Sons of Encouragement

by Francine Rivers

  The city was alive with excitement. Everyone was talking about Jesus.

  And then, He was gone again, out in the countryside and villages among the people. He went as far as Caesarea Philippi with its idols and the Gates of Hell, where Gentiles believed demons passed in and out of the world. He traveled through the Ten Towns and stayed in Samaria. And though I did not follow Him, I pondered His words. “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant on the lookout for choice pearls. When he discovered a pearl of great value, he sold everything he owned, and bought it!” What was this pearl? What did I have to sell to buy it?

  As the Law required, He returned to Jerusalem three times each year, for the Festival of Unleavened Bread, the Festival of Harvest, and the Festival of Shelters. And each time Jesus came with His offerings to God, the priests grew more hostile, more determined to turn the people against Him. They even became allies with those they despised, the Herodians, who asked questions that could have caused Him to come into conflict with Roman law.

  “Tell us—is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”

  In response, Jesus asked for a coin. When given a denarius, He asked the Herodian scribes whose picture and title were on it. Caesar’s, of course. “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give to God what belongs to God.”

  Sadducees questioned Him on the resurrection of the dead, and Jesus said they were mistaken in their understanding of Scripture. “God said to Moses, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ So He is the God of the living, not the dead.”

  His words astonished me. All Jews knew the bones of the patriarchs lay in the cave of Machpelah near Hebron. And yet, they lived? What He said confused me more than enlightened me. The harder I tried to understand what I had learned, the more confused I became.

  The multitudes grumbled. Some said He was a good man; others said He led the people astray. The priests wanted Him seized, but no one dared lay hands on Him. He and His disciples camped on the Mount of Olives, but I didn’t go there, afraid of what others would say if I was seen. So I waited, knowing Jesus would come early to the Temple.

  I was there when some scribes and Pharisees dragged a half-clad woman before Him. “Teacher,” they said, though I knew the title rankled them, “this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act. The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?” The trembling woman covered herself as best she could. She tucked her legs beneath her and covered her head with her arms. Men stared, whispering, for she was beautiful. Some sniggered. I moved behind a column and watched, sickened. I had seen her that morning with one of the scribes.

  Jesus stooped and wrote on the ground. Did He write that the Law also prescribed the man who shared her bed be stoned with her? I could not see. When Jesus straightened, I held my breath, for the Law was clear. The woman must die. If He told them to let her go, He would break the Mosaic law, and they would have cause to accuse Him. If He said to stone her, He usurped the power of Rome, for only the governor could order execution.

  “Let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone.” He stooped and wrote again.

  No one dared lift a stone, for only God is sinless. I stayed behind a pillar to see what Jesus would do. Next He looked at the woman. “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?”

  “No, Lord.” Tears streaked down her face.

  “Neither do I. Go your way. From now on, sin no more.”

  Though I was touched by His mercy, I wondered. What of the Law?

  I did not follow Him then, though I drank in His words. Even when many of the leading priests called Him a false prophet, despising and rejecting Him, He drew me with His teaching.

  “A Nazarene carpenter as the Messiah of God! It is blasphemy even to suggest it!”

  None of us—not even his closest friends—guessed what Jesus had meant when He said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will understand that I Am He.”

  Near the end of the week, with trepidation, yet full of hope, I went to Jesus. I had met Peter and Andrew and Matthew. I knew John, and he encouraged me: “Speak to the Master.” I dared not share my deepest hope with John: to become a disciple, to be worthy enough to travel with Him.

  Surely, all my training, all my hard work and self-sacrifice, had prepared me to be counted among His disciples. I thought I could help Him. I had connections, after all. I wanted Jesus to know how hard I had worked all my life to keep the Law. When He knew these things, I expected Him to give me the assurance I wanted. I had much to offer Him. He would welcome me. Or so I thought.

  I was a fool!

  I will never forget Jesus’ eyes as He answered my questions.

