Monthly Archives: April 2013

Blood Poured Out For You

Christian Life, ,

BLOOD POURED OUT FOR YOU

“Taking the cup, He blessed it, then said, ‘Take this and pass it among you. As for me, I’ll not drink wine again until the kingdom of God arrives.’

“Taking bread, He blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them saying, ‘This is my body given for you. Eat it in my memory.’

He did the same thing with the cup after supper, saying ‘This cup is the new covenant written in my blood, blood poured out for you.'” Luke 22:17-20 (The Message).

Is it any wonder that Jesus longed to share this meal with His disciples? He had reached the moment that would become the watershed of all history, a simple meal that symbolised the greatest victory of all time and the event that exposed, disarmed and defeated the arch enemy of all humankind.

Bread and wine, picture of His broken body and poured-out blood, formed the core of the Passover meal. The lamb was sacrificed to provide the blood that protected the people from the angel of death. The bread was baked without yeast as a mute testimony to the sinless nature of God’s lamb.

No longer would Passover be the celebration of God’s daring rescue from slavery in Egypt. From this moment on it took on a new significance – a meaning Jesus had struggled for three years to communicate to His disciples. He had not come to effect another deliverance from human oppression. As long as we are alive and subject to human authority, there will always be those who exploit people for their own ends. It is part of man’s greedy and wicked nature.

Underneath man’s inhumanity to man lies a far more sinister power – the unseen dominion of a dark and relentless fallen angel whose desire is to enslave and destroy every unsuspecting soul who is deceived by his enticements and enslaved by their own choices.

Jesus’ passion was to expose him by willingly becoming the victim of his hatred without falling into his trap and being ensnared by his lies. Try as he may, the devil could not lure Jesus into submitting to his lying suggestions. All he wanted Jesus to do was to do what he wanted and so disobey and mistrust the Father’s love.

Jesus’ response was always the same. Whenever Satan set his traps, He was ready with the same answer, ‘Daddy didn’t tell me to do it. That’s not what Daddy said.’ Even when He was tested to the limit in the Garden of Gethsemane, His rested His soul in His Father’s will.

Jesus’ steadfast faith in His Father’s love proved once and for all that, in spite of all the pressure to doubt Him and heed the devil, it was possible for a human being to be a true son, to submit to the Father, even to an unjust and shameful death, and to come out unscathed because God promised that He would raise Him from the dead, and God is absolutely trustworthy.

And that’s what this simple meal symbolised. It was not a sacrifice to be repeated again and again as some teach. It was simply a reminder of what Jesus did. Deliverance from political oppressors pales into nothing compared with the greater deliverance from enslavement to the father of lies, and all the pain of broken lives that enslavement to him brings.

This meal is a celebration of the eternal truth that Jesus has set us free from the guilt, shame and condemnation of our sin and our failure to trust Him, and from the power of the devil to deceive us any longer. As sons of the living God, we have an elder brother who has gone before us to show us the way to the Father and who has provided us with the same person who enabled Him to persevere – the Holy Spirit who comes to live within us.

Because You Carry My Name

Christian Life, , ,

BECAUSE YOU CARRY MY NAME

“He went on, ‘Nation will fight nation and ruler fight ruler, over and over. Huge earthquakes will occur in various places. There will be famines. You’ll think at times that the very sky was falling.

“‘But before any of this happens, they’ll hunt you down, arrest you and drag you to court and jail. It will go from bad to worse, dog-eat-dog, everyone at your throat because you carry my name. You’ll end up on the witness stand, called to testify. Make up your mind right now not to worry about it. I’ll give you the words and wisdom that will reduce all your accusers to stammers and stutters.'” Luke 21:11-15 (The Message).

Reading Jesus’ words is like reading today’s newspaper. Both parts of His prediction are happening all around us – conflicts and natural disasters on the one hand and persecution of His followers on the other.

