Monthly Archives: July 2022

THE FOOLISHNESS OF THE CROSS

Gospel, ,

THE FOOLISHNESS OF THE CROSS

We’ve travelled a while through a series I called “Things Jesus did not say.” As westerners – at least some of us who read this are – our worldview is different from the ancient Hebrew worldview which the Bible represents. When we understand what Jesus said from His perspective, many of the things He said which made no sense to us before, have come to mean something to us now. Then I asked myself, “Where now?”

A short while ago I was browsing on YouTube and came across a beautiful song with simple but powerful words called “The power of the cross”. I got to thinking about the title. What is it about the cross of Jesus that is so powerful? After all, He was just a man who was crucified – or was He? Paul wrote this in his letter to the Corinthian church over two thousand years ago:

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Cor. 1: 18)

In the Gentile and Jewish world of his day, Paul was up against huge opposition to his message.

Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. (1 Cor. 1: 22-24)

Throughout His private life with His disciples, Jesus referred to His approaching death on more than one occasion. He informed them that He was to die at the hands of the Jewish leaders.

From this time on Jesus began to explain to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that He must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. (Matt. 16: 21)

Apart from His time with His disciples in the upper room when they celebrated the last Passover together, Jesus told them nothing about the reason for His death. He indicated that He was to be the fulfilment of Passover when a lamb was killed for a family, and its blood painted on the doorposts of their houses to protect the family from the angel of death. That He would be killed, yes, but why? No.

He promised His disciples that the Holy Spirit would come to take His place, and that He would be within them. It would be left to the Spirit to lead them into all truth and to teach them everything they needed to know about Jesus, including the ramifications of His death. God chose the great Jewish rabbi, Paul, a man who had a powerful legal mind and a thorough grasp of the Scriptures, to understand and explain the meaning of the cross for all who came after him.

Paul had studied under Gamaliel, one of the significant rabbis of his day, but one whose yoke led Paul into deep bondage to legalism and produced a fanatical persecutor of those who believed in Jesus. It was only through a personal encounter with the risen Christ that Paul recognised Him as his Messiah and his understanding of the cross was transformed from foolishness to power. He knew the way the Jews thought. He was one of them. He had also dismissed the crucified Jesus as nonsense until his eyes were opened on the Damascus road.

It was the power of the very cross he despised that had changed him from a vicious religious fanatic to a passionate lover of Jesus and preacher of the cross. From that moment on, his stance was:

I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom but on God’s power. (1 Cor. 2: 3-5)

There it is again; what to humans was foolishness was really God’s power.

The Jews rejected Jesus’ claim to be the Son of God because they demanded signs, yet they dismissed as foolishness the greatest of all signs – God’s love demonstrated by His presence among them and His sacrifice for them. They were too blind to see in Jesus the fulfilment of all the prophetic signs in the very Scriptures they claimed to know and hold to.

How ironical that they had Him killed because they refused to believe that He was their Messiah, and yet His death, the very death they had engineered, was the greatest of all the signs that He was who He said He was, and that He had to die and rise again according to their Scriptures.

The Greeks dismissed the cross of Jesus as foolishness because it did not fit with their human “wisdom”. They had no understanding of sin because sin was not an issue in their religious beliefs. In fact, the very way they worshipped their idol gods was through the celebration of every fleshly lust. That God was holy and demanded payment for sin did not suit their lifestyle of indulgence. They wanted something to tickle their minds, not change their lives.

In our world, nothing has changed. People still follow false religions and reject Jesus because he is too “nice” and His gift of forgiveness and salvation too easy. People either want to indulge their fleshly appetites without conscience or restriction or they slavishly follow the demands of their legalistic gods because it satisfies their need to “save” themselves.

The real foolishness lies, not in believing in Jesus, but in rejecting Him. If He said He would be crucified and raised again on the third day, and it happened, why would we not believe everything else He said? Why would we throw away the opportunity to get rid of our guilt, our fear and all our hang-ups and insecurities and live lives of peace and purpose because we don’t want to trust the most trustworthy person who ever walked this earth?

To me, that is sheer foolishness!

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.

