SUFFERING TEACHES THE WISDOM OF OBEDIENCE
Van Gogh’s The Raising of Lazarus
By: Frank Tunstall, D. Min.
When Mary plunged into her despair, is it not reasonable she had the thought, “When I see Jesus again, I fully intend to give Him a piece of my mind. I’ll tell Him plainly, ‘Jesus, my brother did not have to die, and if you had come, he would be alive and happy now. We lost him because You didn’t come.’”
THINK ABOUT IT. Have you, dear reader, ever been angry enough with Jesus to tell Him in no uncertain terms why you are angry with Him? Please remember, it’s OK to tell Jesus how you feel. He can handle your anger and He won’t stop loving you.
In my years as a college professor, I had a young student in my New Testament class who had been hit with a divorce and was deeply crushed. She handled her pain, she said, by going outside, looking up into heaven, and screaming at Jesus! My response to her was it was OK for her to “scream at Jesus; He can handle it and He won’t stop loving you!”
In time she did heal and discovered the new beginning that followed was better than what she lost.
After Martha departed to meet Jesus on the outskirts of Bethany, it is entirely possible that Mary, left sitting at home, wished she had gone with Martha. In any case, when Martha returned, the witness from her sister was enough to shake Mary, even though what she perceived as Jesus’ inaction had so deeply hurt her.
This time Mary stood up quickly and obediently headed to the Lord. Her quick response to Jesus’ personal invitation is another example of the immediacy that was such a striking trait in the faith of Abraham, Mary’s forefather (Genesis 19:27; Hebrews 5:8-9; John 8:46).
The writer of Hebrews said although Jesus “was a Son, He learned obedience from what He suffered” (Hebrews 5:8). The sense of this verse does not suggest Jesus had a moral flaw of disobedience in His character. Instead, “He learned” the wisdom of “obedience from what He suffered.”
This includes Jesus learning “from experience what it was like to obey when obeying meant suffering, even the worst kind of suffering, death by crucifixion. It was after He had proved Himself perfect in this kind of experience that Jesus became the giver of eternal salvation to all those who obey Him” (Hebrews 5:8-9). It was part of making Jesus the perfect sacrifice. There will never be a need for another “because that which is perfect has come” (1 Corinthians 13:10). Since Jesus learned the wisdom of obedience through suffering, how much more does suffering teach us “to obey is better than to sacrifice” (1 Samuel 15:22).
Life Can Start Over Again
Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) was a famous Dutch painter. Sadly, he tossed away the truth imparted to him in his Christian home and sank into deep depression. By the grace of God Van Gogh later began to embrace the Gospel a second time. As he did his life took on hope and he gave that hope color in his paintings.
Van Gogh chose yellow as his color to portray how step by step he was recovering his faith. As this happened he added more and more yellow to his paintings to show the warm truth of God’s love.
In one of his periods of depression, however, he painted his famous, The Starry Night. The painting is full of yellow in the sun and in nature, but the church gets no yellow. At that time, he saw no truth in the church although the church is the place that should be standing as the house of truth.
By the time Van Gogh painted The Raising of Lazarus his faith had recovered and his life was on the mend. His painting of ‘Lazarus’ is full of yellow, almost blindingly yellow. In fact, Van Gogh put his own face on Lazarus to show his hope in the resurrection of Jesus. With Van Gogh, yellow tells the whole gospel story.
Van Gogh’s brush is an illustration that shows anyone who needs a new beginning can find it at the foot of Jesus’ cross. The redeeming grace of God’s love that Jesus poured out at Calvary is for whosoever will confess Jesus as the Son of God in heartfelt repentance.
March 15, 2023 1:20 pm|
Wonderful article. I never knew that about Van Gogh’s use of the color yellow. —Shirley Spencer