Category Archives: Christian Life

ONLY THE BLOOD OF JESUS

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ONLY THE BLOOD OF JESUS

“Again, Jesus called the crowd and said, ‘Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. Nothing outside a man can make him ‘unclean’ by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him ‘unclean’.’”  Mark 7: 14-15 (NIV).

These words of Jesus cut right across the practices of man-made religion. Why did God give the Jews dietary laws in the first place? The nation of Israel was formed and brought up of Egypt – a pagan nation which did not understand ‘clean’ and ‘unclean’ foods, i.e., foods which were good for the body, or health risks because they were unhealthy or not prepared properly.

God built His health laws into His religious system to ensure that the people would obey them for their own sake. But, as in all religious systems, they began to interpret the forbidding of eating certain foods as religious taboos, and they built an entire religious system on these taboos. This became part of the heavy religious yoke they were wearing that weighed them down.

Jesus exposed their foolish thinking and lifted the yoke in one sentence. “It’s not what goes in that pollutes but what comes out of the “belly” – the inner being.” How does this work? What one eats has no effect upon one’s spirit unless it is the expression of the “yetzer harah” (the greedy person who does not care about other people) as in the story of the rich man and Lazarus. The evil and corruption of sin is already in the heart, and the mouth becomes the instrument which reveals what is already inside.

Surely this makes a whole lot more sense than believing that what a person puts in his mouth defiles him. It is only the foolishness of men’s hearts and the blindness caused by sin that distorts the understanding, producing a senseless belief that something as ordinary as food can somehow pollute a person’s soul. 

By declaring all food clean, Jesus pulled the rug from under the Pharisees’ feet. Much of their ammunition against Him and His disciples was based on their food taboos and their scrupulous washing of hands and cooking utensils. Jesus made it clear that human need was more important than food and Sabbath rules, and the Pharisees hated Him for exposing their hypocrisy.

There are many religions today that do things to the body which they think will make their souls clean, like washing, and eating or not eating certain foods. Nothing can wash our hearts clean, but the forgiveness Jesus bought by His own blood. God demanded our lives as the payment for our debt of sin. Because we are already polluted, giving our lives will only pay for our sin.

Because Jesus lived a pure and unpolluted life of perfect obedience to His Father. His death as though He were a sinner, is enough to atone for the sin of the whole world. Only the blood He shed on the cross can cleanse our hearts and make us acceptable to God.

MULTIPLIED!

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MULTIPLIED!

“By this time, it was late in the day, so His disciples came to Him. ‘This is a remote place,’ they said, ‘and it’s already late. Send the people away so they can go to the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.’

“But he answered them, ‘give them something to eat.’ Mark 6:35-37 (NIV).

The disciples were irritated with Jesus. After a busy time, He had planned to spend the day with them out in the country. A crowd arrived and, instead of sending them away, He taught and ministered to them the whole day. By the time evening came, the disciples had had enough. They asked Jesus to send the people away to get food. Jesus refused. Instead, He said to them, “You feed them.” What were they supposed to do? It was late, there were no villages nearby and they did not have enough money to feed such a huge crowd. Jesus had a plan.

We learn some important things about Jesus from this story.

He did not mind interruptions. He did not think about Himself. The people did not irritate Him. He saw their need and did what He could to help them. Not even His weariness or His plan to spent time with His disciples stopped Him from treating them with compassion.

He refused to send the people away hungry. If he did that, He would be telling them that God was not interested in their physical need. He did not want them to find some other source for their need. He had come to reveal God as their Father. Sending them away, as they disciples wanted Him to do, would have given them the wrong message. “Go and find help somewhere else. God does not care about you.”

He had absolute confidence in the character of His Father. He did not have to ask God what to do. He knew that His Father would back up His plan. He took what He had, five barley loaves and two fish, thanked God for them and broke them into pieces to feed the people. As the disciples handed out the bread and fish, everyone had enough to eat and there was enough left over to fill twelve baskets. The boy who gave his lunch went home with much more that when he left.

Jesus had so much confidence in His Father’s love for the people and His power to meet the people’s needs that He didn’t have to ask God to anything. He knew that His Father would do a miracle to provide enough food for everyone.

Jesus says to us, as He said to His disciples, “Follow me.” When we watch Him, we learn to live like He did, with so much confidence in the Father that we don’t have to panic when we are in need. Jesus did not do magic, but He trusted His Father to do a miracle. When we give away what we have, He multiples it and gives it back to satisfy our needs. 

DO WE NULLIFY THE WORD OF GOD?

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DO WE NULLIFY THE WORD OF GOD?

“And He said to them: ‘You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God to observe your own tradition. For Moses said, ‘Honour your father and your mother,’…But you say that if a man says to his father and mother: ‘Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is Corban (that is, a gift devoted to God), then you no longer let him do anything for his father or mother. Thus, you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that.’” Mark 7:9-13

If you want to, there’s always a way around God’s commands so that you will not be inconvenienced or that you will be able to do what you want. In this instance Jesus was saying that the Pharisees made disobedience look “holy” by giving to God what should have been used to take care of needy parents. I say “you” purposely because it is easy to dump guilt on other people and not look at ourselves and ask whether we are doing the same thing.

In what ways do we weasel out of doing God’s commands by redefining truth to suit ourselves? There is something very subtle about “religious” thinking that we must be careful about. Jesus makes it clear here that it is more important to take care of parents than to “give to God”. God sets as much store on looking after other people’s needs as He does on honouring and worshipping Him. To do the one and neglect the other is equally unacceptable to Him.

