Monthly Archives: May 2023

DON’T FORGET TO REMEMBER

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DON’T FORGET TO REMEMBER

“Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.” Deuteronomy 5:15.

“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing!” Isaiah 43:18,19a.

Isn’t it strange how we remember what we should forget and forget what we should remember? We struggle to forget the hurts and offences we have received from other people and yet we quickly forget the good things God has done for us. We remember the bad things that happen to us, but the good things often pass by unnoticed.

Before Moses died, when the children of Israel stood on the edge of the Promised Land, he reminded them of the way God had delivered them from slavery, led them, provided for them, protected them and cared for them for forty years in the desert. One of the key words of the Book of Deuteronomy is “remember”. Moses had to command the people to remember because, if they forgot where they had come from, they would soon become proud and self-sufficient, and they would no longer trust and worship the Lord as their God.

How important it is for us also to remember where we came from. We were dead in sin and in bondage to the devil until Jesus made us alive by His Holy Spirit and set us free from our bondage to sin and our slavery to addictions, bad habits and behaviour patterns. How important it is for us to remember the good things God does for us every day. He gave us a beautiful world to live in, He provides the sunshine and rain that make our plants grow, He give us food, clothing and shelter; we enjoy the love of friends and family and, most of all, He has given us His own Spirit to be in us forever. There is nothing we need that He has not given us so that we can live our lives in Him and for Him.

When we have grateful hearts and are always thanking Him for His goodness, we will not be grumblers and complainers like Israel was, making God angry and bringing His judgment on them for their unbelief.

But God also commands us to forget certain things. We need to forgot our past sins and failures, as well as our achievements, and stretch forward towards the most important goal, knowing Jesus our Lord, because all these things, good and bad, will hinder us from growing in our faith and moving towards the future God has for us. God does not stand still. He has big plans for all His people. He does not want us to settle down where we are and never reach towards greater things in the future. So, the Apostle Paul said, “One thing I do: forgetting those things which are behind …I press on toward the goal to win the prize…” Philippians 3:13b, 14a.

DO YOU LOVE ME?

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“DO YOU LOVE ME?”

When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you truly love me more than these?” John 21:15a

It was early morning. Seven of Jesus’ disciples had gone fishing because they had nothing better to do. They knew Jesus was alive. They had seen Him, but He kept coming and going. He hadn’t yet told them what He wanted them to do. They fished all night but caught nothing. Imagine how unhappy they must have felt. They couldn’t even catch fish even though it was what they could do best.

In the dawn light they saw someone on the beach, and the smoke of a fire. He looked familiar but they couldn’t see who it was. He called out to them, “Have you caught anything?”

“No,” they called back and to their surprise He instructed them to throw their net in again, on the right side of the boat. Peter remembered a similar instruction three years ago, when they caught more fish than they could handle. John suddenly realised who it was. “It’s the Master!” he yelled. Peter flung on his tunic and jumped overboard. He wasn’t going to wait for them to row the boat ashore. He wanted to get to Jesus.

It was a painful moment for Peter, one he had probably been dreading. The coal fire reminded him of his denial of his Master. What would Jesus say to him? The other disciples came ashore with a huge catch of fish. Jesus carried on cooking breakfast, but He said nothing. All the disciples felt bad because they had deserted Him. They waited for Him to scold them, but He kept silent. He knew that their consciences were telling them all how they had failed Him.

After breakfast, Jesus spoke to Peter. “Simon,” He said, “Do you love me?” He called Peter by his old name just to remind him that he had to start all over because of his failure. Why did He not ask Peter why he had denied Him? That was not important to Jesus any more. The most important question Peter needed to answer was, “Do you love me?” Peter could not change what he had done but he could change what he was going to do.

Love is a powerful bond that connects people through thick and thin. Peter did not know it yet, although Jesus warned him of what was coming, but he was going to face many tests of his love for Jesus. He would be beaten, imprisoned, and even threatened with death for following his Master and he would be crucified in the end because he refused to deny Jesus a second time. If he loved Jesus, he would always be loyal to him no matter what happened.

How does our love for Jesus grow? When we experience His love for us in tough times, it gives us confidence to trust and love Him too. The more our love is tested the stronger it grows.

ARE YOU COMFORTABLE WITH JESUS?

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ARE YOU COMFORTABLE WITH JESUS?

When the teachers of the Law who were Pharisees saw (Jesus) eating with the ‘sinners’ and tax collectors, they asked His disciples, “Why does He eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?”

Religion does strange things to people. Religious people are aware of how ‘good’ they are and how ‘bad’ other people are who are not like them. That’s because their ‘goodness’ depends on how well they keep the rules of their religion. They separate themselves from the people who don’t keep the rules as well as they do.

Jesus didn’t care about rule-keeping because rule-keeping made people proud. Jesus cared more about people being friends with Him. It didn’t matter to Him if they did not keep the rules. He knew that being friends with Him would teach them how to become like Him, loving, caring and merciful to all people.

In the story from which this verse is quoted, Jesus had called Matthew, a tax collector, to follow Him. Matthew was rich from the money he had made people pay him, over and above the taxes he collected for Rome. The Jews hated him because he took their money, and they could not stop him. He didn’t care about keeping the rules of their religion, but when Jesus called him, he left everything to follow Him.

