn minutes of Jesus’ life on the cross. It is His final comment from the cross that catches my attention. It is a prayer but goes further than up. That prayer goes wide.

Let’s read Jesus’ final words before He breathed His last breath:

Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." When he had said this, he breathed his last. The centurion, seeing what had happened, praised God and said, “Surely this was a righteous man.” (Luke 23:46-47, NIV)

What a scene! Jesus was dying and this was His final sentence on earth before He was the resurrected Lord. He said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” Then He simply breathed His last.

Here is the incredible part—that when the centurion saw what had happened, he began praising God and saying that Jesus was a righteous man. A centurion who beat and dragged the Son of God to calvary, witnessed Jesus’ cry and final breath and, with praise, declared who Jesus was!

Søren Kierkegaard said something remarkable: “The gospel is seldom heard but it is overheard.” Jesus wasn’t even talking to the centurion; He was talking to His Father. Yet this man overheard and something changed in him.

It gets crazier in Mark’s account. I think it is the same centurion, but Mark adds a bit of a twist: “When the centurion, who was standing right in front of Him, saw the way He breathed His last, he said, ‘Truly this man was the Son of God!’” (Mark 15:39).

What? Breathing. Just His breathing. Just the way He breathed. And the man’s response to breathing was, “Truly this man was the Son of God."

St. Francis of Assisi said, “Preach the gospel at all times and when necessary use words.” Jesus didn’t use words in Mark’s account. He just breathed. What was happening? Did the centurion get saved by simply observing Jesus’ breath? I don’t think so. Let me explain.

Breathing is what we do every day and in every moment. And people watch the way we do life every day and in every moment. The simple things we do, such as breathing, we do them without thought. But there are other things we do that people watch: the way we raise our children, the way we speak to them; the way we treat people in retail; how we handle our finances; how we have a good work ethic; how we don’t get an attitude when we drive or when we work behind a counter or desk; when we come to work on time and don’t leave till the job is done; how we finish tasks.

I call that breathing. The stuff we do—that we do the right way.

The centurion did not get saved from Jesus’ one breath but by watching Jesus until the moment He died. It was the way Jesus responded to the abuse. Listen to how Peter described those moments on the cross, which gave breathing power:

If you endure suffering even when you have done right, God will bless you for it. It was to this that God called you, for Christ himself suffered for you and left you an example, so that you would follow in his steps. He committed no sin, and no one ever heard a lie come from his lips. When he was insulted, he did not answer back with an insult; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but placed his hopes in God, the righteous judge. (1 Peter 2:20-23, GNT)

The centurion did not just see breathing, he saw more—he saw no lies coming from Him. When Jesus was insulted, He did not answer back. When He was beaten, He did not threaten back. He placed His hope in God.

Everything added up to the centurion’s realization that “truly this man was the Son of God.” After seeing Him breathe during the pain, the suffering, and the false accusations, watching Him breathe that final breath was the icing on the cake.

When you live the way Jesus lived, then the simplest thing—like breathing—can change someone’s life.

We think it is a gospel-preaching moment or a church service or a powerful verse that draws people to get saved. We forget that if that happens, it was because they saw a lot of breathing before that.

Keep inviting people to church, keep sharing life with them, keep telling them about the love of Jesus. But don’t forget that when someone responds to Jesus, it wasn’t the breathing of one moment but the breathing that took place every day.

That’s what the famous African missionary, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, remembered when he stepped off a train in Chicago during the height of racial discrimination. He’d attained some renown and had won a Nobel Peace Prize, so, the story goes, when he arrived at the station, the city officials greeted him with handshakes and the key to the city and reporters questioned him about his long trip from Africa. As he took it all in, he finally noticed something over his shoulder and excused himself from the crowd.

Everyone watched as he maneuvered back to the train to help an older black woman who was struggling with her luggage. When he got back to the group, one of the reporters said, “That’s the first time I ever saw a walking sermon.”

Albert Schweitzer was just breathing. Doing what he did every day.

May we have the same said about you and me.

Day 66

Today’s Reading: Luke 22

In today’s reading we are entering into Luke’s telling of the Passion Week. While Jesus is with His disciples in the garden of Gethsemane, He speaks some remarkable words to Peter, which will be important to all of us, because it is what Jesus does right now for every one of His children.

At the Last Supper, right after Jesus says that one of the Twelve will betray Him, He then says these words to Peter:

Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers. (Luke 22:31-32, NIV)

Simon, Simon.

Just like when you heard your parents use your full name when you were a kid—this is what it means when Jesus repeats Peter’s name twice. This is the full name with the middle name—and that means trouble. What makes this interesting is Jesus goes back to the name, Simon, which He’d changed to Peter.

Remember the story from Matthew 16:15-18, when Peter said to Jesus, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus said, “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church."

Now Jesus goes back to the old name and says it twice. Peter is not necessarily in trouble, but is about to experience trouble . . . Satanic trouble.

Jesus says, “Satan has asked.”