  I had sought His approval; He exposed my pride and self-deceit. I had hoped to become one of His disciples; He told me what I must give up to become complete. He gave me all the proof I needed to confirm He was the Messiah. He saw into the heart of me, the hidden secrets even I had not suspected were there.

  And then Jesus said what I had longed to hear. “Come, follow Me.”

  I could not answer.

  Jesus waited, His eyes filled with love.

  He waited.

  God waited and I said nothing!

  Oh, I believed in Him. I did not understand all He said, but I knew Jesus was the Messiah.

  And still, I walked away. I went back to all I knew, back to the life that left me empty.

  Months passed. How I suffered, my mind tortured by thoughts of Sheol! When I went up the steps of the Temple, I put coins in the hands of beggars, and cringed inwardly. I knew the truth. I gave not for their sake, but my own. A blessing—that’s what I was after! Another mark in my favor, a deed to bring me closer to the assurance of hope and better things to come. For me.

  What I had viewed as blessing and God’s favor had turned out to be a curse testing my soul. And I had failed, for I had no conviction to give up what gave me honor and position and pleasure. Again and again, I failed. Day after day, week after week, month after month.

  I wished I had never heard the name of Jesus! Rather than ease the restlessness of my soul, His words scourged my conscience and tore at my heart. He turned the foundations of my life into rubble.

  Passover approached. Jews poured into Jerusalem. I heard Jesus had ridden the colt of a donkey up the road lined by people waving palm fronds and singing, “Praise God for the Son of David! Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Praise God in highest heaven!”

  Jesus, the Messiah, had come.

  I didn’t go out to see Him.

  When He entered the Temple, He took a whip and drove out the money changers and merchants who filled the court that should have been left open for Gentiles seeking God. He cried out against those who had made His Father’s house of prayer into a robbers’ den. People scattered before His wrath.

  I wasn’t there. I heard about it later.

  He taught in the Temple every day. His parables exposed the hypocrisy of the religious leaders, fanning their hatred while they pretended not to understand. They twisted His words, trying to use them against Him. They oppressed those who loved Him, even threatening a poor cripple with expulsion from the Temple because he carried his mat after Jesus healed him on the Sabbath.

  “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!”

  I trembled when I heard Him. I hid at His approach.

  “Everything you do is for show! On your arms you wear extra wide prayer boxes with Scripture verses inside, and you wear robes with extra long tassels. And you love to sit at the head of the table at banquets and in the seats of honor in the synagogues! Woe to you!” His voice thundered and echoed as He strode the corridors of the Temple. “You shamelessly cheat widows out of their property and then pretend to be pious by making long prayers in public.”

  Scribes shouted against Him, but they could not drown out the truth that poured from His mouth. He indicted the priests, who were to be shepherds of God’s people and behaved, instead
, like a pack of wolves devouring the flock.

  “You take a convert and make him twice the child of hell you yourselves are! Blind guides! Fools! You are careful to tithe even the tiniest income from your herb gardens, but you ignore the more important aspects of the law—justice, mercy, and faith.”

  The walls of the Temple reverberated at the sound of His voice. The voices of those He confronted sounded as nothing before His wrath. I shook with fear.

  “You will never see me again until you say, ‘Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord!’”

  He left the Temple. Like sheep after the shepherd, His disciples followed. Some looked back in fear, others with excited pride. Voices rose in anger. The scribes and Pharisees, the priests, everyone seemed to be shouting at once. Would the anger inside this place overflow to the streets beyond? Faces twisted in rage. Mouths opened in curses upon the Nazarene. Some tore their clothing.

  I fled.

  I remember little of what I felt that day other than I had to get away from the wrath inside the Temple. Jesus walked away with His disciples. Part of me wanted to follow; the practical side of me held back. I told myself I had no choice. What Jesus asked of me would dishonor my father. I knew He had not asked the same of others. Why did He demand so much of me?

  His words were like a two-edged sword, slicing through the lies I believed about myself. I was not the man of God I thought I was.

