Monthly Archives: December 2019

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE – DON’T BE AFRAID OF RELIGIOUS BULLIES

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DON’T BE AFRAID OF RELIGIOUS BULLIES

“‘I’m speaking to you as dear friends. Don’t be bluffed into silence or insincerity by religious bullies. True, they can kill you but then what can they do? There’s nothing they can do to your soul, your core being. Save your fear for God, who holds your entire life – body and soul – in His hands.'” Luke 12:4, 5.

Always, always, Jesus put life into its correct perspective. For Him, life includes this life and the life to come. If our concern is only for this life, we will make decisions and choices which will adversely affect us in the eternal realm.

Had He only considered preserving His life for the short time He was on earth, the outcome would have been very different for us human beings. But He didn’t. The writer to the Hebrews puts it like this, ‘”…who, for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross…” (Hebrews 12:2b NIV).

Jesus was never afraid of the truth. He spoke it and He lived it fearlessly. Truth cannot die and those who hold to the truth cannot be destroyed. The body is destructible and will die, be it by natural or unnatural means, but the inner being will never die. It will continue to live, either with God or without God, depending on what we do with the truth.

Pilate asked Jesus, ‘What is truth?’ He didn’t even wait for an answer but, unknowingly, he was standing in the presence of the one who said, ‘I am the truth.’ So, what is truth? Everything that God is, says and does is the truth.

Jesus came to represent the Father, and to reveal the Father and He is therefore the embodiment of truth. Look and listen to Jesus and you have an accurate representation of the truth.

Religious bullies come in many subtle disguises. Some kill people who don’t subscribe to their religion. Others kill people’s names in the media and especially on the internet in the name of ‘truth’. Character assassination is a common way of destroying the opposition, especially in political circles.

But Jesus assured us, ‘Don’t worry about people like that. They may kill your name or even your body but they cannot kill you. Only God can do that and you are safe with Him forever if you stand on the side of truth.’

It is neither pleasant nor easy to face the hot breath of lies that is often used against us, especially when we are a threat to people as Jesus was. We either want to curl up or shut up but the counsel from God’s word is, ‘Stand up, speak up and look up.’ You may pay a price for your courage but the reward far outweighs the cost in the long run.

Ungodly people think nothing of using revenge to vindicate themselves when they cannot get their own way, but God’s Word says, ‘Don’t be like them. Let God do your vindicating for you.’ It may not happen in this life but God is a righteous judge. He will always have the last word, ‘If God is for us, who can be against us?’ That question has only one answer – no-one. A man of God once said, ‘Fear God, and you will have nothing else to fear.’

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE – PHARISEE PHONINESS

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CHAPTER TWELVE

PHARISEE PHONINESS

“By this time the crowd, unwieldy and stepping on each other’s toes, numbered into thousands. But Jesus’ primary concern was His disciples. He said to them, “Watch yourselves carefully so that you don’t get contaminated with the Pharisees’ yeast, Pharisee phoniness. You can’t keep yourself hidden forever; before long you’ll be exposed. You can’t hide behind a religious mask forever; sooner or later the mask will slip and your true face will be known. You can’t whisper one thing in private and preach the opposite in public; the day’s coming when those whispers will be repeated all over town.'” Luke 12:1-3.

It’s amazing how comfortable Jesus was in the company of tax collectors and ‘sinners’. He ate with them, symbolising that He had no issues with them. He spent time with them in preference to the religious ones. You never read long accusations against them from His mouth and yet…He had so much to say against the Pharisees.

He hated Pharisaical attitudes so much that He spent time warning His disciples against them. ‘Don’t even keep company with people like that,’ He said, “because you will be contaminated with their ‘yeast’.’ Why?

Is it possible that God is far less fazed by the obvious sins that we find so heinous, sins like adultery, lying, stealing, murder, etc., than He is by the two-facedness of the Pharisees? Why did Jesus hate their hypocrisy? The people He hobnobbed with had no need to be told how bad they were. They knew it and they welcomed Him because He accepted them and offered them hope.

A comment I wrote in my Bible long ago says it all. ‘Religion is the most difficult disease to cure because it infects with such self-righteousness that no sense of need remains.’ Isn’t that the difference between the ‘sinners’ and the Pharisees, no sense of need?

