Monthly Archives: May 2023

DON’T BE DECEIVED

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DON’T BE DECEIVED

“Whenever the evil spirits saw Him, they fell down before Him and cried out, ‘You are the Son of God.’ But He gave them strict orders not to tell who He was.” Mark 3:11,12 (NIV).

Although the demons knew who Jesus was, and blurted out the truth in His presence, their avowed intent was to lie, deceive and pervert the truth to as many people as they could, to discredit Him so that people would not believe Him. They could not help but admit in His presence that they knew who He was. But their real nature, liars like their master, the devil, comes out when they speak to people. Their purpose is to deceive people into believing that God is not loving, and that sin is nice and will not have any consequences.

Because human beings are frail and transient, (Psalm 103) we are easily deceived by demons. If we are not convinced for ourselves who Jesus is, we will believe their lies because we are ignorant and gullible.

The people ran after Jesus from all over Israel and the surrounding territories because of what He could do for them. Everyone wanted a piece of the pie, but they were not willing to become a part of the kingdom of God. That would mean giving up their right to control their own lives and do as they liked and follow Jesus and become like Him. He was unselfish and self-sacrificing. That is a high price to pay when we enjoy our sinful lives. Only when we run into trouble, do we run to Jesus for help.

John warns (in 1 John 2:15-17) that the world and its concerns are as short-lived as humans are. If we attach ourselves too closely to the world and what it stands for, we are in danger of being swept away with it when it finally disappears. Our only guarantee of being part of the everlasting realm where God is, is to attach ourselves to Him and to shelter in Him where we cannot be lured away by deception (Psalm 91:1).

How do we do that in practice? By learning to become one with God in what He desires. The domain where we experience oneness with God is in our thinking which ultimately influences our deciding, choosing, and doing. When we begin to think like God, we begin to take shelter in Him and dwell in His protective shadow by faith in the truth.

If we are vulnerable to deception, then we can also be influenced by the truth and, when we believe the truth, our lives are secure in God who is from everlasting to everlasting. Our thoughts of truth bind us to the truth. If we think what is true, we are secure in God; we dwell in God and He dwells in us, and we are part of His eternal kingdom that cannot be destroyed.

Jesus promised us that if we follow Him, we shall know the truth and the truth will set us free.

CATCHING MEN FOR JESUS

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CATCHING MEN FOR JESUS

As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. 17 “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” 18 At once they left their nets and followed him. Mark 1:16-18

How were the disciples to catch men? What was the method and what was the “bait”? As you walk with Jesus and watch and listen to Him, it makes sense that the “bait” was the love and mercy of God which He talked about, showed by His miracles, and gave away freely through His kindness and compassion. He touched the lives of ordinary people, forgiving their sin, healing their broken bodies, and freeing them from slavery to demons (Acts 10:38). Who would not be “lured” by a God like that? For too long the people had been forced to obey or driven away by fear of the God who made so many demands that it was impossible to satisfy Him.

Even if the disciples didn’t understand, they followed Him anyway and set out on a journey to relearn the love of the God who had originally called them to be His people thousands of years before, but whose true character gradually became dim because of religion that had taken God’s place in the lives of His people. Instead of being free to love God, they were forced to obey man-made rules.

Why did the Pharisees hate Jesus so much? Why did they want to kill Him? Could it be that the same fear that controls all other religions, made them afraid to love God in case they were wrong. They could not launch out onto the love of God in case they were right, and Jesus was wrong? Did their pride in own ‘good works’ and their false understanding of ‘righteousness’ make them hold on to their belief that they were right? Did they hate Jesus because He was too ‘nice’ to the people they despised, and they could not accept God’s generosity to ‘sinners’?

How do we respond to God’s generosity? Do we stubbornly think that this is all a mirage: that there is a catch somewhere; that we will wake up and find that it was all a beautiful dream? Why do we struggle at times with the issue of healing? Why do we have nagging doubts when we pray as though the ‘bait’ were made of tasteless plastic and not the real thing? Is this part of the growth and maturing of true faith? How confident are we that what we are offering people is the truth and that God will back it up?

If we really want to be fishers of men, Jesus said, “Follow me.” That means sticking close to Him and watching the way He did things. We can do that by reading about Him in His Word and learning His ways by watching and listening to Him.

THE REAL MEANING OF SABBATH

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   THE REAL MEANING OF SABBATH

“The Jews said to the man who had been healed, ‘It is the Sabbath; the Law forbids you to carry your mat.’ But he replied, ‘The man who made me well said to me, “Pick up your mat and walk.” So, they replied, ‘Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?’” John 5:10-12 (NIV).

Why was the Sabbath such a big issue for the Jews? They were constantly attacking Jesus for not observing the Sabbath the way they thought He should. Jesus healed people on the Sabbath, and they were angry with Him because they saw it as ‘work’. One of their sins in their past was their failure to observe the Sabbath. Sabbath was a sign of the covenant between them and God and the thing that set them apart from all other nations.

To keep the Sabbath meant that they had to trust God. Firstly, they had to know that the God they worshipped was real. Secondly, to take a day off and to do no work meant that they earned no money on that day. It meant that they were worth more to God than the work they did and that they were willing to trust Him to provide for them.

