Hearing God at Palm Sunday
Hearing God at Palm Sunday [∞]
It was Palm Sunday and the small group of families that had been meeting for worship in homes was just breaking up from their worship time. The young pre-teen girl had been looking at a small replica of the tablets of the Ten Commandments on the mantle.
“You said that when there are two things, that they are really one thing, but represent it from a heavenly and an earthly view.”, she said to her father.
“Yes.”, … wondering what she had been thinking about.
“There are two tablets of the law, so there must be heavenly commandments and earthly commandments.”
“Yes. Do you know which are which?” … pleased at her perception.
“The first four must be the heavenly ones, because they talk about how we should treat God, and the last six are the earthly ones, because they tell us how to treat each other. But you said that when two things are split, that they represent the cross. So, the tablets are split, the water was parted, the veil was torn and the rock was split. But Jesus was not torn on the cross, not even a bone was broken. I don’t get how all those things represent the cross.”
Just as her father opened his mouth to explain, she stopped him.
“I get it. God was split. The Father left the son on the cross when he said ‘Why have you forsaken me?” And God was split. “
Tears came to their eyes; to hers as she realized the Divine cost of the cross, that the only God of the universe was torn, whatever that means, in order to save us from sin. They came to his eyes recognizing that the 11 year old girl had discerned the mystery of the ages while, in churches all over the country that year well-educated and well-intentioned preachers told of the physical agony of the cross… according to Mel Gibson.
Two-thousand years earlier Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do men say that I am?” Peter, an uneducated fisherman… one more likely to swing a fist or a dagger than to consider a more “spiritual” response to an altercation, responded, “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.”
Jesus marveled at Peter the same way the father marveled at his daughter. Jesus explained that God had given Peter a revelation. No man had taught him that. But Peter had not had a visitation by angles, nor had a white light appeared. He reported no dreams or visions, or writing on the wall. How could he have had a revelation, and not been aware of it? God had spoken to him in the still, small voice. Consider the following verses and the role of the Holy Ghost in speaking to us:
▸ ± 1Ki 19:12 And after the earthquake a fire; [but] the LORD [was] not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. ▸ ± Lu 12:11 And when they bring you unto the synagogues, and [unto] magistrates, and powers, take ye no thought how or what thing ye shall answer, or what ye shall say:
▸ ± Lu 12:12 For the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say.
▸ ± Joh 14:26 But the Comforter, [which is] the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.
▸ ± Joh 16:13 Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, [that] shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come. And they did remember: ▸ ± Joh 2:17 And his disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.
▸ ± Joh 2:22 When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said.
▸ ± Joh 12:16 These things understood not his disciples at the first: but when Jesus was glorified, then remembered they that these things were written of him, and [that] they had done these things unto him.
▸ ± Ac 11:16 Then remembered I the word of the Lord, how that he said, John indeed baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost. The Holy Spirit speaks to us by causing us to remember. God built a communication device in our brain, which we recognize as the ability to correlate information, for the express purpose of being able to ‘cause us to remember’.
Peter has studied the scriptures and was expecting the Messiah. Many people were. But the Holy Spirit had taken the knowledge he had of the scriptures and correlated them with what he observed of Jesus, and came to the conclusion that he was the Son of God. This was not what others expected. This was unique to Peter’s understanding of the scriptures when viewed in light of Christ. It was his revelation from God in the still small voice.
Just like Peter, the girl had been taught scripture, but no one taught her that the one and only God of the universe, the indivisible deity, had indeed been torn. She had correlated what she knew in the Old Testament with that which she knew of Christ in the New. Just like Peter, she did not know that she had a revelation from God. The Holy Ghost, speaking in whispers, brought things to remembrance and guided her in truth.
Just like Peter and the young girl, we each have the same communication mechanism built into our brains for the express purpose of enabling the Holy Spirit of God to communicate to us. As we fill our heads with scripture, Old and New Testaments, and meditate upon them, God shows us pictures of Christ in the Old as our own personal testimony that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God.
The one advantage that the young girl has is that she has been taught that God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him and that the wisdom of God is hidden in childish riddles within the scriptures themselves. We can learn to discern the riddles as she has.
