Category Archives: Christian Life

MAKING OTHERS BIG

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MAKING OTHERS BIG

“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.” Philippians 2:3,4.

What an unusual quality for believers to have in a world of arrogant pride and self-interest. According to Jesus, true greatness is to be found in humble service – making others big at our own expense. This is not the world’s way of achieving greatness. In the world, “greatness” is most often arrived at, either by climbing on other people’s heads, or by self-aggrandisement at the expense of others.

There is, in the Trinity, a beautiful picture of the perfect unity and harmony between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Each Person in the Trinity focussed on making the other two Persons big. As I read through John’s Gospel, for example, I am struck by Jesus’ passion to exalt His Father and the Holy Spirit. During an altercation with the religious leaders who accused Him of being demon-possessed (how they reached that conclusion one does not know), He vehemently defended His relationship with the Father.

“I am not possessed by a demon,” said Jesus, “but I honour my Father…” John 8:49.

Over and over again, He declared His submission to the Father and exalted both the Father and the Holy Spirit above Himself. And yet, when He was speaking of the Holy Spirit’s ministry to His disciples in the Upper Room, He assured them that the Spirit would exalt Him and teach them about Him. “He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you.” John 16:14.

The Father, too, has elevated the name of Jesus above all other names and given Him the highest position heaven can afford. “Therefore, God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Philippians 2:9-11.

We not only have examples of the way the three Persons of the Trinity made each other big, but we also have the example of the human Jesus in the way He acknowledged people and treated them all, no matter whether they were good or bad, big, or small, with respect and dignity and made them big by accepting and acknowledging each person equally.

Since Jesus calls us to follow Him, and since God’s kingdom, alone, is eternal, and functions in the opposite way to the world, we, as followers of Jesus, can only find our true selves and true greatness in doing what He did. Even when He dealt with obvious “sinners” like the Samaritan woman, or the woman taken in adultery, no accusing word passed His lips, but love and acceptance that set them free.

INTRO-SPECTION OR “OUT”-SPECTION?

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INTRO-SPECTION OR “OUT”-SPECTION?

“Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure…” 2 Peter 1:10.

“Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves.” 2 Corinthians 13:5.

Introspection is something we are often urged from the pulpit to do. From a “western” way of interpreting the Beatitudes, for example, Jesus is seen as encouraging His disciples to keep looking inside, to be aware of how spiritually bankrupt we are, to mourn over our sinfulness and to hunger and thirst for righteousness as though it were a quality we don’t have and is just out of reach.

The verses I have quoted above, however, are not a call to introspection, but a reminder to be sure that we are “in the faith” and faithfully following our calling and election. 1 Corinthians 11:28 calls on those who participate in the Lord’s supper to examine themselves, not morbidly introspectively but to ensure that their attitude to fellow believers is right, recognising and acknowledging the “body of the Lord”, the church, lest they suffer the consequences of mistreating one another which was sickness and death.

As I read through the Old Testament, I often find the writer’s invitation to God to examine his heart. “Search me, O God and know my heart: test me and know my anxious thoughts…” David prayed in Psalm 139:23. God does not want us to spend our lives bewailing our sin and our human frailty. His desire is that we should experience His peace and joy as a witness to the miracle of His life that He has given us.

According to the Hebrew way of interpreting God’s word, the Beatitudes were Jesus’ reminder that true happiness comes from carrying out God’s desire for us to make other people’s lives better. His law, recorded in different places in the Old Testament, centred on worshipping God as their source and being merciful and generous to their fellow Hebrews and to the strangers who lived among them because God had been merciful and generous to them when they were slaves in a foreign land. God’s law was not intended to make them good but to set them free from greed and selfishness so that they could show the surrounding nations what God is like.

In the Sermon on the Mount, which many people claim to be their standard for living, even those who have never believed in Him, Jesus gives us a vivid picture of the character of kingdom citizens and the way they should live as members of the kingdom of God. None of the things He talks about are possible outside of the grace of His Spirit, empowering people to live in a way completely opposite to the ways of the kingdom of darkness.

The problem with introspection is that it focuses on the problem and sucks us into misery and despair. Rather, we change, not by looking within, but by looking at Jesus and doing what He did – loving and serving others.

GRACE – PERFECTLY REVEALED IN THE FATHER’S LOVE

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GRACE – PERFECTLY REVEALED IN THE FATHER’S LOVE

“As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him; for He knows how we were formed, He remembers that we are dust.” Psalm 103:13,14

The more I read Psalm 103, the more amazing the treasures I find in it. Perhaps what amazes me the most is that David understood and experienced God’s grace in a time when grace was foreign to the people of God.

How did David recognise God’s grace? He encouraged his soul and his inmost being to praise the Lord by remembering all His benefits. He enumerated the many blessings he enjoyed in his fellowship with God, the most obvious being the forgiveness of his sins. Perhaps he wrote this psalm after his adulterous relationship with Bathsheba and expressed the relief and gratitude he felt when he experienced the grace of forgiveness.

Like David, we are also the recipients of God’s unending grace. What are the benefits we enjoy which should call from us a continuous song of praise to God? Surely, God’s grace in the many ways we receive it from Him.

