Jesus Wept

Grace and peace to the Saints, from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.

I came from a nominally Christian family; that is, we had the form of righteousness, but our lives denied the power thereof.  We weren’t hypocrites, but the only person in our family who really hungered after the things of God was my grandmother.  My mother, unfortunately, did not, and whatever my grandmother built with her hands, my mother would stomp to pieces with her feet (Proverbs 14:1).  She has gone on to her reward: which, I know not, so I won’t belabor this point.  

The point I am trying to make is that there was constant spiritual warfare going on in our house, as my grandmother tried her best to raise us in a Christian environment, only to have her best efforts thwarted.  As a saved man, I can now look back on my childhood and appreciate what a monumental struggle she had with Satan as she tried to give us an appreciation for the things of God and for the good things of life in general, but was woefully inadequate to the task, as we were much too heathen for her.  

God knows how my grandmother must have prayed for me.  I can remember as a young man in the military going to see her when I would come home on leave.  She would be sitting alone in her bedroom, dressed in a nightgown and nestled in her recliner with the Bible on her lap full of handwritten notes and scraps of paper.  I would sit and talk with her for awhile, and I could see in her eyes that she wanted to talk with me about the things of God, but she knew that my visit on those Saturday nights was only to say, Hi before going out to party.  Sometimes I would sit long enough to watch Larry King a bit with her, but it was rarely for more than an hour, and my heart was already through the door and on its way to the club.  

How I wish I could have those days back, but alas, my grandmother has gone on to be with the Lord, and all I have is the memories of those times.  I was closer to my grandmother than I was to my own mother.  When I sang my first and only Gospel solo at my high school Spring Festival, it was my grandmother who came to see me perform.  My mother could not have cared less.  I didn’t know the sacrifice my grandmother had made to be there for me until one of the girls in the choir came and told me that my grandmother was in the bathroom throwing up.  That was love.  That was my grandmother.  I can’t wait to see her in Heaven.  And I will.  

I really hadn’t intended to say this much, but I have been groaning in my spirit this morning about the hardness of our hearts and how it was the patience and perseverance of some Saint praying and interceding on our behalf that led us to repent and get saved. Jesus honored the prayers of that one person often praying through tears on our behalf.  I bless the name of Jesus for His mercy.

What I wanted to talk about today is one of the traditions we had in our family that I never forgot: reciting a Bible verse before eating the meal.  You see, back in those days, we used to pray before eating.  Even if we didn’t pray before eating any other meal of the day, if we were sitting at the dinner table, we were required to pray.  Now, most people merely give thanks for the meal, but in my family, we would recite a Bible verse.   Actually, my siblings and I would recite THE Bible verse, for the only verse we ever learned was “Jesus wept.”  And we were in such a hurry to eat, that we never really said, “Jesus wept,” but, “Jeeswep.”  What irreverent little gremlins we were!

Now, I, my mother, and siblings lived upstairs from my grandparents in a two-family flat that they owned.  (Whenever my grandfather would get mad at my mother, he would tell me how it was his intent to rent the upstairs to someone else so that he would always have some cash coming in, but that they gave it to my mother, because she needed a place to stay.  I don’t doubt this for one minute.)  During the week, my family would eat upstairs, but on Saturdays and some Sundays, we all ate downstairs at my grandparents’.  

It was on Saturdays that I got a chance to hear my mother’s and grandparents’ Bible verses.   There was a time when I could remember all their verses, and as a child, whenever their turn came, I would say their verses in my mind, even imitating their voices.  (Yes, I was strange.)  But, now I can’t remember their verses at all; that is, I have forgotten all but the last few words of my grandmother’s verse, which was, “I can’t understand it.”

I never understood what the purpose was to this ritual, as no one ever explained to me why Jesus wept, and why we were required to orally commemorate what I thought must have been a very sad point in our Savior’s life.  Moreover, I wondered why only the children had to commemorate this day, while my grandfather and mother said something else, and my grandmother was confused about something.  But, confusion notwithstanding, it was a tradition, and children love traditions.

Flash forward to 2006.  I have been saved since September 2005, and I am regularly studying my Bible to know my Jesus better and growing in wisdom and understanding.  I am in John 11, which is where Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, when I come across verse 35: “Jesus wept.”  I got goosebumps as I realized that it was this verse that I had been saying for as long as I could remember!  I was so happy about my discovery, that I tried to explain it to my three small children.  The problem was that they were only 7, 6, and 4, and their eyes were glazing over and spit running down the sides of my little boy’s mouth as I tried to explain this watershed event to them.  I’m convinced that some of history’s greatest events were only witnessed by four-year-olds with spit running down their mouths.  I’m convinced of it.

Anyway, as I reflected on this, I realized that my grandmother had been trying to teach us Bible verses and had started with what is one of the shortest, if not the shortest verse in the Bible.  It is also one of the most powerful, as it shows our Lord’s humanity.  

As you recall, Jesus wept because Mary, the sister of Lazarus, was crying before Him saying, “If thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.”  The onlookers thought that Jesus was crying because “He loved him.”  But I believe He was crying because they still didn’t fully understand who Jesus was and is and that if they had fully realized that Jesus was God in the flesh, they would have understood that they had merely to ask, and He would have given Lazarus life.  As a matter of fact, they doubted until the moment Lazarus walked out of the tomb.  But I digress.

