Daily Archives: March 1, 2013

Martha, You Are Troubled…

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MARTHA, YOU ARE TROUBLED

“As they continued their travel, Jesus entered a village. A woman named Martha welcomed Him and made Him feel quite at home.” Luke 10: 38-42

This much-preached-about little interlude is an eye-opener to the character, gifts and attitudes of these two sisters and the way they expressed their worship of Jesus. Martha appears to be the older sister and also the “boss” in the home. At this stage, Lazarus doesn’t feature at all.

Jesus seems to have treated this home in Bethany as a haven. It was close to Jerusalem and its occupants were open to Him and His message. He loved them and they loved Him. He often spent time with them, opening the truths of the kingdom to their willing hearts.

Both sisters were worshippers but they expressed their worship differently, according to their personalities. Mary loved to be with Jesus, sitting in His presence among the disciples regardless of protocol, ignoring the taboos of her culture. Jesus welcomed her and valued her closeness to Him.

Martha expressed her worship by serving Jesus and His disciples. She was the practical one, preparing a meal for the Master and His disciples. Both sisters were worshipping Jesus in the way they expressed their worship best.

The trouble arose when Martha expected Mary to be like her. Her worship was tainted with fleshly irritation with her sister for not serving Jesus her way. She had forgotten that true worship is doing whatever you do as unto the Lord, giving thanks to the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus. That makes the whole of life an expression of worship if it is done to Him and for Him.

Jesus’ rebuke was not about what Martha was doing but about how and why she was doing it. Was Jesus telling Martha that Mary’s worship was better than hers? I don’t think so. If He was, then He would be encouraging rivalry between the sisters.

What had Mary chosen that was better than Martha’s choice? Was it not to focus on Jesus and not be troubled by her sister’s choices and actions? Had Martha chosen to work in the kitchen with the same joyous abandon as Mary’s inactivity with Jesus, her worship would have been a positive experience for her and a true act of worship acceptable to the Master.

Whose Dust Are You Wearing?

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WHOSE DUST ARE YOU WEARING?

“And when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that sticks to our feet we wipe off against you.'” Luke 10:10,11

Jesus was a rabbi, trained in the educational system of His day. It was customary for a rabbi to select a group of disciples to be trained to follow and imitate him. His shoes were fitted with a flap which kicked up dust when he walked. His disciples would walk in a line behind him and the one closest to him would be covered in the dust kicked up by the flaps on His shoes.

It was such an honour to be covered with the dust of one’s rabbi that one would not wash it off but rather show it off. This dust symbolised the blessing of the rabbi’s influence and it was used as a verbal blessing spoken over people, “May you be covered in the dust of your rabbi.”

By contrast, Jesus instructed His disciples to wipe off the dust of a town that would not receive them. He did not want them to be influenced by the attitude of hardness expressed by that town’s rejection of them. They were His representatives. What they said and did was what He said and did because He identified with them completely in their ministry. Therefore, if the people of a town rejected His disciples, they rejected Him and His Father.

There is a lesson for us in this teaching of Jesus. If we are disciples of Jesus, we are to wear His yoke, His way of interpreting the Scriptures and His way of living the Word of God. We will live under His influence, covered with His dust, if we walk close behind Him. But if we allow the influences of ungodly people, their dust, to cover us, we will, in turn, shake off that dust on other people as we go through life.

Jesus said that we are to shake off the dust of unbelieving people because it will affect the way we wear His yoke and carry His dust in the world. We need to ask ourselves daily, “Whose dust am I covered in today? Do I walk close enough to my rabbi to be covered in His dust, or am I carrying the dust of the ungodly world because I have not shaken it off?”

When God Speaks

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WHEN GOD SPEAKS

“When Moses and Elijah had left, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, this is a great moment! Let’s build three memorials: one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” He blurted this out without thinking. While he was babbling like this, a light-radiant cloud enveloped them. As they found themselves buried in the cloud, they became deeply aware of God. Then there was a voice out of the cloud: “This is my Son, the Chosen! Listen to Him.” When the sound of the voice died away, they saw Jesus there alone. They were speechless. And they continued speechless…” Luke 9:34 – 36 (The Message)

Babbling…speechless, what a contrast! Peter, James and John saw Jesus. Peter began to babble – empty-headed chatter about erecting three memorials on the mountain. Did he want to commemorate the experience or did he just want to stay there and never go back to the valley again?

Tabernacles…shelters…memorials…did this hark back to the wilderness where God’s presence was with Israel, but confined to a tent into which people were not permitted to enter? Peter had not yet grasped the significance of Jesus’ name, Emmanuel, God with us.

Remember Jacob. He was shocked when he found out, through his dream at Bethel, that God was not confined to a recognised altar or shrine. God was where Jacob was, out in the open sleeping on a stone. He blurted out, “God is in this place and I didn’t know it.” God reassured him, “Jacob, I’ll be with you wherever you go.” Jacob was also babbling, verbalising his ignorance. When God spoke he was locked into the truth…”I’ll be with you.”

Peter’s babbling, likewise, was silenced by the voice of God. From babbling to speechless, silent, struck dumb by the voice of truth. Until God spoke, Peter babbled. When God spoke, there was nothing more to say. God’s presence in the cloud…God’s voice in their ears…everything changed!