JESUS DID NOT SAY THAT WE WOULD BE JUDGED BECAUSE OF THE SINS WE HAVE COMMITTED

Apologetics, ,

JESUS DID NOT SAY THAT WE WOULD BE JUDGED BECAUSE OF THE SINS WE HAVE COMMITTED

How often we hear these words from the mouth of a preacher, “When you stand before God, He will condemn you because you murdered someone by your anger… you lied… you stole… you committed adultery…!

No, my friend, according to Jesus, there is only one standard by which you will be judged.

“Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”

John 3:18 NIV

You see, both unbelief and faith produce the fruit of our attitude towards Him; rejection of Jesus or belief in Him as Lord. All the sins we commit are the fruit of unbelief in Jesus. All our good works are the fruit of lives transformed by the power of the gospel.

“Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.”

John 3:20-21 NIV

Paul confirmed the truth that God will judge the world by this one standard.

“God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marvelled at among all those who have believed. This includes you because you believed our testimony to you.”

2 Thessalonians 1:6-10 NIV

Does this mean that those who have never heard of Jesus will escape judgment? Not at all. The Bible clearly teaches us that God has placed a witness to His existence and His nature in the creation around and above us…

1 The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
3 They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
4 Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world. Psalms 19:1-4

18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. Romans 1:18-20

He has also written His moral law in the conscience of every person born into the world.

12 All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. 14 (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.) 16 This will take place on the day when God judges people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares. Romans 2:12-16

In today’s world of technology, every person who has access to the internet has access to a free copy of God’s Word in most languages and dialects. Gone are the days when the Bible could be banned or burned. Religion fears the Bible; prejudice keeps people from reading the Bible, but those who sincerely desire to know the truth will be led by the Holy Spirit to seek the Lord, and those who seek Him will find Him.

6 Seek the LORD while he may be found;
call on him while he is near.
7 Let the wicked forsake their ways
and the unrighteous their thoughts.
Let them turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on them,
and to our God, for he will freely pardon. Isaiah 55:6-7

God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ Acts 17:27-28

God will surely reveal Himself to anyone who seeks Him and desires to know Him.  

3 “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you,” declares the LORD,”    Jeremiah 29:13-14

JESUS DID NOT SAY THAT WE MUST GIVE OUR MONEY AND POSSESSIONS AWAY

Apologetics, ,

JESUS DID NOT SAY THAT WE MUST GIVE OUR MONEY AND POSSESSIONS AWAY

As Jesus started on His way, a man ran up to Him and fell on His knees before Him. ‘Good teacher,’ he asked, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ ‘Why do you call me good?’ Jesus answered. ‘No one is good – except God alone. You know the commandments: You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honour you father and mother.’ ‘Teacher,’ he declared, ‘all these I have kept since I was a boy.’

Jesus looked at him and loved him. ‘One thing you lack,’ He said. ‘Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.’ At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad because he had great wealth. (Mark 10: 17-22)

Well, didn’t Jesus tell this young man to give everything away? Sure he did, but Jesus was addressing a specific individual in a specific situation, not telling everyone who follows Him to get rid of their money.

We have no idea who this young man was and how he came to acquire his wealth. He could possibly have been his father’s eldest son who had inherited a double portion of his father’s wealth as the firstborn in the family. There is no evidence that he was a tax collector who had acquired his money through dishonest means. He was quick to tell Jesus that he had not defrauded anyone. He seems to have been an honest and upright young Jew who did all the right things.

Despite his law-abiding life, he still felt that there was something missing. What did he recognise in Jesus that brought him to Him and not to his own religious teachers? Perhaps he recognised that they were no further than he in their religious lives and practices. Perhaps he even saw through their phoney “holiness” and knew that they had nothing to offer him. How long had he observed Jesus and seen in Him a quality that he longed to have in his own life – a humility and genuineness that showed up the “holy” ones for what they were.

Whatever his reasons for seeking Jesus out, he presented a golden opportunity for Jesus to explain the “gospel” to him.  Why did Jesus begin with the Ten Commandments? Is this a model for evangelism? Get people to admit that they have broken the commandments and are going to hell? Jesus did not even mention hell or contradict the young man when he declared that he had observed the commandments from his childhood. What was Jesus” intention? Was it to find out where this man stood in his understanding and attitude towards God?

