Monthly Archives: July 2015

Unearthly Glory

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UNEARTHLY GLORY

And He said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.’

After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with Him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone. There He was transfigured before them. His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Peter said to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters – one for you, one fore Moses and one for Elijah.’ (He did not know what to say, they were so frightened).

Then a cloud appeared and covered them, and a voice came from the cloud: ‘This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to Him!’ Suddenly, when they looked around, they no longer saw anyone except Jesus (Mark 9: 1-8).

What a terrifying moment for a bunch of drop-outs! “But why terrifying/” you ask. This was way outside of their everyday experience. These were fishermen, tax collectors, blue-collar workers, remember, not religious boffins from the local theological college. They faithfully followed Jesus from pillar to post, trailing after Him from one end of the country to the other, but they were still uneducated men. This time He took them up a mountain, a high one at that, according to Mark. What were they going to do up there?

When Jesus was sure that they were quite alone, no hikers near them to witness what His disciples were about to see, something amazing, radical, other-worldly happened. The visible radiance of His divine being broke through His humanity. For a moment, the veil between heaven and earth disappeared. His disciples saw something beyond their normal vision, something that was there all the time but they were not permitted to see, and it nearly scared them to death.

Their shaky faith in Jesus as the Son of God was given a boost they would never forget. And, on top of that, they glimpsed two of the most prominent and influential men of their history, Moses and Elijah, representatives of the Law and the Prophets. Their minds were in a whirl.

Trust motor-mouth Peter to put his foot in it again! He had to say something but he didn’t know what to say, so he blurted out the first thing that came into his mind. “This is great! Let’s stay here forever. Let’s build shrines for the three of you, one for you, Jesus, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” But Peter, haven’t you just recently confessed that Jesus is the Messiah? So where do Moses and Elijah fit in?

At that moment something even more shocking happened. Not only a glorified Jesus in front of their eyes but also a voice from heaven. God actually spoke to them in an audible voice. If they were frightened out of their wits before, how did they feel now? It took the voice of God the Father to speak sense into their addled brains. “Don’t you realise that this is Jesus, my Son, the one I love? Moses and Elijah don’t come into the picture at all any more. Their time is over. They had their say, but now it’s Jesus you must listen to.”

Peter must have burned with shame for blurting out such a stupid idea. More than ever before, these three men were faced with the truth that this Jesus, this rabbi whom they followed, watched, listened to and learned from was actually, really the Son of God!  Would they ever forget this holy moment? It was forever indelibly written on their memory. Both Peter and John wrote about it – John in his gospel and Peter in his first letter.

It’s no wonder these men could go out, after the coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, with such holy boldness that nothing scared them. They didn’t care if the whole world was against them. They knew the truth. Jesus was the Son of God. They would die for Him if they had to. They had seen Him on the mountain. They had seen Him after the resurrection. Nothing would change their conviction that He was the Son of God. That’s what they proclaimed – not some wishy-washy message about “come to Jesus and He’ll make everything alright for you” or “come to Jesus so that you can go to heaven when you die.” But

Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah (Acts 3: 36).

This is the message that changed the first century world. This is the only message that will change the world today – not the rubbish that is being preached from many of the pulpits today – “God wants you to be rich” or “Come and get your miracle”. Peter, Paul and all the others had only one message – Jesus Christ and Him crucified, risen and glorified.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (copyright 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Check out my Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

 

 

 

The Cross Or Loss

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THE CROSS OR LOSS

Then He called the crowd to Him along with His disciples and said, ‘Whoever wants to be my disciples must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world yet forfeit his soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for his soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His Father’s glory with the holy angels (Mark 8: 34-38).

Discipleship, according to Jesus, is an all-or-nothing transaction. Following Jesus is not like joining a club or a cause. Sign on the dotted line, pay your subscription for another year and you’re in. This time He didn’t have a private conversation with the Twelve; He went public to make sure that everyone understood the implications of His call.

At this point He had not yet extended an invitation to the crowd to join His band. In fact, He discouraged some of them who wanted to follow Him for the wrong reasons. “Foxes have dens and birds have nests,” He told would-be disciples, “but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” Was this an allusion to His poverty or His nomadic lifestyle? We could interpret it that way if we did not understand the Hebrew way of speaking.