Peter never forgot that moment. He was so deeply impacted that, years later, he wrote about it to the people of God to whom he had ministered throughout Asia Minor (2 Peter 1:16-18). If he ever had misconceptions about Jesus’ identity, that moment in God’s presence, those unearthly words from God, forever cleared from His mind the clutter of unbelief, especially after the resurrection when he began to connect the dots and everything was unscrambled in his mind. He never again doubted who Jesus was. He was eyewitness to something that human beings had never seen or heard, God clothed in human flesh, and human flesh clothed in the glory of God.

Jesus warned us, “And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans for they think that they will be heard for their many words. “ (Matthew 6:7 NIV) How easy it is for human beings to babble until they meet the glorified Jesus. It happened to John on Patmos. It happened to Paul on the Damascus road. Everything will change when we stop babbling and listen to God speak.

Who Is My Neighbour?

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WHO IS MY NEIGHBOUR?

Looking for a loophole, he asked, “And just how would you define ‘neighbour’?” Jesus answered by telling a story. Luke 10:29, 30.

In true ‘Jesus’ fashion, He answered an important question with a story. The religion scholar wanting to know the identity of his neighbour, was probably thinking in terms of persons within his own race. Jesus’ story was intended to broaden his horizon to ‘need’, not race or culture. In the story, the compassionless attitude of the religious elite contrasted with the compassion of the Samaritan who recognised need and did not react to the racial prejudice which he knew to be in the heart of the Jew.

Jesus was turning the man’s question on its head. He was making the point that it does not matter who my ‘neighbour’ is. What is more important is who I am ‘neighbour’ to. It is my responsibility to be a neighbour to anyone I meet who needs the help I can give.

Another issue, which probably made the questioner squirm, was the exposure of the typical attitude of the religious experts. Their ‘professional’ standing in the community produced such arrogance in their hearts that they refused to dirty their hands or their ‘holiness’ by stooping to help a person in need. This is so contrary to the heart of the Father. Once again Jesus was showing up their complete misunderstanding of the God they thought they were worshipping.

This is an attitude God hates because it elevates one person above another. No-one is more special in God’s eyes than another and to take up that attitude is idolatry because it challenges God for the central place in the heart.

Generosity was another issue with the religious elite. They were essentially greedy – controlled by the ‘yetzer harah’, the eye of darkness or the greedy (evil) eye. The Samaritan’s generosity must have hit home to the listeners, especially those who belonged to the hyper-religious group.

Jesus was sickened by the selectiveness of the religious people. Because they misunderstood the Law of God which conveyed the attitude of the heart of God, they thought that being arrogantly exclusive was what God wanted. They misunderstood the reason for their need to separate themselves from the pagans – because they were so prone to being influenced by the evil ways of those who worshipped idols.

They forgot that their role in the world was to model a God who is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and full of love and faithfulness (Exodus 34:6). True religion is to become involved, not isolated, from the suffering of others, regardless of whether they deserve it or not.

When You Pray, Say…

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WHEN YOU PRAY, SAY…

“Then He said to them, “When you pray, say, ‘Father, hallowed be your name; your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation.'” Luke 11:2-4

I wonder how well the disciples understood what Jesus was teaching them about prayer. Did they grasp the underlying truth of God as their Father?

Unlike Matthew 6, there is no preamble to this version of the prayer. Although Jesus taught them that prayer is not about words, words are used to express the thoughts and emotions of the heart. What a world of meaning is wrapped up in the word ‘Father’! There is no prayer outside of this relationship which was made possible through Jesus. “Yet to all who received Him, to all who believed in His name, He gave the right to be called children of God…” John 1:12.

Prayer is the way sons communicate with their heavenly Father. Prayer is the conscious turning of the attention away from self to the One who is our source and sustainer, changing the focus of our attention from self and its issues to God and His attributes. Whatever words it might take to do this are only the vehicle through which this change of awareness is effected. Therefore, when a son focuses his attention on Father God, that is prayer.

This Father with whom human beings are privileged to have a relationship because of Jesus, is not outside our realm of existence and experience. Heaven is not a place up there or out there but a dimension that completely saturates the physical realm as air saturates the earth. God is everywhere and He is therefore as near to us as our breath.

Prayer is therefore, firstly, a change from my environment to the environment of God, of His presence and nearness. Secondly, it is an awareness of who He is. To hallow His name is to concentrate on His glory, “the sum of His magnificent attributes and the eternal fame of His mysterious works”. Where my attention was taken up by the issues of my life, I deliberately change my focus to the greatness of the God with whom I am engaging in love and trust as a son.

To engage with Him in this way is to put my personal concerns into the context of the bigger picture of His kingdom and will. It is also to put my failures into the context of His mercy. Since He has dealt with my load of guilt and the barrier of sin that separated me from Him, I dare not hang onto the offences that separate me from my fellow man.

Just as I am dependent upon Him for every crumb that passes my lips as a little child, I too, I depend on Him for the “bread” of heaven that nourishes my soul. And, knowing how tainted I am with the self-centred greed that has infiltrated my soul from birth, I look to Him to save me from my self-destructive ways that would ensnare and destroy me without the grace of His Spirit who is constantly at work in me.

This simple pattern prayer teaches me the essence of the attitude and disposition of a son to the Father, submitting to Him and being involved in the things that are on His heart. This is not about putting God first. This is about putting Him in the centre of my thinking and living.