Tag Archives: Jesus

Learning To Be A Son – Chapter Three – Jesus The Authentic Son

Book Reviews, , , ,

CHAPTER THREE

Jesus the Authentic Son

Although the Father chose sonship as His model for the relationship He desired between Himself and mankind, and sent the second person of the Trinity, whom He named Jesus (Yeshua), to be the human model for us, it was not cut and dried that Jesus would be the perfect Son. He had to learn to be a Son by going through all the experiences of humanity, from birth to death without failing in His submission and obedience to the Father. He had to be a perfect Son where Adam failed.

He had to be a Son in the Hebrew culture and religion into which He was born. To be a son in the Hebrew language and understanding was to “continue the house”. It was His role to continue God’s house through reproducing Himself in His disciples so that they in turn would reproduce Him in those they taught to be disciples.

Through thirty years of growing up in a Jewish home and three years of public ministry during which time He was under constant harassment from His arch enemy, the devil and those of His own people who opposed Him, Jesus never faltered. He passed every test; His love, loyalty and commitment to unity with the Father remained intake in the wilderness, during three years of scrutiny by His disciples, the common people and the religious leaders and received the Father’s wholehearted affirmation at every step along the way.

His final test was the cross. Gethsemane was the ultimate expression of His submission to the Father’s will. He passed the test and was resurrected by the power of the Holy Spirit to authenticate Him once and for all as the perfect Son and fully qualified to be the sinless lamb who was sacrificed to take away the sin of the world.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, has been released in paperback and digital format on www.amazon.com.

To order your 0wn copy of either book, contact

Toll free – 0800 990 914 (South Africa)

orders.africa@partridgepublishing.com

www.partridgepublishing.com/africa  or call

+44 20 314 3997 (outside South Africa)

ISBN: Hardcover – 978-1-4828-0891-9                                                                                     Softcover 978-1-4828-0890-2                                                                                                              eBook 978-1-4828-0889-6

Check out my Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

 

 

Learning To Be A Son – The Way To The Father’s Heart

Book Reviews, , ,

LEARNING TO BE A SON – THE WAY TO THE FATHER’S HEART

For several months I have advertised my debut book, “Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart”. I believe it’s time to pique your interest by giving you a glimpse into the content of the book.

First of all, I must tell you why I wrote it. A few years ago I was encouraged by a friend to spend a month studying one chapter of the Bible. I chose Luke’s Gospel and inched my way through chapter one with great enjoyment and profit; so I carried on into chapter two and three and eventually to the end of the book which probably took me a year or more, nearer two, I think.

At about the same time I was introduced to the teaching of a young American preacher by another friend which became a turning point in my understanding of the Bible. This young preacher had studied under a rabbi, a Messianic Jew who was also a Christian minister. What he had to say was life-changing for me as he explained many aspects of the Bible from the ancient Hebraic language and culture, which made sense to me as never before.

I also discovered a scholar of the ancient Hebrew language – Paleo Hebrew – on the internet and, through reading some of his work, I was faced with the truth that much of what I had understood and believed had no foundation in Scripture. Talk about having to change my mind! These events sent me on a quest to read and understand the Bible from the perspective of the ancient writers and not from my own western scientific and philosophical imposition on the Scriptures.

Now don’t get me wrong. I did not become a Hebrew scholar by any means, but I did lean heavily on the scholarship of others. As I pursued Luke’s story, and then later on the other three gospels, I began to realise how far the church has strayed from the simplicity of Jesus’ teaching and mission.

His primary purpose was to reveal the God of Israel who had been buried under all the baggage of Judaism. It was His passion to reveal to His people the one name by which they did not know God – the name “Father”. This was His all-encompassing mission which included His way of life, His teaching, His miracles, His death and His resurrection, all of which were a revelation of what God the Father is really like.

