Tag Archives: Jesus

Battling The Loser

Bible Study, , ,

BATTLING THE LOSER

“Then some Jews from Antioch and Iconium caught up with them and turned the fickle crowd against them. They beat Paul unconscious, dragged him outside the town and left him for dead. But as the disciples gathered around him, he came to and got up. He went back into town and the next day left with Barnabas for Derbe.” Acts 14:19-20 (The Message).

A close shave for Paul, but all in a day’s work! It seems that this interlude did not put him off. He had a calling and a commission which he would not renege on, no matter what it cost him. Put yourself in his shoes. How much more would you have stomached from your fellow-Jews before you packed up and went home? Not Paul! There was a determination in his spirit that refused to be beaten down by the enemy.

Why was Paul able to write the letters he did, which have been the strength and support of millions of people down through the generations? He was drawing from the wealth of his own experience, hammered out in real-life situations, to build up the believers who had been won through many a hard-fought battle.

Who was the enemy? Not people, as he had come to realise, because people are deceived into believing what is not true if their minds are not fortified by the truth. These Jews who hounded him from city to city were just like their leaders back in Jerusalem who perceived that Jesus was a blasphemer and not the Son of God as He claimed to be; so they killed Him.

They refused to believe that God was kind enough to send His Son to rescue mankind from the results of their rebellion. Their religion was a self-help affair that put their God under obligation to them. It was a hard pill to swallow to change their thinking to believe that they were helpless to do anything about their plight and to put their trust in someone who had been executed for blasphemy against God and treason against Rome.

Paul knew what spiritual warfare was. He had been in the conflict from birth, on the wrong side, believing that his way was right and trying to exterminate the enemy by killing those who opposed him. He had to learn that the real enemy was not people but the one who was deceiving and using people to do his dirty work – the devil and his demons.

He changed allegiance when he was confronted by the living Jesus on the Damascus road. Just as fanatical as he was for his religion as a young Pharisee, so committed was he to the Jesus he had once persecuted. Paul had to learn that he touched Jesus every time he touched one of Jesus’ people. He also learned that every time a person touched him, it was the enemy of Jesus behind that person, actively opposing the work of Jesus in him.

“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Ephesians 6:12 (NIV).

Where do these forces most powerfully operate? In the minds and hearts of people, of course! Satan, the counterfeiter, knows that, to get people to act for him, he must control them through what they believe. Influence them to believe lies and they will do exactly what he wants — sow conflict and chaos wherever they are.

Through the Word and the Holy Spirit, God is constantly offering us the knowledge of the truth. When we believe the truth that He is here, He is good and He is in charge, we have no need to fight people. All we need to do is to stand firm on the truth of who God is and what He has said. No need to “pull down strongholds” except in our own minds, to identify “spirits”, or to do anything to defeat the devil. Jesus did that on the cross.

We have one instruction which takes care of the devil and his lies – “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” James 4:7 (NIV). Paul had no need to oppose or fear the people who had attacked him. They were not the enemy. He could quite safely go back into town because he had overcome the enemy within, the hatred and revenge that would have destroyed his peace and put him at enmity with the Spirit of God in him.

David Is Dead

Christian Life, , , ,

DAVID IS DEAD

“‘Dear friends, let me be completely frank with you. Our ancestor David is dead and buried – his tomb is in plain sight today. But being also a prophet and knowing that God had solemnly sworn that a descendant of his would rule his kingdom, seeing far ahead, he talked of the resurrection of the Messiah — ‘no trip to Hades, no stench of death.’ This Jesus God raised up. And every one of us here is a witness to it. Then, raised to the heights at the right hand of God and receiving the promise of the Father, He poured out the Spirit He had just received. That is what you see and hear.'” Acts 2:29-36 (The Message).

Someone once said, “Life is lived forward but understood backwards.” The same can be said about prophecy. Until it has been fulfilled, it is obscure and does not make sense. Once it has been fulfilled, it all comes together in an “o-o-oh” moment!