As I was saying, I not only realized that what I had been saying since a child was in the Bible, but I now understood the circumstances under which Jesus said it.  Powerful stuff.

I didn’t realize the effectiveness of teaching children Bible verses to say at mealtime until 2008, when I and my children came to the States from Germany.  I knew my time with them was going to be short, because of the circumstances under which I brought them to America.  That story is not the subject of this discourse and is much too complicated for me to include here.  But suffice it to say that there was a conspiracy to keep my children in Germany, one purpose of which I believe was to keep them from becoming Christians. Believe me when I tell you that Satan will expend an inordinate amount of energy to prevent a child from turning to Christ or to destroy their faith in Him.  Understand this.

The forces of Satan succeeded in bringing them back to Germany, but not before I preached Jesus to them and got them saved.  Hallelujah!  Believe me when I tell you that the enemy is clever, resourceful, and relentless.  But he is no match for Jesus Christ.

Now, I realized that the reason Jesus had wanted me to bring the children to America was for them to not only hear the Gospel, but to live it.  This is very important.   You see, Germany is a pagan country, as Roman Catholicism, the dominant religion in Germany, is a pagan religion.  It is not Christianity.  Not to speak evil of my wife, but she is not a Christian either, though she claims to be, and goes to church ever Sunday.  I found this out when I once asked her where she thinks we go when we die, to which she replied, “I know we go somewhere, but I don’t know where we go.”  

I want you to understand something:  If you don’t know where we go when we die, then you are not a Christian, because Jesus has told us in the Bible.  Saying you don’t know is calling Jesus Christ a liar.  What do you think the term “saved” means?  It means you are saved from the flames of Hell.  Salvation has come to mean different things to different people, but to the Christian, salvation means just that.  But that is fodder for another discussion.

Now, it was impossible to create the proper Christian atmosphere in my house in Germany, as there were just too many forces in conflict.  When we came to America, however, I was able to live the life that God intends without strife in my home.  As I said, I knew my time with them would be short, so I wasted no time getting the Gospel into my kids, constantly gauging their understanding to know when I should ask them to make a decision for Christ.  I was trying to get them to memorize Scripture, but only one was able to memorize them sufficiently.  

Then one day I remembered the Bible verse I learned as a child, and that we would say it every day at mealtime.  I decided to try this with the kids.  And it worked like a charm.  I gave my little boy, who has learning issues, Psalm 87:1, “His foundation is in the Holy Mountain” as his first verse, and he learned it almost right away.  I gave my teenage daughter from a previous marriage, who had come to live with us, Psalm 66:18, “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.” And I gave my other two daughters their verses.  The plan was to have a different verse every week, but various factors changed this to bi-weekly and sometimes even monthly.  But the important thing is that we stayed at it, and it paid off.

One day I decided to test the effectiveness of the program, so I asked each of the kids to write down ever verse he knew.  As it turned out, each knew about 30 Bible verses!   This was because they not only memorized their own verses, but the verses of their siblings as well, because they would hear them every day.  And not only did they know the verses, but they also knew where to find them in the Bible, as I would allow them to choose their own verses, and they would declare the chapter and verse after reciting it.  This worked marvelously.  An unintended benefit from all this is that I also learned their verses as well as my own.

Now that the kids have been back in Germany with their mother for almost three years, they have forgotten many of their old verses, but John 3:16 and John 14:6 they have never forgotten.  And if there were two verses they should never forget, those would be the two. In November of last year, my thirteen-year-old took it upon herself to choose Bible verses for her and her brother and sister to recite at mealtimes.  So, the tradition continues.  God is good, Saints.

Of course the devil will do everything he can to destroy what God has established in these children, but what Jesus has started, He will also finish.  You can count on that.  The important thing is that the foundation has been established.  And as many of you know, even when a tornado has blown the house down, the foundation often remains intact, and the house can therefore be rebuilt.  But without the foundation, there is nothing to rebuild on.

That is my message to you today, Saints.  Those of you who have children, start right now to get God’s Word into them.  They will soak it up like a sponge; I’m a witness.  God let me hear my little boy at six years old–six years old–preach the Gospel to his mother one day when she called to speak to the kids.  I never told him that his mother was not saved. Yet, there he was one day when we were at the post office and his mother had called: walking around the post office with my cell phone in his hand, totally oblivious to everything and everyone around him, preaching the Gospel of Reconciliation to his lost mother.  Don’t you tell me God ain’t able.  I’ve seen what He can do.

So, don’t waste any time getting the Word of God into your kids.  Turn off the T.V.  Put the Bible on the middle of the table, so the kids understand that it’s the center of your existence.  Let them handle it, touch it, make it theirs.  Get them their own Bible and tell them to write their name in it, and do anything they want to make it theirs.  Only do it on the outside.  The inside is the Word of God and should not be tampered with except for notes and such.  Let almost every other word that comes out of your mouth be “Jesus” or “God.”  Make sure that they understand that Jesus is not only the Son of God, but God Almighty.  Don’t be surprised when your kids start using the two interchangeably, which is exactly what you want them to do.

Stop watching anything that your kids can’t watch with you.  If you think along these lines, you will quickly see how sinful are most of the programs that we think are OK.   This is what walking the walk is all about.

If you do these things, you will see incredible results.  But you gotta start.  So why not do it today?

“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he shall not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6).

The Still Man

Copyright © 2012 Anthony Keeton, The Still Man ®.  All rights reserved.