The Man That Betrayed Jesus

Luke 22:3

"Then entered Satan into Judas

 surnamed Iscariot, being of the 

number of the twelve."

         The atmosphere of Passover time was always inflammable. The Roman government normally had only a small detachment of troops stationed at Jerusalem; but for the Passover season many more were drafted in. The problem which faced the Jewish authorities was how to arrest Jesus without provoking a riot. It was solved for them by the treachery of Judas.  When Satan entered into Judas; two things stand out.

        Just as God is looking for men to be his instruments, so is Satan. A man can be the instrument of good or of evil, of God or of the devil. We all see this whole universe as the battle ground between the god of the light and the god of the dark, and in that battle a man must choose his side. We, too, know that a man can be the servant of the light or of the dark.

        But it stills remains true that Satan could not have entered into Judas unless Judas had opened the door. There is no handle on the outside of the door of the human heart. It must be opened from within.

    It is our own decision whether we will choose to be the instrument of Satan or a weapon in the hand of God. We can enlist in either service. God help us choose aright! 
        Amen!

Reading: (Luke 22: 1-6)

May God Bless You

And Your Family

Minister Robert A. Lail Sr.

The Cross Life Ministry

       

Trust God, You Will Lack Nothing!

Luke 22:35  

And he said unto them, "When I sent you without purse, 

and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye any thing? 

And they said, Nothing" 

        Here at Christ parting, He wanted them to acknowledge that He had been a kind and careful Master to them ever since they left all to follow Him. "When I sent you without purse, and scrip,and shoes, lacked you any thing?  He admitted that He had sent them out in a very poor and bare condition, barefoot, and with no money in their purses, because they were not to go far, nor be out long; and that He would teach them to depend upon the providence of God.
        If God had send us out into the world, let us remember; "that better than we have begun with nothing." Christ' disciples gave all, but they had lacked nothing; they then lived as plentifully and comfortably as ever; and they readily acknowledged it: "Nothing, Lord; I have all, and abound."  It is good for us often to review the Providences of God that have been concerning us all our life, and to observe how we have got through the straits and difficulties we have met with. 
        Christ is a good Master, though His servants may sometimes be brought low, yet He will help them; and though He try them, He will not leave them. We must not complain, but be thankful, if we have had the necessary supports of life, or we have had neither prosperity or riches or we have lived from hand to mouth, and lived upon the kindness of our friends. The disciples lived upon contribution, and yet did not complain. To their Master's honour, they said that it was sufficient; they had wanted nothing. Let us all evaluate our heart's today.  "Can You Say It Was Sufficient And Wanted Nothing."  
        Amen!

Reading: (Luke 22:35-38)
Ref: (HGSB; BSC)

God Bless You

And Your Family

Minister Robert A. Lail Sr.

The Cross Life Ministry

 

The Widow's Gift

Luke 21:3  

And he said, "Of a truth I say unto you, 

that this poor widow hath cast 

in more than they all." 

         He looked up and he saw many people flinging their offerings into the treasury and then came a poor widow. All she had in the world was two mites. It was the smallest of all coins, so the offering of the widow was worth one twentieth of a new penny. But Jesus said that it overvalued all the other offerings, because it was everything she had.
         There is the spirit in which a gift is given. A gift which is unwillingly given, a gift which is given with a grudge, or a gift that is given for the sake of prestige or of self-display loses more than half its value. The only real gift is that which displays the outflow of the loving heart. 
        There is the sacrifice which it involves. That which means nothing to one man may be a costly sum to another. As the rich flung their offerings into the treasury, it did not really cost them much; but the two mites of the widow woman cost her everything she had. They no doubt  calculated how much they would give; but the widow gave with that generosity which could give no more.
        Giving does not begin to be real giving until it hurts. A gift shows our love only when we have had to do without something or have had to work hard in order to give it. How many of us give to God like that?
        Amen!

Reading: (Luke 21:1-4)
               (Mark 12:41-44)

May God Bless You

And Your Family

Minister Robert A. Lail Sr.

The Cross Life Ministry

 

Power To Continue

Acts 1:8

"But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: 

and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, 

and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth."

        The power of the Spirit was going to make them Christ's witnesses. That witness was to operate in every place possible, first in Jerusalem, then throughout Judaea; then Samaria, the semi-Jewish state, which would be a kind of bridge leading out into the heathen world; and finally this witness was to go out to the ends of the earth.       

        Luke has talked about waiting for the coming of the Spirit. And I'm sure we do not think that the Spirit came into existence now for the first time. It is possible for a power to always exist, but for men to experience it must be received at some given moment in time. So knowing that the Holy Trinity is, God The Father, Jesus Christ The Son, and The Holy Spirit, there came a special time  when they experienced, and a time when all ages will experience that full power which has always been present, and once received gives power to continue as witnesses for Christ. 
        Let us look at certain things about Christian witness. First, a witness is a man who says I know this is true.  For instance; In a court of law a man cannot give evidence a made up story; it must be his own personal experience. Second, the real witness is not of words but of deeds. " The witness of a man's life is irresistible.
        Third, in Greek the word for witness and the word for martyr is the same  A witness had to be ready to become a martyr. To be a witness means to be loyal no matter the cost.  My friends, as Believers in Jesus Christ, we must stand for what we, by faith believe to be true, and give our life for the Gospel Of Jesus Christ.
        Amen!

