Daily Archives: April 11, 2013

They Recognised Him

Christian Life, ,

THEY RECOGNISED HIM

“They came to the edge of the village where they were headed. He acted as if He were going on but they pressed Him: ‘Stay and have supper with us. It’s nearly evening; the day is done.’ So He went in with them. Here is what happened. He sat down at the table with them. Taking the bread, He blessed and broke and gave it to them. At that moment, open-eyed, wide-eyed, they recognised Him. And then He disappeared.'” Luke 24:28-31 (The Message).

‘He blessed and broke and gave it to them.’ Sound familiar? This was another trigger for these disciples. Jesus had probably done this hundreds of times during the course of His association with them. Many more than the inner Twelve followed Him around and no doubt He had shared many a meal with them. This was the first clue to the identity of the stranger who had accompanied them on their journey home.

Peter had his own triggers which brought back both painful and precious memories: The crowing of a rooster would always remind him of his terrible failure, and a coal fire, of his Master’s gracious forgiveness. For these disciples it was the simple gesture of blessing and breaking the bread.

Perhaps they were not in the Upper Room at His last Passover meal when He formally established a new covenant with them. They were not part of the inner circle but it was a familiar action, nevertheless. And who could miss the wounds in His hands which had, up to this point, been hidden?

It was those nail-prints which clinched it for them. No one could go through that ordeal and come out alive, with Roman soldiers on guard to make sure that every execution was carried out to the death. Their fuzzy, grief-soaked minds were suddenly cleared and they saw Him and recognised Him. Strange that it was His hands, not His face or His voice that finally convinced them.

Jesus must have enjoyed that moment! He has been on the road with them for a while, walking alongside them, listening to them, and talking to them but they were blind and deaf to all the familiar things about Him? Why? Was it because their disappointed expectation blinded them to His identity and His intention?

That’s how it often is with us too. Our expectations of God are either too low or too tied to our circumstances to allow us to recognise Him with us. We are in a tough spot and God seems silent or absent. We pray and nothing happens. Times get tougher and doubts and fears increase. Everything looks dark and hopeless. We have high hopes and they die when Jesus does not show up.

These are not intended to be faith-killing but faith-building moments. Faith does not grow when everything goes our way. Faith grows when there is nothing happening and we have to stake ourselves on God’s faithfulness. Satan comes in these times to call God’s character into question, like he did with Eve, because he desperately wants to discredit God so that we will mistrust Him.

But there is inexpressible joy awaiting us when Jesus shows us that He has been there all the time, putting everything in place to answer our cry. What an awesome moment when He reveals Himself and we know that our trust was worth it all! Even if everything seems dark and hopeless to you right now, won’t you trust Him? At the right moment He will show you that He has been there all the time and His plans for you are good.

The Scriptures Have to be Fulfilled

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THE SCRIPTURES HAVE TO BE FULFILLED

“Then He said, ‘Everything I told you when I was with you comes to this: All things written about me in the Law of Moses, in the Prophets and in the Psalms have to be fulfilled.'” Luke 24:44 (The Message).

The prophetic fingerprints of Messiah are woven into the story of a nation, the Hebrews, from its beginning as a single and initially childless couple, through the growth of this family in Egypt, their miraculous deliverance from slavery and their journey to, and life in the Promised Land.

It is a record of their chequered history as a people who persisted in rejecting their God and living in rebellion against His teachings. Their disobedience and idolatry brought them back into slavery to another wicked and idolatrous world power, Babylon, from which God again graciously restored them to their own land although it remained occupied territory under Persia, Greece and Rome.

The most important details of Messiah’s life, death and resurrection are encoded in this book, miraculously preserved and passed down over a period of four thousand years. It was written by some forty authors from every ancient walk of life and yet it is one story, a record of the Creator God’s dealings with man, and specifically the Hebrews, whom He chose to be His own people, and their response to Him.

God’s master stroke was to weave the story of Messiah into the story of His people as His signature of authenticity. What other religious book contains a signature like that – with one hundred per cent accuracy of fulfilment? Through the prophet Isaiah He claimed supremacy over the idols they so loved to worship, which were powerless to speak and act, let alone predict the future.

Apart from His resurrection, what else would have convinced His followers that He was who He said He was? For three years they had followed Him. They had walked with Him, listened to Him and watched him do miracles and interact with all kinds of people. Their experience of Him had brought the growing conviction that He was their Messiah, but the events of the previous few days blew their hopes apart. They thought they were the victims of a terrible hoax.