Peter must have been in his element when he preached his first sermon. All the Scriptures that he had memorised as a child came flooding into his mind through the revelation of truth from the Holy Spirit. What was once a mystery was now clear and it came pouring from his mouth in a torrent of declaration and, I guess, worship.

His message didn’t take hours to prepare, writing copious sermon notes and practising in front of a mirror or preaching to the dog! He stood up, opened his mouth and out it came with a fire that burned deep within him. It was graphic, logical and convicting, saturated in the Word and revealing the truth which cut the hearts of his hearers.

Imagine what would happen in our world if those who proclaim the Word of God were energised by the Holy Spirit in the same way as Peter was. His sermon followed ten days of prayer and waiting on God.

Just as the life of the believer is a partnership between us and God, so also is preaching. Sometimes there is so much effort put into the technicalities of a sermon that the result is a carefully structured and crafted work of art which had no heart and no fire.

Peter got his message on his knees. It touched his own heart first before it could touch any other. It flowed from his inner being through his mouth like a river and caught the hearers up with the mighty power of conviction.

Step by step, Scripture by Scripture, he built the throne, not David’s throne which the people were longing for God to re-establish, but a far greater throne, the throne of Jesus, David’s Son, to whom all the prophecies pointed and in whom they were fulfilled.

David was the greatest of Israel’s kings and the model against which every other king was measured. But, like every other mortal, he died and the proof of his death was still with them. David had spoken of a greater king, his descendent, who would not be a victim of the power of death. He died, yes, but death had no grip on Him because He no penalty of His own to pay.

Imagine the energy Peter put into his triumphant declaration, ‘This Jesus God raised up’! It echoed around the building, stunning the people into silence and stabbing their hearts with shock and terror. “We killed Him. He’s alive again. What will He do to us now?” But Peter was not finished with them yet…

Everything in the Scriptures

Christian Life, , ,

EVERYTHING IN THE SCRIPTURES

“Then He said to them, ‘So thick-headed! So slow-hearted! Why can’t you simply believe all that the prophets said? Don’t you see that these things had to happen, that the Messiah had to suffer and only then enter into His glory?’ Then He started at the beginning, with the Books of Moses, and went on through all the Prophets, pointing out everything in the Scriptures that referred to Him.” Luke 24:25-27 (The Message).

What a Bible study! No one ever has, and no one ever will explain the Scriptures as Jesus did to those two that day! All the learned Jewish rabbis from ancient times could not have understood the Word of God as He did because He was both author and subject of the book.

Perhaps the message of these verses is the same for us today as it was for them then – we are thick-headed and slow-hearted because of our ignorance of the Scriptures. God has not only given us His Word but He has given us His Spirit to explain and interpret His Word. And yet we have so many teachings and practices that have “evolved” from the Bible that are not true to the Bible because, unlike the noble Bereans who “examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true,” – Acts 17:11b – NIV), we have not gone back to the Bible to verify the things we believe and practise.

Everything about Himself was there for them to discover if they had only taken the trouble to search. In fact, had they listened to Him with faith, they would have understood because He was the living Word right there with them for three years. John testified that “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have enough room for all the books that would be written.” John 21:25 (NIV). That is quite a statement!

Firstly, Jesus gave one simple instruction to His disciples out of which flows everything else He taught and demonstrated. He said to them, and to us, “Follow me.” And yet, if one considers the variety of superstructures that have been built on Him, the picture of true discipleship has been horribly distorted. All the rituals and paraphernalia that have been piled on Him have buried Him and replaced Him with nothing but another man-made religion.

Where do robes, incense, chanting, processions, hierarchy, priesthood and laity, rituals and every other belief and practice added to the simplicity of His call, fit into His purpose for coming? Do these things help us to live in harmony together as brothers and sisters in the family of God so that we can be witnesses to Him in the world?

Jesus calls us into close fellowship with Him with no trappings and requirements other than to love and obey Him. Out of that flows our fellowship with each other. “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.” 1 John 1:3 (NIV). Where does all this other stuff fit into that?

