Monthly Archives: January 2020

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE – FUTILE FAITH

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FUTILE FAITH

“A bystander said, ‘Master, will only a few be saved?’ He said, ‘Whether few or many is none of your business. Put your mind on your life with God. The way to life – to God – is vigorous and requires your total attention…'” Luke 13:23-24.

Jesus consistently refused to pander to mere curiosity-seekers. His response to this man’s question seems rather rude until we understand what He was saying from His perspective. What would be the point of His self-sacrificial mission to earth if all it produced was people who gathered useless information to satisfy their desire to know about God and not to know God?

Jesus did not come to earth and lay down His life to gather around Him a crowd of freeloaders who have no interest in the meaning and purpose of life in the kingdom of God. There is a tendency today of ‘accepting Jesus’ as an escape route from hell and a solution to all our problems rather than a commitment to the life-time commitment to become who we are, sons and daughters of the living God.

The life we have been given is an apprenticeship for the life to come. What we do with it now will determine what God does with us in the “hereafter”. He gives us the choice and then works with us according to the choices we have made. This is not a joy-ride to heaven. It is vigorous and requires our total attention. The Apostle Paul reiterated Jesus’ sentiments in Philippians 2:12b,13 – ” …Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose.”

Jesus was constantly referring people back to a consideration of their own lives before God. Those who reported the cruelty of Pilate who murdered worshippers in the sanctuary, were warned they that would suffer a similar fate if they did not repent. If we have any involvement with Jesus of Nazareth, it can only be a personal and lifetime commitment to Him as our Master and Lord.

There is a world of difference between the present-day gospel message which is essentially saying, “Come to Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins so that you can go to heaven when you die,” and the message of the apostles who declared, “Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ,” Acts 2:38 (NIV).   

The good news of the kingdom of God was never intended to be an escape route from earth. It is a promise of hope and the renewal of a corrupted earth and a mandate for those who recognise and bow to the Lordship of Jesus, to bring heaven to earth.  By living out the life of Jesus in the power of His Spirit here on earth, His Father’s benevolent and gracious rule can be extended through His people wherever they are.

God’s promise is that every knee will bow to this Jesus whom He has elevated to the highest place and given a name above every name.  Even those who refuse to acknowledge Him now will bow, including His arch-enemy, the devil, and that will be their admission of defeat and their self-inflicted removal from the presence of God forever.

So, once again, Jesus says to every reader, ‘Be warned. You choose….”

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE – ON A STEADY COURSE TOWARDS JERUSALEM

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ON A STEADY COURSE TOWARDS JERUSALEM

“He went on teaching from town to village, from village to town but keeping on a steady course towards Jerusalem.” Luke 13:22.

Jerusalem, the Holy City of God, ancient citadel of David, Israel’s model king and revered leader. Jerusalem, seat of religious government and site of their most holy shrine – the great temple of God, place of God’s presence and the rallying point of His people. The temple was their security and their expression of unity. Every year they gathered in their thousands to celebrate their feasts at the temple in Jerusalem.

Jesus loved Jerusalem; He loved the temple. His first experience at the age of twelve captured His heart. He tarried in Jerusalem while His parents set off for home, not knowing that He was still in His Father’s house, about His Father’s business. Every time He returned to Jerusalem at feast times, He taught in the temple. His passion for His Father’s house drew forth white-hot anger when greedy merchants turned it into a market place. Why would He not move with eager steps towards Jerusalem?

Jesus was fully aware of the sinister side of Jerusalem. Its beauty and fascination eclipsed its history. It was also the place where its own people had murdered its own prophets. Jerusalem was a place of religious intolerance and a rigid and ruthless priesthood. Anyone who threatened their position and power was dispensed with. Both political and religious threats were quickly judged and exterminated to keep the peace with Rome and to maintain the status quo.

Jesus fell into the category of a religious embarrassment. His popularity temporarily bordered on fanaticism because He was everything the people longed for. He was there for them in their physical crises; He miraculously fed them from meagre resources; He was kind and compassionate; He was the friend of sinners; He forgave their sin and restored peace in their hearts and, best of all, they fervently believed He would rescue them from their Roman oppressors.

Jesus knew that Jerusalem was the place of His final showdown with His opponents. To move steadily towards Jerusalem, knowing that they held the power to destroy Him, was to commit suicide, and yet He was unflinching in His purpose. Worse still, He not only put Himself in the place of personal danger, He deliberately provoked His enemies into a frenzy of murderous hate by His exposure of their hypocrisy, His insistence on His identity as the Son of God and His unflinching adherence to the truth.

Jesus was not afraid of Jerusalem. It was the place where the climax of history would be played out with Himself the focal point. He had come to die in Jerusalem. Luke captures this in His attitude in this moment in this one significant phrase, “…on a steady course towards Jerusalem.” Unlike us who are swept along by our circumstances, Jesus moved purposefully into His because He knew who He was and why He had come.

