Taking Your Advice (Matthew 27:17–26)
Advice for every aspect of life abounds. Not all of it is good or even makes sense. For example, baseball legend Yogi Berra once said, “When you get to a fork in the road, take it.” Huh?
In 1998, Marriage Partnership magazine offered some practical advice for married couples:
- Don’t hog the blanket.
- Husbands, think twice before complimenting your wife’s best friend on her new hairstyle.
- Wives, decide not to describe, in excruciating detail, every plot twist in your day.
- Stop fiddling with the thermostat.
- If you get up first, don’t sing in the shower.
- Don’t leave nail clippings anyplace but in the wastebasket.
The problem with good advice is that sometimes we don’t take it. That was the case with Pontius Pilate, Judea’s Roman governor, as Jesus stood before him, waiting for judgment. Pilate had the authority to set Jesus free, and he knew the charges against the Jewish rabbi were bogus. However, the crowd clamored for blood, and Pilate feared their reaction if his judgment went against their desires. If anyone needed advice, it was Pilate.
Enter Mrs. Pilate. While Pilate sat on the judge’s seat, his wife sent him a message: “Don’t have anything to do with that innocent man, for I have suffered a great deal today in a dream because of him” (Matthew 27:19).
But Pilate didn’t heed his wife’s advice. In a display of supreme indecision, Pilate let the crowd decide Jesus’ fate. When people clamored for Jesus’ death, Pilate washed his hands, symbolizing his own innocence in the matter.
The Bible doesn’t say much about Mrs. Pilate, her dream, or the reason why Pilate disregarded her advice and let the crowd decide Jesus’ fate. Even so, God used Pilate’s cowardice as part of his plan to bring about Christ’s death on the cross, which provided the only means of our salvation.
Giving and taking advice has its merits and dangers. In marriage, it’s wise to listen to a partner’s advice but wiser still to test it against Scripture. Is there a Biblical principle for or against what’s being proposed? Are there examples from Scripture that are helpful?
Besides holding advice up to Scripture, praying through a matter can give spiritual insight to a decision. If we bring our decisions to God in prayer—as a couple and as individuals—we can be sure God will guide us and provide us with the tools we need to make good decisions.
—Nancy Kennedy
Taken from NIV Couples’ Devotional Bible
All Hostile to God
And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death. (Colossians 1:21-22)
The best news in all the world is that our alienation from God is ended and we are reconciled to the Judge of the universe. God is no longer against us but for us. Having omnipotent Love on our side mightily steels the soul. Life becomes utterly free and daring when the strongest Being is for you.
But Paul’s whole message of salvation is not good news to those who reject the diagnosis in Colossians 1:21. He says, “You were formerly alienated and hostile in mind.”
How many people do you know who say, “I am hostile to God in my mind”? People seldom say, “I hate God.” So what does Paul mean that people were “hostile in mind” to God before they were reconciled by the blood of Christ?
I think he means that the hostility is really there toward the true God, but people do not allow themselves to think about the true God. They imagine God to be the way they would like him to be, which seldom includes any possibility that they might be in really serious trouble with him.
But concerning the God who really is — a God who is sovereign over all things, including sickness and calamity — we were all hostile to him, Paul says. Deep down, we hated his absolute power and authority.
That any of us is saved is owing to the wonderful truth that the death of Christ obtained the grace by which God conquered our hearts and caused us to love the One we once hated.
Many are still learning not to be hostile to God. It is a good thing that he is gloriously patient.
Job continues comparing his past blessings to his current anguish. He then states his final protest of innocence to God, hoping that he will hear.
Nothing to Hide
Read
“Have I put my trust in money or felt secure because of my gold? Have I gloated about my wealth and all that I own?
“Have I looked at the sun shining in the skies, or the moon walking down its silver pathway, and been secretly enticed in my heart to throw kisses at them in worship? If so, I should be punished by the judges, for it would mean I had denied the God of heaven.
“Have I ever rejoiced when disaster struck my enemies, or become excited when harm came their way? No, I have never sinned by cursing anyone or by asking for revenge.
“My servants have never said, ‘He let others go hungry.’ I have never turned away a stranger but have opened my doors to everyone.
“Have I tried to hide my sins like other people do, concealing my guilt in my heart? Have I feared the crowd or the contempt of the masses, so that I kept quiet and stayed indoors?”
(Job 31:24-34)
Reflect
Job affirmed that depending on wealth for happiness is idolatry and denies the God of heaven. We excuse society’s obsession with money and possessions as a necessary evil or “the way it works” in the modern world. But every society in every age has valued the power and prestige that money brings. God’s people must purge themselves of the deep-seated desire for more power, prestige, and possessions. They must also not withhold their resources from neighbors near and far who have desperate physical needs.
Job declared that he did not try to hide his sin as people often do. The fear that our sins will be discovered leads us to habits of deception. We cover up with lies so that we will appear good to others. But we cannot hide from God.
Respond
Do you try to keep people from seeing the real you? When you acknowledge your sins, you free yourself to receive forgiveness and new life.
Streams in the Desert – June 7
But no one says, ‘Where is God, my Creator, who gives songs in the night’ (Job 35:10)
Do you have sleepless nights, tossing on the hot pillow, and watching for the first glint of dawn? Ask the Divine Spirit to enable you to fix your thoughts on God your Maker, and believe that He can fill those lonely, dreary hours with song.
Is yours the night of bereavement? Is it not often at such a time that God draws near, and assures the mourner that the Lord has need of the departed loved one, and called “the eager, earnest spirit to stand in the bright throng of the invisible, liberated, radiant, active, intent on some high mission”; and as the thought enters, is there not the beginning of a song?
Is yours the night of discouragement and fancied or actual failure? No one understands you, your friends reproach; but your Maker draws nigh, and gives you a song—a song of hope, the song which is harmonious with the strong, deep music of His providence. Be ready to sing the songs that your Maker gives.
—Selected
“What then? Shall we sit idly down and say
The night hath come; it is no longer day?
Yet as the evening twilight fades away,
The sky is filled with stars, invisible to day.”
The strength of the vessel can be demonstrated only by the hurricane, and the power of the Gospel can be fully shown only when the Christian is subjected to some fiery trial. If God would make manifest the fact that “He gives songs in the night,” He must first make it night.
—William Taylor