Why was it so important that His people understood that God was their Father? It was God’s intention to create a race of human beings to be His sons and daughters and who would relate to Him as a Father. Luke even called Adam “the son of God” in his genealogy of Jesus, linking the Messiah to the first man God created. Because sin alienated God’s children from Him, Jesus came to deal with sin so that the human race could be reconciled to their Father and be restored to fellowship with Him in His family.

Jesus lived on earth as the model of a perfect son, to qualify as our substitute when He paid the debt for our sin but also to show us how to be sons and daughters of God.  it is on the basis of sonship that we have access to the Father and that we are privileged to have a share in His nature, His resources, His kingdom, a home, an name and an inheritance.

Like the password we use to have access to many of the benefits of the internet, so it is the “password” – son or daughter of God – that gives us access to all the benefits of being a member of God’s family. Prayer is the privilege of sons. It is the way in which we gain access to the Father, and to His heart and mind as we live in the world to do His will and to extend His kingdom on earth.

My book explores reason why every human being whether he is aware of it or not, is a son of God; the way to access and enjoy our sonship; the nature of Jesus who is the model son, and the privileges and responsibilities of being sons and daughters of God. Our role as sons and daughters is to follow Jesus, as He called His disciples to do, so that we can learn to be imitators of our elder brother.

In the next few weeks we shall explore the contents of each chapter of the book in the hopes that your appetite will be so whetted that you will want to buy your own copy.

A Fruitless Fig Tree

Bible Study, , , ,

A FRUITLESS FIG TREE

Jesus entered Jerusalem and went into the temple courts. He looked around at everything, but since it was already late, He went to Bethany with the Twelve.

The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, He went to find out if it had any fruit. When He reached it, He found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then He said to the tree, ‘May no one ever eat fruit from you again.’ And His disciples heard Him say it. (Mark 11:11-14)

Really Jesus! Why were you so peeved about a fig tree that had no fruit because it was out of season? Were you having a bad hair day? Did you have the sulks?

If He did have the sulks, it would have been the first time in His life. No, Jesus did not have the sulks. He cashed in on a golden opportunity to give His disciples another valuable lesson. But the story is still incomplete. This was much more than simply another example of His power over nature. Read on!

In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots. Peter remembered and said to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, look! The fig true you cursed has withered!’ Have faith in God,’ Jesus answered. ‘Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, “Go, throw yourself into the sea,” and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours. And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.’ (Mark 11:20-25).

There are two valuable lessons hidden in this story. Firstly, fig trees had symbolic meaning for a Jew. God often referred to Israel as a “fig tree”. Where was the fig tree first mentioned in the Bible? Way back in Genesis, it was the first tree mentioned by name in the Garden of Eden. When Adam and Eve realised they were naked, they tried to cover themselves with fig leaves. It was man’s first attempt to deal with his sin in his own way. Was this why God called Israel a fig tree? Israel’s greatest sin against God was their idolatry. They did not trust God for His solution for sin. They worshipped and served false gods and lived fruitless lives as a result.

In a wordless lesson to His disciples, Jesus demonstrated to them how useless it was to attempt to approach God their own way. Just as fig leaves could not cover the sin in their hearts, so their self-effort was useless to deal with sin. Would the disciples have got the message? Yes, if they understood the imagery. The fig tree was full of leaves but no fruit. God’s people were full of “good works”, but they were useless to deal with sin. The real fruit was repentance – returning to the way of the Lord and coming under His authority. Only Jesus’s sacrifice could bring them back into fellowship with Him.

The second lesson was far more visible to them. Jesus was not showing off by speaking death to the fig tree. He was showing them by a clear visual aid how powerful faith was. Faith is expressed in ad declaration. Why did the tree die? Jesus spoke to it. He declared His intention. The tree must die in order to teach His disciples a life lesson they would never forget.

Paul used this same principle when he wrote to the Roman church about experiencing the reality of salvation.

If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved (Rom. 10:9).

Did you notice the sequence? Declare and believe.

Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, “Go, throw yourself into the sea,” and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him.

This does not mean, of course, that you can get God to do anything you want by simply speaking it out. Faith’s foundation is not what we want but what God has promised. His promises are a declaration of His intent, but we must activate them through faith.

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 Cor. 1:20).

We activate faith by our declaration – like turning on a light by flicking the switch.

Is Jesus tying these two ideas together? Our sin is covered, not by the “fig leaves” of self-righteousness, but by the forgiveness God offers us through Jesus. However, it must be received by the declaration of faith. From then on our walk with the Lord is a journey of faith, steadfastly speaking out God’s promises rather than our doubts and fears.

Let us not be like fruitless fig trees.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (copyright 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Check out my Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

 

 

The Cost Of Unbelief!

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THE COST OF UNBELIEF!

Jesus left there and went to His hometown, accompanied by His disciples. When the Sabbath came, He began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard Him were amazed. ‘Where did this man get these things?’ they asked. ‘What’s this wisdom that’s been given to Him? What are these remarkable miracles He is performing? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t His sisters here with us?’ And they took offense at Him.  

Jesus said to them, ‘A prophet is not without honour except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home.’ He could not do any miracles there, except lay His hands on He was amazed at their lack of faith. Then Jesus went around teaching from village to village (Mark. 6: 1-6).   

Two things amazed Jesus – great faith and no faith! Two remarkable miracles had just happened. Jairus’ daughter had been raised from the dead, and the woman with chronic bleed had been healed. Surely the news had got around. They didn’t need Facebook to publish what had happened!

Then Jesus went to Nazareth! Their homeboy had come home. Come Sabbath and He was in His place in the synagogue as usual. How many times had He been in that place as a child and a young boy growing up among them? It was nice to have Him home, but then they began to chat among themselves. ‘We know this guy,’ they muttered. ‘What’s it with Him? We know His parents. His brothers and sisters are right here in Nazareth. Who does He think He is? Where does He get all this stuff He’s telling us?’

They were non-plussed. Nothing about Jesus made sense to them. They could not shake Him loose from His small-town origins – so they thought. How could He be so different from the rest of His family? They were just ordinary folks like the rest of the people in the village, but this Jesus? They could not figure Him out. He was saying things and making claims by insinuation that were just too much for them to swallow.

How would you have reacted to a man who grew up in front of you, goes off for a while and then comes back, teaches in the synagogue like a professor and says things that, by implication, claim that He is God! Wouldn’t you think He was crazy? Wouldn’t you want to lock Him up before He did something really dangerous?

We would, except for one thing. The things they were puzzled about – His teaching, His wisdom, His remarkable miracles – were the very evidence that He was very different from the ordinary people in Nazareth. They judged Him and dismissed Him by His family; His mother was Mary, a local girl; His brothers and sisters all lived among them and they didn’t speak or act like He did. So He must be crazy!

They were faced with a decision – just as every other person who met Him was faced with a decision. They either believed what He said and did and accepted the evidence that He was the Son of God, or they ignored the evidence and wrote Him off, just as the people of Nazareth did.

Jesus spent time with His disciples – three and half years, to be exact – painstakingly teaching them and showing them, incident by incident, miracle by miracle and explanation by explanation, who He was. Their reaction, in the beginning, was like the reaction of His own people – amazement, puzzlement, and even fear. But slowly their truth began to dawn on them. He was no ordinary man. He was a man alright. They lived in such intimate connection with Him that they could not help but realise that He was human, but at the same time, He was much more than a man. What other man, even the most godly prophet in their history, came anywhere near Him in His really knew God. “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” declared Peter, their spokesman.

If only His own townsfolk had properly read the evidence and made an honest judgement instead of taking offence! They missed a never-to-be-repeated opportunity. No faith, no miracles, no change of heart, no new life.

What about you? Who do you say Jesus is? Faced with the evidence, you have to make a decision.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (copyright 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Check out my Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

 

 

He Did Not Listen!