Sinners, for example, like Zaccheus, grasped the forgiveness Jesus offered and received new life from Him. The Pharisees covered up their wickedness with a veneer of religion and pursued their greedy lives thinking that no-one knew what was behind their masks.

Jesus warned that the rot could not be covered up forever. Sooner or later they would be found out and exposed for who they really were. Imagine the shame of such exposure, especially because they were supposed to be representatives of God to the people.

God is never fooled by the face we show to the world. I quote from a message from Bill Johnson of Bethel Church, Redding, CA. ‘Jesus loves to offend the mind in order to expose the heart.’ God’s desire is to expose our darkness by turning on the light of His truth. The problem is that, like the Pharisees, we prefer the darkness because our deeds are evil. Our ‘darkness’ infects our world like the Pharisees’ darkness infected theirs.

Instead of scuttling under the rocks like bugs do in the light, Jesus yearns for us to come clean so that we can walk in the light with Him. Our masks may hide our true faces for a while but sooner or later they will slip and then…?

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE – THEY TOOK THE KEY

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THEY TOOK THE KEY

“‘You’re hopeless, you religion scholars! You took the key to knowledge, but instead of unlocking doors, you locked them. You won’t go in yourself, and won’t let anyone else in either.’

“As soon as Jesus left the table, the religion scholars and Pharisees went into a rage. They went over and over everything He said, plotting how they could trap Him in something from His own mouth. ” Luke 11:52-54.

Who were the religion scholars and Pharisees? They were the religious boffins – the theological students and professors of their day who dissected the Torah and reassembled it according to what was acceptable to them.

We have them today, the men and women who take the Word of God apart and pass judgment on its authenticity, accuracy and validity, judging by the standards they set up.  They write books about their findings and, if they have a big enough name, their books often carry more weight than the Bible itself. So-and-so said this or so-and-so said that.

But Jesus wasn’t interested in who said what about the Torah. He was more concerned about what it said to them and how they responded to it. Knowledge has no value unless it impacts our lives for the better. The Pharisees and religion scholars were good examples of the futility of scholarship for its own sake.

Their ‘learning’ actually shut God’s word up to the common people. Their interpretations and applications were so complicated that ordinary people did not have the capacity to enter the simple way of life God was offering them. The boffins themselves were no example of real piety. Their lives and learning were pure sham, all for show.

So, what does this mean for us? Two things. Firstly, no ‘learning’ is of value if it complicates the simplicity of God’s way. The study of God’s Word must result in changed lives, otherwise we may as well spend our time dissecting ‘Winnie the Pooh’ for all the value it has for us.

Secondly, God’s Word must always be the measure for what people teach and write about it. “Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.” Acts 17:11 (NIV).

This altercation Jesus had with the Pharisees also exposed the disposition of their hearts. They were more concerned about being right than about being righteous. Because Jesus spoke truth, and they knew it, their driving passion was to silence Him. Jesus said emphatically that those who are on the side of the truth would come to Him and He was right. By their very behaviour, these religious frauds revealed whose side they were on. They sided with the deceiver because of their hardened hearts.

Every time we hear the truth we either embrace or silence it. When we kill the truth in our hearts, we kill Jesus and stand in danger of the same judgment Jesus poured out on them.

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE- MONUMENTS TO MURDERERS

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MONUMENTS TO MURDERERS

“You’re hopeless! You build tombs for the prophets your ancestors killed. The tombs you build are monuments to your murdering ancestors more than to the murdered prophets. That accounts for God’s Wisdom saying, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, but they’ll kill them and run them off.’ What it means is that every drop of righteous blood ever spilled from the time earth began until now, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah who was struck down between altar and sanctuary, is on your heads. Yes, it’s on the bill of this generation and this generation will pay,” Luke 11:47-51.

This is a serious charge against Jesus’ generation. He was holding them accountable for every murder their ancestors committed. By memorialising murdered prophets, they were sharing in their guilt, according to Jesus. Why was that? Although they were distancing themselves from their ancestors’ actions as a show of their disapproval, in actual fact, in their hearts they were just as guilty because they hated the truth and anyone who preached the truth.

