The Need for Fresh Insights

One of my goals this summer was to do a devotional reading through the gospel of John. This week I finished my read through this gospel and I was struck by an event that took place in chapter 20 verses 1 to 18. The scene takes place after the resurrection of Jesus. Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb where Jesus’ body was laid, and she notices that the stone had been rolled away. She then runs to tell Peter and the other disciples, to which Peter and John ran to the tomb to find out for themselves. Sure enough they saw with their own eyes that the body of Jesus was gone. They walked away from there; it would seem, with their heads down and without hope. The next scene shows that Mary stood outside the tomb weeping. While she was weeping she was approached by Jesus who asked why she was weeping. At this point she was unaware that he was her Lord. But when she realized that she was staring her Lord in the face she calls him “teacher”. Jesus then gives her instructions. He tells her to go to the disciples. She was to tell them these words (v. 17), “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”

Why was this, the message he wanted to send to his disciples? Why didn’t he simply say, “Tell the disciples you saw me, and tell them to get back over here.” Apparently, this was a phrase or a saying that he had said to them before. Therefore, when they heard these words it would have clicked in their minds that this message was from Jesus. They most likely would have thought, “Wait a minute she wasn’t there when he taught us this, and now she’s quoting him.” They would have then believed what she was saying because she was quoting something they had heard Jesus spoke before.

Sometimes God’s word must be spoken to us in fresh ways so that we are shaken up to say, “O, yeah…that’s what the Bible says.” It’s easy to get in a rut and just read the Bible without moving us towards greater belief in the Lord. When the Bible is read it should produce greater faith and confidence in the Lord.

I trust that in your reading through the Bible (particularly during the summer) you are reading it with fresh eyes and ears. Don’t look at the word of God as just another book. Read it intently. Listen to sermons preached with fresh ears every time. Allow it to produce in you a greater love for the Savior, and may it cause you to resolve ever more to walk in the ways of the Lord.

I love this quote from Maurice Roberts' The Thought of God. It encapsulates that thought I'm attempting to capture here.

If our hearts remains cold after all we can do to conjure up in our minds the wonders of Christ's love towards us, we must be ruthless with our affections and constrain our slow hearts to measure our debt of thankfulness to Jesus by a consideration of the gulf between our blessings and our deservings. Let us recall with deepest mortification that if Christ is my life, I was his death. If he is my righteousness, I was his damnation. As he is all my blessing, I was once his curse, this scourge, his "hell". O what a contradiction of God I was when Christ found me and renewed the divine image upon my soul! O at what a distance from God I was when Jesus breathed life into me and bade me live in the near presence of his Father!