Secondly, we have built a world-wide prayer movement called “spiritual warfare” that in fact functions as though the death of Jesus were inadequate to deal with the devil. We are taught to “pull down”, “take authority over”, “break through”, “cast out”, “identify principalities”, “bind and loose” and even do “prayer walks” with no regard to the truth that Jesus accomplished the total defeat of Satan at the cross.

“When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive. He forgave us all our sins, having cancelled the written code with its regulations which were against us and that stood opposed to us; He took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” Colossians 2:13-15 (NIV).

If we have doubts about the efficacy of Jesus’ death, then we must add all these other things to try to subdue the devil. There is no evidence in the book of Acts that the Early Church was taught to do any of these things. By sharing their lives and their resources with one another and preaching Jesus as Lord, they turned the world upside down and brought down powerful religions like Diana-worship and eventually even the worship of Caesar.

The Bible sounds a serious warning to those who add anything to the sufficiency of the person and work of Jesus. “But even if we, or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned.” Galatians 1:8 (NIV).

How important it was for those disciples then, and for us today, to know that Jesus had to suffer, to die and to be raised from the dead so that we can be living witnesses of who He is. Our transformed lives show the world that Jesus, and not the devil, is Lord, and expose his deception.

Sweat Like Blood

Christian Life, , , ,

SWEAT LIKE BLOOD

“Leaving there, He went, as He often did, to Mount Olives. The disciples followed Him. When they arrived at the place, He said, ‘Pray that you don’t give in to temptation.’

“He pulled away from them about a stone’s throw, knelt down and prayed, ‘Father, remove this cup from me. But please, not what I want. What do you want?’ At once an angel from heaven was at His side, strengthening Him. He prayed all the harder. Sweat, wrung from Him like drops of blood, poured off His face.” Luke 22:39-44 (The Message).

This is a very different Jesus from the one we have been accompanying through the Gospel of Luke. He was a man of many emotions, as we would expect from someone who was the perfect representative of mankind. Unlike many men, He did not ignore, deny or hide His emotions. He felt compassion, He rejoiced, He wept, He laughed, He grieved, He got angry and He got frustrated. Luke describes Him as a very human Jesus but also, always, the true Son of God.

This is the first time He showed His emotion regarding His approaching death. The dark shadow of the cross fell across Him in the olive grove. “Gethsemane” means “press” reflecting the process by which the precious oil was extracted from the olives that grew there. He was feeling the press of His impending sacrifice.

There were many “last times” for Him in the next few hours. The Passover meal He had just shared with His disciples was the last time He would eat with them. These moments would be the last time He would fellowship with His Father in the solitude of the garden and in freedom.

The overwhelming weight of what was looming was crushing Him like the press that crushed the olives. Only the pure Son of God knew what it meant to become sin for us. Only He felt the terrifying prospect of separation from His Father with whom He had lived in intimate and unbroken fellowship as a human being for thirty three years, of being cut off, abandoned and left alone in His time of greatest need.

Unless He was able to come to terms with, and fully embrace what lay ahead in the next few hours, the battle would be lost before it even began. His entire human life was consumed by this one purpose – to do the Father’s will. “Then I said, ‘Here I am, I have come — it is written about me in the scroll. I desire to do your will, O my God. Your law is within my heart.'” Psalm 40:7-8 (NIV). Now was the time to put His purpose to the ultimate test,

There is nothing wrong with the process by which He came to submission to the Father. There was no rebellion in His heart, not reluctance to submit, only the horror of His impending ordeal. He was to embrace His Father’s will by submitting to the worst that human beings could do to Him at the instigation of His arch enemy, the devil, without resistance, either physical or emotional.

This was a struggle so severe that His blood began to flow even before His skin was pierced by the whip, the thorns, the nails or the spear. Our minds cannot conceive of the suffering it meant, not only for Him but for the Father who loved and delighted in His Son beyond anything we can imagine.

In that moment, in the full understanding of what lay ahead, Jesus embraced the Father’s will once again, and the deal was sealed. From that time on, He was secure in the strength of His submission and the knowledge that He would overcome — and He did. No amount of torture or torment could remove from Him the peace that surrender had secured. He was the only one, in spite of being the prisoner and the one in trial, in absolute control of the situation.

