Monthly Archives: October 2022

FOR THE LAST TIME

Gospel, ,

FOR THE LAST TIME

“When it was time, He sat down, all the apostles with Him, and said, ‘You’ve no idea how much I have looked forward to eating this Passover meal with you before I enter my time of suffering. It’s the last one I’ll eat until we all eat it together in the kingdom of God.'” Luke 22:14-16 (The Message).

Was Jesus crazy? It almost sounds as though He was looking forward to His coming crucifixion. He had shared Passover meals with them in the past. He knew this was the last one He would eat with them as a human being. He referred to other Passover celebrations in the future but they would take place “in the kingdom of God”. 

In spite of the glimpses He gives us into the significance of His suffering, both to Him and to the Father, we will never fully understand what the cross meant – neither the experience nor the outcome.

The cross of Jesus – the pinnacle of history and the dividing line for all people for all eternity! For every person, the cross determines our eternal destiny, depending on our choice.

It was because of the cross that God’s plan to build a family of people just like His Son was put back on track. Satan’s deception in the Garden of Eden derailed it for a season, but Jesus paid the debt of man’s sin, reconciled His alienated human race and reinstated every son and daughter into His family through faith in Him. 

It was through the cross that Jesus exposed the devil for the liar he is. In spite of the injustice of His trial and death sentence for who He was – the Son of God and the king of the Jews, He submitted Himself to their cruelty and to the Father’s will without a murmur. His death spelt the end for Satan. His judgment was coming and he knew it!

“When they hurled their insults at Him, He did not retaliate. When He suffered, He made no threats. Instead, He entrusted Himself to Him who judges justly. He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by His wounds you were healed. For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.”  1 Peter 2:23-25 (NIV).

Jesus looked forward to the cross because it would be the completion of His mission on earth, the culmination of His revelation of the Father and the cue for His return to His place in glory with the Father and the Holy Spirit. So great was His love for the Father that He even relished His suffering because it was the Father’s will to rescue mankind from death and bring them back home to Himself.

‘Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith who, for the joy set before Him, endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of God.” Hebrews 12:3 (NIV).

For Jesus, this Passover meal would be the opportunity to reveal the full significance of the historical event they were celebrating. Passover was a picture of the greater redemption from slavery to sin and Satan that He was about to accomplish as the sacrificial Lamb of God whose blood on the lives of those who believe in Him would protect them from death and open the door to everlasting life.

No, Jesus was not crazy! Once again, in His self-forgetful love for human beings, He relished the outcome of His suffering – redemption, rescue and reconciliation and the door to eternal life flung open to anyone who will receive His forgiveness and His invitation to return to the Father’s house and the Father’s arms to be a beloved member of His forever family.

GIVE GOD WHAT IS HIS

Christian Life, ,

GIVE GOD WHAT IS HIS

“Watching for a chance to get Him, they sent spies who posed as honest enquirers, hoping they could trick Him into saying something that would get Him in trouble with the law. So they asked Him,…’Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?’

“He knew they were laying for Him and said, ‘Show me a coin. Now this engraving, who does it look like and what does it say?’

“‘Caesar,’ they said.

“Jesus said, ‘Then give Caesar what is his and give God what is His.’

Try as they might, they couldn’t trap Him into saying anything incriminating. His answer caught them off guard and left them speechless.” Luke 20:20-26 (The Message)

Got them again!

Jesus was no push-over. These so-called ‘spiritual’ men had still not learned not to mess with Him. They always came off second best. This time it was about taxes. The Jewish people chafed at their Roman overlords’ taxation on top of the tithes, offerings and temple taxes they had to pay. It was a heavy burden on them and brought many of them into poverty.

But there was a more sinister issue at stake. Jesus was a rabbi with authority which meant that His disciples were obliged to copy everything He said and did. What He said about paying taxes would reveal His heart attitude to the Roman government which He would pass on to His disciples with possible serious results.

If He showed any antagonism towards Rome, He would be suspected of treason. His opponents were trying to catch him off guard so that He would unwittingly incriminate Himself and open Himself to arrest by the Roman soldiers.