Reading: Acts 1:6-11
Ref: (HGSB)

May God Bless You

And Your Family

Minister Robert A. Lail Sr

The Cross Life Ministry

        

The Question Of Christ Commission

Luke 20:8  

And Jesus said unto them, "Neither tell 

I you by what authority 

I do these things".

        When anyone has received a divine commission, he should not have to prove it. His credentials are written large upon his life and message. It was so with John the Baptist. There was no need for him to argue his claims. The crowds in the Jordan valley; the multitudes he baptized were sufficient to attest him as God’s servant. What he said about God and sin found corroboration in their hearts. So it was with our Lord. The masses of people that followed Him and hung on His words had no doubt that He (Christ) was the heir of the vineyard.
        The leaders professed to doubt it, because, when they used the language of the parable that follows, they were reluctant to surrender their claims to the ownership of the vineyard.  Probably, sufficient stress has not been laid upon the supreme intellectual power of our Lord, which was displayed so clearly in these conflicts with the Hebrews specious, deceptive, and their oversubtle reasoning in which Jesus always came out the conqueror, by the sheer force of His mind. “We should have the mind of Christ Within Our Self !”
        Amen!!

Reading: (Luke 20:1-8)
               (Matt.21:23-27)
               (Mark 11:27-33)

May God Bless You

And Your Family

Minister Robert A. Lail Sr.

The Cross Life Ministry

The Entrance Of The King

Luke 19:29,30  

And it came to pass, when he was come nigh to Bethphage and Bethany, 

at the mount called the mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, 

Saying, "Go ye into the village over against you; in the which 

at your entering ye shall find a colt tied, whereon yet never 

man sat: loose him, and bring him hither."

                                             
         From Jerusalem to Jericho was only seventeen miles, and now Jesus had almost reached his goal. Jerusalem, His journey's end, lay just ahead. The prophets had a regular custom that they made use again and again. When words were no effect, when people refused to listen and understand the spoken message, they resorted to some dramatic action which put their message into a picture that none could fail to see. It was just such a dramatic action which Jesus planned now. He proposed to ride into Jerusalem in a way that would be an unmistakable claim to be the Messiah, God's Anointed King. Let's look at certain things about His entry into Jerusalem. 
        It was carefully planned. It was no sudden, impulsive action. Jesus never left any thing until the last moment, He Went by God's time clock. He had his arrangement with the owners of the colt. The Lord needs was meet a long time long ago. It was an act of glorious defiance and of superlative courage.
        By this time there was a price on Jesus' head. It would have been natural that, if he must go into Jerusalem at all, he should have slipped in unseen and hidden away in some secret place in the back streets. But he entered in such a way as to focus the entry upon himself and occupy center stage. It is a breath-taking thing to think of a man with a price upon his head, an outlaw, deliberately riding into a city in such a way that every eye was fixed upon him.
        It is impossible to exaggerate the sheer courage of Jesus. It was a deliberate claim to be king, a deliberate fulfilling of the picture in (Zech. 9:9).  "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass." The ass in Palestine was not the lowly beast that it is in this country. It was noble. Only in war did kings ride upon a horse; when they came in peace they came upon an ass. So Jesus by this action came as a king of love and peace, and not as the conquering military hero whom the mob expected and awaited. However my friends, Christ' next entry will be the Conqueror of The World.
        Amen! 

Reading: (Luke 19:28-44)
               (Matt. 21:1-11)
               (Mark 11:1-11)
               (John 12:12-19)

May God Bless You

And Your Family

Minister Robert A. Lail Sr.

The Cross Life Ministry  

The Waiting Cross

Luke 18: 31

Then he took unto him the twelve, and said unto them,

"Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things

that are written by the prophets concerning

the Son of man shall be accomplished." 

        There are two kinds of courage. There is the courage of the man who, suddenly and without warning, is confronted with some emergency or some crisis, and without hesitation and even being reckless flings himself into it. There is the courage of the man who sees a terrible situation looming ahead and knows that nothing short of running can avoid it, and who yet goes steadfast and forward. There is no question which is the higher courage. Many a man is capable of the heroic action on the spur of the moment; it takes a man of supreme courage to go on to face something which haunts him for days ahead and which, by turning back,  he  could escape.

       With the frequent warning of what was to happen to Jesus in Jerusalem, we sometimes wonder why, when the cross came, it was such a shock and such a shattering blow to His disciples. The truth is that they simply could not take in what He was saying to them. They were obsessed with the idea of a conquering king; they still clung to that hope that He would let loose His power in Jerusalem and blast His enemies off the face of the earth.  I'm sure that some of us today holds that same hope every now and then.

       Here is a great warning to every listener. The human mind has a way of listening only to what it wants to hear. There are none so blind as those who refuse to see. There is a kind of wishful thinking which believes that the unpleasant truth cannot really be true, and that the thing it does not want to happen cannot happen. A man will always struggle against the tendency to hear only what he wants to hear.

       Jesus never foretold the cross without foretelling the resurrection. He knew that shame lay before Him, but He was equally certain that glory lay before Him, too. He knew what the malice of men could do, but He knew also what the power of God could do. It was in the certainty of ultimate victory that He faced the apparent defeat of the cross. He knew that without a cross there can never be any crown.  Then said Jesus unto his disciples, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Matt. 16:24).

        Amen!

Reading: (Luke 18:31-35)

Ref: (HGSB)

May God Bless You

And Your Family

Minister Robert A. Lail Sr.

The Cross Life Ministry