Monthly Archives: March 2020

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE – TODAY IS SALVATION DAY

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CHAPTER NINETEEN

TODAY IS SALVATION DAY

“Then Jesus entered and walked through Jericho. There was a man there… Zaccheus, the head tax man and quite rich. He wanted desperately to see Jesus, but the crowd was in his way…so he ran on ahead and climbed up in a sycamore tree…

“When Jesus got to the tree, He looked up and said, ‘Zaccheus, hurry down. Today is my day to be a guest at your house.’  Zaccheus scrambled out of the tree…delighted to take Jesus home with him. Everyone who saw the incident was indignant…’What business does He have getting cosy with this crook?’ Zaccheus stammered apologetically, ‘Master, I give away half my income to the poor…’

“Jesus said, ‘Today is salvation day in this home! Here he is: Zaccheus, son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to find and restore the lost.'” Luke 19:1-10.

Another much-loved Sunday school story with so much in it that we can miss!

This incident epitomises the difference between the attitude of Jesus and the people around Him (and all of us as well because we are all infected with the same tunnel vision).

Zaccheus was a man with a conscience who did bad things. He made a comfortable living preying on the public who hated him but could do nothing about it. But there came a time when he became sick of his way of life and his alienation from his fellow Jews. How do we know that? What crook would climb a tree to catch a glimpse of a rabbi whose sheer goodness would be repulsive to him unless there was a deep-seated yearning to change?

Why did he climb a tree? Just to get a close-up view of Jesus, or because he was too embarrassed to get close to Him? What did he hope to achieve by getting a passing glimpse? To satisfy his curiosity or to fix in his imagination a picture of the person he would like to be? We don’t know but, once again, Jesus’ spiritual radar screen picked up the blip of a man who wanted to see Him.

As always, His response was immediate and, as always, He was not put off by the external trappings of the man’s life. He zeroed in on Zaccheus’ heart and stopped under the tree. Knowing that Zaccheus would feel too unworthy to invite Him home, He invited Himself, sweeping aside all the tax man’s false notions and emotions about himself. Jesus saw him, not as a rotten, thieving henchman of the Roman government as those around Him did, but as a son of Abraham!

Zaccheus’ response to Jesus’ generous attitude towards him is startling. How could a greedy and conniving crook suddenly become generous and open-handed to the poor and to those he had outwitted? It just does not happen in the natural. Something had transpired in the man’s heart in his encounter with Jesus that radically and permanently changed his disposition.

Light had exposed and dispelled darkness and the result was transformation! His money, unlike the other rich man who refused to let go of his wealth, even for the prize of eternal life, was tossed out of the way because it stood between him and Jesus, and Jesus knew that Zaccheus had been rescued from his self-destroying choices and was back on the path to the Father.

There are so many beautiful lessons for those of us who are disciples of Jesus to learn. As disciples, we are called to be imitators of Jesus. Our first major lesson is to look at people through the eyes of our Master. To Him, they had no past. His atoning sacrifice took care of that. He never accused or blamed. He accepted and embraced every returning prodigal with generosity and compassion. They were lost sons coming home.

Secondly, Jesus never saw failure but always, potential. As a son of Abraham, this one-time criminal had a renewed calling: “…All peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” Genesis 12:3b (NIV). With the Messiah in charge of his life, he could bless the very people he had robbed by sharing his faith and his wealth.

The crowd were indignant with Jesus for associating with a robber. Jesus was elated because the robber had returned home as a son!

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE – WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?

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WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?

“He came to the outskirts of Jericho. A blind man was sitting beside the road asking for hand-outs. When he heard the rustle of the crowd, he asked what was going on. They told him, ‘Jesus the Nazarene is going by.’

“He yelled, ‘Jesus! Son of David!  Mercy, have mercy on me!’

“Those ahead told the man to shut up, but he only yelled all the louder, ‘Son of David! Mercy, have mercy on me!’

“Jesus stopped and ordered him to be brought over. When he had come near, Jesus asked, ‘What do you want from me?’

“He said, ‘Master, I want to see again.’

Jesus said, ‘Go ahead – see again! Your faith has saved and healed you.’ The healing was instant. He looked up, seeing – and then followed Jesus, glorifying God. Everyone in the street joined in, shouting praise to God.” Luke 18:35-43.