But Jesus was too smart to be caught out. His response was not a spur-of-the-moment reaction. He was not only on guard, but He was also well-prepared because of His complete understanding of God’s kingdom and how to live in it in the earthly environment. In every situation He faced as a earthling, He viewed His life from God’s perspective and taught His disciples to do the same.

Unlike us, who easily forget God, He lived His life with His Father in the centre. Everything He thought and did came out of His union with the Father. His answer to their question gives us insight into the way we should live in the kingdom of God so that we best represent Him in an ungodly environment.

In His high-priestly prayer, He put in a nutshell what our attitude should be to the world system in which we live. “‘My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it.'” John 17:15-16 (NIV).

If we live in the world, we are subject to the systems humans have put in place, including submission to earthly government, and God expects us to fulfil our obligations as unto Him. However, we have a different disposition from the people of the world, the nature and presence of God infused into us by the Holy Spirit. Not to be ‘of the world’ implies that we bring the disposition of Jesus into the way we live.

He showed us how by the way He honoured and respected all people, treating them with compassion and generosity and revealing the love of the Father by His loving and caring attitude.

To ‘give to Caesar’ implied civil obedience while to ‘give to God’ meant not only submitting to His supreme authority over everything, but also living in such a way that we make ‘up there’ come ‘down here’. We are, first and foremost, representatives of the way God runs things, and that includes loyally submitting to the government in everything that does not clash with God’s kingdom and His ways.

GIVE GOD YOUR BODY

Devotion, ,

GIVE GOD YOUR BODY

I have been thinking about the significance of Paul’s words in Romans 12:1-2…

“And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Don’t copy the behaviour and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.”

Romans 12:1-2 NLT

These words follow Paul’s extended explanation of salvation, focusing on God’s righteousness in the gospel. He did the right thing by forgiving our sin and restoring us to fellowship with Him as His sons and daughters because He made Jesus an atoning sacrifice for our sin.

Therefore (and so – NLT), because of all that God has done in Christ for us, we are obligated to give Him our bodies as living sacrifices. Why our bodies? Why not our lives, or our souls, or spirits? Is there something significant about giving our bodies to God, especially the bodies that are weakened by disease or disabilities, or even age?

Let’s look at our bodies for a moment.

1. Our bodies are the temporary residences in which we live on this earth. They are subject to all the effects of Adam’s sin, including death.

2. Our bodies are the vehicles through which we  are tempted to commit sin. We use every part of our bodies to disobey God.

3. Our bodies experience the suffering that debilitates us and affects our moods, attitudes, emotions and even our trust in God. Our bodies are frail and fallible and, because we suffer in our bodies, we are thrown into doubt, insecurity, anxiety, and feelings of abandonment and betrayal.

4. Our bodies are also the vehicles of worship. We are prompted, through our senses, to acknowledge God’s greatness and to honour Him for who He is and what He does.

5.We connect with fellow humans through our bodies. We express love and hatred through our bodies. We communicate through language we hear and speak and through body language we see.

6. We are a unit of body, soul, and spirit, created in God’s image to express Him to the world of people around us.

7. Our bodies, though temporary in a fallen world, will be transformed into the likeness of Jesus’ resurrected body when He returns to set up His kingdom on earth.

8. Our bodies become the “Holy of Holies” of God’s dwelling place through the presence of the Holy Spirit when we are made alive and adopted into God’s family through faith in Jesus.

9. Our bodies are the subject and object of so much prayer especially when they go wrong. We spend a great deal of time and effort on focusing on keeping our bodies alive.

It seems, then that our bodies play a significant role in the participation and enjoyment of our salvation both now and in the life to come. Is it any wonder, then, that Paul instructs us to present our bodies to God as a living sacrifice!

Why is this so important?

If we maintain possession of our bodies, we are responsible for taking care of them and for what we do with them. We retain the right to do with our bodies what we choose and must bear the consequences of our choices.

