There are terrible times in our lives when everything seems to have gone so wrong that nothing will ever be right again. When Jesus died, the disciples must have felt like their whole world ended. They had given up their jobs, their families, and everything to follow Him. They had hoped to be rich, famous, and powerful when Jesus became King and suddenly, they probably wished that none of it had ever happened. But God always has other plans, even when things seem darkest and most terrible.
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Hi! I’m Miss Tyler and welcome to another episode of Context for Kids where I teach you guys stuff most adults don’t even know. If this is your first time hearing or if you have missed anything, you can find all the episodes archived at contextforkids.podbean.com, which has them downloadable, or at contextforkids.com, where I have transcripts for readers or on my Context for Kids YouTube channel. (Parents, Scripture this week comes from the CSB, the Christian Standard Bible).
Passover is almost here and so I want to talk about something that we can all relate to—having the worst day ever. And there are a lot of reasons we can have bad days—maybe our pet dies, that’s really horrible, or we move away from our friends, or we get bullied at school, or we just can’t figure out fractions no matter how hard we try, or we can’t go on that family vacation because there was a blizzard. And all of those are sad and some of them are really sad but I want to talk about Jesus’s disciples and their worst day ever. And not just the Twelve main disciples either. I am also talking about Jesus’s mom, and the women who stayed with Him at the Cross and Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha. In fact, there were somewhere between seventy-two and one-hundred and twenty disciples at that point. We know this because He sent out seventy-two disciples all over the Galilee to prepare the way for Him. And on that exciting Pentecost when all of His disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit, there were one-hundred and twenty. Some of the new disciples were his brothers James and Jude, who only came to believe Him after He rose from the dead.
For every single one of those people, the saddest and worst days of their lives were probably when Jesus, their teacher, was arrested and crucified and died and was lying in the Tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. Not only were they heartbroken because they loved Jesus and had been following Him for years, learning from Him, watching Him heal people and make miracles happen, but also because they thought He was the Messiah that the Jews had been waiting for over hundreds of years. The Jews had been suffering for about six hundred years. The Babylonians came and destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple, and forced almost all of them to walk to Babylon where they were forced to live for seventy years, and then the Babylonians got wrecked by the Persians. The Persian King Cyrus the Great told the Jews that they could go back home to Israel but most of them didn’t and even the ones who did were still just a small part of the huge Medo-Persian empire. And then the Greeks came and took over, and after a short time on their own, the Romans took charge. So, the Jews never had their own Kingdom again like they did when David and Solomon were king. They might have a king, like Herod the Great, but it was kind of a joke because he really just worked for the Romans. They weren’t their own bosses. They didn’t have a real king and their own laws, and they couldn’t entirely do what they wanted because a foreign government was bossing them around. It’s a lot like when Africa, South America and India and other places were controlled by countries in Europe like England, Spain, and Belgium. They easily took over countries that didn’t have guns and ships. The people who were born there couldn’t rule themselves and so they were generally treated badly. Same with North America when the Europeans and the Americans did that to the Native Americans who had been living here.
Living in a situation where someone else from the outside is the boss is not ever fun. And so, the Jews had been living like this for about six hundred years when Jesus was born, and they were waiting for someone called the Messiah. Messiah is a word that comes from the Hebrew Mashiach, and it means anointed one; in Greek the word is Christos, where we get Christ. The kings and priests of Israel were anointed, which means that they were officially God’s representatives. It means they had special jobs, and their boss was God. But the Messiah was special, and unique. The Messiah was supposed to come and make it so that they would never live under the thumb of evil outsiders again. They believed that the Messiah would destroy the Roman Empire and get revenge for all the horrible things that the Jews had suffered since they lost their kingdom. When Messiah came, they believed that they would be a mighty empire again, like when Solomon was king. And He would fix what was wrong with the Temple so that crooked people wouldn’t be in charge of it anymore. People had been whispering and wondering if Jesus was that Messiah; if He would raise an army and drive out the Romans for good, retake all the land that had been lost, and regather all the exiles who had left but had never come back home.
