For the
next seven days you will see and hear what worship through suffering looks and
sounds like. Jesus said that He only spoke what He heard the Father saying
(John 8:25 – 28), and that He only did what He saw the Father doing (John
5:19). As Jesus hung on the cross, dying for the sins of the world, He spoke
words from the Father, which pleased the Father. From these words, you can
learn to worship under the most painful circumstances imaginable. Jesus did.
The first
words of Jesus from the cross are found in Luke 23:34, “Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do.” This request of Jesus reaches all the way back
to Genesis 3, the occasion of the first sin from which all sin originated. Adam
and Eve were created in the perfect image and likeness of God. They were placed
in an ideal environment, the Garden of Eden. God gave them a simple command, “You
may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall
surely die.” Genesis 2:16 – 17
And yet,
when tempted to do what God had commanded them not to do, they believed the lie
of the tempter rather than the truth of God’s word. They ate of the fruit in
order to know more, and became totally blind and deaf to the spiritual reality
of what they had done. The lie promised that they would know more, but stole
the intimate knowledge of God they had. The tendency to suppress the truth in
order to believe the lie was passed down from one generation to the next from
the seed of Adam until the Seed of woman said, “Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do.” Jesus was asking the Father for the very thing
the Father promised to give in Genesis 3:15, “I will put enmity between you
(the serpent) and the woman, between your seed and her Seed; he shall bruise
your head, and you shall bruise your heel.”
In Psalm
2 there is a conversation between the Father, the Son, and the kings of the
earth that teaches this important truth. It begins by describing the vain plot
of declaring independence from God, “The kings of the earth set themselves, and
the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and his Anointed, saying,
‘Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.’” This
plan causes God to laugh at the ignorance and futility of such a thing. Then He
speaks to them in His fury, saying, “As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my
holy hill.” The Hebrew word “fury” is charon, used over forty
times in the Old Testament, exclusively of God, describing His intense
displeasure and anger. It is the opposite of pleasing God, of worshipping Him.
The next
verse, 2:7, the Son speaks and quotes the Father’s decree, saying, “I
will tell of the decree: The LORD said to me, ‘You are my Son; today I have
begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations you heritage, and the ends
of the earth your possession. You shall break them with the rod of iron and
dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.’” The Son declares what He
has heard the Father say and asks the Father for what He has promised to give.
This pleases God, the Father, to declare what He has said and to ask what He
has promised. And this is what Jesus is doing on the cross, asking the Father
for the forgiveness He had promised all through the Old Testament, beginning in
Genesis 3:15.
When
others persecute you, slander you, and curse you, pray the promises of God for
your enemies. As you bless them with the promises of God, you become a blessing
to God. This is what it means to worship the Father in spirit and truth, and in
suffering.
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