Monthly Archives: April 2013

A Heap of Rubble?

Christian Life, , ,

A HEAP OF RUBBLE?

“One day people were standing around talking about the temple, remarking how beautiful is was, the splendour of its stonework and memorial gifts. Jesus said, ‘All this you’re admiring so much — the time is coming when every stone in that building will end up in a heap of rubble.’

“They asked Him, ‘Teacher, when is this going to happen? What clue will we get that it’s about to take place?'” Luke 21:5-7 (The Message).

Amazing, isn’t it, how things that seem so permanent and indestructible can disappear without warning in a moment! The Israelites had put such confidence in the durability of their temple that they could not believe that it would ever be destroyed.

Jeremiah warned them, centuries before, about putting false hope in their temple. “Hear the word of the Lord, all you people of Judah who come through these gates to worship the Lord. This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel says: ‘Reform your ways and your actions, and I will let you live in this place. Do not trust in deceptive words and say, ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord!’ If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless and the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your forefathers for ever and ever. But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless.'” Jeremiah 7:2b-8 (NIV).

The Babylonians came and did exactly what Jesus predicted was about to happen again — they reduced their temple to rubble and plundered all its treasures. Perhaps the people who commented to Jesus on its beauty had forgotten its history.

There are lessons for us to learn from this incident as well. God places no value on things if they do not serve the purpose of enhancing our relationship with Him and the fruit of that relationship. How many people foolishly put their confidence in inanimate things like crucifixes, St Christopher images or even a rabbit’s foot or family photograph to keep them safe instead of trusting in the living God! Even our money is not infallible!

Of course we have to remember that we live in a world where “stuff” happens. No one is immune from the problems and tragedies that affect all human beings. Jesus warned us that these things are inevitable (John 16:33), but He also promised that in Him we have a place of refuge – peace – that will protect us from the effects of these adversities.

Sometimes bad things happen just because we are part of an imperfect world; sometimes we are the victims of other people’s choices and sometimes we bear the consequences of our own poor choices. In this case, destruction was coming on Jerusalem because God’s people had rejected their Messiah and called down His blood on their own heads.

We may not escape the troubles that inevitably happen but we can have an eternal safeguard that carries us beyond the confines of this life. God’s promise to those who love Him is infallible: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose. For those God foreknew He predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers.” Romans 8:28-29 (NIV).

We must never be caught up in foolish superstition that trusts in things and not in God. God and His word are reliable in a world that is fragile and transient. “The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.” 1 John 2:17 (NIV).

A Glorious Welcome

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A GLORIOUS WELCOME

“‘It will seem like all hell has broken loose — sun, moon, stars, earth, sea in an uproar and everyone all over the world in a panic, the wind knocked out of them by the threat of doom, the powers-that-be quaking.

“And then — then! — they’ll see the Son of Man welcomed in grand style — a glorious welcome. When all this starts to happen, up on your feet. Stand tall with your heads high. Help is on the way!'” Luke 21:25-28 (The Message).

What a glorious, terrifying moment! It will be glorious for those who have taken Jesus’ words seriously and terrifying for cynics, sceptics, agnostics, atheists and everyone who chose to believe and follow the counterfeit rather than the truth. So cataclysmic will Jesus’ return be that even the natural world will reel with the enormity of it.

Earth’s population, past and present, will be split right down the middle; those who love Him will welcome Him with overwhelming joy and relief; those who rejected Him will cringe in horror when they discover to their loss that He was telling the truth all the time.

The Apostle Paul wrote to encourage the Thessalonian believers who were suffering at the hands of the Roman emperor (probably Nero) because they refused to acknowledge that Caesar was Lord.

“God is just. He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled…This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with His powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of His power on the day He comes to be glorified in His holy people and to be marvelled at among all those who have believed.” 2 Thessalonians 1:6-10a (NIV).

Jesus made enormous predictions. How do we know they are true? Many people have prophesied over the centuries. What are the credentials for believing what they say? In order to verify their trustworthiness, we have to examine their authority, their character and their accuracy.

On what authority did Jesus say these things? He claimed that His authority came from the Father. “‘For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself. And He has given Him authority to judge because He is the Son of Man.'” John 5:26-27 (NIV).

When we examine the character of Jesus, we must find that He was a liar, a lunatic or flawless. He asked His opponents a question that they could not answer: “‘Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me?'” John 8:46 (NIV).

As for the accuracy of His predictions, if He foretold His death and resurrection in uncanny detail and then fulfilled every detail to the letter, is there any reason to doubt any of His other words, prophecies and promises?

