Sweet Injuries: Holy Week Wednesday

Here we are, at the halfway mark in Holy Week. This solemn week is truly one of repenting and rejoicing, for with every move and prayer of repentance, we receive our Lord’s pardon, grace and mercy, to fill our sin-healed hearts with hope and joy.

Nevertheless, we have not come to the end of it all, therefore receive again, at this mid-week time, the entire verse of the hymn, which has been our beautiful and bountiful garden for harvesting.

Why, what hath my Lord done?

What makes this rage and spite?

He made the lame to run, He gave the blind their sight.

Sweet injuries! Yet they at these themselves displease,

And ‘gainst Him rise.

Rage and spite are all of the devil and be not ever mistaken about this. They go together, joint partners that never ever work alone. Have a look at these instances of rage against Jesus. Our eyes are on religious people who had become so enraged with Jesus, they tried to throw Him over the cliff and kill Him. Then all those in the synagogue when they heard these things, were filled with wrath, and rose up and thrust Him out of the city and they led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, that they might throw Him down over the cliff. Luke 4: 28 – 29. Just what had Jesus done? What was His injury to them? He had just spoken truth to them about who He was to God and who God was to Him. Sweet Injury!

Jesus has left Galilee and gone to Judea, the place where the Jews, His own people are waiting to kill Him. After these things Jesus walked in Galilee; for He did not want to walk in Judea, because the Jews sought to kill Him. John 7: 1. Jesus’ own people want to kill Him? Why, what has Jesus done to His people, the Jewish people, for them to hate Him so, to the point of wanting to kill Him?

Is there any semblance of truth in this for us today, the Church, His Bride, whom He so deeply loves? Is Jesus more outside the Church than He is inside her, as the common, outside poor are receiving Him with faith and trust, which He does not see demonstrated in Israel, among His own Christian community? If the Church has at all become pharisaical in her nature, then she will also be condemned as they were, for any hypocrisy and self-righteousness. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel land and sea to win one proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you yourselves. Matthew 23: 15

 Hear and See! Without even being aware of our secluded spite and rage against the very Living Word, which we claim to love, honour and cherish, many of us disobey, deny, devalue and kill the unadulterated Words of Jesus. We evangelize and make those we bring in, to be as we are in a faith, which is more trusting and more confident in humans, human powers and wisdom, than in our Lord’s divine and higher wisdom. Isn’t that killing Jesus, the Living Word, daily?

We know that rage and spite are of the devil. However, in his cunning and deviousness, he will keep us fixed and focused on rage and spite that are boisterous, belligerent and violent. Nevertheless, our Lord is showing us that it is not always so. We are being educated and being made aware of rage and spite that are deadly, dumb insolence. These are just as dangerous or even more dangerous. It’s like focusing all your attention on the lion before you who is roaring ferociously, while at your toes, a silent, deadly scorpion is crawling.  Here is an example.

Join Jesus, as He has accepted a dinner invitation from a Pharisee called Simon. Jesus accepts and all is going well. The meal is excellent and the company is just right for Simon. Then, in walks an uninvited guest, who goes straight to Jesus and touches Him. Straightaway, Jesus’ host begins to think evil, unholy and unhealthy thoughts about Jesus and who He really is. Listen to Simon. This Man, if He were a prophet, would know who and what manner of woman this is who is touching Him, for she is a sinner. Luke 7: 39b, He was okay with Jesus as His guest, but now he has changed drastically and doubts Jesus’ credibility and genuineness as a prophet of God. He denounces Jesus in his mind, denying who He really is. Is this not, Sweet injury, that Simon, at Jesus’ loving act of grace, shown to a penitent sinner, should be so displeased and deplorably dishonouring to Jesus? 

Hear and See! Without shame, without apology and without any kind of thought, we so easily speak ill of Jesus in our minds and hearts. We are okay with His Words and Ways, until we witness an act of grace that makes us begin to doubt and vilify Jesus. Jesus knows every single thought we think about Him, and though we do not speak out what we are thinking, He knows. 

Give God thanks for truth, as His Holy Spirit reveals even our unspoken words against the Deity of Jesus.