Satan is God’s Satan. He is not an independent agent who can take your life without God’s permission. He is not an independent entity who does what he wants. We see that in the book of Job when Satan had to get permission to attack Job.

Try to imagine the picture Jesus gives Simon Peter: Satan is on one side trying to take Peter and to sift him like wheat. And on the other side, Jesus is praying for him. “Satan has asked to sift all of you . . . I have prayed for you.” At the same time that Satan is asking for Peter, Jesus is interceding for him. That changes everything! That alters the whole case! There may be failure, defection, cowardly denial, and compromise, but there can never be ultimate ruin. Why? The praying Christ.

We think our spiritual lives are all about what we do—our prayer lives, our consistency in Bible reading—and our successes in those things secure us. But nothing could be further from the truth.

The plotting of Satan is no match for the praying Christ.

It isn’t your prayers that secure your place with Him in eternity—it’s Jesus’ prayers that secure you.

I don’t think we can mention the praying Christ without referencing His post-resurrection heaven ministry. Listen to it: “He is able to save fully from now throughout eternity, everyone who comes to God through him, because he lives to pray continually for them” (Hebrews 7:25, TPT).

Satan does not get his way with you. Because you have a Savior who neither sleeps nor slumbers (Psalm 121:4) and is continually praying for you.

Peter doesn’t just get a praying Christ; we get a praying Christ. A person must get past the love of Christ for us, the cross of Christ that values us, and the prayers of Christ before he or she can make their bed in hell.

I love this story. Little Johnny would wake up every night, because he would hear a bump. But the sound was him as he fell out of bed in his sleep. This happened five nights in a row, until finally Johnny said to his father, “Daddy, I’m so tired of falling out of the bed. Can you fix it?” His father said, “Son, it is really simple. You never got far enough in.”

The reason you keep falling out of Jesus is because you never got far enough in. You got in church, now it’s time to get in Christ. In Christ, you have a praying Christ.

Satan doesn’t just want Peter, Satan wants you. Let the words of the Scottish preacher Robert Murray M’Cheyne give you encouragement and empower you to walk in victory: “If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies. Yet distance makes no difference [to Him]. He is praying for me.” And He is praying for you too.

Day 65

Today’s Reading: Luke 21

When I begin to think about what Jesus can see, I am amazed. Consider these:

• Jesus sees the past. In John 1, He tells Nathaniel the day he was under a fig tree.
• Jesus sees the future. He prophesies in John 21 about Peter’s death.
• Jesus sees into the heavenly realm and the spiritual battle that goes on when sickness is being conquered. He says in Luke 10 that He saw Satan falling like lightning as the disciples were doing their calling.
• Jesus sees into the minds of people. In Mark 2 when the religious leaders are thinking that He cannot forgive sin and Jesus questions their thoughts.

With all these amazing things that Jesus sees, would He be interested in the scribble on a church tithing envelope? I think He is interested, and He does look at what we give. Consider this opening story in Luke 21.

He looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury. And He saw a poor widow putting in two small copper coins. And He said, “Truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all of them; for they all out of their surplus put into the offering; but she out of her poverty put in all that she had to live on.” (Luke 21:1-4)

We get worried too much about what the government can see and what they know about us that we forget something really important. That God is omniscient. And He knows everything that is going on in our lives.

He sees it all. Omniscience is a theological word to describe one of the attributes of God. It means that He is all knowing. That He knows everything about you and me—not just what we do but why we do it.

A few years ago, I was sitting in a meeting next to a very talented graphic designer for a major Christian organization. He told me, “When we are designing something, we always tell ourselves that when people do something, there is the good reason and there is the real reason. Our company always tries to figure out the real reason.”

I was reading the story about the American industrialist, Henry Ford, who was asked to donate money for a new medical facility’s construction in Ireland:

The billionaire pledged to donate $5,000. The next day in the newspaper, the headline read, “Henry Ford contributes $50,000 to the local hospital.” The irate Ford was on the phone immediately to complain to the fund-raiser that he had been misunderstood. The fund-raiser replied that they would print a retraction in the paper the following day the headline to read, “Henry Ford reduces his donation by $45,000 to the hospital.” Realizing the poor publicity that would result, the industrialist agreed to the $50,000 contribution.

Real reason? Saving face.

Jesus knows the real reason—all the time. This is Jesus’ last time in the temple before the crucifixion and His last message to the people. And His last message in the temple is on giving.

Understand this about the offering time at church: He is not just there, He is watching. He knows not only who is giving but what they gave.

He saw the woman drop in her two small copper coins. And the offering that caught His attention was a “no noise” offering.

Let me explain. First remember this: she put in a lepta. It was less than a penny. It was the smallest currency in Palestine. Jesus has to be very close to see someone drop in two pennies. In fact, their nickname was “small change.”

At that time the bigger donation of money, the heavier the money. Literally heavier. The heavier the cash, the louder it was.