What an inspiration this is for those of us who have chosen to believe what He said and to entrust our lives and our destiny to Him! We are secure in the truth that His death on the cross was neither a coincidence nor the victory of devil-inspired religious despots but the pre-determined plan of a loving and compassionate heavenly Father who sent His Son into a dangerous world to rescue us from the clutches of the devil.

Jesus was fully aware of what lay ahead of Him and moved into it with steadfast purpose because He knew the outcome and obeyed the Father in order to carry out His rescue plan. He absorbed the very worst that human beings could do to Him, He died as a silent and unprotesting sacrificial lamb although He was innocent, and triumphantly rose from the dead to prove it.

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE – ENOUGH FOR EVERYONE

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ENOUGH FOR EVERYONE

“Again He asked, ‘What shall I compare the kingdom of God to? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough.'” Luke 13:20, 21 (NIV).

When two or more parables appear together, called a ‘chain’, to interpret them correctly one must look for the common theme. This story follows the one about the smallest of seeds, the mustard seed, which grows into a tree large enough to shelter the birds. This story tells about a small amount of yeast that leavens a large amount of dough. So what’s the point?

Yeast is often used in Scripture to illustrate the permeating power of evil. During the period of the Passover celebration, the people of God had to remove all yeast from their homes. The apostle Paul picked up on this when he was dealing with the Corinthian church’s failure to deal with a member who had fallen into gross sexual sin.

“…Don’t you know that a little yeast works through a whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast – as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb has been sacrificed.” 1 Corinthians 5:6, 7 (NIV).

In Jesus’ parable, however, yeast is not about evil but about the power of a small amount to permeate a large amount of dough. Such is the power of God’s kingdom to spread its influence across the entire globe. God does not work by force but by influence. Other religions tend to equate power with force. “Believe what we tell you or suffer the consequences.” God’s Spirit works by persuading and convincing, by appealing to the mind and conscience.

There have been times in history when people have turned to the Lord en masse in unusual circumstances like, for example, when the Holy Spirit fell on the believers on the day of Pentecost, and during great spiritual revivals. However, God’s way is also the slow but sure way of people influencing people one by one. Great revivals have swept people into the kingdom of God by the thousands, as have huge evangelistic campaigns all over the world. But the witness of a transformed life is able to influence the mind and convince the heart that Jesus is Lord.

Look, for example, at the experience of the Apostle Paul, a one-time Pharisee and religious fanatic, persecuting believers to the death because he thought he was right. When he was faced with the courageous witness of Stephen, the first of many who laid down their lives for the truth of the gospel, Saul of Tarsus was profoundly moved, although he was only finally convinced on the Damascus road when Jesus Himself confronted him.

The influence of Jesus’ love-slave, Paul, just one man, has touched the entire world throughout all the generations through his preaching and writings, a small amount of yeast permeating the lives of millions of people for two thousand years.

Evil produces revulsion in the hearts of sane-thinking people. Threats of death may manipulate behaviour but only the powerful influence of the gospel of Jesus can transform hearts, change behaviour and redirect destinies towards unselfish service, usefulness and eternal life in the presence of the Most High God.

This simple truth gives great encouragement to God’s children. However insignificant we may feel, however little we may be able to do, there is enough power in our little to influence those around us and to change our environment. As people see the kingdom in action, those who have a heart to respond, receive the King and experience His gracious transforming power that slowly affects those around them.

And so on, and so on…

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE – WHAT’S IT LIKE?

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WHAT’S IT LIKE

‘Then Jesus asked, ‘What is the kingdom of God like? What shall I compare it to? It is like a mustard seed which a man took and planted in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air perched in its branches.'” Luke 13:18, 19 (NIV).

The kingdom of God is like a multi-faceted and multi-coloured diamond. It is impossible to describe in it one sentence or with one idea. Jesus was constantly telling stories to illustrate yet another aspect of this amazing dimension of life from which He had come. He wanted His hearers to catch a glimpse of its wonder and its splendour and yet, like the prophets of the Old Testament and John in the book of Revelation, He struggled to communicate other-worldly ideas in human language to human understanding.

The point of Jesus’ story is lost to us if we fail to understand the significance of the mustard seed. The mustard seed of which Jesus spoke was a weed in Palestine, not the seed we use to flavour our food. If it were, for example, it could not accurately be classified as the smallest of garden seeds. The seed He called a mustard seed was as small as a grain of pepper shaken from a pepper pot.

In Jesus’ day, there were two types of gardens, the one around the homeowner’s house in which he planted flowers, or herbs for table use, and his field outside the town which he used to grow crops for commercial purposes. No gardener in his right mind would plant a mustard seed in either, to take up the soil’s nourishment and moisture for no good purpose.