  And then Jesus turned and looked at me. For the barest moment, I saw the invitation. Did I want to go back inside the Temple to my prayers and quiet contemplation, ignoring all that went on around me? Or did I want to follow a man who looked into me and saw the hidden secrets of my heart? One way required nothing; the other, everything.

  I shook my head. He waited. I backed away. I saw the sorrow come into His eyes before He walked away.

  I feel that sorrow now. I understand it more today than ever before.

  The next time I saw Jesus, He hung on a cross between two thieves at Golgotha. A sign written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek, hung above his head: “Jesus the Nazarene, the King of the Jews.”

  I cannot explain what I felt when I saw Jesus outside the city gate, nailed on a Roman cross. Men I knew hurled insults at Him. Even in His hour of suffering and death, they had no pity. I felt anger, disappointment, relief, shame. I justified myself. It seemed I had not turned my back on God after all. I had rejected a false prophet. Hadn’t I?

  What does that say of me? I thought myself a righteous young man striving always to please and serve God. Jesus exposed me as a fraud. The shame comes back to me now, years later. Such was my arrogance! Such was my willful blindness to the truth! I was equally ashamed of the religious leaders. Men I respected, even revered, stood below the cross, smirking, casting insults, mocking Jesus as He died. They felt no pity, showed no mercy. Not even the wailing of Jesus’ mother or the weeping women with her could rouse their compassion.

  The rabbi I had followed for so long was among them. They reminded me of vultures tearing at a dying animal.

  Would I become like them?

  And where were Jesus’ disciples? Where were the men who had lived with Him for the past three years, who had left their homes and livelihoods to follow Him? Where were those who had stood along the road waving palm fronds and singing praises as Jesus entered Jerusalem? Had it been less than a week ago?

  I remember thinking, Was it this poor carpenter’s fault that we expected so much of Him? When given the choice between an insurrectionist like Barabbas and a man who spoke of peace with God, the people clamored for the freedom of the one who killed Romans.

  Nicodemus stood in the gate, tears streaming down his face, into his beard. Arms crossed, hands shoved deeply into his sleeves, he rocked back and forth, praying. I approached my father’s old friend, alarmed to see him in such distress. “May I help you?”

  “Be thankful your father did not live to see this day, Silas. They would not listen! They set out to do what they would do. An illegal trial by night, false accusations, false witnesses; they’ve condemned an innocent man. God, forgive us.”

  “You are an honest man, Nicodemus.” I thought to absolve him. “It is Rome who crucifies Jesus.”

  “We all crucify Him, Silas.” Nicodemus looked up at Jesus. “The Scriptures are being fulfilled even as we stand here watching Jesus die.”

  I left him to his grief. His words frightened me.

  I celebrated Passover as the Law required, but felt no joy in reliving the deliverance of Israel from Egyptian bondage. Jesus’ words kept coming back to me. “God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for Him, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.”

  God had made death pass over His people in Israel. If Jesus was the Messiah, as I had once thought and Nicodemus still believed, what vengeance would God take against us? What hope had we of God’s intervention?

  I dreamed of Jesus that night. I saw His eyes again, looking at me, waiting as He had that day when He left the Temple. When I awakened, the city was dark and silent. My heart beat heavily. I felt something in the air.

  “I am the way and the truth and the life,” Jesus had said. The proclamation of God or words of a madman? I didn’t know anymore.

  The way was lost, the truth silenced, the hope of the life Jesus offered as dead as He was.

  It seemed the end of everything.

  “You have been hard at work for a long time, Silas.” Epanetus stood in the doorway. “When we asked you to write your story, we did not intend you to become a slave to it.”

  Silas put the reed into the pen case and blew on the last few letters he had written. “I’ve been lost in the past.”

  “Has it been a comforting journey?”

  “Not entirely.” He rolled the scroll carefully. His muscles were stiff, his back aching. As he rose, he stretched. “I was deaf and blind.”