Jesus was spot on because down the line they would do to Him what their ancestors had done to the prophets. But they would not just dispose of God’s prophets sent to tell the truth and warn them of the consequences of breaking God’s laws, they would kill the Son of God who came to show and tell them the truth about the Father and to rescue them from their self-destructive ways.

Jesus told a parable about seeds and soil. Two kinds of ground don’t even give the seed a chance to take root, the hard ground and the shallow ground. What is it that makes our hearts as hard as a pathway? Perhaps among many reasons for hard hearts is the persistent refusal to take God seriously. This takes us right back to the devil’s lie in the Garden of Eden. He duped the first pair into believing that they could make their own rules and get away with it.

And we still believe the same lie! God’s people chose to reject God’s way and make their own way. They worshipped idols and oppressed their fellow-Israelites and God let them face the consequences of their choices. And they did not learn!

Jesus came in person from the Father to show His people what the Father is like and what His government is like, and they rejected Him because they still wanted their own way even though it destroyed them. No wonder He called them ‘hopeless’!

But what about us? How do we fit into this damning accusation? If we refuse to take Jesus seriously, we retain the same guilt as the religious leaders of His day who yelled, ‘Crucify Him! Crucify Him!’ together with the crowd who bayed for His blood.

Every person who hears the truth but refuses to believe it will carry the same guilt and pay the same price as those who murdered the prophets and who demanded Jesus’ death. It is impossible to destroy the truth. Truth is eternal because God is eternal and God is truth. Truth will destroy those who reject it. God takes no pleasure in destroying anyone but He cannot deny Himself. The choice is ours.

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE – THE TRUTH HURTS!

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THE TRUTH HURTS!

“One of the religion scholars spoke up, ‘Teacher, do you realise that in saying these things you’re insulting us?’

He said, ‘Yes, and I can be even more explicit. You’re hopeless, you religion scholars! You load people down with rules and regulations, nearly breaking their backs, but never ever lifting a finger to help them.'” Luke 11:45-46

Why is it so difficult for people to recognise what religion does to them? Religion is one of the most powerful deceiving spirits, together with mammon – the spirit that drives the lust for money – that operates on the earth.

God created man to live in union with Himself. God is free. Nothing drives Him. Nothing enslaves Him. Freedom is His great passion for us, but not the ‘freedom’ that the devil entices us into, the freedom to do as we please, because that freedom is the worst kind of slavery. It is slavery to our own selfish passions which clash with the selfish passions of others and cause the kind of chaos that governs the world today.

Real freedom is to do life God’s way so that we are not driven by the painful emotions that come from the cruel ways we treat ourselves and others. These religious leaders were a case in point. Why did they react to Jesus’ accusations? They were guilty and they knew it.

God created us to make choices but He also gave us a conscience which reacts to bad choices. Because we refuse to believe what God says, we keep making the wrong choices, serving ourselves instead of serving God and others. There is nothing that will make our feelings of guilt and shame go away when we have rejected God’s way and chosen our own, except God’s forgiveness.

These so-called spiritual leaders piled rules on their followers to have power over them. When we are insecure because of our own guilt, we like to control other people because it gives us a feeling of power. ‘Control freaks’, as we like to call them, are actually emotionally insecure people.

Emotional pain robs us of our true identity. Because of childhood experiences such as abandonment or rejection, which we turn inward and interpret as the result of our worthlessness, we feel inferior to everyone else and have to make up for it by using our ‘power’ to push other people around.

In this case, it was done in the name of ‘religion’ which Jesus hated because it enslaved the ordinary people to fear, fear that breaking the rules will bring God’s wrath on us. This is a devilish lie to discredit God. He has already punished Jesus for every wrong choice we have ever made. He has taken away our guilt and opened the way for us to be reconciled to Him. He has no desire or need to punish us. He invites us to be His sons and daughters.

Paul put it this way, “God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them.” 2 Corinthians 5:19a (NIV).

He has done away with the notion that any kind of rule-keeping appeases Him. He knows we can never be perfect on our own. He did it all for us so that we can be free from guilt to live in fellowship with Him.