Category Archives: Christian Life

POPULAR JESUS

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POPULAR JESUS

“When they heard all He was doing, many people came to Him from Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, and the regions across the Jordan and around Tyre and Sidon. Because of the crowd, He told His disciples to have a small boat ready for Him, to keep the people from crowding Him. For He had healed many, so that those with diseases were pushing forward to touch Him.” Mark 3:8-10 (NIV)

From the synagogue to the lake, Jesus was like the Pied Piper of Hamlyn; so much excitement that He was in danger of being trampled. The news of what He was doing had swept through the land like wildfire, even outside the borders of Israel. People came from as far away as Tyre and Sidon and Trans Jordan, and from every corner of Israel.

It’s no wonder that the people ran after Him, especially since sick and disabled people were being miraculously cured. There was no doctor anywhere that could do what He was doing. The people were full of hope that they could be cured of their diseases and delivered from their suffering.

There is a twist in this story. The people who mobbed Him were only interested in what happened to them in their everyday lives. They didn’t seem to realise that God’s kingdom was present with them. What was it that attracted them to Jesus? Was it not what He was doing for them? Here was someone whom they needed around. If He were their king, He could provide food for them, heal them, and make their lives happy and comfortable.

They had not yet grasped that Jesus was inviting them to live in the kingdom of God where He reigned in love and peace and would teach and give them the power to live with other people in love and peace.

But, amid this noise were voices from another world – demonic spirits from the unseen realm of darkness who, up to this point, had been able to do exactly what they liked with the people. When Jesus came on the scene and began disturbing their control over people, they knew and spoke the truth when they acknowledged Him because they understood His authority over them. Although they deceived the people all the time, pretending that they were in charge, they knew who Jesus was and they could not help but blurt it out because they were afraid. They were squatters in human beings who belonged to God and, when Jesus told them to get out, they had to go.

Jesus reacted to them promptly, telling them to be quiet. He did not need them to tell people who He was because every human being needs to find out for himself based on the evidence. We don’t need demons to tell us who Jesus is. We need to look at Him, listen to Him, weigh up the evidence and then decide who He is so that we can make the choice to follow Him.

DRAWING THE BATTLE LINES

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DRAWING THE BATTLE LINES

“Another time he went into the synagogue, and a man with a withered hand was there. Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched Him closely to see if He would heal him on the Sabbath.  Jesus said to the man with the withered hand, ‘Stand up in front of everyone.’” Mark 3:1-3 (NIV).

The Pharisees’ dispute with Jesus over His attitude to the Sabbath was turning into a running battle. It was almost as though Jesus was baiting them by purposely healing people on the Sabbath. The difference between what they thought was righteousness and what He taught and practised was becoming clearer and was widening into a chasm.

The Pharisees thought that “righteousness” was about not doing certain things. They had many rules about what they were not allowed to do on the Sabbath. For them, to be righteous meant that they didn’t break any of their rules. By contrast, Jesus was showing them both God’s heart and theirs by using the Sabbath as an opportunity to help people who needed help. His attitude was: “What kind of action suits the Sabbath best? Doing good or doing evil? Helping people or leaving them helpless?”

God is always filled with compassion for people who need help. To Jesus, it was far worse not to help people in need than to break a Sabbath ‘rule’. A lot of the time people do sinful things in order to manage their emotional pain, for example, becoming addicted to cigarettes, alcohol or drugs or engaging in bad habits. Jesus had more to say to the Pharisees who kept religious rules to cover up their failure to be merciful than to people who engaged in sinful behaviour to cover up their pain. He showed us what sin really is by showing mercy to people who sinned. To Him sin was not doing good rather than doing evil. The most wicked behaviour was to ignore someone in need rather than to commit adultery.

This speaks loudly to us because our most natural behaviour is to look inward and keep taking care of our own needs and our own “reputation”. This is what the Hebrew people called the “yetzer harah” – the evil eye. The eye of light keeps looking at God and sees other people’s needs. God’s greatest measure is: What do I do when I see another’s need and I have the power to meet it? To ignore people when we can help them is to act unrighteously. To take care of other people’s needs is the righteousness which flows out of the righteousness Jesus has given us by faith. We cannot have Jesus’ righteousness without it showing in the way that we act generously towards other people.

Every time Jesus healed someone on the Sabbath, He was acting out God’s righteousness by showing mercy no matter what day it was. He was showing people what it was like to be free of rules that forced them into behaving selfishly because they were always careful about their own behaviour.

DON’T BE DECEIVED

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DON’T BE DECEIVED

“Whenever the evil spirits saw Him, they fell down before Him and cried out, ‘You are the Son of God.’ But He gave them strict orders not to tell who He was.” Mark 3:11,12 (NIV).

Although the demons knew who Jesus was, and blurted out the truth in His presence, their avowed intent was to lie, deceive and pervert the truth to as many people as they could, to discredit Him so that people would not believe Him. They could not help but admit in His presence that they knew who He was. But their real nature, liars like their master, the devil, comes out when they speak to people. Their purpose is to deceive people into believing that God is not loving, and that sin is nice and will not have any consequences.

Because human beings are frail and transient, (Psalm 103) we are easily deceived by demons. If we are not convinced for ourselves who Jesus is, we will believe their lies because we are ignorant and gullible.

