To follow the Footsteps of Jesus, what did that really look like? It is far more than geographical. Yes, his feet trod many a stone and pebble along some of the most traveled roads and some of the quietest solitude paths. Our theme for Lent this year is the Footsteps of Jesus. Looking at the many places his feet touched ground, and the purpose behind each step. The destination, the people he touched and healed along the way. The relationships he forged with his 12 chosen and his extended disciples and their families.
He stepped into the cold water of the Jordan and was baptized by John, He walked out with the Spirit of God upon him. Then he walked the lonesome valley into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan, where he endured the most physically exhausting time he would have to endure until the final trek to Jerusalem. We have followed his footsteps to Capernaum and the Sea of Galilee. To Nazareth his home town where he was almost pushed off Mr. Precipice, and was never able to return. We followed him back to the Sea and saw the water he would have walked on, and the storms he calmed.
It has been such an honor and a blessing to have had the opportunity not once but twice to go to Israel and walk those same paths, touch some of the same stone steps, look down on the water that he would have walked on, stand in and above the synagogues that he preached in. Kristen and I have done a Lenten series where we showed some of the pictures from our trip almost a year ago. Does that even seem possible?!? But it is not just a slide show, it is the path that Jesus traveled and why. What happened along the way, showing the scriptures in living color and the people, the lives that were restored, made clean, healed, brought back to life and touched.
But that is the physical locations. What about walking a mile in His shoes? One could say well we can’t he is God. True. Yet he became Man to SAVE man and so we could relate to him. We could “see God”. Jesus limited himself in the form of man to experience what we experience. To “feel and touch, be sore, endure cuts, scrapes, viruses, tears of both pain and joy, to laugh and feel the exhilaration of standing on a mountain top, or the pride in finishing a project, creating a masterpiece. He didn’t have to. He didn’t have to physically walk or experience the pain of this world, BUT he CHOSE to.
We will be coming to the part where Jesus turns his face towards Jerusalem for one last time, fully knowing what will happen with this final journey. We will walk the path across Bethpage, Lazarus’ tomb, The Mount of Olives, the City of David, up the steps of the Temple Mount, we will walk towards the pool of Bethesda where he healed the paralyzed, we will sit on the steps where Jesus taught. We will walk down the long and winding road where he sat on a Donkey that Blessed Palm Sunday. We will stand inside the Upper Room where Jesus sat and ate his last meal with is disciples. We will stand near the place where Jesus wept 3 times knowing that soon guards would be coming to take him away. We will journey from the far east side of town to the far west side where Caiaphas’ home resides, see the place where they had a mock trial and found him guilty, the dungeon where he might have spent the remainder of the night and then follow them to where they drug him to Pilot in the morning. We will then continue on to King David’s Palace where Herod resided when he came to town to question Jesus and then back to the lonely hill where Jesus most likely was crucified and the discovered tomb where he most likely could have been buried.
We can walk the steps of Jesus geographically, but not spiritually. Even for those who have been brutally tortured, and physically harmed we can never walk the road spiritually. Jesus came as a man to take on the Sins of all man. He became the Guilt Offering taking on all the guilt of the world. He became the sacrificial lamb that would pay the final price for sin and death. We just finished the Book of Revelation at church and while some may still struggle with some of the words on the page, it is the Words of Jesus himself. It is why he came to show us what the rooms look like that he went to prepare for us one day! The New Heaven and the New Earth. How glorious, how marvelous, how precious the undeserved gift of salvation that both you and I get to receive when we ask him into our hearts as our Lord Adoni and Savior.
Jesus said He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end, the first and the last. He is the slain lamb, but also the Lion of Judah. He is fully divine, yet became fully human. He is Yeshua which means Salvation. As we continue to tread the steps that Christ traveled let us go humbly, in reverence remembering that he deviated from that road to seek out the lost, the undesirable, the least of these. And if we want to walk where he walked let us do the same. As his disciples, Jesus has given us the gift of example, let us drop our nets and follow in his footsteps.
To see our lenten services on the Footsteps of Jesus, click the links below:
Footsteps of Jesus Part 1
Footsteps of Jesus Part 2