In every way Jesus fulfilled the qualifications of an authentic prophet. He foretold the destruction of Jerusalem and it happened. He even told Peter that he would suffer a violent death and Peter died by crucifixion. Accurate fulfilment of His prophetic words gives us reason to take everything else He said seriously, including what He had to say about his return and the consequences of rejecting Him and disregarding His words.

For those who believe in Him, it will be a moment of celebration and vindication, delirious joy for our union with our Master and release from the obstacles and hindrances of our sinful nature, and vindication that our faith in Him and perseverance in spite of opposition was not in vain.

What’s Behind the Appearance?

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WHAT’S BEHIND THE APPEARANCE?

“When the Pharisees, a money-obsessed bunch, heard Him say these things, they rolled their eyes, dismissing Him as hopelessly out of touch. So Jesus spoke to them, ‘You are masters at making yourselves look good in front of others but God knows what’s behind the appearance.'” Luke 16:14,15 (The Message).

What a powerful hold deception has over people’s minds! It is Satan’s potent and elusive weapon, blinding us to the most simple and obvious truths. If we would just stop and think logically for a moment, we would recognise how easily we have been duped.

In this case, the Pharisees, who loved money and power and paid any price to get it, made two serious errors; they thought that by outwardly acting holy, they could cover up their greedy hearts, and secondly, they thought that they could fool God. Had they only stopped to think, they would have realised how wrong they were.

Jesus’ words should have brought them back to reality with a bump, but it only drove them deeper into their hardened attitude. That’s the other part of Satan’s arsenal that is so difficult to overcome. He trades on human pride to keep his deception in place. Once a person has made his erroneous beliefs public by acting on them, he will not easily back down and admit that he is wrong.

This stubborn attitude disqualifies a person from access to the kingdom of God. Truth and humility are the two requirements for understanding and entering into the realm of God’s rule. They are like the guiding lights that must be lined up to give a ship safe entry into the harbour. Truth displaces the lies that cause us to veer off course, and humility softens our hearts to believe and receive the truth.

Jesus gave us clear directions for getting free from the lies that ensnare us and drive us into misery, pain and loss, “To the Jews who believed Him, Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.'” John 8:32 (NIV). The truth in and of itself cannot set us free. It must first be believed and internalised to become effective in breaking the bondage of deception.

There is a process in moving from deception to truth. Sometimes it happens is a blinding flash of understanding and at other times it follows a period of careful investigation and growing conviction.

For the disciples, barring Judas Iscariot, it was a combination of the two. They followed, watched and listened to Jesus for three years and then came His death and resurrection. His appearance to them was the last piece of the puzzle. From that moment nothing could budge them from the truth that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Until then they still wobbled and tottered in their faith, but the presence of the risen Jesus cancelled all their doubts and misunderstandings.

This is the moment of revelation and transformation. It happened to the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus; it has happened to millions of people across two thousand years but it never happened to the Pharisees because they refused to examine the evidence. They chose lies over truth and became part of the tragedy of those who never fulfil their God-given potential.

If you examine the evidence with a humble desire to know the truth, there will come for you the dazzling moment of conviction and the life-changing experience of faith, giving you entry and access into the realm of God passionate love and unfailing goodness. All His resources will be yours, you will find the meaning and purpose of your existence and your eternal future will be secure, based on the infallible truth of God’s word.

But is all comes back to the same thing. You choose….

There Was Once a Rich Man

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THERE WAS ONCE A RICH MAN

“‘There was once a rich man, expensively dressed….wasting his days in conspicuous consumption….A poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, had been dumped on his doorstep. All he lived on was…scraps off the rich man’s table…Then he died, this poor man….The rich man also died….In hell and in torment, he looked up….He called out…”Send Lazarus…”…But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember…'” Luke 16:19-31 (The Message).

A familiar story to Bible-readers, but what is the point of this parable? Hebrews read for identification. Who am I in the story? How often Jesus directed His stories at the Pharisees as a wake-up call! If God’s word is a seed, then Jesus sowed lavishly into the ears of the religious leaders, but to no avail.

This is quite a shocking story for several reasons:

Firstly, it uncovers the heart of this rich man. Jesus had no issues with his being rich. In fact, the Apostle Paul stated categorically that Jesus Himself was rich. “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich.” 2 Corinthians 8:9 (NIV). He had issues with what the rich man did with his riches.

In this case, he spent it all on himself, not just on his needs, but on a sumptuous and lavish lifestyle that made him blind to the need of the poor man at his gate. A simple but graphic description of what was known as the ‘yetzer harah’ – the evil eye or the eye of darkness – the inward-looking eye that sees no-one but self.

Secondly, Jesus shows us the destiny of greedy and selfish people. Hell is not about God getting people back for not listening to Him. It’s a consequence of a life squandered on self instead of fulfilling God’s higher purpose. It was the garbage dump of the city where worthless stuff was burnt – a terrible tragedy and sorrow for the God who gave us the freedom to choose, knowing that that freedom could cost us our eternal destiny.

