Monthly Archives: May 2023

YOU CHOOSE

Christian Life, ,

YOU CHOOSE

“A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path…some fell on rock…other seed fell among thorns…still other seed fell on good soil.” Luke 8:5-8.

The story of the seed and the soil tells us as much about the storyteller as it does about the story. To relate something like this meant that Jesus understood people and He knew how to understand them.

Not everyone’s response to the Word of God is the same. People’s ways of thinking are molded by many different experiences – who our parents were, how we were brought up, the influence of our family and friends, where we live, our cultural and religious backgrounds, what we experienced as children and how we interpreted our experiences as we grew up.

God’s Word is a seed, and it has the power within itself to germinate and grow, but the soil it falls into will determine whether it grows to maturity or withers and dies without producing fruit. 

This story also reveals how Jesus accepted what happened to the seed when it was planted. He placed no unfair expectations on any person’s response to His message. How they accepted and responded to His teaching was how it was. He did not bully people or try to persuade them to believe Him against their will. He allowed the truth of what He did and said to speak for itself.

He worked with those who believed Him, but He also respected the choices of those who were not persuaded. Jesus was never afraid to expose wrong thinking, false beliefs, and hypocritical behaviour but He always left people to make their own choices. He confronted people with the truth, and He confirmed the truth by what He was and did and allowed people to decide for themselves whether He was who He said He was.

The choice belongs to each person who hears Him. God’s final judgment will rest on the choices we made in this life. Jesus never forced anyone to believe in Him, but He also made it clear that our choices always take us somewhere. It is the fool who thinks that he can make the same choices that got him into trouble and have a different outcome.

Jesus IS the truth and He SPOKE the truth and He told us what the outcome would be if we choose not to believe Him. “As for the person who hears my word but does not keep them, I do not judge him…There is a judge for the one who rejects me…that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day.” John 12:47,48.

Wherever we go and whatever we do after we die will depend on the choices we make now. That is how fair God’s judgment is. If we follow Jesus now, we will be with Him forever. If we choose a life of sin now, we will be forced to live in sin forever with all its terrible consequences.

WHAT IS THE FOUNDATION OF YOUR LIFE?

Christian Life,

WHAT IS THE FOUNDATION OF YOUR LIFE?

46 “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say? Luke 6:46

“Why are you so polite with me, always saying ‘Yes, sir,’ and ‘That’s right, sir,’ but never doing a thing I tell you?” Luke 6:46 (The Message).

Unlike the other religious leaders of Jesus’ day, Jesus was not just giving them His opinion. He was telling them what really worked. The laws of the Old Testament were God’s way of telling His people how to live. If they obeyed His laws, they would live safe, happy, and free lives but if they disobeyed, they would be enslaved by unhappiness, poverty, misery, and invasion by enemy armies who would conquer and capture them.

Since Jesus is the Son of God and our Creator, He should know what works in our lives. He said that He came, not to do away with God’s law but to show us how it works in practice.

If we hear the words of Jesus but don’t put them into practice, we are like a foolish man who built his house near the water but did not set it on a firm foundation. When the storm came, his house collapsed because it had no foundation to hold it together.

Those who make Jesus’ word the foundation on which they build their lives, will be safe when the storms come. What are the storms of life? Everything that is unpleasant; that causes us unhappiness and that makes us question the meaning and purpose of life.

What is the foundation that Jesus said would save us from ruin when the storms come? He promised that, when bad things happen to us, we can trust Him. He is able to turn even bad things to our good; He will never leave us alone; He will carry our burdens for us so that they will not crush us, and He will provide solutions to our problems and difficulties.

There are many religions in the world and religious leaders make many promises. How do we know which one is the truth? First, we must look at the one who makes the promises. Is his claim true? Is he who he says he is? If he is not, why believe him? Secondly, we must look at his promises. Are his promises true? Does he have the power to carry out his promises?

Jesus said He is the Son of God. He would prove it by rising from the dead. Did He? People have tried to prove that the resurrection was a hoax, but they cannot because Jesus did rise from the dead. He is alive today. He said that, if we believe in Him, He will give us eternal life. Billions of people through the ages have experienced His power to rescue them from a life of ruin and give them a new start. Those who believe in Him know that they have been forgiven and have the power to live new and different lives. Jesus is trustworthy. All other religions are built on the words of fallible human beings. Jesus is the Son of God. What He told us is the truth. We can trust Him.

JUDGING HAS A HABIT OF BACKFIRING

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JUDGING HAS A HABIT OF BACKFIRING

“Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults – unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging.” Matthew 7:1,2 (The Message).

The story of the woman who broke her alabaster box of perfume over Jesus’ feet, is well-known. Jesus’ host at a dinner party was a Pharisee. When we read the story (in Luke 30ff), it is easy for us to be on Jesus’ side and on the side of the woman He was defending. We don’t like the Pharisees because Pharisees were Jesus’ enemies, and we feel good about despising him because he was in the wrong. After all, didn’t Jesus expose his hypocrisy? He was judging Jesus and the woman against himself and coming out clean, so he thought.

But what is the background to the story? Jesus was invited to a meal with a Pharisee. In Hebrew culture, to eat with someone meant that you had settled your issues and put the past behind you. You were reconciled. Did the Pharisee have issues with Jesus? It seems not until the entrance of the woman. He was eating with Jesus, no problems, reconciled, if nothing happened to trigger what was still inside him.