Jesus taught like no one else ever had—or ever would again! When He spoke, it felt like He was the final authority and like no one could say anything to trip him up and the people who disagreed with him regretted it because they just couldn’t compete with His wisdom. And the miracles! Oh my—He fed thousands from a few barley loaves and some small fishes. He was throwing demons out of people easier than we can take out the trash! The people who were paralyzed, who couldn’t move—they got up and walked just because He told them to. Blind people could see. Deaf people could hear music for the first time. He made sick people healthy, and he even raised a few from the dead. It was like Jesus was fighting a one-man war against all the forces of darkness; except, He wasn’t going after their human enemies—the Romans who were starving them to death with taxes that took most of their food, the executions and crucifixions without even a fair trial, and the bullying of the foreign soldiers who often hated them and resented having to be there. Everyone believed that God was going to punish the Roman Empire, and they were hoping that Jesus was going to be the man to make it happen.
But the leaders had never liked Him. At every step, they tried to trick Him, trap Him or trip Him up with a clever question but they had given up because every time they tried, they just ended up humiliated, embarrassed, and shamed for everyone to see. He had a reason for doing everything that they hated, and try as they might, He wasn’t ever caught doing anything that was actually illegal. And the people loved Him, but the leaders were afraid of what would happen if He got more popular and raised an army and failed to defeat the Romans—things would be even worse than they already were—or if He just became so famous that no one would listen to them anymore. They had worked hard to get to where they were, and they weren’t about to let a guy from Galilee take it all from them. So, when they got the chance (when Judas betrayed Jesus), they arrested Him and decided to have Him put to death because He said that someday, He would judge the High Priest for his wickedness. They believed that judgment was the job of God and that judging the High Priest was the same thing as blaspheming God. Blasphemy is a Greek word that means to slander or insult or to lie about someone. For example, if I accuse you of doing something that you didn’t do, that would be blaspheming you. Blasphemy is very serious to God and so we aren’t supposed to say anything about someone else unless we absolutely know for sure that it is true. And even then, it has to be very important and appropriate to talk about. We can’t just go around blurting out stuff against people just because we want to.
But that’s what they did to Jesus. They blasphemed Him and they had Him killed because they wanted Him out of the picture and not because He was actually evil or deserved to die. Even the Romans knew He didn’t deserve to be crucified. But they did it anyway, during the Passover, when all the Jewish people were in Jerusalem celebrating the freedom of their ancestors from slavery in Egypt. Everyone whom Jesus had ever known was there in town; everyone He had healed or fed or cast a demon out of or taught. Everyone who was hoping that He was the Messiah was there. But when they saw Him on the Cross, they decided that He wasn’t the Messiah after all and were very cruel to Him as they walked by. But I don’t want to talk about all the strangers. I want to talk about what was going on with His disciples and His family. Because right now? –Their lives couldn’t possibly seem any worse.
All of their hopes and dreams for Jesus becoming their king had gone down the drain. Not only wasn’t He going to fight the Romans and kill them, they were killing Him instead. And to even admit that they were His followers now was embarrassing and dangerous. Just one week earlier, Jesus had ridden into Jerusalem on the colt of a donkey and the people of Jerusalem had cut down palm branches and were singing and celebrating Him like He was already their king. They were saying, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord! Hosanna in the Highest Heaven!” (Matt 21:9, CSB) Hosanna means “save us now!” and they were saying that because they wanted someone to save them from the Romans. When they called Him the “Son of David” that’s the same as calling Him their rightful king! When they said “Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord” they were quoting from Psalm 118, which is about the Messiah, who is also called the Right Hand of the Lord. And when they said, “Hosanna in the Highest Heaven!” that requires a bit more explanation. You see, they had a lot of ways to describe God because they wouldn’t say His Name. So, they might use Adonai (which we translate as Lord), or Heaven, or Most High, or those kinds of things. So, when they said, “Hosanna in the Highest Heaven!” it meant, “Save us now, God!” They were excited and they were wondering if this was finally the day when everything would change and a new Moses and a new Joshua and a new David would save them from all of their troubles. Can you even imagine what that would feel like? Maybe you can. Some people today have experienced that in their own life. Many people are still waiting to be freed from the people who are hurting them.
