Monthly Archives: May 2023

MARY’S DEVOTION

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MARY’S DEVOTION

“(Martha) had a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what He said.” Luke 10:39; “Near the cross of Jesus stood (Mary) His mother.” John 19:25; “Early on the first day of the week…Mary Magdalene went to the tomb…” John 20:1.

Three Marys; Mary of Bethany, Mary the mother of Jesus, and Mary Magdalene. Each of them was drawn to Jesus and loved Him so much that she wanted to be near Him.

Mary of Bethany chose to sit at Jesus’ feet although, as a woman, she should not have been with the men. Her devotion to Jesus was stronger than what other people thought of her. She may have been offending the disciples, but she cared more about being close to Jesus than about pleasing the men in the company.

Martha was irritated with her because she thought that helping her in the kitchen was the right thing to do. She wanted Mary to be like her, working hard to serve Jesus. Jesus responded to Mary’s devotion. He defended Mary’s choice. She could help Martha in the kitchen at any other time, but she could not always be near Him, listening to His teaching. She had made the best choice, and no-one could take it from her.

When Jesus was hanging on the cross, His mother stood nearby. She had given Him birth; she had nursed Him as a baby; she, together with Joseph, had raised Him to adulthood. He was her son. She wanted to be as near to Him as she could, even though she could do nothing to help Him. She loved Him. She wanted Him to know that she was there. She wanted to comfort him, to soothe His pain as she had done when he was a little boy. Just seeing her there must have helped Him to bear His pain.

Jesus responded to Mary by giving her to John as his new mother and he to her as her new son. John took her into his home so that she would never need to be alone again.

Mary Magdalene was also devoted to Jesus. He had set her free from many devils and she adored Him with all her heart. She followed Him wherever He went and did what she could to take care of Him and His disciples.

Now Jesus was dead. She had also stood at the cross and watched Him die. She was heartbroken. Her beloved Master was dead, cruelly crucified although He had done nothing wrong. Early in the morning she went to the tomb. She wanted to be near Him even though only His broken body was left.

She was beside herself with grief when she found the tomb empty. She did not even see the angels or hear their message. Her grief blinded her to everything around her. Jesus came to Mary and spoke her name. That was enough to turn her grief into joy. She fell at His feet. Jesus was alive.

“IT IS FINISHED”

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“IT IS FINISHED”

When He had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that He bowed His head and gave up His spirit. John 19:30.

Have you ever wondered what Jesus meant when He said, “It is finished”? I suppose many sermons have been preached on those three words, and many different ideas shared. Here are some of the ideas that come to mind right now.

The Old Testament is full of prophecies about the coming Messiah. Right after Adam and Eve had disobeyed God, He promised that someone would come who would bruise the head of Satan. He was talking about Jesus. When Jesus said, “It is finished,” did He mean that all the prophecies about His first coming had been fulfilled? No-one needed to look for another Messiah because He had shown the people that He really was the Son of God by fulfilling all the prophecies about Himself. 

Did He mean that His life of suffering as a human being on earth was over? Was He saying to God, “I have done everything you asked me to do and now it is over, all the terrible things that I have just gone through, the rejection, betrayal, humiliation, and the agony of being crucified”? Yes, all of that was finished and He could give up His life because He had completed His task.

What about His sacrifice as an offering to God for the sins of the world? All the things that went wrong when Adam chose to disobey God were now put right through His death on the cross. He paid for all our sins, He washed us clean from all our unrighteousness and He brought us back to God as His children. He brought those of us who believe in Him back to one another as brothers and sisters. Jesus completed all of that when He died.

His death also defeated the devil. Satan has always used lies to make us slaves to him when we believe what he says. He tries to make us believe that God does not love us and that he, Satan, is our real master. He tells us that sin isn’t bad, and that sin is fun. When we sin, we become his slaves and he torments us with guilt and shame. Jesus died to get rid of our sin and to show us that the devil is a liar. God loves us so much that He sent His son to die for us.

Bu there is something else that Jesus finished when He died. How do we know that God will answer our prayers? If we ask God to do what He has promised, because He sees everything from beginning to end, when Jesus said, “It is finished,” it means that God has already done what we have asked Him to do. So, instead of begging and pleading, we can say “Thank you” to Him for answering our prayers, even if we don’t have the answer yet because Jesus said, “It is finished.”

For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so, through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God. 2 Corinthians 1:20

RELATIONSHIP OR FELLOWSHIP?

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RELATIONSHIP OR FELLOWSHIP?

“We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ…This is the message we have heard from Him and declare to you: God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with Him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth…” 1 John 1:3, 5-6.

Something is bothering me which I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.

If we claim to be in a relationship with God, why do many of us still have unbiblical ideas about God; for example, why do some of us think that God is punishing us when things go wrong? Why are we so reluctant to pray?