What is this grace of which we speak? God’s grace is certainly His unmerited favour, lavishing on us what we have not earned and what we do not deserve. But there is another aspect of grace which we may miss, that is, God doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves. It is by grace that we are rescued from our lives of self-destruction. We could never have done enough to save ourselves from our sin but, through Jesus, God did it for us and now, like David, we can say, “Who forgives all your sins…”

David must have also experienced something of God’s grace in the fatherly love and compassion He lavished on him. As I read the psalm, I can almost feel the tender embrace of a Father who knows we are frail, human and transient, like the grass which comes and goes in a day. David had only faint inklings of the Father whom Jesus came to reveal fully by living a human life as a mirror image of God. How great is the love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God. There can be no greater evidence of grace than this.

It grieves me that so much of current gospel preaching ignores God’s fatherly heart for His people. The story of the prodigal son puts it in a nutshell. God wants us to come back into fellowship with Him and to enjoy His love for us as our Father. It’s great to have our sins forgiven but it doesn’t stop there. God wants us home with Him, now and forever.

Many of us live as orphans. We are fatherless – not having either an earthly or a heavenly Father.  Jesus says, “I am the way…no one comes to the Father but through me. Let me take you to the Father.”

GOD DOES NOT BEND THE RULES

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GOD DOES NOT BEND THE RULES

“I the Lord do not change. So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. Ever since the time of your forefathers you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord Almighty. Malachi 3:6, 7.

Why is there as much trouble, sadness, relationship, marital and family problems, and financial struggles in the family of God as outside? Is it because we ignore or try to bend the rules God has given us for a happy and fulfilled life?

God has built natural laws into the universe so that it will function efficiently within those laws. In the same way He has set moral boundaries for us so that we can live blessed, free and happy lives within those boundaries. Problems arise when we step over the boundaries to do what we want Our problem is that we choose to step outside God’s law and when things go wrong, we blame Him!

God IS love and because He loves us, He wants to protect us from self-destruction. He does this by putting protective boundaries around us which help us to understand His nature because His rules reflect who He is.

God’s laws also show us who is in charge. Adam chose to disregard God’s one prohibition and the result was chaos and disorder in the world. When God says, “Do this,” or “Don’t do that,” He wants us to know that He is in charge, not us, and He has the right to hold us accountable for what we do.  

God’s desire is that we live in unity with Him and with one another. By setting boundaries, He is showing us how to do that. Problems arise when we do our own thing because that creates chaos and discord when we disobey Him.

“But what about law and grace?” you may ask. God did not abolish the rules when Jesus came. Jesus showed us how to fulfil them by living in perfect obedience to His Father, not because rule-keeping would make Him righteous, but because it was natural to obey His Father to please Him and to show us how to live the blessed life. Jesus lived within God’s boundaries and then died as though He had broken every law. Why? He cleared our debt of sin out of the way so that we can live in unity with God.

God also gave us the same Holy Spirit who enabled Jesus to live a sinless life. When we choose to do the right thing, He provides the power for us to carry out our decisions. That’s called “grace”. Grace does not replace law. It gives us the power to obey the law – not all the details that are in the Old Testament but the principles which are repeated in the New.

No, God can’t bend the rules for us because He does not change. He gives us power to keep the rules so that we can enjoy life.

FOLLOW ME

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FOLLOW ME

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. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” At once they left their nets and followed Him. Mark 1:16, 17.

Have you ever wondered why Peter and Andrew, James and John followed Jesus so readily without asking any questions? It was a far more significant reason than that Jesus had a magnetic personality.

Jesus was a rabbi – a teacher of the Torah – trained in the schools of His day. All Jewish boys began their formal education at the Beth Saphar – elementary school in which they learned and memorised the Torah. If they made it through Beth Saphar, at the age of twelve, they went on to study at the Beth Talmid, the school of disciples. They were taught by the rabbis who had authority (s’mikeh), a term given to those masters of the Torah whose authority to develop their own interpretation of the Torah was acknowledged.

“Because he spoke with God’s authority, many people recognized Jesus as a rabbi with s’mikeh—one of the few exceptional rabbis with authority to teach their own interpretation of the Text. As Matthew 7 records, “The crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority.”” http://www.followtherabbi.com/Brix?pageID=2087

The rabbi’s authority included the right to choose their disciples from the Beth Talmid, from students who studied under the accredited rabbis with s’mikeh. Instead of choosing disciples from the Beth Talmid in the accepted way, Jesus chose men who were disqualified from the Beth Talmid and had been sent home to learn the family trade. Fishermen were disqualified because they were permanently “tamai”, unclean, because they worked with dead fish.

Every rabbi with s’mikeh had the right to develop his own interpretation of the Torah, his “yoke” which he “bound” on his disciples, making it imperative for every disciple to follow his interpretation and not create his own.  Jesus understood that the yoke of the rabbis of his day bound many requirements on the people and made their religious life an intolerable burden. His invitation, by contrast was, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30.

It was such an honour to be called by a rabbi that no-one would think of not obeying, especially those who would never have an opportunity to become a rabbi’s disciple because they were not students at the Beth Talmid. For those whom Jesus called, He had only one instruction. “Follow me.” As they followed, day after day, they would learn His yoke and learn to imitate Him. That alone, is the disciple’s calling. Nothing else!