This story is a wonderful illustration of how faith interacts with the power of God. Luke has not identified this insignificant blind beggar, but we know from the other gospels that his name was Bartimeus. From God’s point of view, he had a name; he had an identity; he was a person of value who had a disability which made him an outcast of society, but not of God. He was worthless to people, a parasite, but not to Jesus.

To the untrained ear, the sound of his voice begging for hand-outs mingled with the shouts of the rest of the crowd and was lost in the din, but not to Jesus. He always hears the cry of the needy, raised in hope and expectation.

Bartimeus was tiresome; he refused to be put off by the heartless people around him who ordered him to shut up. Why should he? He had a sudden hope and he wasn’t about to let the opportunity to be freed from his blindness be lost because of other people. Instead of keeping quiet, he yelled all the louder. It’s no wonder Jesus heard him! He didn’t hear his voice as much as He heard his heart.

Isn’t that just like Jesus! The gospels record many similar incidents – Jesus responding to a heart cry. The outer covering of the crying heart didn’t matter to Him – lepers, prostitutes, tax collectors, blind, lame, sick, deaf, rich, poor, Pharisee or sinner; He heard and responded to them all.

The interaction between the blind man and Jesus was very simple – no long prayers, no beating about the bush, no reasoning or explanations, just a simple question, ‘What do you want from me?’ and an equally simple response, ‘Master, I want to see again.’ Interaction over, transaction done! ‘Go ahead – see again!’

How tragic that we, in the tradition of those who have gone before us, are perpetuating the terrible distortion of the gospel, which we call Christianity. We have turned this simple exchange between Jesus and us into a rigmarole, with religious paraphernalia, elaborate rituals, and teachings that twist and distort the simplicity of a partnership with Jesus in submission to Him and in the company of His redeemed people.

When I watch some of the goings-on on so-called Christian TV, sadly, I ask myself, ‘Is this why Jesus came?’ and my heart bleeds for the people who are sucked into the deception and who are missing out on the beauty and simplicity of a union and communion with Jesus that shifts all the weight of living onto His shoulders.

Jesus sternly rebuked the disciples for getting between Him and the little children whom mothers had brought to Him for His blessing. Being drowned with a millstone around their necks was a better option than hindering anyone from coming to Him, He said. What about the leaders who mindlessly perpetuate all the nonsensical practices that take ordinary people’s attention away from Jesus? He came to set us free, not to tie us up in endless deviations from His pure and simple truth.

My plea to the people of God is this: Don’t let people shut you up and keep you away from getting close to Jesus. All that matters is that you and He keep interacting so that you can walk close to Him in the confidence that you are hearing and listening to each other.

He will do the rest! 

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE – EVERYTHING WRITTEN

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EVERYTHING WRITTEN

“Then Jesus took the Twelve off to the side and said, ‘Listen carefully. We’re on our way up to Jerusalem. Everything written in the Prophets about the Son of Man will take place. He will be handed over to the Romans, jeered at, made sport of, and spat on. Then, after giving Him the third degree, they will kill Him. In three days, He will rise, alive.’ But they didn’t get it, could make neither head nor tail of what He was talking about.” Luke 18:31-34.

Every belief system has a source from which it gets its information and upon which it bases its authority. For any information affecting life and destiny to be valid, it would be wise for those who receive it to ask two simple questions: ‘Who said it?’ and ‘What authority does that person have to say it?’

Jesus made some startling and outrageous claims which we must either dismiss as the ravings of a madman, or believe and receive as the truth, depending on the source and authority of His statements. There is one fool proof way of putting His words and His authority to the test – prophecy!

In the Old Testament, God used this criterion to challenge the claims of false prophets and the idols they represented. He made fun of the foolish notion that a craftsman could take a log of wood, trim it and use the off-cuts to warm himself and cook his food, and carve the rest into a god and then bow down and worship it! Can people be so deceived as to think that, because they attribute characteristics and abilities to a block of wood or stone, that makes it reality?

“‘Who then is like me? Let him proclaim it. Let him declare and lay out before me what has happened since I established my ancient people, and what is yet to come – yes, let him foretell what is to come.'” Isaiah 44:7 (NIV).

“All who make idols are nothing, and the things they treasure are worthless. Those who would speak up for them are blind; they are ignorant to their own shame. Who shapes a god and casts an idol which can profit him nothing?” Isaiah 44:9, 10 (NIV).