When I read what the apostles had to say in the New Testament, I find something in there that isn’t spoken about very often – fellowship. The apostle John writes about fellowship like this:

Our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ…

But aren’t fellowship and relationship the same thing? I think we use the words interchangeably because we think they mean the same thing, but they actually don’t. Not if we read the story of the prodigal son correctly. The son had a relationship with his father. He was his son and, even though he was living it up in a far country, he did not stop being his son. But he was certainly not in fellowship with his father.

Even the son who stayed at home had no fellowship with his dad. He was angry with him and refused to go home to celebrate his brother’s return. He didn’t see things the way his father did, hence – no fellowship.

I think that there are too many “believers” who say they have a relationship with Jesus, but they are not in fellowship with Him. Fellowship is about spending time with Him so that one gets to know Him and learns to think like Him. Fellowship is about having things in common, about doing things together and about sharing our lives with Him. It’s about being connected to Him so that His life is in us and that we live His life through us.

If we have no fellowship with God, what’s the point? Fellowship means communicating with God so that our hearts become one. That’s Jesus’ passion, isn’t it?

 “…I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” John 17:21.

The purpose of fellowship with God is to show the world what God is really like. That’s what Jesus prayed before He went to the cross. He came to re-establish the relationship between us and the Father so that we can have fellowship with God to put Him on display to the world.

TWO VOICES

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TWO VOICES

In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the Desert of Judea and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near,” This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah: “A voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight paths for Him.’ Matthew 3:1-3.

When you read the newspaper or secular magazines, or watch TV or listen to the radio, it seems as though God is not important or does not even exist in the world today. Many people display their beauty or their talents through these media, but they do not acknowledge that their gifts or their good looks come from God. It is a silent voice that is telling the world that God is absent, irrelevant, or indifferent to the world He has created.

This is a lie that the devil is passing on to the people in the world. Satan is a liar, and he wants us to believe that he is in charge and that he controls the things that go on around us, and even our lives if we believe him. When we choose to believe him, we open the door for him to bring destruction and even premature death to us and our families.

For four hundred years the Jewish people had not heard a single word from God. There was no prophet to tell them what God was doing or what He was going to do. They must have thought that God had forgotten them or that He didn’t care about them any more. Many of them tried to please God by obeying all the laws in the Torah (the five books of Moses) as well as all the laws their religious leaders had made up to protect the law of Moses. Nothing they did made any difference. God was silent.

Then John the Baptist began to preach in the desert, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” What was he saying? “Change your mind about God. You have been thinking that He’s not here any more. He is here. He has always been here. He is still in charge of your lives. He wants you to believe in Him. He is coming Himself to be with you and show you how to live.”

This message must have shaken the people because they had been thinking the devil’s way and not God’s way for a long time. They began to listen to John and to be baptised by him as a way of saying, “We want to be a part of this new life you are telling us about.”

There are still two voices speaking today. There is the silent voice of the world that says, “God’s not here,” or “God doesn’t care, “or “God’s not interested in you.” There is also the voice of the Word of God that says, “God is here, God is good, and God is in charge.” We can choose which voice we want to hear, and which voice will lead us to death or to eternal life.

TWO LIONS

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TWO LIONS

Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He can open the scroll and its seven seals.” Revelation 5:5.

Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. 1 Peter 5:8.

The devil wants to be in charge. He thinks that he is in control of the world and all the people in the world. He believes that the world belongs to him and that he can frighten people into doing what he wants. But the devil is not the true lion. He is only a counterfeit lion. He makes a noise like a lion, but he has no power to do anything to people unless they give him that power by believing his lies.

The world is full of people who believe his lies, are afraid of him and worship him through many false religions that keep them in bondage to fear. The devil uses the powerful weapon of fear to keep people enslaved to him. He has a very clever way of making people believe in him. He disguises himself as a god in many different forms. Some gods are idols or images that are terrifying and evil. These gods demand sacrifices and need to be appeased by doing rituals or behaving in cruel or ugly ways. All these practices show us what kind of a god he is, causing people to do things that are disgusting, making them undignified and inhuman.

Jesus is the true Lion. He does not harm or destroy people even though He is called “the Lion of the tribe of Judah”. He is strong and powerful, but He used His power to destroy the devil’s work by allowing Satan to do the worst he could to Him, killing Him on a cross. Jesus rose from the dead to show us that Satan’s most powerful weapon, death, could not hold Him because he is the perfect Son of God. He rose from death and will never die again.

By overcoming the devil, Jesus showed us that He is the Lord of all creation. He is in charge, not Satan. His kingdom will rule forever, not the kingdom of darkness. Jesus rules by love, not hatred and destruction. He will restore all of creation to its perfection when He returns to the earth to rule over His kingdom forever. He loves us and has rescued us from the devil’s power.

Satan wants us to believe that he is in charge so that he can destroy humanity because he hates God, and people belong to God. There is only one lion that will have the final victory and it is not the lion who can only roar but do nothing else. Jesus, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, has triumphed. When He comes, He will destroy Satan forever and all who have followed him. Then He will reign forever and we will reign with Him.