From his response, it was obvious that this man was a devout Jew. He did all the right things, even fasting, praying and doing his tsidaqahs, his acts of righteousness which were his duty – his first fruits offering, and his tithes to the temple, and giving to the poor. He did everything by the book. What did he lack? He must have had an emptiness somewhere in his heart, a sense of unfulfillment that niggled at him, and became more urgent when he was near Jesus.

He desperately wanted the assurance that he would “go to heaven when he died”. Is that the conviction that he lacked? Perhaps he thought that one good deed, one thing above everything else he could do would do it so that he would never have to worry about it again.

Do, do, do! That was what hammered in his brain. All he wanted was to do something special to have his future secured.

What was his understanding about eternal life? Was he aware that eternal life is not something you “get” when you die; that it is a quality of life that begins now when you embrace God’s instructions for living in the kingdom of God?

Why did Jesus love him? Was Luke saying that Jesus did not love everyone else? I don’t think so. I think Jesus saw the potential in him and longed to see him fully involved in God’s kingdom. He also saw something else in this man; a huge barrier to his becoming a genuine citizen of God’s kingdom – his wealth. In one quick instruction, Jesus uncovered his heart. “Give it all away,” He said, “and come, follow me.”

There is an important principle in Jesus’ words. It’s not necessarily about money. It’s about who or what we love more than Him. He said that whatever stands between us and Him must go, or we cannot be His disciples. Why is it so imperative that we follow Him without any baggage? He came to show us the Father and to take us to the Father. We can only ever experience eternal life when we are reunited with and completely one with the Father.

Jesus said that a branch has no life outside the vine. There is no life in us when we are disconnected from Him because He and the Father are one, and to be one with Him is to be one with the Father. Jesus is the way, the only way and, apart from Him we have no life. 

No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. (Matt. 6: 24)

The bottom line is who do you love? You will serve the one you love. This rich man obviously loved his money too much to let it go. He chose to forfeit life in union with Jesus and to become whole again and one with the Father because money held his heart.

What holds yours?

JESUS DID NOT SAY THAT WE MUST BE PEACE-KEEPERS

Apologetics, ,

JESUS DID NOT SAY THAT WE MUST BE PEACE-KEEPERS

There is a huge difference between being peacemakers and peace keepers. What did Jesus say?

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matt. 5: 9-12)

This chiasm has been arranged a little differently. The central thought has been put first.

 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.

Once again, to understand this chiasm, we must go back to its use in Scripture. There are only two places in the New Testament where the term, “making peace” is used, apart from here.

For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him, and though Him to reconcile all things to Himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through His blood shed on the cross. (Col. 1: 19-20).

Through His shed blood, Jesus reconciled to God everything in the universe that was alienated from God through Adam’s disobedience.

Therefore remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth . . . were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in His flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in Himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which He put to death their hostility.  (Eph. 2: 11-16)

Wow! Can you see how deep the roots of peace-making go? There can never be peace between God and man and between man and man outside of the sacrifice Jesus made to reconcile us to the Father by doing away with the reason for the hostility. Sin alienated us from God, an impenetrable barrier that we could not nothing about.

There was only one solution – a perfect sacrifice made by a perfect son. God demands death as the penalty for sin, but every sinner must pay for his own sin. Only a sinless human could pay the debt for all sin, and Jesus was that sinless human.

Reconciliation, then, is not about bringing warring parties together. Reconciliation is about dealing with the cause of the war. God did that through His Son, so that there is no more reason for people to be alienated from God or from one another. The roots of the hatred between the races lie in the problem of alienation between God and man because of sin. Racial hatred will never be removed apart from the cross. It cost Jesus His own blood to do away with the hostility and make peace between God and man and between man and man.

Where does persecution fit into the picture? Human beings are not neutral in their attitude towards God. Because of our natural bent towards rebellion, we are at enmity with God. There is deep-rooted hatred of God and anything that has to do with Him. Why was Jesus crucified? Because of man’s hatred for God!