According to John in his first letter, the two are so closely intertwined that we cannot do the one without the other. We express our love and obedience to God by doing practical acts of caring like clothing and feeding the poor. From Jesus’ perspective, whatever we do for the least of people, we are doing for Him. Mother Teresa called the poorest of the poor, “Jesus in a disturbing disguise.”

How would we respond to people differently if we were aware that they were representatives of Jesus in disturbing disguise? How clearly do we see His face behind the person who draws out contempt in us?

It is important to cultivate an awareness of God’s presence in our everyday lives and in our changing circumstances so that we are not thrown off balance when unexpected things happen to us. We also need to focus on seeing His face in the faces of the people around us, especially in those with whom we can find no connection. This means that we deny ourselves and do something to help the other person even if we don’t feel any responsibility towards him or her.

Jesus explained how He would judge the nations when He comes in His glory; not by looking at our ‘religious’ activities but by the way we took care of, or did not take care of, needy people. They matter to Him. They must matter to us.

YOU WILL NEVER THIRST AGAIN

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YOU WILL NEVER THIRST AGAIN

“Jesus answered, ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up into eternal life.’ John 4:13-14 (NV).

The woman Jesus met at the well outside the village of Sychar was an outcast of society. She was living with a man who was not her husband after being divorced five times. The people of the village shunned her. She must have felt embarrassed because she went for water in the middle of the day instead of in the early morning or the evening which was the time of the day when the village women went to the well. 

Her story was the same as the story of many women. She was looking for love in the wrong places and leaving behind a string of broken relationships because the men she thought would love her only used her and then threw her away!

She was astonished when a Jewish man spoke to her at the well. No Jew would speak to a Samaritan, especially a Jewish man speaking to a Samaritan woman. That was her first surprise. Her second surprise was that Jesus understood her so well. He knew that she was thirsty for love, and He also knew that she would not find real love from men who selfishly used her to satisfy their own lust.

He told her that He could give her the kind of “water” that would satisfy her thirst. Although she did not understand at first, He meant that He could give her the love that no man could give her. He was not speaking of the “love” she was looking for from a man. He was talking about God’s love which would satisfy her thirst for love forever. 

Every human being needs to be loved. We cannot survive without love, but the love that we have for one another is conditional. We love our husband, wife, parent, friend, child when they please us. If they don’t, we withdraw from them, we punish them by saying unkind words or withholding our care or our friendship, but God is not like that.

Jesus was offering her a love that would not reject her no matter what she said or did; a love that would always be kind and compassionate, a love that would never end and from which nothing could separate her. He called it “water” – something that would quench her thirst to be loved so that she would not need to live an immoral life to satisfy her craving for love.

When we receive God’s love, our hearts are so much at peace that we do not need to live sinful lives like she did to find love. It no longer matters whether the love of our husband or wife, father or mother, brothers or sisters, or friends is not perfect. God’s love is perfect, and we can always be secure in His love. We will continue to be thirsty and continue to drink at the wrong fountain until we submit to the Lord and receive His love forever.

WAS JESUS TOO NICE?

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WAS JESUS TOO NICE?

“Among the crowds there was widespread whispering about Him. Some said, ‘He is a good man.’ Others replied, ‘No, He deceives the people.’ But no one would say anything publicly about Him for fear of the Jews.” John 7:12-13 (NIV).

People will always have divided opinions about Jesus. No one can ignore Him because, if what He taught about God and Himself is true, we must do something about it. If not, then He was the biggest liar that ever walked this earth.

What the people said about Him must have been very difficult for Him. “He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive Him.” John 1:11 (NIV). The Message Bible says, “He came to His own people, but they didn’t want Him.”

Why was it so difficult for people to receive Him and His message? Was it because He represented someone who was too “nice”? Many of them were happy to receive what He did for them, but they did not want to listen to what He said and showed them about God, His Father. Not even His brothers trusted Him although they had grown up together.

Why are people so suspicious about God’s goodness? Is it because Adam traded his oneness with God for oneness with the devil and now does what he wants? He is a liar and a deceiver and destroyer, and we are all born with his nature. When we have been “born again”, it will take a lifetime to rebuild our trust in God and get rid of our suspicion so that we can become confident in the reliability of God’s word and His ways.

We are all so self-conscious that we look at God through our own unreliable natures and our experience of other people. We think God is like us.

Jesus’ own family and everyone else around Him were hostile towards Him. Some made a feeble attempt to defend Him but, overall, they dismissed Him as a phony. They accused Him of being in league with the devil and doing the devil’s work. Some even thought He was mad.

Perhaps what Jesus said and did was just too good to be true. People were afraid to put their faith in Him in case He let them down and He turned out to be a fraud. With their hopes of Messiah so high and their hatred of the Romans so great, they could not afford to trust someone who might fail them. Their disappointment would be too great.

God’s counsel to Jeremiah when he was hated and rejected was, “Don’t change your words for them. Let your words change them.” This is how Jesus approached the situation. He made no apologies for what He said, and He stuck to the truth. He was not put off by their rejection of Him because He was representing the truth.

Despite people’s attitude to Jesus today there are still those who listen to Him and follow Him. They find that was He promised is true, forgiveness, peace and real life.