“When they hurled their insults at Him, He did not retaliate; when He suffered, He made not 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…” 1 Peter 2:23-24a (NIV).

This is a great lesson for us to learn. Jesus won the battle before it began by embracing the Father’s will. He was not caught out or taken unawares. Unlike Him, we do not know what lies up ahead but, as we live in daily submission to God, we will be ready to face our own ordeals without resistance if we entrust ourselves to Him who judges justly.

“So then, those who suffer according to God’s will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good.” 1 Peter 4:19 (NIV).

Misplaced Expectations

Christian Life, , , ,

MISPLACED EXPECTATIONS!

“The women, who had been companions of Jesus from Galilee, followed along. They saw the tomb where Jesus’ body had been placed. Then they went back to prepare burial spices and perfumes. They rested quietly on the Sabbath as commanded

“At the crack of dawn on Sunday, the women came to the tomb carrying the burial spices they had prepared. They found the entrance stone rolled back from the tomb, so they walked in. But once inside, they couldn’t find the body of the Master Jesus.” Luke 23:55-56; 24:1-3 (The Message).

Everything these loyal women did after Jesus had died was to fulfil a certain expectation. Their beloved Master had perished at the hands of the Jewish leaders and the Roman authorities. All they could do for Him now was to give Him a decent burial. Nothing was spared in their preparation for that final act of love. They had little time before the beginning of the Sabbath at sundown. Working together, they pooled their resources and then waited for the dawn of the first day of the new week.

Although they had a mission to fulfil, they put it in its proper perspective. Their first obligation was to submit to a Higher Authority. Sabbath was a special day every week, symbolic of their covenantal relationship with Yahweh, and they rested as was a custom so deeply ingrained in them that they would no more ignore it than ignore all the other requirements of the Torah.

Even their obedience had a certain expectation in it. It was prophetic of another rest of which their Master had spoken, the rest of release from the tedious details of their teaching which was given to them for the purpose of introducing them into the rest of His completed work.

If they grasped why they had to do so many things to fulfil their Law, they would understand that these were pictures of Jesus’ death as redemption from sin. Jesus had invited them into His yoke of freedom from the “labour’ of trying to satisfy God’s requirements in their own strength.

All their “laws” and cultural practices were the foundation to understand the mighty redemptive work of Jesus which was unfolding before their eyes. Redemption from slavery in Egypt was a picture of His daring rescue of mankind from slavery to sin. The entire rigmarole of sacrifices pictured His once-for-all offering of Himself on the cross as the perfect sacrifice of atonement and the first-fruits of the resurrection.

They were, at that moment, right in the middle of that drama. They had not yet grasped where it was leading. They went to the tomb expecting to find His body where it was placed and to carry out their final loving ministry to all that was left of Him that they could honour. They expected to be the givers and the corpse of the Jesus the taker.

Their first shock was to find the tomb open. Had they not witnessed with their own eyes the mighty effort it took to seal that tomb with a massive stone? In their grief and passion to do something for Jesus, they had not taken into account the problem that faced them when they reached the tomb. A few women’s combined strength would never dislodge the stone.

Even when they found the stone rolled out of the way, they still expected His body to be where Joseph had left it. They did not consider why the stone would have been moved – for one purpose only, for His body to be removed and taken elsewhere, perhaps for reburial at an unknown site, or perhaps to hide in order to offset any false claims that He had risen. Whoever had moved the body would be able to produce it as evidence to disprove that claim.

Whatever their expectations might have been that early Sunday morning, one was too unlikely to consider, that He was not there because He was alive and had walked out of the tomb! In their shock and grief at His loss, they forgot His promise. The reality of His death crowded out the only possibility that befitted the one they had believed was the Son of God.

Because our expectations are often so earth-bound because of present reality that we ignore God’s promises, like the women, we miss the indescribable joy of expecting Jesus to show up in the middle of our crises because He is no longer in the tomb but alive and with us as He promised.