Thirdly, it smashed into the Hebrew philosophy that wealth was equal to God’s blessing and poverty a curse on people who were out of favour with God. How could this rich man land up in hell if his wealth was a token of God’s favour? This must have shocked both the Pharisees and the disciples. On one occasion, a rich man came to Jesus to ask what he needed to do to have the assurance of eternal life. Jesus told him to get rid of his wealth because it stood between him and following Him. The young man refused.

Jesus’ comment puzzled His disciples. ‘How difficult it is,’ He said, ‘for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.’ The disciples blurted out, ‘Who, then, can be saved?’ That was a shock to them. If rich people, who were supposed to be the blessed ones, could not enter the kingdom, what hope was there for the rest?

Jesus’s story reveals something much deeper than wealth=blessing=salvation. It was not having wealth but what you did with it that revealed your heart. Wealth is a good servant but a terrible master. What we do with is it the measure of our love for God.

Fourthly, not even torment in hell changed the heart of this man. O yes, he thought about his brothers but only because he did not want them to experience the terrible end of a worthless life, which presupposed that they were living just as he had. But his attitude to the poor man had not changed. He still regarded him as less than himself. ‘Send Lazarus,’ he instructed Abraham, as though Lazarus were his servant to dispatch as he chose.

Jesus was not, for one moment, advocating good works as a way of salvation. His blood alone can forgive the guilt of our sin and cleanse us from all our unrighteousness, but He presupposed that our hearts will also be transformed so that we do not continue living self-indulgent lives. Generosity is a sure sign that our hearts and lives have been changed, If not, we need to re-evaluate so that we do not land up where the rich man did because he assumed….

The Indestructible Word of God

Christian Life, ,

THE INDESTRUCTIBLE WORD OF GOD

“‘The sky will disintegrate and the earth dissolve before a single letter of God’s Law wears out.
Using the legalities of divorce as a cover for lust is adultery; using the legalities of marriage as a cover for lust is adultery.'” Luke 16:17-18 (The Message).

This seems like an odd combination of ideas, the eternal nature of God’s word and a warning against using legal ways as an excuse for adultery. But there is never anything random about Jesus’ thinking. He always came from the perspective of God and His ways rather than the natural, human way of thinking.

The concept of adultery has far wider implications than simply breaking a marriage relationship. It is a violation of the essence and nature of God Himself and the power that holds the universe together.

According to the Shema – the Hebrew confession of faith – “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” Deuteronomy 6:4 (NIV), which an Israelite would recite more than once every day, God is one (echad – in Hebrew), not in uniformity but unity in diversity. Those who deny the Trinity or reject the deity of Jesus or the personality of the Holy Spirit have not grasped the significance of this unity. God is three persons, separate, but in essence and nature, perfectly one.

This oneness is reflected in the universe. Everything in the universe is interactive and interdependent. Everything on earth functions as one; man is a unit – every system in his body functions as one and when one system malfunctions, the whole body is affected.

God created a man and a woman and brought them together in marriage to function as one as a perfect reflection of His being. So, according the Genesis 2:24, marriage is primarily to be a visual aid of the unity of the Godhead. “For this reason (that the woman was fashioned from the body of the man), a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” The purpose of marriage is not primarily for companionship, procreation or legalised sex but to express the unity of God.

Is it any wonder, then, that Satan targets marriage and the family as his most potent expression of hatred against God? Our so-called sexual ‘freedom’ has done more damage to the fabric of society than any other deviation from the ways of God because it has caused the whole of society to unravel.

Adultery is not just the disruption of a marriage partnership. It is a denial of the nature of God and attack on society as a whole and every human being in particular. The consequences of adultery are not only individual, they are universal.

Since God’s word is the manifestation of Himself in another form, it cannot be destroyed. It is as eternal as He is. His word is not broken – those who reject or disregard His word are broken by it and whatever is broken will land up in the trash.

Jesus warns that we must not think that we can get away with lust by disguising it under a legal divorce or even a legal marriage. Using divorce as a way for getting free to marry someone else does not fool God and neither does legal marriage as a cover-up for lust. These are the ways in which the selfishness that breaks ‘echad’ can be expressed. The only legitimate motivation for marriage is the sincere purpose of becoming one as a true, though imperfect, expression of God’s echad-ness.

Here is the Apostle Paul’s take on marriage. “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord…Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her to make her holy…and to present her to Himself as a radiant church…In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies…’For this reason a man must leave his mother and father and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ This is a profound mystery — but I am talking about Christ and His church.” Ephesians 5:22-32 (NIV).