But once Jesus was arrested by the Temple guards, and taken away in chains and beaten, all of His disciples ran away and left Him alone. Peter followed a long way behind but when he was asked if He was a follower of Jesus, Peter lied and said he didn’t even know who Jesus was. The only people we know for sure stuck with Him were his mother and the other women who had supported them with money, and maybe Lazarus but we don’t know the name of the one man who was there when Jesus was dying. The rest went into hiding. They must have been very scared. If Jesus could be killed that way, they could too. They would be recognized as people who were following a new king and the Romans would be angry about that because they believed that their king, Tiberius Caesar, was a god or at least the son of a god. And no one else was allowed to call themselves a king unless Caesar said they could. To even claim to be the rightful heir of King David would be extremely dangerous. And now they were caught up in all of that danger. They would have felt so many things, like guilt over abandoning Him, guilt for lying about knowing Him, a lot of confusion about what had even happened, and questions about what was going to happen to them now. Matthew had given up his tax collection business. Peter, Andrew, James, and John had all walked away from their family fishing businesses. How could they even go back home? Everyone would laugh at them and maybe even stone them to death. They had no place to go, and no hope for the future. Every dream of being important and sitting next to the king when He came into His kingdom were crushed to pieces and their lives were worse than if they had never even met Him. Or so they thought.
And what about Mary, His mother? Can you imagine how heartbroken and confused she was? What about what the angel Gabriel had told her about Jesus? How could she explain how she even got pregnant in the first place when she wasn’t even married? What about Anna and Simeon and what they said in the Temple after Jesus was born? What about the shepherds and the wise men from the east? What about all the miracles? What about the angel who spoke to Joseph? He was told to name her son Jesus because He was supposed to save His people but now, He was dead. Her other sons hadn’t believed that Jesus was the Messiah, they thought He was crazy, and now she couldn’t help but wonder how on earth everything could have gone so terribly wrong. One thing she knew for sure—He couldn’t save anyone now. But more than that, He was her son and she loved Him and He had died in the most horrible way imaginable while she had watched.
Everyone was hopeless at this point. But what does hopeless mean? Hopeless is a word that means we can’t see anything ever being good again, that there is no chance for things to be right. Hope is the opposite of all that. Hope is what we feel when things all around us are either good or bad, but we believe that it will all be alright, that God will make things work out. We don’t know who wrote the Book of Hebrews in the Bible, but the author had something interesting to say about faith and hope, “Now faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen.” (Heb 11:1) Hope is important because we can only really hope for better things when we trust God. Trust is another word for faith. When everything around us seems to be going wrong and life is a total disaster, what saves us from giving up entirely? Hope does. You see, when we have our eyes and attention on God and all the things He has done for us and for others, we remember that no matter how terrible things seem, He is going to win in the end and that means that we will too. It doesn’t mean that we will always get what we want or that we will always be happy, but it does mean that God hasn’t forgotten about us. I mean, He can make amazing things happen. He can turn a slave and a prisoner into the second most powerful man in the world in less than a day. He can save people who are trapped between an army and the sea by splitting the sea in two and making a way for the people to walk to the other side in safety.
But death is another thing, right? Dead is dead. That’s what the disciples and Jesus’s mom were all thinking during those terrible days when everything they had hoped for seemed ruined and lost. How could even God fix this? The one man they had ever met who could raise the dead was dead. And when we focus on what people can do—and at this point they were all looking at Jesus like He was just a man, a very anointed and powerful and good man but still just a man—well, men (meaning humans in general) will always fail and can’t be trusted like we can trust God. For God, the impossible is always possible and death is nothing but a technicality—something to be brushed out of the way like we would swat at a fly. And oftentimes, what seems like the most impossible problem to us is actually God’s solution for an even bigger problem. Over your lives, if you are paying attention, you will notice that sometimes when everything seems lost it is because God is getting ready to show off and do something amazing. Because such and such a bad thing happened, a good thing happens to make everything even better. Not always, of course, and not in ways that we can always see. God is able to take every bad thing that the world throws at us and make it into something good.