Matthew invited his friends, the ones who were just like him, to have dinner with him. He also invited Jesus and His disciples, and they happily ate together and felt very comfortable. The Pharisees saw what was happening and criticised Jesus for eating with the ‘bad’ people, the ones who broke the rules. Jesus was a rabbi, a religious teacher, and they felt that He should know better. Eating with ‘sinners’ would make Him ‘unclean’; their rule-breaking would contaminate Him and that would be bad for a rabbi.

Why were the tax collectors and rule-breakers comfortable with Jesus? He did not judge, criticise, or condemn them. He accepted them just as they were. He loved them despite their sin because they were people made in God’s image. He could see the possibilities in them if they learned to follow His ways. If he judged them, they would not come to Him. He didn’t have to tell them they had done wrong, but He also knew that they could change if He became their friend. He listened to them, and they listened to Him.

Jesus was comfortable with them because they didn’t try to hide their sin from Him. They didn’t pretend to be what they were not. The Pharisees and religious people also had wicked hearts, but they hid behind their rule-keeping. Jesus knew they were selfish and greedy even though they tried to hide it from Him. He could see through their hypocrisy, and they hated Him for that. Jesus knew that all people were separated from God because of their sin. By eating with them, He was saying that God was okay with them and that He wanted to be reconciled to them.

A MAN AFTER GOD’S OWN HEART

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A MAN AFTER GOD’S OWN HEART

“I have found David son of Jesse a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do.” Acts 13:22b

There is only one man in the Bible of whom it was said, “He was a man after God’s own heart.” Isn’t it strange that God would call man who was a murderer and adulterer, a polygamist and a pretty useless father “a man after my own heart”? Is it possible that God doesn’t see things the way we do? We know that God hates the sins David committed, so why did He look past those things and show David so much favour?

The punishment for murder and adultery, according to the Law of Moses, was death. Why did God not have David put to death for killing Uriah and committing adultery with his wife, Bathsheba? Was there something in David’s life so much more important to God that He was willing to forgive David’s sins and not have him killed?

At God’s command, Samuel had anointed David to be king of Israel in place of Saul because Saul disobeyed God. It was David’s right to kill Saul’s family when he became king so that no descendant of Saul would be able to take the throne from him. David had opportunity to kill Saul on two occasions when Saul was hunting him down, but David spared Saul’s life because he would not take the law into his own hands. David also refused to put people to death who opposed him when his son, Absolom, tried to steal the kingdom from him. David preferred to show people mercy rather than take revenge.

One of the most beautiful examples of David’s heart of kindness and mercy was the way he treated Jonathan’s only remaining son. After he became king of Israel, he remembered the promise he had made to his friend Jonathan, who was Saul’s son.  “David asked, ‘Is there anyone still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness for Jonathan’s sake?’” 2 Samuel 9:1. He was told of one crippled son, Mephibosheth who was living in exile in Lodebar.

Mephibosheth had no right to David’s kindness except that David had made a covenant with Jonathan. He promised that he would show mercy to Jonathan’s children. Mephibosheth was also handicapped which meant that he could not come into the king’s presence. David could kill him and that would be okay. But instead, he called Mephibosheth, restored his grandfather, Saul’s land to him and invited him to come and live in the royal palace and eat at his table.

To “eat at his table” meant that David offered Mephibosheth complete reconciliation. There would be no enmity between them even though his grandfather had hated David. What David did was exactly like the heart of God. He offers us reconciliation by allowing us to eat at His table – the communion table where we remember that Jesus died to reconcile us to God. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

STAY CONNECTED

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STAY CONNECTED

“So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” Genesis 1:27

The Bible tells us that God is spirit. He does not have a body. Human beings are both spirit and flesh; we have bodies which are the houses in which our spirits live. What does it mean to be created in the image of God?

Here are three important ways in which we are like God. 1. We share His character. He made us to be like Him in the way we behave and treat other people. We can be kind, compassionate and generous because that’s who God is. 2. He also made us to be one with Him. We can love, obey, and submit to God so that we share His heart for the people around us. 3. God is the ruler of everything He has made but He gave us the task of taking care of His creation for Him.

By disobeying God, Adam chose to disconnect himself from God and live by his own rules and make his own decisions. That hasn’t worked because the world we live in is in a mess as a result. Adam didn’t only disconnect himself from God; he also separated himself from his fellow human beings. So today we have anger and hatred and fighting between people because we do what Adam did. We live in a disconnected world.

Jesus came from God to show us how much God loves us and to reconnect us with Him and with each other. He died in our place to get rid of the barriers between us. God sent His Holy Spirit to help us understand what Jesus has done, to change our hearts, to reconcile us to God and to one another and to give us the power to stop being selfish and to care about one another instead.

Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, has made us one again in His new family. Now it is up to us to protect that oneness by caring more about each other than we do about ourselves. The Apostle Paul tells us about three ways in which we can destroy the connection we have with one another. 1. We can be selfishly ambitious – always wanting to be ahead of other people and not caring about who we hurt on the way. 2. We can think we are more important than other people. 3. We can think we are better than other people.

Here are some ways in which we can protect the connection we have with our families, our friends, and our fellow believers. The Apostle Paul said we must 1. Accept one another and not try to change each other, 2. We must honour one another, treating each other with respect and dignity, 3. We must acknowledge each other and 4. We must submit to one another, working with instead of against each other.

This is the way the world will know that Jesus came, because we live together in peace and harmony.