Monthly Archives: April 2022

IMITATORS OF JESUS

Christian Life, ,

IMITATORS OF JESUS

Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God (Eph. 5: 1)

The third step in being a disciple of Jesus is imitating Him in everything He was and did. Disciples were taught to walk behind their master, one behind the other so that they could watch the person in front of them. The one who walked behind the rabbi was to copy everything he did.  Each one was to copy the one in front so that they would all end up copying their rabbi.

It was the privilege of the disciple who walked directly behind his rabbi to be covered with the dust which the rabbi’s sandals kicked up as he walked. This was a sign of his privileged position. It was considered a blessing to wear the rabbi’s dust.

On one occasion Jesus sent His disciples out to the villages round about to preach the good news of the kingdom and the do the works of the kingdom in preparation for His arrival in that region. If a village or a household refused to receive them, they were to shake the dust off their feet and move on without protest. What was He saying?

We interpret His instruction from our purely human mindset. Shake the dust – i.e., thumb your nose at them as a sign of contempt. Does that sound like the way Jesus would react, Jesus – the one who always looked for an opportunity to show mercy? If the rabbi’s dust which they wore was a sign of His blessing, wouldn’t it be true to say that He instructed them to leave His blessing on those who rejected Him by shaking off the dust of their feet even if they refused His message?

Jesus used the rabbi/disciple model to train His disciples to be like Him. Mark recorded His strategy like this:

He appointed twelve that they might be with Him and that He might send them out to preach and to have the authority to drive out demons (Mark 3:14).

“That they might be with Him” was the first part of their training – following and learning. They were to watch and listen, absorbing everything they could about their rabbi, not only just learning to teach what He taught but actually becoming what He was – a true son of the Father in every sense of the word.

Jesus took every opportunity to teach them about the Father and to model a true son. They were not just to be wooden puppets, moving when He pulled the strings. They were to absorb everything about Him including His attitude and disposition. When James and John wanted to call down fire on the Samaritans for refusing them hospitality, Jesus sharply rebuked them. 

…James and John…asked, ‘Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to destroy them. But Jesus turned and rebuked them.  And He said, “You do not know what kind of spirit you are of, for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” (Luke 9.54-55)

He told them more than once:

If anyone hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge that person. For I did not come to judge the world but to save the world (John 12: 47).

Jesus both taught and showed His disciples that His disposition towards His people was compassion and mercy. He wept over the city of Jerusalem for not recognising Him and for rejecting their opportunity to respond to His invitation to return to the Father and to be a part of His eternal kingdom.

Imitation Jesus is not just a mechanical copying of what He said and did. Through the prophet Ezekiel, God promised that He would send His Spirit who would change their hearts (Ez. 36:26-27). He fulfilled His promise on the Day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit fell on all the waiting believers. Peter responded to the confusion in Jerusalem by reminding the people of the same promise in the prophecy of Joel.

And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams and your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days (Joel 2:28-29).

The same Spirit who empowered Jesus would indwell them. Unlike all the other rabbis who could teach and train their disciples but could not impart their heart and disposition to them, Jesus promised that the very same Spirit that fell on Him would fall on them. He would live within them as Jesus’ other self, and mould them into His image as they followed and learned from Him.

It was His intention to produce replicas of Himself, empowered by the same Spirit, carrying the same authority to do the same works and even more (John 14:12) through Him, so that they would extend the kingdom of God wherever they went.

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

LEARN FROM ME

Christian Life, ,

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light (Matt. 11:28-30).

LEARN FROM ME

These are some of simplest, most profound and most misunderstood of Jesus’ words. To understand them from His perspective and according to His intention, we must go back in time to first century Israel. 

Only those who live under an oppressive religious system would understand what it was like to be under the yoke of Judaism in Jesus’ day. Perhaps modern-day orthodox Jews, for example, might understand what it felt like to have every action regulated by a religious prescription and all their activities hemmed in by rituals and then, on top of that, to have religious “police” watching every move. It was like have a religious KGB everywhere.

Jesus called His people, not simply those who bore the burdens of everyday life in Israel but those who were tired of carrying the burden of trying to please God by doing the right thing when the “right thing” was a burden too heavy to carry, rest. They had long ago lost the meaning of being in a covenant relationship with the God who loved them and who taught them how to live so that they could enjoy fellowship with Him and with their fellow Jews.

