To be Delivered Up

Last week I was attending the Shepherd's Institute and thus was not home with my family for our normal morning Bible study and the words of Jesus in Mark 10:33-34 stood out to me;

“See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles. And they will mock him and spit on him, and flog him and kill him. And after three days he will rise.”

Actually, it was the word "delivered" that really caught my attention that morning.  Why delivered?  The basic meaning of the original word means "to hand over, to give into the charge of another".  We know that Judas betrayed Jesus into the temple's hands, but is this what Jesus was referring to?  Did Jesus feel that Judas had "possession" of Him?  Could it be that Jesus felt that it was His own Father that would hand Him over to a cruel humanity for His mutilation and death?  As I meditated on this thought, several other scriptures came to mind that spoke to me in a powerful way of what it means to be totally surrendered to the will of God!

• When Satan tempted Christ in the wilderness, he told Jesus to "throw yourself down from the temple roof" to prove God the Father's prophesy that He would "give His angels charge over thee, to bear thee up lest you dash your foot against a stone".  Satan knew that Jesus had special protection from His Father, and used that to try to get Jesus to tempt God.
• We see Jesus protected from the angry mob at Nazareth when they were going to throw Him over the cliff, all of a sudden, the tables turned and Jesus simply walked through their midst and away to safety.  Clearly a divine protection.
• And then there was also the time when Jesus was debating with the scribes in the temple and they were mocking His statement that He has seen Abraham because He was too young!  Jesus responded "Before Abraham was, I AM" to which they grabbed stones to kill this blasphemer and it says Jesus "hid himself and went away".  It would also appear to me that Jesus was again granted an unusual protection because the time of His death had not yet come.

But now He was going up to Jerusalem, where that protection would be taken away, and the most horrible wickedness the world could think of would be heaped on His head, and He would face it...alone.  Alone!  Can you hear it in His agonizing cry of "Father, why have you forsaken me?!"  He who had given up SO MUCH just to leave heaven and become a human being, was now losing what little shelter He had from His Father and being delivered to the worst of men!  But He did it because it was His Father's will and He was committed to obey at any cost, and that included even His own life!   But there was a bigger picture going on!  His Father in heaven was working a glorious plan of redemption for you and me and it needed the perfect Lamb.  God's plan was not the best plan for Jesus's life here, but it was the only way for His kingdom to grow and succeed.  As Jesus yielded to His Father's plan and died, He became the redemption for all of us mankind.

You see, God has plans that are far bigger than we can often see in our lifetimes.  Joseph didn't know why he had to face such treachery and pain, and yet God had a plan and by being submissive to it, Joseph was used to save many people including those closest to himself including the very ones who had so wounded him.  But he had to accept God's leading, even while not understanding.  I am sure that Paul, sitting many days in jail wondering if this was the day he would be either killed or set free, wondered what God was doing.  But think where we would be today if Paul had not been imprisoned for all those years!  His letters to the churches have been a source of incredible teaching, direction, and growth for the church ever since!  But they likely would not have happened if Paul could simply have booked a passage to Corinth on the next ship.  By him being locked up, he had to write and those writings have probably done more to build the church of God over the years, than all the churches he planted put together!   Job was another example.  God was doing something in the heavens that Job could not see, and at first Job demanded to know why!  But God so eloquently reminded Job that we should not question the Almighty's hand.  He has proven His faithfulness over and over again!  His wisdom and foresight is beyond our wildest comprehension, so who are we to demand He fit His divine plans into our feeble minds?

How about us?  When we face difficult trials and unexplained pain, how do we respond?  I confess that many times I have held onto hurts and bitterness far too often because I couldn't see God's big picture.  What if God is allowing my life to be "ruined" or even slightly damaged, so that He could touch someone else's life in a way that would otherwise have been impossible?  Am I willing to submit to that?  Even if it means my life, or the lives of those I love?  If I can choose to believe that God is truly in control, that He has a plan that is bigger than my understanding, and then allow Him to use my life in whatever way benefits His kingdom most, He will give us the strength to walk these fiery trials with the forgiveness and strength that Jesus had on the cross. Jesus prayed, "Father, forgive them..." and He can give us the strength to do the same, but we must first follow Christ's example.  May we be willing to be delivered up, and maybe used up, not for our glory here, but for His glory both here, and in the eternal glory in the hereafter!