God is really smart! There is one foolproof test that authenticates His authority and His power to pull off what He claims – lay it all out in detail before it happens and then carry it out just as He said it would happen. He did not speculate, guess or prophesy in vague generalities. He set it out, step by step and then fulfilled it to the letter.

On this occasion Jesus did just that – alerting His disciples to what lay ahead for Him in the near future, drawing the spotlight onto Himself as the fulfilment of the mysterious words of the Old Testament prophets. How important this was for His disciples even though they did not get it at that moment! He was sowing the seeds of faith that would burst into life after everything that He had spoken about was fulfilled.

It is important to note that He was making no new predictions. He was drawing their attention to their own ancient, sacred writings. He was no upstart prophet. He was not only thoroughly steeped in the Torah, the Prophets and the Writings, but He also knew that He was the topic and focus of everything that was written. He was sharpening their vision, so that they would know, when it happened, that He was the one of whom their Scriptures spoke.

It was this incontrovertible proof that Jesus was their Messiah that gave them the courage to stand by their witness even to the death. What fools would give their lives for a pipe dream or a hoax? Jesus said He would die and rise again, just as the Scriptures had predicted, and He did it, and they saw it and they staked their very lives on the truth.

God’s challenge still stands today. If you are going to stake your life on the belief system set up by some human being, on what authority does he make his claim and what proof can he give that his claims are authentic?

After two thousand years of trying, unbelieving people have yet to disprove Jesus’ identity and His claims, and millions down the generations bear testimony that He is who He said He is, that He is alive, and that He is perfectly capable of fulfilling all His promises just as He did when He said He would die and rise again. Our faith is based on solid, indisputable, historically verifiable truth and not on the pitiful fancies of depraved imaginations!

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE – MULTIPLIED!

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MULTIPLIED!

“Peter tried to regain some initiative: ‘We left everything we owned and followed you, didn’t we?’

“‘Yes,’ said Jesus, ‘and you won’t regret it. No one who has sacrificed home, spouse, brothers and sisters, parents, children – whatever – will lose out. It will all come back multiplied many times over in your lifetime. And then the bonus of eternal life.'” Luke 18:28-30.

Sometimes we might be tempted to think that Jesus was so heavenly-minded that He didn’t care about people’s ordinary, everyday needs and wants. But Peter’s comment brought out the evidence of His sane and balanced thinking. Of course He cares! He doesn’t just treat people as ‘souls’!

We are whole people with human lives that have needs as well as souls and spirits that must be nurtured. As long as we are resident on this present earth in our present human bodies, He has pledged to provide for and take care of us if we trust Him.

However, Jesus did not specify the details of His provision for us. He did not for one moment guarantee that He would literally replace many times over what we sacrifice in order to follow Him. What would be the purpose of owning houses and lands if only to boost our assets?

But, once again, let’s put this promise into the perspective of His ‘kingdom’ thinking. Jesus was always pragmatic. What would be the value of hoarding wealth? From God’s point of view, anything that is not circulated, stagnates and loses its usefulness. He is willing to put anything into a believer’s hands that He knows will not be wasted on self or pulled out of circulation by hoarding.

But Jesus is also indescribably generous. He releases to us in superabundance whatever we need for ourselves and for whoever we can bless. He removes the boundaries of what is ‘mine’, family, possessions, property, money and resources, and opens up the resources of His kingdom in ways we could never dream possible.

What do I mean by that? When God calls us into His kingdom, we enter a realm where blood ties and personal assets no longer restrict us. Remember what Jesus said? ‘He who does the will of God is my mother and brother and sister.’ We become members of God’s forever family, bound by a blood tie much stronger than the ties of human family, the sacrificial blood of our ‘elder brother’, Jesus.

We also step into the realm of all the shared resources of the Father. “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world and all who live in it.” Psalm 24:1 (NIV). To claim ‘mine’ is to take ownership illegitimately of what is not ours. We are children in a family whose Father owns everything and who is loving, caring and generous beyond our understanding.

For Jesus, sacrifice is not a loss but an exchange, and, as always, we are never diminished by what we choose to sacrifice. If we let go of the little we claim as ours, we gain the limitless ‘much’ that God will pour into our lives as long as we use it for the ‘family’ and not hoard it for ourselves. Jesus put it like this: “‘But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.'” Matthew 6:33 (NIV).