It doesn’t mean that He caused the bad thing to happen. People make bad choices every day. People get into cars after drinking beer or wine and they can kill other people on the road, or maybe they were on their phone or texting and ran into someone. There is nothing good about that, or when an innocent person goes to jail, or someone gets robbed. Or when someone gets crucified, like Jesus did. God didn’t invent injustice, which is what we call something that is seriously unfair in a huge way. God does everything He can to turn us into the kind of people who won’t put up with that and will do something to change it. But sometimes He will use something like that to make something amazing happen. Like Joseph saving his entire family, and the whole world, from starvation after his brothers sold him into slavery and he was put into prison for doing what was right. Right now in the story of the people who loved Jesus, they must have all felt like they were in the deepest, darkest, and most hopeless prison ever created. That’s what sadness and fear and confusion and anger are like when something terrible happens. This is the place where we can’t see anything good in the world and we can’t imagine a way out of trouble. I mean, dead is dead, right? And when the bad guys win, they win, right?
Not always, and certainly not forever. All of His loved ones knew they would see Him again at the resurrection of the dead (far in the future) and that they would be reunited in the world to come, but that never changes the pain and heartbreak and difficult emotions that we feel when someone dies—and not just then but for a long time afterward. Even Jesus cried when His friend Lazarus died! Even though Jesus knew that He was about to raise him from the dead. Wow, if that isn’t permission to cry and feel our real feelings then I don’t know what is! So, we shouldn’t ever look down on them for how badly they felt—God made us and He made our emotions and gave us love for each other. And the hardest thing in the world, when we are hurting that badly, is to hope that it will all be okay in the end. We are too distracted by pain to even think like that. And so, they all lived out the next couple of days believing that everything having to do with Jesus and His mission was totally lost. The new Kingdom they had been hoping for was lost too. And you know what? Without God, that all would have been totally true.
They didn’t know what Jesus had done, what he had accomplished on the Cross. They had no idea that there was a war going on and Jesus had already won it and was still winning it. They had no idea that Satan and all his demons were being defeated and that things were about to change in the world. It was like all of the evil in the world was poured into the bottomless pit of the goodness of Jesus and didn’t even make a dent. Sure, His outside body was killed in a terrible way but there wasn’t enough evil or death or sin in the world to keep Him dead. Jesus was too alive because, like God, He is too good to be beaten by evil. Not human evil, not demon evil, not sickness evil, not sin evil, and especially not death evil. All of the evil in the universe and it wasn’t enough to defeat Jesus. And Jesus knew it. Jesus knew God’s plan to destroy Satan’s kingdoms and to weaken him to the point where he is still dying and doing everything he can to keep his kingdoms alive. But more and more people turn to Jesus every single day and that means that every day Satan loses more and more people. Did you know that more people become Christians every single day than are born? Especially in places like Africa and the Middle East and in East Asia.
Of course, Mary and the other disciples couldn’t understand that they had a reason to hope. And if they had ever been told that a third of the people in the whole world would call themselves Christians—they wouldn’t have probably been able to believe it could be true. They had no idea that Jesus would be alive again before they knew it and that they would all see Him, and that because He came back from the dead, that people all over the world would stop being afraid of dying, or of the Roman Empire, or the Nazis or whoever else wanted to kill them. They couldn’t see that the Gentiles would give up their pagan gods and would follow the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They couldn’t even imagine a world where Jesus would make us realize that slaves are equal to their masters, and women equal to men, and gentiles equal to Jews; or a world that would one day start the fight to get rid of slavery. They would have been amazed to know that someday, the people who used to just walk by when they saw babies abandoned on the sides of the roads would take them in and adopt them. Or that people who used to only care about their own families would build the world’s first hospitals where the poor could be helped. The only world that Mary and the disciples knew was about to change forever, but it only happened because Jesus had died. They hadn’t learned yet that God will have His way no matter what we humans do to mess it up.
And that’s why we can always have hope. Not because things are always good—they aren’t always good. But because we know, in the end, that God always wins and someday He will wipe the tears from our eyes and the sadness from our hearts and the pain from our bodies and the world will be as it always should have been. Jesus will be here, and He will be the King of the earth and just like He hears our prayers now, He will hear us then too. And we will see Him, and we will go to Jerusalem and celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles with Him every year–a party with Jesus and for Jesus. Wow, if that doesn’t fill us up with hope then I don’t know what will!
I love you. I am praying for you. And I can’t wait to meet you at that party!