Paul explicitly states that we are to give God our bodies (a deliberate act) as a living sacrifice (for a specific purpose) as an act of worship. Since there is so much bad stuff going on in the world through peoples’ bodies, giving them to God as a living sacrifice is a safeguard against using our bodies for the wrong purposes.

We transfer responsibility for the care and use of our bodies to God and we take responsibility only for obeying His instructions.

God wants our bodies as a sacrifice, not as a loss to us but as an exchange. Jesus gave His body as a sacrifice and received, in return, millions of brothers, and sisters just like Himself. What does He give those who give Him their bodies as a sacrifice?

Paul tells us, in Rom. 12:2, that He will give us renewed minds to know, understand and enjoy His perfect will.

“Don’t copy the behaviour and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.”

Now that’s a great trade-off, isn’t it? To know that God’s will, including everything that happens to your body, even the debilitating illnesses, diseases, malfunctions, accidents, etc., that you are suffering, are God’s perfect will for you because He is working on a bigger plan than you know or understand.

Since you gave God your body as a sacrifice, He is free to work in and on your body whatever pleases Him for you highest good and to give you back something far better and more glorious than you ever gave Him.

Resurrection day is coming, as surely as the day Jesus rose from the dead. Your permanent body will be perfectly suited to the environment of God’s eternal kingdom. If you give Him ownership of your body now, He will, through it and whatever suffering He calls you to endure, perfect your spirit to be fully compatible with the realm in which He dwells and reigns.

What am I saying? God wants to take you into a place where you will never question or doubt His goodness, whatever is going on in your body. It’s His now. You gave Him the right of ownership. He bought it at a great price. Now take your hands off His property and allow Him free rein to mould you into the image of His Son even through what He is doing in your body.

I love the words of Joni Eareckson Tada, when she was struggling with an infection of Covid-19…

In the midst of her darkness, the Lord asked her, “Joni, do you trust me?” She responded, “Yes, Lord, I believe.” In the days following this encounter, she developed a strange calmness, “almost an indifference” she said, “to what it would feel like and how it would end.”

She felt Him drawing her into His shelter and resting under the shadow of the Almighty.

Quoting the writings of another sufferer (I could not identify the name on the video), she said, “When the suffering soul reaches a place of calm, sweet carelessness, when he can inwardly smile at his (own) suffering and not even ask to be delivered, then it begins to work its blessed ministry. Then the cross we are carrying begins to weave itself into a crown.”

In conclusion, said Joni,

“When we give our suffering over to God, and sink ourselves into His will, He will make every pain work its divine purpose in our lives.”

“Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.”

James 1:2-4 NLT

No more interfering with His working in you, then, through begging, pleading, believing for, crying, whining or thinking that healing is the only right and best outcome for you. God’s will is good, pleasing and perfect for you. Celebrate His will with joy through your pain and let’s see what God can do.

GOD OF THE LIVING

Christian Life, ,

GOD OF THE LIVING

“‘Even Moses exclaimed about resurrection at the burning bush, saying, ‘God: God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob!’ God isn’t the God of dead men but of the living. To Him all are alive.’

“Some of the religion scholars said, ‘Teacher, that’s a great answer!’ For a while, anyway, no one dared put questions to Him .” Luke 20:37-40 (The Message).

Hidden truths! Did anyone notice that the truth about resurrection is hidden in that short and seemingly insignificant statement – “God of Abraham”?

Every Jewish boy would have known that because his text book from birth was the Torah, the five books of Moses. He would have heard the Shema – “Hear O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one,” (Deuteronomy 6:4) – every time he suckled at his mother’s breast. By the age of six he would have memorised the book of Leviticus and by twelve, the whole Torah. In the Torah are the seeds of every major doctrine in the Bible, including the truth about the resurrection.   

God created time and lives in a realm which is not subject to time. Unlike Him, human beings are not eternal. Our existence begins at a point in time but, from that point, we never cease to exist.

Because of Adam’s choice, we are subject to death, but death is not the end. It is the transition from time to eternity, from the realm of the physical to the realm of God where we shed all the imperfections of our fallen humanity and stand before God in the perfection of Jesus which He gave to us because of His death on the cross.