Jesus brought them back to the Scriptures they knew so well. He was the one of whom the writers of their sacred books had written, whose fingerprints were on every page of their carefully-copied scrolls. He took them through their Bible, book by book, and highlighted every prophecy that He had fulfilled until they were convinced beyond doubt that He was their long-awaited Messiah.

If these men, who were fearful and faithless until Jesus opened the Scriptures to them, were so convinced of His identity as Messiah and Lord that many of them paid the supreme price for the truth, can we not take their testimony at face value and trust the person and words of Jesus as they did? That conviction, empowered by the Holy Spirit who came on the day of Pentecost and took up residence inside them, energised their lives and gave them the courage to die for their testimony.

The same Jesus is Lord today and the same Spirit energises us to stake our lives and our destiny on Him because everything written about Him in the Scriptures is true.

The Promise is for You

Christian Life, , ,

THE PROMISE IS FOR YOU

“Cut to the quick, those who were there that day listening asked Peter and the other apostles, ‘Brothers! Brothers! So now what do we do?’

“Peter said, ‘Change your life. Turn to God and be baptised, each of you in the name of Jesus Christ, so your sins are forgiven. Receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is targeted to you and your children, but also to all who are far away — whomever, in fact, our Master God invites.'” Acts 2:37-39 (The Message).

The gospel in a nutshell!

Peter’s hearers had got it! They were guilty and they knew it. No excuses, no blame-shifting, no procrastinating. In an agony of conviction they cried out, ‘What shall we do?’ Peter’s response was equally simple and direct: ‘Change your life. Turn to God. Be baptised. Receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.’ Thank God there was an answer for their dilemma.

Four simple steps to a brand new life and the invitation is wide open to anyone and everyone who responds. No need for special knowledge, for practising rituals or keeping rules, for trying to get to God through a priest or through Mary or any other human mediator.

Step one: Own your guilt. You are estranged from God because of your sin nature and your rebellion against Him. Own it! You did it! You put Him to death as though you were there. He had to die because of you. Change your attitude. You are blind and deceived. You thought you could live your way but your way doesn’t work. It only leads you deeper into guilt.

Step two: Turn to God. Your blindness caused by deception and unbelief will be taken away. “Whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.” 2 Corinthians 3:15 (NIV).

Sep three: Be baptised into the name of Jesus Christ. For them no baptismal classes were necessary. They understood baptism, ritual washing in running water signifying cleansing and identification. Baptism was practised regularly in Jewish culture – new priests were baptised into their priestly office, Gentiles were baptised into the Jewish religion etc. They were “washed” and initiated into a new status.

Step four: Receive the Holy Spirit. This is the step that is either ignored or overstated with a lopsided emphasis on gifts or “goose-bumps”. The Holy Spirit is God’s ultimate gift to every believer on the basis of Jesus’ sacrifice. He is the “Spirit of sonship” who fuses us to Himself, guarantees and makes real who we are in Christ and administers to us everything we have inherited as sons of God.

We must receive Him as purposefully as we received Christ. We must acknowledge His presence in us, with or without evidence, and respond to Him with increasing understanding and recognition. He will do what He does if we do what we are supposed to do.

The promise is for everyone and that means you!

The Picture on the Box

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THE PICTURE ON THE BOX

“Back and forth they talked.’ Didn’t we feel on fire as He conversed with us on the road, as He opened up the Scriptures for us?’

They didn’t waste a minute. They were up and on their way back to Jerusalem. They found the Eleven and their friends gathered together talking away: ‘It’s really happened! The Master has been raised up. Simon saw Him!’

“Then the two went over everything that had happened on the road and how they recognised Him when He broke the bread.'” Luke 24:32-34 (The Message).

What a moment for everyone! Jesus was alive! He had shown Himself to them at last! The mystery was solved. All their doubts and disappointment were swallowed up in this unforgettable moment.

Some of them were revelling in their own personal encounter with Him. Others were enjoying the story they were being told. There were too many now, to doubt the truth that He was really alive and that He had really met with them and spoken to them.

All the pieces of this giant puzzle they had been living with for the past three years were falling into place. The picture was crystal clear and they had become convinced believers in an instant. For three years Jesus had been showing them fragments of the puzzle but they had never seen the big picture. How could they believe the whole thing if they had not yet seen it?

As the two trudged along the road back home to Emmaus, they poured out their heavy hearts and dashed hopes like a torrent to the stranger who walked with them. They just did not know how to put it all together. Moses and the Prophets had spread out the pieces. Jesus put them all together for them in that matchless Bible-study-on-the-move!