He was pretending that all was well between him and Jesus until the prostitute gate-crashed the party and had the audacity to touch Jesus, supposedly making Him unclean. His reaction? “Jesus is supposed to be a prophet, but He must be a fake because He should know who this woman is.” What was on his face must have given him away. In his thoughts he was judging both Jesus and the woman, Jesus for pretending to be a prophet and the woman for being a sinner.

Strange how we expose ourselves! Jesus warned that when we judge others, we set up the standard for Him to judge us. The Pharisee set himself up as the standard and found both Jesus and the woman guilty because they didn’t measure up to him. He knew who the woman was, and Jesus didn’t so he was better than Jesus. He wasn’t doing what the woman was doing so he was better than her. He felt justified and comfortable with himself until Jesus spoke.

He started by telling him a little story. “Two men owed a banker money, one a small amount and one a large amount. The banker forgave them both their debt. Who would be more grateful?” Of course, Simon had to answer, “The one who was forgiven most.”

“Exactly,” said Jesus. Then He pointed out that Simon’s lack of courtesy to Him as his guest showed how little he understood what Jesus had done for him. The woman had done everything for Jesus that Simon should have done because she knew how much she had been forgiven. Simon had no idea how big his debt was because he was too busy judging the woman. His attitude had exposed his own heart.

Jesus says, “Be careful how you judge because you will be shown up.”

I AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD

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I AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD

Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” John 8:12 (NIV).

What a lovely idea, but what does it mean?

“Western” thinking people would immediately conjure up a mental picture of Jesus holding a lamp and walking ahead to light the way for us who follow Him. A Hebrew person would ask the question, “What does a light do?” Light reveals, exposes and allows us to see pictures of our environment and shows us the way to go.

Jesus’ statement is loaded with Old Testament connotations, for example, to say “I am” was to claim the name “Yahweh” which is the covenant name of God! To invite people to follow Him would refer to the Israelites’ experience in the wilderness when they were led by a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day. They were going to take possession of their inheritance – the Promised Land of Canaan, with all the ramifications of that promise made to their ancestor, Abraham.

Jesus is therefore extending an invitation to anyone who would follow Him, since he is God, and has the authority and power to take us to our promised inheritance, to become His disciples, and to imitate Him because He is the way to the kingdom of God and eternal life.

The Hebrew concepts of “light” and “darkness” help us understand how to follow Him. The Hebrews spoke of “the eye of light” (the yetzer tov) and “the evil eye” or “the eye of darkness” (the yetzer harah); for example, Jesus said, “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good (yetzer tov) your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, (yetzer harah), your whole body will be full of darkness…” Matthew 22,23a (NIV).

“Light”, here, means the ability to look beyond yourself to see the needs of others, to be generous and do something for them to make their lives better. “Darkness”, by contrast, is the inability to see beyond yourself; it is the selfish and greedy eye that is only concerned with your own needs and wants. A person with the yetzer harah had no desire or ability to share his resources with anyone else.

Jesus told a story about a person with a yetzer harah (Luke 12:13-21). A rich man’s farm produced an abundant crop. Instead of using his abundance to share with needy people, he decided to store it all up for himself. Then he could take life easy and would not need to work so hard. Jesus called him a fool, not because he was rich but because he was not rich towards God.

Since Jesus is the most loving, caring, and generous person who ever lives, He promises that, if we follow Him, we will never be greedy or selfish. Instead, we will experience the joy of really living by caring for others.

WHAT JESUS TAUGHT ABOUT THE SABBATH

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WHAT JESUS TAUGHT ABOUT THE SABBATH

Then Jesus said to them, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” Luke 6:5

Throughout His public ministry, Jesus was hounded by the Pharisees. They had issues with Him because He did not fit into their idea of what a rabbi should be teaching and doing.

On this occasion Jesus and His disciples were walking through a field of grain on the Sabbath. Because the disciples were hungry, they picked some grain and rubbed it between their hands to get rid of the husks before eating it. The Pharisees pounced on them. “Why are you doing that? Don’t you know you are not allowed to do that on the Sabbath?”

Jesus quickly came to their defence. “Don’t you people remember what David did when he was hungry? He took the bread off the Table of Showbread in the tabernacle and shared it with his companions.” Now if that wasn’t breaking the law, what was?

Jesus had been explaining to them that you cannot pour new wine into old wineskins. You cannot put the new wine of relating to God as sons into the old wineskin of law keeping as a way of trying to please God.

The disciples were ordinary human beings with needs. Were they to squeeze their natural physical hunger into their religion? Is that how they were to interpret God? Was their Father more interested in their obeying a rule – and not even His rule but something the ancient rabbis had invented which did not give them more freedom but rather robbed them of it – than in meeting their need?

Jesus’ challenged the Pharisees’ right to enforce rules He did not make. He was not only a rabbi with authority; He was also the Son of God. Who made the rules that would protect His people’s freedom? He did, therefore He had the right to apply those rules in such a way that they revealed the heart of the Father.

God had given them the Sabbath law so that they would be able to take a day off. God did not value them by the amount of work they could do but by their status as sons of God. Rules that are made to control and restrict people do not come from a heart of mercy. Rules that protect, ensuring safety and freedom from slavedrivers, and the happiness that comes from doing the right thing, flow from a heart of love.

Every time the Pharisees attacked Jesus for “rule-breaking” they exposed their own hearts. They were satisfied with their own performance and critical of all those who failed to come up to their standard. If they performed according to their laws, they were content with themselves.

Jesus is concerned about the attitudes of the heart. He refused to bend to their demands and defended the men who were in the process of learning how to live like their rabbi. He was entrusting to them the task of teaching people what the Father is like by living like Him.