Because Jesus came from that realm, He could speak of as fact, that which we receive by faith, that God is the God of the living because Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are still alive in His presence.

Had the Sadducees paid a little more attention to the Torah, they would not have made fools of themselves by posing a question to Jesus that revealed their ignorance.

In His reply, Jesus shows us how we can find the answer to many of the questions that puzzle us about our faith. There is a principle of Biblical interpretation that will help us, called the Law of First Mention. The first time something is mentioned in the Bible is the key to understanding what it means in the rest of the Bible.

There is an example of this principle that will help us to understand God’s original intent about prayer. The first mention of prayer is found in Genesis 4:26: “At that time men began to call on the name of the Lord.” In the original Paleo (picture) Hebrew, the word for “call” meant “to turn the head to face the One who can bear the burden.”

That’s it! We have made prayer into something quite complicated whereas the Bible presents prayer as the simple act of changing our awareness! When Adam and Eve chose to ignore God’s command, they lost their God-awareness and became self-aware, ( “‘…I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.’ And He said, ‘Who told you that you were naked?'” – Genesis 3:10b-11a), a preoccupation that has never changed

To change our awareness means to recognise and acknowledge God in the centre of whatever our concern is. We don’t have to bring God into our situations – He’s already there! When we change our awareness, we move from worry and panic to peace because He is there, He is good and He is in charge.

Jesus was saying, in essence, ‘Go back to the beginning where God has revealed His original intent. That’s where you’ll find His answers to your questions.’

HALLELUJAH

Devotion, ,

HALLELUJAH

“Halalujah” is a familiar word in our ritual of church “praise and worship”. However, we miss its beautiful meaning through our ignorance of its use in ancient Hebrew.

“Halal” in ancient Hebrew meant “the shining of a star”. To understand how it came to mean praise in association with Jah, i.e., halalujah (praise Jah), we must go back to its use in navigation. Before the invention of modern instruments, sailors would plot their course by the light (shining) of the stars.

This practice formed the idea behind praising God. When we praise Him, we focus on His “shining”, His glory, His attributes, His goodness, mercy, and compassion which become the pattern upon which we model our lives.

So, we navigate an evil and uncertain world by gazing at Him and living our lives by the light of His instructions (torah), His truth about Himself revealed in His Word.

In the New Covenant, we have the perfect “shining” of the Morning Star, Jesus, (the Son), who “radiates God’s own glory and expresses the very character of God…” – Heb 1:3a.

This wonderful imagery is lost in so much of today’s Christian music which focuses on our experience rather than on the glory of Jesus and the marvel of God’s grace in the gospel.

Paul encapsulates our true “halalujah” in his matchless prescription for transformation.

“And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”

2 Corinthians 3:18 NIV

Many churches have ditched the great hymns of the past that contemplated in verse and music the “shining of the star” in favour of tuneless ditties that often bemoan our spiritual poverty and focus on our emotional whining.

Compare, for example, the words of Fredrick William Faber. 1848…

My God, how wonderful Thou art,

Thy majesty how bright;

How beautiful Thy mercy seat

In depths of burning light!

How dread are Thine eternal years,

O Everlasting Lord,

By prostrate spirits, day and night

Incessantly adored!

How wonderful, how beautiful

The sight of Thee must be,

Thine endless wisdom, boundless power,

And aweful purity!

O, how I fear Thee, living God

With deepest, tend’rest fears,

And worship Thee with trembling hope,

And penitential tears!

Yet I may love Thee too, O Lord,

Almighty as Thou art,

For Thou hast stooped to ask of me

The love of my poor heart.

No earthly father loves like Thee,

No mother, e’er so mild

Bears and forebears, as Thou hast done

With me, Thy sinful child.

Father of Jesus, love’s reward,

What rapture will it be,

Prostrate before Thy throne to lie

And gaze and gaze on Thee!

… with some of the songs we sing today.  Of course, there are many modern, beautiful songs that gaze at the shining of the star, but why do we ignore those that were written by great poets and hymn writers of the past who had a deep sense of awe in the presence of God as though they are out-of-date?