So why did Jesus tell a story about a man who did something out of character by planting a mustard seed in his garden? We find the clue in His comparison between us and the way God acts in His realm, in two words, ‘tree’ and ‘bird’s. Unlike our motives which are usually selfish, God cares about the ‘birds’. Since it is a parable, an earthly story with a heavenly meaning, a man plants a mustard seed in his garden to provide shelter for birds. The birds have no value for the gardener, in fact probably the opposite but, because he cares about them anyway, he does it even if it means loss to him.

How like God to something like that! On more than one occasion Jesus used ‘birds’ to illustrate God’s care for creatures who are fragile, transient, of no commercial value (except for the doves that unscrupulous merchants were selling in the temple), and sometimes even destructive to the farmer’s crops. Two sparrows are sold for the coin of least value in their currency; God cares for birds by providing them with food they didn’t grow.

In a money-driven world, to do something like that is unthinkable. It would take time, effort, and money to do something that brings no return, and yet that is exactly how God cares, not only about His creation but about us who are the crown of His creation. Of what value were we to God before He rescued us from our God-denying and self-destructive ways? Not only of no value but a liability to Him.

He created us to bring glory to Him by being mirrors of His nature. We not only failed to fulfil His purpose, we deliberately rebelled against Him, actively denying His existence, ignoring His overtures of love to us and systematically destroying His world that He so lovingly fashioned for His pleasure and our enjoyment.

And yet, God in His mercy, planted a ‘tree’ outside Jerusalem on which His Son hung naked in the burning sun, bled and died for us so that we can take shelter in His ‘branches’. This is the kingdom, the realm into which God invites all who receive His Son as their Master, to enter and to enjoy that shelter with Him in the eternal ‘now’ in which God lives.

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE – WHO IS REALLY RESPONSIBLE?

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WHO IS REALLY RESPONSIBLE

“But Jesus shot back, ‘You frauds! Each Sabbath every one of you regularly unties your cow or donkey from its stall, leads it out for water and thinks nothing of it. So why isn’t it all right for me to untie this daughter of Abraham and lead her from the stall where Satan has had her tied these eighteen years?’ When He put it that way, His critics were left looking quite silly and red-faced. The congregation was delighted and cheered Him on.” Luke 13:15-17.

Could the synagogue ruler have answered Jesus, ‘But my animals are not under the law of God like we are’? From his perspective he could have been right but Jesus never viewed life from the human perspective. That’s the difference between Him and us. Our logic is human. Jesus always thought God’s thoughts. The very essence of our new life in Christ is to learn to think God’s thoughts instead of our own.

“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – His good, pleasing and perfect will.” Romans 12:2 (NIV).

So what was Jesus’ perspective on this woman’s condition? Satan! He was the culprit. But, lest we assume that we are automatically Satan’s victims, we need to understand the way he works. Neither God nor Satan has any power over the gift God gave us – the freedom to make our own choices. We choose according to what we believe. God calls us to respond to truth while Satan works through deception.

In this woman’s case, somewhere in her life something happened that gave Satan his opportunity to sow lies in her mind. She believed his lies and emotional pain followed, which blocked out the truth of God’s love and caused her body to become as twisted as her mind.

Satan’s lies are always directed at discrediting ourselves, other people and, eventually, God, resulting in feelings of fear, anger, rejection, insecurity, unforgiveness, bitterness and worthlessness which are the ideal breeding ground for demonic harassment. The devil’s ensnarement comes in the form of mental, emotional and physical bondage from which there is no escape except by diagnosing the lie and replacing it with the truth which, said Jesus, is the key to freedom.

People in this condition desperately long for someone to rescue them. There is not a person in the world who can do this except Jesus. He came from the Father to bring both grace and truth to His world. Only He can set captives free; no psychiatrist, psychologist nor counsellor can reveal the truth to the heart of the sufferer. No medication can cure the mind of the lies which hold people prisoner to mental and physical ‘illness’.

How tragic that our medical scientists, in their human ‘wisdom’, have chosen to bypass, ignore, and reject the only person who has the power to set people free, Jesus, who is the Prince of Peace. Every malady has a ‘diagnosis’ and is so categorised that its real cause is masked by the name of some or other disorder. We are satisfied as long as we have a ‘diagnosis’ even if there is no ‘cure’. Our conditions are ‘managed’ while Jesus came to set captives free.

His anger was aroused by this heartless ‘religious’ man who saw more value in his animals than in a woman whom Jesus deliberately called ‘a daughter of Abraham’. She had as much right to freedom as the animals whom he faithfully led to water, even on the Sabbath, because she was a member of God’s covenant people. Freedom from the shackles of emotional pain is the inheritance of believers in Jesus. Have you come to Him to set you free?