But, to the Pharisees, Sabbath-keeping was much more than that. They had made Sabbath- keeping one of the reasons for God to accept them. They missed the real purpose of the Sabbath. It wasn’t a rule to be kept but God’s mercy to them to get them out of the cycle of working and sleeping. It was to be a day of rest.

Jesus was showing the people God’s mercy by healing sick people on the Sabbath. Healing was not ‘work’, it was mercy and God’s law was about mercy. Therefore, to heal on the Sabbath was not to break the law but to do the right thing. Jesus came to show us what the Father is like. God is merciful. He did not give us His law to bring us into bondage but to set us free from our own selfishness and greed.

The Pharisees did not understand this. Jesus offended Him because He did not keep the Sabbath the way they believed. They attacked the man who had been healed and tried to make him guilty because Jesus told him to pick up his mat. When He found him in the temple, the place where he had gone to show himself to the priests so that he could offer a sacrifice for his healing, Jesus urged him to leave his life of sin.

Jesus wasn’t concerned about the Pharisees’ accusations because they were not true, but He was concerned about something more important, that sin brought unpleasant consequences. He wanted the healed man to stop sinning so that nothing worse would happen to him. 

This story is a lesson for us. Righteousness is about doing right, not about not doing wrong. To show mercy to someone is need is to do the right thing. This is what pleases God.

THE WORD BECAME FLESH

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THE WORD BECAME FLESH

“The word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1:14 (NIV)

What a power-packed statement! Not a baby-in-a-manger, once-a-year-at-Christmas-time story but something that really happened and something that changed history and the destinies of millions who believe in Him. Jesus came from the other side, stepped down from His position in glory with the Father, put on a human body and ‘tabernacled’ for a while right among His own people. John adds his own testimony, ‘We have seen His glory…full of grace and truth,’ perfect and complete. Not many people saw His glory. Oh! They saw Him alright, but they didn’t recognise or acknowledge that He was the Son of God or that He came here to display Father’s glory.

The real Jesus, the second Person of the Godhead, the one who was constantly working with His people for thousands of years, the one who spoke with both mercy and severity, came Himself, disguised as a human being, living in the tent of a human body for a little while, like His own people in the wilderness, to show and tell the whole story of redeeming love.

What did John and his fellow-disciples see? They saw in Jesus the perfect balance of grace and truth in action. He Himself was the fulfilment of everything the tabernacle – the ‘mishkan’ – represented. He is the way to the Father; He is the truth about God and He is the life that God gives us when we believe in Him. He takes us to the Father through the blood He spilt on the cross. We are allowed into the Holy of Holies to fellowship with God because Jesus came to earth as a human child.

Through the revelation of grace and truth that He brings in Himself, those who believe in Him are made both clean and holy through the offering up of His own blood which was sprinkled on the mercy seat to make atonement for the sin of the world.

Grace and truth are the whole picture, God acting out of the fullness and perfection of who He is; grace shows us how great His love is, and truth shows us His justice. Because God is both true to Himself and gracious to us, Jesus paid the debt for our sin Himself by becoming God’s sacrificial lamb so that He can cleanse us of sin and accept us into His holy presence.

But every human being must make his own choice. Jesus came, presented Himself to the world and delivered His message by being the message. Everyone who sees and hears the message can either accept or reject what he sees and hears and take full responsibility for his choice. But for John the issue was clear, and he saw and believed.

It isn’t the birth of Jesus we should celebrate. We should remember every day that He came from the other side to be with us and to die for us.

NO POPULARITY POLL

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NO POPULARITY POLL

“’You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” John 5:39,40 (NIV).

There is in this passage an indictment against much of popular ‘gospel’ preaching today. Jesus made it clear that He did not come to be popular. He is not interested in collecting many people who will take sides with Him. He came to reconnect people with His Father in a relationship of unity, submission, and trust so that He can make them whole again.

Although John the Baptist’s witness was powerful and spectacular, Jesus said that there was much more convincing evidence of who He was and why He came – His works of compassion and mercy which pointed to the Father from where He came, and who He was, the Son of God. The religious leaders rejected Him because they could not see beyond their own petty laws.

If His enemies were honest about wanting to live God’s way and if they were really listening to Him and thinking about what He said, they would have realised that He was not a fake like they said He was, but really the Son of God. But they so wanted to be right that ignored the facts and chose to believe their own lies which cut them off from ever experiencing God’s life.

They were so busy using the Torah – the Law of God – to prove that they were right that they could not find what they were looking for. They were looking for the Messiah in the Torah, but He was standing right in front of them, and they missed Him. His words, His works, His way of living all pointed to a match between Himself and the Scriptures but they couldn’t see it because they hated Him and lost out on the promise of life.

How can we apply this to ourselves? We are constantly faced with a choice – life or death, but we also must look at the evidence. Whose words will we believe – the words the world keeps telling us, such as, do whatever you like – there are no consequences; you can ignore God; He won’t do anything to you? If we listen to these words, God’s word seems out of place in our lives.

If we choose to listen to God’s words, God’s power steps into our lives and works for us to bring about His will in our lives. Even the bad things that happen are turned to our good when we decide to trust and obey Him rather than what the people in the world are telling us.

Jesus is not interested in gathering followers just to have numbers. He is careful to tell us that being His disciple will cost us something. Not everyone is pleased when we choose to follow Jesus and live His way. We may not be rewarded now but there is a great reward in the life to come – eternal life with God.