Bible Study, , , ,

HE DID NOT LISTEN!

A man with leprosy came to Him and begged Him on his knees, ‘If you are willing, you can make me clean.’ Jesus was indignant. He reached out His hand and touched the man. ‘I am willing,’ He said, ‘Be clean!’ Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed. “See you don’t tell this to anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.’ Instead he went out and began to talk freely, spreading the news. As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly but stayed outside in lonely places. Yet the people still came to Him from everywhere (Mark 1: 40-45).

It began with a desperate man and ended with a frustrated Master. All because he did not listen!

A man with leprosy came to Jesus. Leprosy – or an unidentified skin disease which was classified as “leprosy” – was not only a devastating condition because of what it did to the individual physically, but also because of what it did to a person socially and spiritually. The sufferer was doomed to a life of isolation from the family and society and loathing from the rest of the unaffected population. He was “unclean” and therefore untouchable and an outcast.

Any disease or condition that made a person less than perfect, made the sufferer “unclean”, but leprosy was particularly abhorrent because of what it did to the patient. True leprosy attacks the nerve endings, causing the loss of feeling. No feeling, no pain – no pain meant any injury went unnoticed and soon turned into suppurating sores and eventual loss of extremities, leaving the person offensive and deformed.

For this man even to come anywhere near Jesus was risky. He was not permitted to approach people because his condition was infectious. How did he know that Jesus was his lifeline to wholeness and cleanness again? Perhaps he had heard, via the grapevine that there was a rabbi with extraordinary power to heal, moving around in Galilee. To his great delight, Jesus came to his community and he was not going to miss his opportunity.

Only one thing troubled him. He had no doubt that Jesus could heal, but would He want to heal him – a smelly, diseased, deformed outcast? He grabbed his opportunity when Jesus appeared. Falling to the ground before Him, he voiced his misgiving. “If you want to . . .” Jesus was indignant. What gave the man the idea that He would heal some conditions but not others? Did he think that leprosy was one of those sicknesses on His list of “not-to-heal” diseases?

Just to show the man that He was not fazed by what he looked like or smelt like or any of the taboos surrounding his condition, He not only spoke to the man, He also touched him. Jesus, how could you do that? Don’t you know that to touch an unclean person makes you unclean? Not Jesus! He was never contaminated by anyone’s “uncleanness”, not by disease, not by death. He made “unclean” people clean. The poor, sick leper, one minute a pitiful, stinking, offensive outcast, in an instant was transformed by a touch and a word. God’s kingdom had broken through this man’s plight and restored him to wholeness again.

‘Don’t tell anyone,’ Jesus commanded. But how on earth could he keep it a secret? People would recognise him and ask him what happened. Lepers don’t just suddenly shed their leprosy and its terrible consequences like taking off their clothes. But more than that, he just could not shut up. Wouldn’t you tell everyone, even those who didn’t want to listen, what had happened to you? After all, it’s not the kind of everyday thing to be cured of an incurable disease, now is it?

But telling his “good news” did exactly what Jesus did not want him to do. It tied His hands. He became an instant celebrity. People ran after Him for the wrong reasons. Instead of basking in the limelight, He had to retreat and hide, but they still sniffed Him out and swamped Him to fix their problems. He had not come to fix problems. He came to reveal the Father and to show them what life would be like if they returned to God and to obedience to His will.

Jesus was not then and is still not interested now in followers who can get what they want out of Him. He is calling people to follow Him who are so convinced of who He is that they put Him above everyone and everything else to join Him in His mission to make earth where they live a little bit of heaven. Every time we make life better for someone else through the leading and power of the Holy Spirit, we are doing what He prayed, “Your kingdom come; your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Don’t you want to be a part of that?

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (copyright 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

 

Available on www.amazon.com or www.kalahari.com in paperback, e-book or kindle format, or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

 

Check out my blogsite at www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com