Foxes don’t live in dens; nor do birds live on nests. That’s where their babies are born. This was Jesus’ way of telling people that He did not yet have a body upon which to place His head. His disciples were being trained to reproduce Him in others as they lived and spread the good news of the kingdom of God, but something had to happen first. Jesus had to die to reconcile the world to the Father. Sin was the great barrier between God and man. Jesus came to clear the way so the God’s alienated children could be restored to the family.

Jesus had just reassured His disciples that they were the flagship of the church – His body – which would be born on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was poured on once again. Head and body would come together in an unbreakable union to begin the process of reproduction.

However, there was a condition to this process of discipleship without which it would not work. Jesus could not take on board people who came with their own agenda. Following Jesus meant ditching their own plans, putting to death once and for all any ambitions other that being absolutely one with Him.

Taking up the cross does not mean being resigned to our fate. We sometimes think that our cross in life is some responsibility thrust on us, some disability or disadvantage we can do nothing about or some relationship that is like a noose around our necks.

That’s not what Jesus meant. Taking up the cross is voluntary. It’s what He calls His disciples to do but the choice, in the end, is ours. Like the rich young ruler, we can also walk away and lose the opportunity to experience real life in fellowship with Jesus, or we can identify with Him, embrace His will and walk with Him in obedience and self-sacrificing love on our journey to the Father.

This kind of commitment is life-long and demands a “dying”. Paul even declared that it was a daily dying. Have you ever tried dying when you are provoked, irritated, impatient, frustrated, angry, anxious, or afraid? That’s where the rubber meets the road. Taking up the cross means being “dead” to the world – non-reactive to the inconveniences, annoyances, interruptions, frustrations and temptations of life and alive to the presence of the Holy Spirit within. It’s a tall order but, if Jesus could do it, so can we. That’s what being a disciple of Jesus is all about. The Holy Spirit creates a union with Him so intense and intimate that we literally become fused to Jesus. He is in us and we are in Him. Our job is to foster and maintain that union by allowing Him to live His life through us.

There cannot be two wills at work in one person. It’s either my will or His will. It’s a choice I have to make, not once but a thousand times a day. Jesus said that the way to life is narrow. The path is littered with choices. There are many wrong choices and only one right one. Whose will am I going to follow, His or mine? I cannot give Him my will. That is impossible because God gave it to me as a non-returnable gift. I can only choose to do His will.

That’s what it means to follow Jesus – living in such intimacy with Him that we become one. Dead but alive! Nothing less!

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (copyright 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Check out my Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

 

 

Dead Wrong, Devil

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DEAD WRONG, DEVIL

Then He began to explain to them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that He must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him. But when Jesus turned and looked at His disciples, He rebuked Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan!’ He said. ‘You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns’. (Mark 8: 31-33).

Strange, isn’t it, how a person can be so right and yet so dead wrong at the same time! Peter got it right when he confessed Jesus to be the Messiah but, in the very next breath he cancelled his confession with his foolish rebuke.

It was important for the disciples to understand the full extent of who and what the Messiah was. The Old Testament presented two streams of prophecy. Messiah would be both king and servant. What the disciples recognised in Jesus was His power and authority; they had no problem believing that He could overthrow the Roman occupation and set up His rule over David’s realm. They believed it and they wanted to believe it because they ached for the time when the Romans would be thrown out of their land once and for all.

They were so consumed by this expectation that anything Jesus said to the contrary went in one ear and out the other. After all, the very announcement that kicked off His public ministry had to do with the coming of God’s kingdom. They were commissioned to preach it and to demonstrate it by doing the same miracles He did.

What was this talk about being killed and rising again? The other stream in the Messianic prophecies that He would also be the Ebed Yahweh – the Servant of Yahweh – an office which included suffering, they dismissed without giving it a thought. They wanted and needed a powerful ruler to get rid of Rome – bottom line.

They did not understand that God’s agenda was very different from theirs. They were looking for a restoration of the greatness of David’s reign and a return to the comfort of their temporal circumstances. God was about dealing with a far more serious and sinister issue, sin and the alienation from Himself that it had caused. His kingdom was not about geographical boundaries and earthly kings but about restoring the righteousness in their hearts and lives by transforming them from within.

Why did Jesus call Peter Satan? Actually, He didn’t. He addressed the real but unwitting source of Peter’s rebuke. Just as Peter was open to the influence of God and accurately identified Jesus as the Messiah by divine inspiration, so he was equally open to the devil’s lies. He revealed his erroneous expectation of who Messiah really was by opening his mouth and blurting out his rebuke.