People who do not trust God as their Father, run after ‘things’, because ‘things’ are the only thing that represents security for them. When ‘things’ fail, they have nothing left because they have never made the exchange of ‘things’ for confidence in a Father who has never yet failed those who trust Him.

We may think that this is a risky exchange. It is until we try it, and then we find that it is the safest investment we can ever make because it is built on the word of one who risks His own reputation if He fails to honour His promise. So, in the end, it’s not as much about us as it is about Him. If He reneges on His promise, He goes down with us, and that’s the bottom line. But…

“If we are faithless,                                                                                                                                  He will remain faithful,                                                                                                                        for He cannot deny Himself.”                                                                                                                                                     2 Timothy 2:13 (NIV).  

‘And,’ said Jesus, ‘there’s a bonus to all this “sacrifice” thing. You don’t only get all the perks of the kingdom in this life, but you are actually already a part of this kingdom of which there is no end. So, when you step over, all you lose are the restrictions and limitations of your sinful human life and you become a partaker of the life of God in its fullest possible sense.’

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE – EVERY CHANCE IF YOU TRUST GOD

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EVERY CHANCE IF YOU TRUST GOD

“Seeing his reaction, Jesus said, ‘Do you have any idea how difficult it is for people who have it all to enter God’s kingdom? I’d say it’s easier to thread a camel through a needle’s eye than get a rich person into God’s kingdom.’

“‘Then who has any chance at all?’ the others asked.

“‘No chance at all,’ Jesus said, ‘if you think you can pull it off by yourself. Every chance in the world if you trust God to do it.'” Luke 18:24-27.

Jesus’ terse comment when the rich man turned away, stirred up some silt in His disciples’ thinking about salvation.

They followed the general understanding of their day, that wealth was evidence of God’s favour and blessing; hence a rich person was a natural candidate for ‘salvation’. This way of thinking didn’t necessarily take into account the way that riches were acquired. Jesus’ statement blew a hole in that idea!

Perhaps they also thought, like this young man, that they could work their way into God’s favour by earning ‘brownie points’, keeping the law as best they could.

Unlike any other man-made religion in the world, becoming a disciple of Jesus is not a do-it-yourself or self-help religion. In fact, it is not a religion nor was it ever intended to be.

Following Jesus is a partnership based on the choice to believe and accept His forgiveness, and backed by God’s powerful response in which He, by His Spirit, brings a person’s dead spirit back to life – “As for you, you were dead in your trespasses and sins…But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions…” Ephesians 2: 1,4, 5 (NIV).  He brings about a transfer from slavery to Satan’s control by deception into the freedom to believe and trust God because of His son’s sacrifice for sin.

This transfer has some pretty surprising results. We are brought from death to life and from darkness to light. “Darkness” refers to our natural disposition towards selfishness and greed; “light” implies a new disposition of God-awareness in place of self-absorption, and generosity towards others in place of self-centredness. From slavery to sin and the devil, we become the sons of God with all the rights and privileges of sonship, brothers and co-heirs with Jesus of everything that belongs to Him by His right of sonship.

Our destiny is instantly changed from the rubbish dump of wasted potential to life in the realm of the eternal God where death is abolished and we rule, in partnership with Jesus, over God’s entire recreated order, according to how we served our apprenticeship here on earth.

Now, for those who are willing to take the long look, that’s a trade-off even a fool would not want to miss. But what’s the catch? Jesus said, ‘Money!’

Human beings are so dazzled by money and things that they are completely blind to its transience and vulnerability. Money and possessions only apply to this life. Even if we could line our caskets with dollars or their equivalent, they would stay in the coffin and rot like our physical bodies because they belong to this present order of things and have no value or influence in the life of the spirit.

Looking at it from Jesus’ point of view, we realise how impossible it is for anyone to ‘achieve’ eternal life on his own.  No self-help can cure blindness. It has to be a work of God, a rescue, if you will, from the fatal grip of ‘things’. But what does it take to get free? An honest recognition of money’s snare and a cry for help is where it begins. That’s all it takes for God to hear and respond.

It doesn’t only have to be money. It can be anything that comes between us and Jesus; addictions, emotions, habits, choices, people, reactions; whatever it is that blinds us to the value of eternal life can be removed by the power of God. All it needs is a ‘want to’ and an honest confession of need.

And Jesus does the rest!