The people ran after Jesus from all over Israel and the surrounding territories because of what He could do for them. Everyone wanted a piece of the pie, but they were not willing to become a part of the kingdom of God. That would mean giving up their right to control their own lives and do as they liked and follow Jesus and become like Him. He was unselfish and self-sacrificing. That is a high price to pay when we enjoy our sinful lives. Only when we run into trouble, do we run to Jesus for help.

John warns (in 1 John 2:15-17) that the world and its concerns are as short-lived as humans are. If we attach ourselves too closely to the world and what it stands for, we are in danger of being swept away with it when it finally disappears. Our only guarantee of being part of the everlasting realm where God is, is to attach ourselves to Him and to shelter in Him where we cannot be lured away by deception (Psalm 91:1).

How do we do that in practice? By learning to become one with God in what He desires. The domain where we experience oneness with God is in our thinking which ultimately influences our deciding, choosing, and doing. When we begin to think like God, we begin to take shelter in Him and dwell in His protective shadow by faith in the truth.

If we are vulnerable to deception, then we can also be influenced by the truth and, when we believe the truth, our lives are secure in God who is from everlasting to everlasting. Our thoughts of truth bind us to the truth. If we think what is true, we are secure in God; we dwell in God and He dwells in us, and we are part of His eternal kingdom that cannot be destroyed.

Jesus promised us that if we follow Him, we shall know the truth and the truth will set us free.

CATCHING MEN FOR JESUS

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CATCHING MEN FOR JESUS

As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. 17 “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” 18 At once they left their nets and followed him. Mark 1:16-18

How were the disciples to catch men? What was the method and what was the “bait”? As you walk with Jesus and watch and listen to Him, it makes sense that the “bait” was the love and mercy of God which He talked about, showed by His miracles, and gave away freely through His kindness and compassion. He touched the lives of ordinary people, forgiving their sin, healing their broken bodies, and freeing them from slavery to demons (Acts 10:38). Who would not be “lured” by a God like that? For too long the people had been forced to obey or driven away by fear of the God who made so many demands that it was impossible to satisfy Him.

Even if the disciples didn’t understand, they followed Him anyway and set out on a journey to relearn the love of the God who had originally called them to be His people thousands of years before, but whose true character gradually became dim because of religion that had taken God’s place in the lives of His people. Instead of being free to love God, they were forced to obey man-made rules.

Why did the Pharisees hate Jesus so much? Why did they want to kill Him? Could it be that the same fear that controls all other religions, made them afraid to love God in case they were wrong. They could not launch out onto the love of God in case they were right, and Jesus was wrong? Did their pride in own ‘good works’ and their false understanding of ‘righteousness’ make them hold on to their belief that they were right? Did they hate Jesus because He was too ‘nice’ to the people they despised, and they could not accept God’s generosity to ‘sinners’?

How do we respond to God’s generosity? Do we stubbornly think that this is all a mirage: that there is a catch somewhere; that we will wake up and find that it was all a beautiful dream? Why do we struggle at times with the issue of healing? Why do we have nagging doubts when we pray as though the ‘bait’ were made of tasteless plastic and not the real thing? Is this part of the growth and maturing of true faith? How confident are we that what we are offering people is the truth and that God will back it up?

If we really want to be fishers of men, Jesus said, “Follow me.” That means sticking close to Him and watching the way He did things. We can do that by reading about Him in His Word and learning His ways by watching and listening to Him.

THE REAL MEANING OF SABBATH

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   THE REAL MEANING OF SABBATH

“The Jews said to the man who had been healed, ‘It is the Sabbath; the Law forbids you to carry your mat.’ But he replied, ‘The man who made me well said to me, “Pick up your mat and walk.” So, they replied, ‘Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?’” John 5:10-12 (NIV).

Why was the Sabbath such a big issue for the Jews? They were constantly attacking Jesus for not observing the Sabbath the way they thought He should. Jesus healed people on the Sabbath, and they were angry with Him because they saw it as ‘work’. One of their sins in their past was their failure to observe the Sabbath. Sabbath was a sign of the covenant between them and God and the thing that set them apart from all other nations.

To keep the Sabbath meant that they had to trust God. Firstly, they had to know that the God they worshipped was real. Secondly, to take a day off and to do no work meant that they earned no money on that day. It meant that they were worth more to God than the work they did and that they were willing to trust Him to provide for them.

But, to the Pharisees, Sabbath-keeping was much more than that. They had made Sabbath- keeping one of the reasons for God to accept them. They missed the real purpose of the Sabbath. It wasn’t a rule to be kept but God’s mercy to them to get them out of the cycle of working and sleeping. It was to be a day of rest.

Jesus was showing the people God’s mercy by healing sick people on the Sabbath. Healing was not ‘work’, it was mercy and God’s law was about mercy. Therefore, to heal on the Sabbath was not to break the law but to do the right thing. Jesus came to show us what the Father is like. God is merciful. He did not give us His law to bring us into bondage but to set us free from our own selfishness and greed.

The Pharisees did not understand this. Jesus offended Him because He did not keep the Sabbath the way they believed. They attacked the man who had been healed and tried to make him guilty because Jesus told him to pick up his mat. When He found him in the temple, the place where he had gone to show himself to the priests so that he could offer a sacrifice for his healing, Jesus urged him to leave his life of sin.

Jesus wasn’t concerned about the Pharisees’ accusations because they were not true, but He was concerned about something more important, that sin brought unpleasant consequences. He wanted the healed man to stop sinning so that nothing worse would happen to him. 

This story is a lesson for us. Righteousness is about doing right, not about not doing wrong. To show mercy to someone is need is to do the right thing. This is what pleases God.