Jesus addressed the devil as though he were there in the flesh. “This time, Peter, it’s not God speaking through you but the devil and what he said is nothing but a distractor and I will have none of it.” At that moment, Peter was acting in the flesh. He had no understanding of God’s mind. It would take time and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit for Peter to learn to view life from God’s perspective.

Jesus tried hard to prepare His disciples for His passion so that they would not be thrown into disarray when it happened. But so strong was their desire and their expectation that Messiah would deal, not with sin but with Rome that all His efforts fell on deaf ears. Even His strong rebuke did not help to get His message across. He told them the same thing time and again but when the time came, and He was arrested, tried and nailed to a cross, they still didn’t get it.

It seems that Judas even tried to force His hand by betraying Him to the Jewish authorities, which proved all the more that Rome was not on His agenda. Rather than showing His hand as Judas expected and acting against Rome, He submitted to the cross and He rose from the dead, just as He said He would. Only then and finally, after Pentecost, did the penny drop and everything He said fall into place.

We are really no different, aren’t we? Our expectations of Jesus centre so much on our creature comforts that we turn away in disappointment and disillusionment when Jesus does not meet our expectations. God is less interested in our comfort than our character. It is sin that He deals with, not circumstances. His promise is that He will transform us into the image of His Son, so matter what it takes. In the end, we decide how tough it will be by our response to His training.

As one mom said to her son when he resisted going to bed, “You can go easy or you can go hard, but you are going to bed anyway!”

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (copyright 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Check out my Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

 

On This Rock

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ON THIS ROCK

Jesus replied, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.’ Then He ordered His disciples not to tell anyone that He was the Messiah (Matt. 8: 17-20).

What a golden moment . . . and what a mess we westerners have made of it! 

Before Jesus’ words can make real sense to us, we need to put ourselves into His sandals and the sandals of His disciples, taking note of where they were and what His words meant in the language and culture of first-century Hebrews and not twenty-first-century western Greek-thinking so-called theologians.

Where were they? They were in the middle of the “red-light” district of northern Israel. There were sexual orgies going on of the most depraved kind – people co-habiting with goats to worship their god. This was not the place for Jews to get their entertainment. Jesus deliberately took His disciples there to give them a taste of what went on in the real world and then to ask them an in-you-face question, “Who do you say that I am?” If they thought He was just a human, albeit a mighty spiritual one like their prophets of old, then He would be powerless to make an impression on the godless world.

Peter blurted it out. “You are the Messiah.” Well done, Peter! In a rare flash of insight, which Jesus acknowledged as from the Father, he recognised in Jesus something far more than just a man. Now the disciples were ready to receive the next part of their commission to continue the work that Jesus had begun.

No need to spiritualise here. The very environment provides the explanation of Jesus’ words.

“You are Peter – just a little stone, powerless in yourself to do anything. You cannot change what you see going on here. Look around you, Peter. What do you see? Terrible things happening because people have rejected the knowledge of the true God, and created their own gods as an excuse to indulge the lusts of their sinful natures? Yes, Peter, but right here, on this huge rock where the images of their gods are displayed, I will build my church. Nothing will be able to withstand the power of the truth, not even their stupid idea that the cave over there from which water flows is the gate of Hades.”

What will make the difference? Well-meaning but misinformed Christians have latched onto Jesus’ words and turned them into the fanciful doctrine about “spiritual warfare”. Binding the devil and loosing the Holy Spirit! Really? Yes, this is spiritual warfare but not the kind that is carried on in the name of truth.

It was every rabbi’s right, whose s’mikah – authority – was recognised and acknowledged, to teach his own yoke – his understanding of what the Torah permitted or did not permit as a way of life. A rabbi with authority taught his disciples his yoke and expected them in turn to continue to teach his yoke to their disciples without changing it in any way. They were given the authority to interpret the Torah in the disposition of their rabbi.

Jesus was a rabbi with authority to teach His yoke. Instead of interpreting the Torah in the tradition of the other rabbis with authority who had gone before Him, men like Gamaliel, Hillel and Shammai who added rules to rules, making their yoke impossibly enslaving because of their legalism, Jesus said that His yoke was easy and His burden was light (Matt. 11: 28-30) because He was gentle and humble in heart. He taught and practised the mercy and compassion of God in place of the rules of a demanding God who punished those who broke them.

Jesus clashed with the religious authorities who did not like the God He represented. But, His yoke of mercy would break down the hardest resistance, transforming the hearts and lives of people, and replacing their godless ways with loyalty and obedience to Him as His followers accurately represented Him and practised His yoke.

