The God of Meaning

John 18:2

Now Judas, who betrayed him, also knew the place, for Jesus often met there with His disciples.  

Have you struggled with loneliness?  Have you tasted of that bitter cup of rejection and felt the dreadful pains of betrayal in your days?  Is there anything worse on this earth than to see in your own life that there is no one that stands beside you?  

Or, perhaps, you’re successful and surrounded by plenty – plenty of family and friends and associates and they all sing your praises.  And yet deep in your heart you fear that you might let them all down…that you might fail.  Fears of mistakes and catastrophe awaken you from a night’s sleep, hound you, and set you forever on edge.  Behind your smiles there is this deep and abiding trepidation.  The economy could tank, businesses could fail, your job could be lost, your health could fail…time and chance happen to everyone.  It is terrible, sad, but so true.  

So, what a great comfort we have in this passage of wonderful Scripture.  

On the night of his betrayal, on the eve of his earthly destruction and humiliation – facing a pain and rejection none of us can fathom today, our Lord brings his disciples, whom, we relish to know, he calls friends.  Doesn’t he know that soon all will scatter and abandon him in this great and terrible hour?  These that he includes and gives the honor of being his most trusted companions will desert him.  The Shepard is struck and the sheep are, well, sheep.  Of course, Jesus knows.  He is aware.  Still, though, He brings His friends anyway.  

So, in the deepest agonies of doubt and dread, beset by demons past and present, Scripture quiets our troubled souls by telling us that though we will fail Him, Jesus will not fail us.  Though in trials we will suffer, slip, and give every reason for abandonment, our Lord will never, never, lose His unbreakable grasp upon us.  Look at the price He is to pay and contemplate what kind of God this is.  Who would stand for this treatment from those that you give all?  Who, in such an hour of unspeakable anguish and peril, would include those that he knows will fail him?  Surely, this is no man-made god because the indignities that He suffers from both friend and foe are too vast to comprehend.  On paper (as the saying goes) no one would follow such a god.  But this is the true and living God – in the flesh.  He is the breathing Word, able to call forth legions of angels to pulverize any mouth that dare utter a hostile word to Him. But instead, for the glory before Him, and for the sake of the elect, He submits to these horrible things.  

This would all be just sentimental, feel-good nonsense if Jesus had stayed in the tomb.  That He didn’t paints this garden scene so much different than it must have looked on that night.  

Oh, glorious Father, we thank you that you are a personal God – not an impersonal force or abstract truth.  You are absolute truth and complete personality. You offer sinners not only a pardon but a full restoration of meaning and love.  And to our doubts and failures you say, “I will give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.”