Why is loud important? So people could hear your offering make a sound and clap and cheer for you when it hit the brass offering buckets.

The treasury where they placed their offerings consisted of thirteen brass treasure chests called trumpets because they were shaped like inverted horns, narrow at the top and enlarged at the bottom. The rich’s coins on the brass trumpets caused oohing and aahing.

But then when a widow passed by and put in her thin ones, there was no noise from the trumpets. The widow received no noise from the trumpets, but she did get noise from God! Jesus stood up and cheered her offering.

John Calvin got it right when he said that there is a message here for the poor and for the rich:

To the poor: you can always give. Those in poverty can be greedy like anyone else. You don’t need stuff to be greedy. Yet this poor widow gave everything. I have watched just as much greed with little as I have with much.

To the rich: amount is not the issue, sacrifice is. God can do great things with tiny offerings that are a big sacrifice. Don’t be deceived by amounts. They deceive us but not Jesus.

What do you need to remember about giving?

First, only one person that day saw correctly what this woman gave and He was the only one who mattered. Who knew that Jesus was going to be in the audience that day during the offering?

If we knew Jesus was going to be at our church on Sunday, would our worship or our giving be any different?

Well, here it is: Revelation 2:1 tells us that He is always in His church walking among us: “The One who holds the seven stars in His right hand, the One who walks among the seven golden lampstands."

Also, what Jesus hears and sees is not what everyone else hears and sees. The people did not hear anything. Or if they did, they heard the clanging of the copper. But Jesus heard “all”—all that she had. She did not give copper, she gave it all. I wish we had the rest of the story.

But I guarantee there is one. Because I know God, and He always responds to this kind of giving. This is one of those stories that, when I get to heaven, I want to find out about. “What happened to the widow who now had nothing in her possession after she gave all in the offering?”

Guaranteed she has a story to tell. God will always give you a story when you give it all to Him.

Day 64

Today’s Reading: Luke 20

Not everyone who asks you a question wants an answer or wants the truth. Listen to one of the most profound questions ever asked. It was a question someone asked of Jesus, and the one who asked it never stopped to hear the answer: “Pilate said to Him, ‘What is truth?’ And when he had said this, he went out again to the Jews . . .” (John 18:38).

Pilate asked the question and did not even give the One who is called “the truth” a moment to answer. I don’t know if he was really interested. Many times people ask questions, not for the answer, but to see what side you have taken. Their question is for exposure not for truth.

In today’s reading, that is what Jesus faced three times. The religious were asking questions not to know the answer but to see what “side” He was on.

Today in this hostile culture we are in, we face the same thing in our workplaces, college campuses, even the local coffee shops. Maybe we can take a page out of Jesus’ book, from His methods of dialoguing in a hostile environment.

Let’s look at two of the three situations. Notice what was asked and then notice how Jesus responded:

On one of the days while He was teaching the people in the temple and preaching the gospel, the chief priests and the scribes with the elders confronted Him, and they spoke, saying to Him, “Tell us by what authority You are doing these things, or who is the one who gave You this authority?” Jesus answered and said to them, “I will also ask you a question, and you tell Me: Was the baptism of John from heaven or from men?” (Luke 20:1-4)

They watched Him, and sent spies who pretended to be righteous, in order that they might catch Him in some statement, so that they could deliver Him to the rule and the authority of the governor. They questioned Him, saying, “Teacher, we know that you speak and teach correctly, and you are not partial to any, but teach the way of God in truth. Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” But He detected their trickery and said to them, “Show Me a denarius. Whose likeness and inscription does it have?” (Luke 20:20-24)

Jesus did the same thing with every ill-intentioned question. Remember, none of these religious people were asking Jesus to hear the answer but to discover what side He was on. Or as apologist Ravi Zacharias explains that every question comes with an assumption. That is why C. S. Lewis said, “Nothing is so self-defeating than a question that has not been fully understood.”

Let’s take a page from Jesus. What did He do in each situation? Jesus asked questions to the questioner. He questioned the question. Many ask questions but never have been questioned themselves.

I have seen preachers on television being asked these kinds of questions—from hosts on the Today show to Oprah to reporters on CNN and Fox News. Every time they are asked a question as Jesus was, they answer it and get in trouble. Instead of doing what Jesus did, some of these pastors wrongly assessed that these people wanted an answer, which wasn’t true. They wanted to know their side, so the attack could commence.

Answer the question when people want an answer. Question the question when people want to fight.

Jesus would not let them catch Him, but His questions put them on the defensive. One of the most explosive questions Christians are asked today: What is your view of same-sex marriage? Let’s take a page from Jesus: What question can we ask in return that would turn the tables?

Maybe something like this: Do you believe in God? Do you think this is something important enough that He has something to say about it? Would you believe in God even if He contradicts what you think? So where would you find out what God thinks?

Someone said, “Most people dismiss the Bible not because it contradicts itself but because it contradicts them.”

The next time someone asks you a question, take a page out of Jesus’ playbook and ask a question in return.