At that moment, when Peter confessed his recognition of Jesus as the Messiah, Jesus conferred on His disciples the authority to interpret His yoke (the keys of the kingdom) and to teach His would-be followers what the Torah meant according to the disposition of Messiah. They were to “bind” on people the truth which had already been authorised in heaven and “loose” them from the lies which kept them in bondage to legalism which was not the true message of the Torah.

In this way, through the work of the Holy Spirit in them, not by praying “binding and loosing” prayers, people would be rescued from the dominion of Satan. Jesus said that it is the truth that sets people free. The Holy Spirit convinces people of the truth and brings life to their dead spirits.

Real “spiritual warfare” takes place through the truth. We do not fight by shouting at the devil or doing imaginary “binding and loosing”. Jesus waged war with error by speaking the truth and so must we. Our most powerful weapon, the sword of the Spirit, is the yoke of Jesus taught in the disposition of Jesus, gentle and humble in heart.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (copyright 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Check out my Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

 

 

Who Is He?

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WHO IS HE?

Jesus and His disciples then went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way He asked them, ‘Who do people say I am?’ They replied, ‘Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.’

‘But what about you?’ He asked. ‘Who do you say I am?’ Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah.’ Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about Him (Mark 8: 27-30). S

What an environment for a question like that! Idol worship and sexual orgies with goats were going on all around them. This was Caesarea Philippi, headquarters of the worship of the goat-god, Pan and a host of other gods. In the city itself, Caesar was worshipped as God. “Jesus, why on earth did you bring your disciples here of all places?” This was an evil and disgusting place, abhorrent to a group of Jewish men.

Jesus knew very well what He was doing, so it seems. Rather than shield His disciples from what went on in the real world, He exposed them to it in this instance, for a very good reason. Soon enough He would leave them. His physical presence gone, they would be thrown back on their conviction of His true identity. When they were faced with situations just like this, how would they react? Would they fall apart and make a run for it or would they stand their ground, knowing that they had the backing of the Son of God?

Enough time had passed for them to reach a conviction about who He was. Being with Him day and night, they could not escape the truth that Jesus was no ordinary man. The Pharisees may argue and deny that He was more than a man, but they lived with the glaring truth that He was different.

“What do the people say about me?” He enquired. They had their ear to the ground. They listened to people talk. Jesus Himself must have been aware of the various opinions about Him but He wanted them to verbalise what people were saying. Why? Did they agree or disagree? John the Baptist? Elijah? One of the prophets? Really? Did people really believe that Jesus was a resurrected saint from way back when? What kind of faith was that?

“And you? What do you say?” Of course Jesus was going somewhere with this discussion. “Do you agree with them? Is that all you think of me – some unidentified old bones come back to life?” Did it really matter what they thought of Him?  There at Caesarea Philippi – among the pagans?

Peter’s bold declaration came like a bolt of lightning – a flash of inspiration straight from heaven. How many times had the disciples discussed this very issue among themselves? Every time He did stuff that was beyond their understanding, they were shaken to the core. “Who is this man?” The presence of Jesus there, at that moment – at Caesarea Philippi – obscured every evil thing their eyes had seen as He stood out as pure and holy, untouched and untouchable by the filth of the world. Messiah! That’s who He was!

If He was truly the Messiah, then even the worst of sin that ungodly people could produce would not be able to stand against His purity or His power. This was the conviction they needed to take on the world. Matthew recorded that Jesus’ response to Peter assured them that not even the power of the dark underworld itself would be able to overcome the truth that He was Messiah, the Son of God. He would set up His church in the darkest places on earth and nothing would stop Him.

I wonder how many times the disciples returned to this place and to this incident in their imagination when they were surrounded by pagans and their lives threatened by hostile mobs. “Not even hell’s gates . . .” was the promise that would ring in their ears. How strong and bold they could be because their Master was the supreme overcomer, and they went in His name.

Peter answered the question on behalf of his fellow disciples. No one argued or disagreed with him but it would take much more for Jesus to fine-tune their understanding of the implications of Peter’s confession. At this point they were convinced that He was God’s Messiah but they would need a far deeper understanding to carry them through the hazards and dangers of their mission when He was no longer with them. They had to stake their very lives on who He was.

Have you answered the question, “Who do you say I am?” Your life and your destiny depend on it.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (copyright 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Check out my Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com