  “And Jesus gave you ears to hear and the eyes to see. Come, my friend. Walk with me in the garden.”

  The warmth of the sun melted the tension in Silas’s shoulders. He filled his lungs with the sea air. Birds flitted about the garden, ta-ta-whirring from hidden perches. He felt safe here, as though a thousand miles from Rome, the arena, the maddened, screaming mob, but still not far enough away to escape from the memories of what happened there.

  “Where are you in your story?”

  “Jesus’ death.”

  “I would give all I own to see His face, even for a moment.”

  Silas winced inwardly, thinking of the years he’d wasted when he could have been with Jesus.

  “What is it you remember most about Jesus?”

  “His eyes. When He looked at me, I knew He saw everything.”

  Epanetus waited for him to say more, but Silas had no intention of satisfying the Roman’s curiosity about what everything he meant.

  “Do you long for Jerusalem, Silas?”

  That was an easy enough question to answer. “Sometimes. Not the way it is now. The way it once was.” Was that even true? Did he long for the days before Christ came? No. He longed for the new Jerusalem, the one Jesus would bring at the end of the ages.

  “Do you still have family there?”

  “No blood relations, but there may be Christian brothers and sisters still there.” Perhaps a few remained firmly rooted, like hyssop in the stone walls of the city. He hoped so, for he prayed continually that his people would repent and embrace their Messiah. “I don’t know if anyone remains or not. I only hope. It’s been years since I stepped foot in Judea.” May the Lord always call someone to preach there, to keep the gate open for His people to enter into the fold.

  “Perhaps you will go back.”

  Silas smiled bleakly. “I would prefer God called me to the heavenly Jerusalem.”

  “He will. Someday. We all pray that your time will not be soon.”

  Some prayers Silas wished were left unsaid. “Had I remained in Rome, I might be there now.” Perhaps he should have stayed.

  �
��God willed you here, Silas.”

  “The scrolls are precious. They must be safeguarded.” He paused before a fountain, soothed by the sound of water. “I should be making copies of the scrolls, not writing about my trials.”

  “We need the testimony of men like you, who walked with Jesus, who heard His teaching, who saw the miracles.”

  “I didn’t. I told you. My faith came late.”

  “But you were there.”

  “In Judea. In Jerusalem. Once in Galilee. In the Temple.”

  “Write what you remember.”

  “I remember sorrow. I remember the joy of seeing Christ risen. I remember my shame and guilt being washed away. I remember receiving the Holy Spirit. I remember men who served Christ and died for it. So many I’ve lost count. My closest friends are with the Lord, and I feel . . .” He clenched and unclenched his hands.

  “Envy?”

  He let out a sharp breath. “You see too clearly, Epanetus.” Silas wished he could, for he felt lost in the mire of his own emotions. “I am so filled with feelings, and I fear none reflect the Spirit of God.”

  “You are a man, not God.”

  “A ready excuse I can’t accept. Peter hung upside down upon a cross, dying in agony, and still he prayed for those who nailed him there! He prayed for every person in that arena. He prayed the same words our Lord did: ‘Father, forgive them.’ Forgive the whole wretched mass of mankind. And what did I pray? For judgment! For their annihilation! I would have rejoiced to see every Roman burned by God’s fire, and Rome itself made ash!”

  He felt Epanetus’s silence and thought he understood it. “Do you still want me under your roof?”

  “Roman blood runs in my veins. Do you pray now that God will judge me?”

  Silas shut his eyes. “I don’t know.”

  “An honest answer, and I won’t put you out for it. Silas, I knew the same kind of bitterness when several of my friends were murdered by zealots in Jerusalem. I hated every Jew in sight and took vengeance whenever allowed. I don’t know how many of your people I killed or arrested. And then I met a boy. About Curiatus’s age. And he had more wisdom than any man I’d ever known.” He laughed softly. “He said he knew the God of all creation, and that same God wanted to know me, too. It was the first time I had heard of Jesus. The miracle was I listened.”