Wars, earthquakes, and famine are so common that only the biggest make world news. As for persecution, how much of it is ever reported in the mass media, and yet it goes on all over the world, from petty personal and family vendettas to national political policy to exterminate those who follow Jesus and refuse to embrace the official religion of that country. Jesus warned that it would happen “because you carry my name.”

Much of Jesus’ prophetic warning was fulfilled in the generation after His death, when Titus and the Roman army invaded Israel in AD 70, reducing the temple to rubble and slaughtering thousands of Jews across the land. Israel ceased to exist until its rebirth in 1948.

Why is there such animosity against the name of Jesus? What has He done to cause such hatred against Him and His followers? Was He so evil that He and His disciples had to be obliterated? On one occasion He told His disciples, ‘I did not come to bring peace but a sword,’ implying that His coming was going to produce a sharp division between people.

To understand the reason for this great divide we have to go behind the scenes, back to the beginning. Before the creation of the earth, Satan made a bid to oust God. His rebellion was so serious that it resulted in the establishment of a rival kingdom. Satan and one third of the angels were evicted from God’s presence and exiled to the earth where they would operate until judgment day.

There are two unseen kingdoms at work in the world, God’s rule of love and freedom and Satan’s dominion of fear and force. Every person is influenced by one of these powers. That does not mean that Satan shares equal power with God. His presence on earth is part of God’s way of fulfilling His plan to build a family who freely choose to love Him for who He is and what He has done. Satan, on the other hand, uses deception to ensnare people into slavery to him.

Jesus came to expose his lies and defeat him at the cross, inviting people to return to His Father by believing the truth about Him and His Father, receiving His forgiveness and submitting to His rule.

Satan’s hatred for God is expressed through those who are enslaved by his deception. He sows lies about God and His Son which turns them into God-haters. So vicious is people’s hatred for Jesus that they will stop at nothing to destroy those who carry His name, even murdering their own family members if they convert to follow Jesus.

And the reason? Because they “carry His name”. In Hebrew thought a name is a prophetic utterance of character. Everything that Jesus is, is enshrined in His name. To carry His name implies to be like Him. Christians who carry the name of Jesus are such a threat to Satan’s dominion that he will stop at nothing to destroy them. Since people who do not love God are under his influence, they are his tools to do his dirty work.

But Satan’s doom, and all those who follow him, is already secure. God has appointed Jesus, to whom He has given the highest name because of His victory through the cross, to be Lord. To Him, including Satan and all who believe his lies, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord! (Philippians 2:5-11)

Be On Your Guard

Christian Life, ,

BE ON YOUR GUARD

“But be on your guard. Don’t let the sharp edge of your expectations be dulled by parties and drinking and shopping. Otherwise, that Day is going to take you by complete surprise, spring on you suddenly like a trap, for it’s going to come on everyone, everywhere, at once. So, whatever you do, don’t go to sleep at the switch. Pray constantly that you will have the strength and wits to make it through everything that’s coming and end up on your feet before the Son of Man.'” Luke 21:34-36 (The Message).

Jesus issued two warnings regarding His return; be on guard, and be ready. Almost two thousand years have come and gone since His appearance on the earth. That’s a long time to wait for something to happen that is as revolutionary as His coming promises to be. According to the Bible, when He comes He will rid the earth of every person and thing that conflicts with God’s original plan. He will set up His eternal kingdom of righteousness and peace and destroy every opposing force.

He also gave His followers instructions regarding their commission during the interval before He returns. We are to extend His invitation to everyone we meet to follow and obey Him, and we are to take care of His household, loving and serving believers so that we faithfully reflect Him to the world around us.

The temptation to believers is to become so enmeshed in the world and its allurements that we forget Jesus’ instructions and either go to sleep on the job or join the world in its selfish and worthless pursuits. We can become disillusioned with Jesus because following Him is tough and sometimes perilous. The promise of His coming seems so remote and illusory that we simply join in with everything that goes on around us. Hence Jesus’ warning is relevant and needs to be repeated constantly.