Their great religious teachers had, over the centuries, added interpretations and laws to protect them from “misunderstanding” and “breaking” God’s laws until the whole religious system was top heavy with petty rules which completely obscured the way of life God intended. He wanted them to show the nations around them that the God they worshipped was compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love and faithfulness. Instead, they groaned under the oppressive rules they had to observe as well as the Roman government’s oppressive occupation of their beloved land.

Jesus addressed those who were thoroughly sick of their religion. He offered them His “yoke” – a new way to understand what God meant by His teachings in the Torah, not burdensome rules but a way of life that would set them free from the burden of their fear, guilt and shame. To wear a rabbi’s yoke meant to learn from him by association as a young, inexperienced ox would learn to pull a plough by being yoked with an older, trained and experienced ox.

The second step in becoming and being a disciple of Jesus is to accept Jesus’ yoke, to believe and put His teachings into practice by being in close association with Him, listening, observing learning and doing what He taught.

To the Jews who had believed Him, Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ (John 8:31-32)

Firstly, we must ask: Free from what? Of course, Jesus came to set us free from the burden of sin. He took the punishment for our sin to set us free from our guilt and from the power that sin has over us. He gave us His Holy Spirit to live within us as His personal presence with us. The Holy Spirit continually represents and reveals Jesus to us, reminding us of His teaching, empowering and teaching us how to live.

Secondly, Jesus’ yoke replaces all other yokes; religious yokes, denominational yokes, political yokes, or whatever association we have with any system that brings us into bondage. That does not mean that we are free to do as we please. The freedom Jesus offers us is freedom from the worst kind of slavery – slavery to ourselves and the ravages of selfish and greedy living.

Did you notice how He summed up His own disposition – “gentle and humble in heart”? Living selfishly makes us slaves to ourselves and alienates us from the people around us. When we take Jesus’ yoke and learn to live like He did, gentle and humble, compassionate and merciful, our hearts will be at rest as we are no longer tormented by the pangs of conscience and experience the peace of God that guards our hearts and minds.

Life is a journey. When we stubbornly refuse to follow God’s way, we get lost in the wilderness of the world’s ways and we will perish there without the nourishment and water of God’s Word. Jesus calls us to follow Him. He knows where He is going and He knows where He will take   us if we follow Him. He said that He is the way to the Father. If we accept His yoke, His way of living – generously and unselfishly – we will experience His rest, living without guilt or fear in the confidence of the perfect love of the Father.

However, there is a warning I must issue at this stage. Jesus’ yoke demands an all-or-nothing commitment to Him. No disciple was ever permitted to pick and choose what he would follow and what he would ignore. When he accepted a rabbi’s yoke, he accepted it in total. He could not change or omit any part of it. If he did, he was immediately disqualified.

Do you remember Jesus’ saying?

Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me (Matt. 16:24).

Whoever does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple (Luke 14:27).

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

FOLLOW ME

Christian Life, ,

FOLLOW ME

As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, He saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. ‘Come, follow me,’ Jesus said, ’and I will send you out to fish for people.’ At once they left their nets and followed Him (Matt. 4:18-20).

Have you ever wondered why these fishermen left everything to follow Jesus without question of debate? Did they know who Jesus was? Why would they drop everything to follow a stranger, even a wife and possibly a family, as Peter did? Did Jesus have some sort of magnet pull that drew these men to Him? These would all be unanswered questions but for one thing – these were young Jewish men who lived in Israel. They knew the drill.

From the time they were at their mother’s breast, they learned to repeat the Sh’mah,

Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God, the Lord is one (Deut. 6:4)

And the greatest commandment,

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength (Deut. 6:5)

 By the time they went to school they had memorised the entire book of Leviticus – the book that contained their sacred laws.

Every young Jewish male aspired to become the disciple of a noted rabbi. They all went to elementary school at the local synagogue, call the Beth Saphar, at the age of about five where an appointed teacher taught them the a-b-c of the Torah – their main textbook for the next approximately seven years at school and for the rest of their lives.

Secondary education at the Beth consisted of the an in-depth study of the Torah as well as the Prophets and the Writings. Those were not proficient in their studies went home to learn the family business while the rest continued their education at the Beth Talmid, – the school of disciples. They learned by engaging in discussion and debate under the tutorship of a recognised rabbi. Their dream was to be chosen to be a disciple of a rabbi with sh’mikah – authority, to follow him, to live in intimate connection with him, to learn his words and his ways so that they could become his replicas and perpetuate his character and his teaching as his disciples.