Those who represented self-help religion in Jesus’ day, the leaders of His people, the religious leaders, rejected Him because He showed them what God the Father is really like, and they hated Him for it. How accurately He diagnosed the problem:

This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. (John 3: 19)

The way people view sin divides the whole world into two camps – those who hate their sin and those who hate God because of their sin. Those who hate their sin readily respond the Jesus and embrace His solution. Those who love their sin are against God and against those who are with Him. The outcome is persecution. The sinner can’t do anything to God, so he attacks God’s people.

Jesus did not say that persecution is enjoyable. He did say that persecution is a reason to rejoice because it is a sign that we are in the good company of those who hate God, persecuted the prophets, and killed Jesus. We must not be surprised that we come in for persecution as well.

So, what’s the bottom line?

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And He has committed to us the ministry of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal through us. We implore you, on God’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. (2 Cor. 5: 17-20)

Only when people have been reconciled to God can they be reconciled to one another and become a part of those who broker peace between God and man, and  man and man.

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.

JESUS DID NOT SAY THAT HE WOULD FILL US WITH RIGHTEOUSNESS

Apologetics, ,

JESUS DID NOT SAY THAT HE WOULD FILL US WITH RIGHTEOUSNESS

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. (Matt. 5: 6-8)

Just as we learned yesterday, these three statements are connected because they are all part of the second chiasm; (you will understand if you read yesterday’s post).

The problem with understanding this chiasm is that we westerners do not understand what righteousness is. Oh, we love the word because it sounds so “holy” but from our perspective it is abstract and therefore we can’t connect it with action.

Hebrews thought, expressed in their language, in terms of action. They experienced life through their senses. Abstract words meant nothing to them. So then, what is righteousness? Throughout the Old Testament, the word “righteousness” is used interchangeably with “generosity”. Here are a few examples:

The wicked borrow and do not repay, but the righteous give generously. (Psa. 37: 21)

I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread. They are always generous and lend freely; their children will be a blessing. (Psa. 37: 25-26)

Righteousness, then, is doing the right thing i.e., doing what God would do in every situation. God’s attitude towards people is always to be generous and to show mercy, therefore, to hunger and thirst for righteousness really means to be passionate about being generous towards people in need, not only with our resources but with our attitudes and behaviour.

With what then, will we be filled? Not with righteousness but with what we gave away. In the original, the meaning is “herbage”. In other words, God will fill us with whatever we gave away. God always responds to our generosity by multiplying what we give away. Consider these words of Jesus:

Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. (Luke 6: 38)

Because we are dealing with a chiasm, we must first look at the corresponding statement at the end of the chiasm, and then consider the central thought.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Of course we will have no idea what this means if we try to interpret it literally. How is it possible to “see” God when He is spirit? The Hebrews had a word, zikkut,for the kind of generosity that goes beyond what is expected. Every Hebrew person had a duty to give a percentage of his income away – 20% to be exact. A part of his duty was to bring, every third year, the tithe that was meant for his family to enjoy, to the “storehouse” – the tabernacle or temple – for the poor, the widow, the orphan and the alien. This was the least he could do to support the needy.

Anything he did to meet the needs of others above his duty was regarded as zikkut. It was this kind of generosity, based on an understanding of, and in gratitude to God for His generosity, that gave the giver an insight into the heart of God. He was able to “see” God with the eyes of a greater understanding than just doing his duty. His heart was “pure”, unmixed with selfishness, putting God and others first, which enabled him to experience God more intimately than those who just did their duty.

It is this kind of attitude that constitutes hunger and thirst for righteousness. These are the people who will experience the abundance of God’s generosity because He can trust them not to consume what He gives on themselves,  but share it with those in need.

The central thought of this chiasm is mercy. God revealed to Moses, in response to his request (Ex. 33: 18-19), that the weightiest part of His name – His character – is mercy. God’s mercy has been fully revealed in His Son. Jesus’ death on the cross was the pinnacle of God’s mercy and should be the motivation for all our deeds of “righteousness”. We show mercy to others, not because we are benevolent but because of His mercy to us.

Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment. (James. 2: 12-13)

The bottom line is: when we understand the magnitude of God’s mercy, we cannot help but be generous towards others. Then we will be the recipients of God’s abundant generosity towards us with all the material things we need.

So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear? For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.  (Matt. 6: 31-33)

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.