He told a parable about ten virgins who were awaiting the bridegroom’s return. The bridegroom delayed for so long that they all fell asleep. Five of them were ready but not watching; the other five were neither ready nor watching. When the bridegroom finally arrived, they were awakened by the shout, ‘Here he is!’ Their lamps had gone out. Five were able to relight their lamps with the extra oil they carried but the other five had none, so they tried to borrow oil from the others.

Since most of us don’t understand the imagery, our misinterpretation causes us to miss the point. The oil in this story represents, not the Holy Spirit as we tend to think, but the “acts of righteousness” referred to in Revelation 19:7: “‘For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and His bride has made herself ready. Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear.’ (Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the saints.)”

The five “wise” virgins were ready because their “lamps” were full of their “righteous acts”. It was impossible for the “foolish” virgins to borrow righteous acts. They had to go out and do their own, but for them it was too late because the bridegroom came and the doors to the wedding banquet were locked.
Being ready implies that the life of Jesus in us has so transformed us that we have taken on His nature which is loving and generous towards all people. This is the proof that we are ready to receive Him when He returns and to go in to the marriage supper with Him.

His warning to be on guard is equally sobering. What if, when He returns, He finds that we have forgotten to do what He told us to do and, instead, we have joined the world in its selfish pursuits; drinking, partying and living ungodly lives like the rest? How would He feel about us?

His instruction is clear. To be on guard and ready is to be faithfully carrying out His mandate to share His invitation and to take care of those who have joined His household by feeding and clothing them and by doing our duty to Him by sharing our resources with those in need. Daily focussing on these duties will keep us from falling asleep or becoming sloppy, lazy or irresponsible while we wait.

Living for Jesus, one day at a time, is an effective antidote against the danger of failing to be on guard or ready for our bridegroom when He comes.

All Ecstasies and Intimacies

Christian Life, ,

ALL ECSTASIES AND INTIMACIES

“Jesus said, ‘Marriage is a major preoccupation here, but not there. Those who are included in the resurrection of the dead will no longer be concerned with marriage or, of course, with death. They will have better things to think about, if you can believe it. All ecstasies and intimacies then will be with God.'” Luke 20:34-36 (The Message).

Wrong perspective again! Would they never learn?

The Sadducees’ preoccupation was political rather than religious and they had no axe to grind with Jesus. However, they were prompted to get in on the act with their religious counterparts, the Pharisees, not realising that no-one could outsmart Jesus, least of all them with their superficial knowledge of the Scriptures.

So they came at Him with a question prompted by their ignorance, and received a profound response that gives us a chink of light into the life of the believer in the hereafter. It amazes me how much of Jesus’ teaching on the deepest truths about God and the relationship He has called us into, came out of conflict with His opponents.

The current concept and experience of marriage, both in the world and in the church, is a mess because we have failed to grasp God’s original intention, hence the soaring divorce rate, dysfunctional families and all the unhappiness that causes, and all the other deviations from this holy institution; sexual promiscuity, ‘shacking up’ and so-called ‘sexual orientation’. Although our way does not work, we have not yet learned that God’s way is the truth.

What is God’s way?

On one occasion the Pharisees were questioning Jesus about the legality of divorce. He swept aside their rationalising in one single statement, “‘Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard, but it was not this way from the beginning.'” Matthew 19:8 (NIV).

God expressly stated that His intention was to create man in His own image. Israel’s statement of faith in Deuteronomy 6:4 gives us the essence of what that means: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” God’s oneness implies unity in diversity, unity of essence and nature but diversity in function.

The entire universe reflects God’s image in its interdependence and interaction. Nothing in the universe functions independently. The universe is one, unity in diversity. The pinnacle of the expression of that oneness is in man. God made man to be like Him in the unity of our being – body, soul and spirit functioning as one, and in our capacity to be spiritually one with Him.

After creating man and woman, His first action was to bring them together for one purpose: “The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman’, for she was taken out of man.’ For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” Genesis 2:23-24 (NIV).