But the final piece that would complete the puzzle was missing – Jesus Himself. He savoured and kept that piece until they had emptied themselves of all their doubts and misgivings. It had to be so because He could only reveal Himself to them until their false beliefs were all out in the open. It was He, His living presence and His truth that would clear out the lies they had believed and replace their bitter sorrow with joy.

For those disciples, it was a life lesson they never forgot. It was their unwillingness to believe His disclosure about His suffering, death and resurrection, and their insistence that He was dead, that produced their pain and despair, based on a lie. Their interpretation of the events was faulty, no doubt spawned by the father of lies. Only an encounter with Jesus could reveal the truth, change what they believed and replace their pain with joy.

Emotional pain is not something we have to “work through” – which we never really do. It is something that we have to own, and the lies we believe that are producing the pain. The moment we expose our hearts to Jesus, He “shows up” by revealing the truth about the situation, and replacing it with His peace. This is not a long-term process we have to go through but an instant release and exchange which is permanent and maintenance-free as long as we keep the truth in place.

A simple summary: The two disciples believed that Jesus was dead. With His death, all their hopes that He was their Messiah died. The lie they believed produced their painful emotions; grief, disappointment, disillusionment, betrayal, anxiety about their future. They shared their feelings with the stranger who accompanied them. He revealed His identity in a “light-bulb” moment. The revelation of truth set them free from their lies and they exploded into joy!

As with them, so with the other disciples. His presence was enough to convince them that everything He had told them was true because He was alive. And so with us. When we own are pain and the lies that are producing it, Jesus fulfils His ministry outlined in Isaiah 61:1-3 in us. He gives us “beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of despair.” He is the only one who can show is the picture on the box.

Sick and Stupid Culture

Christian Life, , ,

SICK AND STUPID CULTURE

“He went on in this vein for a long time, urging them over and over, ‘Get out while you can: get out of this sick and stupid culture.’

That day about three thousand took him at his word, were baptised and were signed up. They committed themselves to the teaching of the apostles, the life together, the common meal and the prayers.” Acts 2:40-42 (The Message).

“Sick and stupid culture”! That’s a good way to describe my culture, your culture, any culture that leaves Jesus out of the mix. It doesn’t matter where we live in the world; every culture is underpinned by the same characteristics that entered the world with Adam’s declaration of independence from God.

Adam exchanged family oneness for aggression and alienation towards God, his Father and his fellow man, leaving him orphaned and abandoned. He exchanged generosity of spirit for greed and selfishness, making him even more alienated from other people and more lonely. He exchanged fellowship with the Father for man-made religions which leave him empty, frustrated and fearful.

Put these together and you have a multiplicity of cultures that are nothing but “sick and stupid”. Wrap them up in religious systems that have no foundation in fact or reality, that have absurd belief systems and practices and that never bring us back to our source in God our Father and you have “sick and stupid” cultures. Adam’s choice was stupid and left every descendant in every generation sick.

Notice the first evidence of the restoration that happened when the people who had murdered Jesus realised what they had done and came back to God in humble repentance and confession. They devoted themselves to four things that were a radical reversal of their old culture and a powerful witness to the change that had taken place within their hearts.

1. They committed themselves to the teaching of the apostles. For the first time on their lives they were open to receiving the truth. Jesus had promised His disciples that the Holy Spirit would lead them into all truth. He entrusted to them the responsibility of interpreting the events of His life and death under inspiration of the Spirit and passing it on to His followers. It was the knowledge of the truth that would set them free from all the nonsense they had ever believed and practised in their ignorance.

2. They did life together. Their new-found faith in the Messiah bound them together in the unity that God intended from the beginning, restoring the family bond and drawing them to each other so that they loved, shared and cared for one another in such a powerfully visible way that outsiders noticed and were impressed.

3. They ate together – another powerful symbol of their new culture. Instead of living in alienation from each other, they were reconciled. They buried their personal issues and demonstrated their reconciliation by sharing their meals. In the culture of the Middle East, you did not eat with an enemy.

4. They fellowshipped together with the Father in the set prayers of their Jewish faith. The prayers of their Scriptures, which they had prayed as a habit, became the heart of their fellowship with God and with each other.

What a beautiful description of their new faith and their new life! Everything lost in Adam was regained in Christ. How simple compared with the complicated religion much of what is called “Christianity” has become today! Just imagine the impact the church could have if it truly abandoned the sick and stupid culture of the world and adopted the pattern set by these early believers.

They got it right. Why can’t we?