The cue that the rabbi had chosen them was the invitation, “Follow me.” To hear those words from the lips of a rabbi was to them like music in their ears. They would not even think twice about responding. They would drop everything and join him because it was both a dream and an honour to be chosen to be a disciple.

Imagine the surprise when Jesus, who was recognised to be a rabbi with authority called, not aspiring students from the Beth Talmid, but relatively uneducated drop outs from the lake. They were eminently unqualified to be disciples. Apart from their lack of education, they were also considered to be “unclean” because they worked with dead fish.

Not only did Jesus choose fishermen to follow Him, but He also chose His entire band of disciples from among the disqualified! A despised tax collector, political activists, nobodies and even a potential traitor. Did He know who they were, especially since He spent the whole night in prayer before He selected them from among the motley crew who tailed Him? Did He know what He was doing?

Of course, Jesus knew what He was doing! What if He had gone to the Beth Talmid and chosen young men schooled in the ways of the religious leaders of His day? After all, were they not His chief opponents and the ones ultimately responsible for hounding Him to death? How much better to choose relatively ignorant men whom He could shape by His words into His ways without too much resistance. As it was, He had to contend with some of their prejudices which blocked their understanding of His mission.

They refused to believe Him when He spoke of His impending crucifixion. They believed that He was the Messiah. It was unthinkable that their Messiah should suffer and die. Suffering did not fit in with their concept of a king who had come to overthrow Roman occupation and re-establish David’s glorious kingdom. It was only after His resurrection that the whole picture became clear.

The point for us is that Jesus has called us, if we consider ourselves His disciples, first and foremost, to follow Him. That involves leaving behind all our religious notions and preconceived ideas to become closely and intimately associated with Him, to follow His every thought and action until we are thoroughly familiar with everything about Him and fully convinced that He is the Son of God.

This intimacy demands that He be the centre of our lives, that our relationship with every other person to whom we are related in any way be redefined by our relationship with Him as Lord. Any other attitude immediately disqualifies us from being or even calling ourselves disciples of Jesus.

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

WHO DO YOU SAY THAT I AM?

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WHO DO YOU SAY THAT I AM?

Hello to all my faithful readers. We have come to the end of yet another Bible study series, this time on 1 John. “Where now?” I asked. What can I share with you that will be of practical value for you in your walk with Jesus?

Let’s talk about being disciples of Jesus.

When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”
14 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
15 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Matthew 16:13-16

The church, in the main, has not understood what it means to be a disciple or, if it has, it has slowly, over the centuries, veered off course until today we have, in the main, an institutionalised kind of religion that stands alongside and tries to complete with other world religions. It has missed what Jesus intended when He came from the Father – to reveal the true nature of the Father to His people, to take us to the Father and to teach us to follow Him so that we can also be true sons of the Father.

To do this, He chose the rabbi/disciple model which was the way of passing on the knowledge and way of life of one generation to the next among the people of God.  

Jesus called twelve men to be His disciples. In His day, being the disciple of a rabbi was an honoured calling. Rabbis in Israel were essentially roaming (called “peripatetic”) teachers who moved about from place to place engaging people in debates about the meaning and application of the Torah.

Those who were recognised to have authority, called sh’mikah, developed their own “yoke”, their way of understanding and applying the Torah according to what they believed was God’s intention. They gathered around them a group of men whom they chose from the Beth Talmid, the school of young men who aspired to become rabbis. They chose those whom they believed would become like them and would do even more than they did.

Jesus did not choose His disciples from those who aspired to be recognised teachers. He went to the lake and chose fishermen, a tax-collector, and other ordinary men who had no designs on becoming rabbis. In fact, it was not His intention to train them to be rabbis but rather messengers – men who would replicate Him so accurately that they would carry Him and His yoke to the rest of the world.

On one occasion a ‘teacher of the law’ came to Jesus with the request to follow Him (Mat. 8:20). Jesus’ response seems almost like a rebuff.

Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.

Commentators have invented some ‘weird and wonderful’ interpretations of Jesus’ words, simply because they have not understood the way Hebrews think. We would take Jesus’ words literally, thinking that He meant that He was poor; He had nowhere to lay His head. Not so Jesus. Those who heard Him would ask the question, “What do foxes do in dens; what do bird do in nests?” The answer, of course, is that they don’t sleep in dens and nests; they reproduce.  