Jesus made it clear that marriage was only for this life because, when a husband and wife learn to live together in unity, they will have a foretaste of the ecstasies and intimacies of unity with God in the life to come. Marriage is a picture of the real thing and will fall away when the real thing happens.

Selfishness and the power struggle that often happens between husband and wife ruin that picture. It can only become reality if they both understand what marriage is about and learn to live with each other in mutual submission (Ephesians 5:21), and self-sacrificing love. Jesus is our perfect role model. He gave His life for His bride, the church. The purpose of marriage is to be a mirror to the world of what Jesus did for His bride, so that the world may see what God is like and return to Him.

A House of Prayer

Christian Life, , ,

A HOUSE OF PRAYER

“Going into the Temple He began to throw out everyone who had set up shop, selling everything and anything. He said, ‘It’s written in Scripture, “My house is a house of prayer,” but you have turned it into a religious bazaar.’

“From then on He taught each day in the Temple. The high priests, religion scholars, and the leaders of the people were trying their best to find a way to get rid of Him. But with the people hanging on every word He spoke, they couldn’t come up with anything.” Luke 19:45-49 (The Message).

Jesus had made His intentions clear on Palm Sunday when He turned towards the Temple, not Pilate’s residence. The Temple, symbolic of God’s desire to make His dwelling with His people, was His focus. It was the place where He expected to find people whose hearts were after God and who were there to worship Him in the appropriate way. It was there that He spent time, while He was in Jerusalem, teaching the people about the kingdom of God.

What He found when He reached the Temple, appalled Him. Luke’s Gospel gives us few details, but we learn from the other gospels that the opportunists had set up shop in the outer court – the court of the Gentiles, which was the farthest non-Jews were allowed to go in the Temple. The merchants were no doubt there under the protection of the religious leaders who would take a cut of the profits for their co-operation!

So what were they doing? They were making a fine business out of selling ‘unblemished’ sacrificial animals at Passover. This seems innocent enough but a closer look, coupled with Jesus’ accusation, reveals that they were engaged in crooked business.

Every animal had to pass the scrutiny of the priests to be declared fit for a Passover offering. Many animals ‘failed’ the test which meant that they had to be scrapped and another bought from the merchants. The ‘failed’ animal was then sold to the next worshipper whose lamb had been rejected. This practice, together with the exorbitant exchange rate charged by the men handling the forex, was a lucrative business both for the merchants and for their religious overlords.

Jesus was incensed by the whole scene. It angered and sickened Him because it exposed the disposition of the human heart. It was the basest thing any human being could pull off on sincere worshippers, and it hijacked the only place in the Temple where Gentiles were permitted to worship God.

Since Jesus’ action has deeper significance than simply an outburst of righteous anger, we have to go to John’s Gospel to find out the underlying meaning of this incident. John records this event as happening at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. It was a prophetic action which revealed the purpose of His coming. John’s record is authenticated by false witnesses at Jesus’ trial, which we find in Mark’s Gospel (14:57, 58). “Then some stood up and gave this false testimony against Him. ‘We heard Him say, “I will destroy this man-made temple, and in three days will build another, not made by man.”‘ Yet even then their testimony did not agree.”

By cleansing the Temple of the greedy merchants in cahoots with greedy religious leaders, Jesus was declaring the purpose of His own death. He had come to uncover and deal with the deep-seated reason why human beings need to be cleansed and reconciled to God so that He can make His dwelling within us. By giving His own sinless life as a sacrificial Passover lamb, He would set people free from their slavery to selfishness, greed and wickedness, and give us the right and power to become a ‘house of prayer’ for God, a place of loving, intimate fellowship with Him.

It was this ‘zeal for His house’ that sent Jesus to the cross, and it is still the zeal for God’s spiritual house that motivates His passion for people. God has purposed and will fulfil His plan to complete what He began, to build a family of men and women, boys and girls from every nation, tribe and clan on earth who will receive His love, and will love and worship Him in return.

Will you be one of them? It’s your choice…