What did Jesus mean? At that moment, He was the head but He did not yet have a body on which to ‘lay’ His head to reproduce Himself in the world. On the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit fell on the assembled believers, the church was born, which is His body. From that time on, He as the head, worked through His body, the church, to reveal Himself to the world. Those who wanted to be His disciples at that moment needed to wait until His work on the cross was complete and the Holy Spirit had come to indwell His body to replicate Him in them and fill them with His life.

Jesus took His disciples to Israel’s “red light” district in the region of Caesarea Philippi where pagans worshipped the goat-god Pan by having intercourse with goats. It was in this disgusting environment that He asked His disciples, “Who do you say that I am?”

The first step for anyone who would be a disciple of Jesus is to be convinced of His identity. Who is He? Who did He claim to be? How did He authenticate His claims? Is He who He said He is?

Peter answered for the rest, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” He may not have understood all of the implications of his confession but one thing is sure. Jesus accepted his testimony as the truth and a revelation from God. It would take many more experiences for Peter to understand the full implication of what he had just said, including the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus and culminating in the baptism of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost.

Until the would-be disciple comes to that unshakeable conviction that Jesus is the Son of God. it is impossible to be His disciple.

KEEP YOURSELVES FROM IDOLS

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KEEP YOURSELVES FROM IDOLS

We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one. We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know Him who is true. And we are in Him who is true by being in His Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. Dear children, keep yourselves from idols (1 John 5: 19-21).

John lived in a world full of idols. Both Greek and Roman religion centred in the worship of idols which the people practised through sensual and sexual “pleasures”.

Jesus had taught His disciples that there were two kingdoms, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan. Everyone is born into the kingdom of Satan and is under his influence. God supernaturally transfers those who recognise Jesus as the Son of God and give allegiance to Him as Lord from the dominion of darkness to the kingdom of light.

God’s kingdom is both among us and within us. Jesus came to restore God’s rule in the earth. He made this possible by paying sin’s debt and removing the barrier which separated us from God. The Holy Spirit brings us back to life so that we can have fellowship with the Father and the Son. The devil no longer has the power to deceive us. He is not Lord; Jesus is Lord, and we have given our allegiance to Him and acknowledge His authority over us.

The Holy Spirit gives us the power to live new lives, and to follow Jesus as our Master. He teaches us to obey God’s Word and to walk in the light of His truth. He has reunited us with Jesus in a union so close that Jesus called it being “in Him” and He “in us”. Just as a branch is connected to the vine and receives its nourishment from the vine, so we are connected to Him by faith and receive His life through the Holy Spirit in us.

Since we are citizens of God’s kingdom and come under His authority, we have nothing to do with the beliefs and practices of Satan’s dominion. He claims worship from those who worship idols because, though idols are nothing, Satan uses images as a shopfront to get unsuspecting people to worship him.

Therefore, dear friends, flee from idolatry . . . the sacrifices or pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons (1 Cor. 10: 14; 20).

Christians can inadvertently worship idols in many different ways without offering sacrifices to pagan gods or bowing down to idols. Perhaps one of the most subtle forms of idolatry is the god we have created in our imagination from our experience of our earthly fathers as a substitute for the living God.

The Book of Hebrews contains a profound statement, the meaning of which we often miss:

And without faith it is impossible to please God because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who diligently seek Him (Heb. 11: 6).

“. . . Must believe that He exists” has to ask the question, “Who is this who exists?” We must not look for the answer in our imagination, or from our experience of our human fathers but from the Bible. Who is the God to whom we pray? He is, first, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. If the Father to whom we pray is not identical to the Son who came to reveal the Father, we have created an idol in our imagination.

Unfortunately, many of God’s children have developed a distorted picture of God the Father, because their human fathers have represented a god who is harsh, abusive, uncaring, or even absent.

John urged his readers to stay away from the pagan gods around them because these were the shopfront for demons. Whoever worshipped these evil creations became like them in character and behaviour. Believers were tempted to pay homage to them so that they could buy and sell in the market to survive. John said, “Don’t do it, even if you are forbidden access to the markets for food.”

Many of us in the western world are not tempted to worship idols, but what about the “things” to which we give allegiance by putting our trust in them, for example, our money, our assets, our investments, our income, our spouse, our families, even our church or our pastor. We give time to unimportant things which reveals what we value more than our fellowship with God.  

We need John’s encouragement just as much as his readers in the first century. Keep yourselves from idols. There is no higher calling in life than to obey the commandments of the New Covenant, to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and to love one another,

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