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CHRIST IS THE REALITY

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CHRIST IS THE REALITY

Therefore, do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ (Col. 2: 16-17).

This is quite startling! Paul was a Jew and had been a fanatical stickler for the Law, and yet he made a radical statement which contradicted everything he had believed in and taught as a Pharisee and a rabbi.

Religious festivals, New Moon celebrations and Sabbaths were the backbone of Jewish life. They were the weekly, monthly and annual festivals which brought the family and the nation together regularly to cement their unity and to express their faith in God and their anticipation of their Messiah. Elaborate rituals were developed around each celebration which were full of symbolism and meaning for God’s people.

Yet Paul was saying that all of these celebrations and rituals were no longer necessary in their family and national lives? Was he not treading on thin ice by contradicting God’s commands? What right had he to tell God’s people that all of these were fulfilled and done away with in Christ?

As a disciple of Jesus, and an apostle appointed by God, Paul had authority to interpret and ‘bind’ Jesus’s yoke on His followers. The ritualistic celebration of special days was part of the old yoke of Judaism which Jesus fulfilled and abolished by His life, death and resurrection. As his understanding grew, Paul clearly recognised that these special days were prophetic of Messiah. To continue celebrating them was to say, in effect, that they were still anticipating the coming of their Messiah when He had already come.

In what way did Jesus fulfil these prophetic actions? This demands a much more detailed study of the meaning of the Sabbath and the annual festivals which God commanded them to celebrate in Leviticus 23 than we can do here.

However, reading Hebrews 3 and 4 will clear up the issue of the Sabbath, for a start. The command to rest from their weekly labour was prophetic of their perpetual rest of faith in Jesus which sets them and us free from the ‘labour’ of trying to be righteous by keeping God’s laws.

The seven annual feasts were prophetic of the major events of Jesus’s first coming and symbolise what will happen when He returns. He fulfilled the first four feasts in order: He was God’s Passover lamb, sacrificed to deliver us from bondage to sin; He fulfilled the Feast of Unleavened Bread by removing our sin from us just as the Israelites were commanded to remove all leaven from their homes; He fulfilled the Feast of Firstfruits by becoming the firstfruits of the resurrection; He fulfilled the Feast of Pentecost by sending the Holy Spirit to begin the ingathering of the harvest – the church.

There are three feasts yet to be fulfilled when Jesus comes again; the Feast of Trumpets – the announcement of His return; the Day of Atonement when sin will be judged and removed forever and Feast of Tabernacles when God will take up residence with His people, not in booths in the wilderness but in an eternal new heaven and new earth where all the effects of Adam’s disobedience will be removed forever.

This brings me to another important topic. If Jesus has fulfilled days, months and annual celebrations, and did away with food taboos, why do some streams in the church still make them obligatory and legalistically hold to them, especially the Sabbath and food taboos? Is this not a denial of what Jesus accomplished on the cross?

Paul said categorically, ‘Do not let anyone judge you . . .’ We cannot help it if people judge us but what we can help is being affected by their judgment. If someone judges us, it comes from their scruples, not ours.

Jesus gave us two sacraments to observe, not as prophetic of what He would do, but as a remembrance of what He has done; the Lord’s Supper is a remembrance of His sacrifice to seal the New Covenant; baptism is a celebration of His death, burial and resurrection which He accomplished for us to set us free from our slavery to sin and death.

Even festivals like Christmas and Easter, which have become nothing more than an opportunity for merchants to peddle their wares – their success in the commercial world is reckoned by their profit, and people to overindulge, are not rooted in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ but in paganism which has been ‘Christianised’ for convenience.

There is no such thing as ‘Put Christ back into Christmas’ which is the hopeless cry of many churches, because Jesus Christ was never in Christmas. How dare we involve Him in the frenzy, overspending, overindulgence, pandering to the demands of children and hypocrisy of the ‘silly season’? There is very little about Christmas or Easter that resembles the Spirit of Jesus. He has been tagged on to paganism to make it acceptable and to hold us in bondage to tradition, and believers the world over have been sucked into these traditions and are enraged by anyone who dares to challenge them,

Come on, church! Let’s get back to the Word of God and to the truth! When you see what goes on at Christmas in the name of Jesus, ask yourself honestly, ‘Is this why Jesus came?’ Does He really identify with Christmas? Even the name of the season, ‘Christmas’ is an insult to Him and trivialises what He did for us. Christ-mass implies the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. How can we wish people a merry sacrifice of Jesus?

If we are true worshippers of the Lord Jesus Christ, let us put Him and His life and death back into perspective. Simplify your life. Live in the wonder of His salvation which we remember in two simple observances, and in the daily reality of the rest He made possible for us by removing our need to satisfy God’s holy requirements.

He is, after all, everything we need!

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.

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE – PERSISTENT FAITH

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

PERSISTENT FAITH

“Jesus told them a story showing that it was necessary for them to pray constantly and never quit. He said, “There was once a judge in some city who never gave God a thought and cared nothing for people. A widow in that city kept after him. ‘My rights are being violated. Protect me.’ ….After this went on and on he said to himself,…’Because the widow won’t quit badgering me, I’d better do something and see that she gets justice – otherwise I am going to end up beaten black and blue by her pounding.’ 

“Then the Master said, ‘Do you hear what that judge, corrupt as he is, is saying? So what makes you think that God won’t step in and work justice for His chosen people, who continue to cry out for help? Won’t He stick up for them? I assure you, He will. He will not drag His feet. But how much of that kind of persistent faith will the Son of Man find on the earth when He comes?'” Luke 18:1-8.

Another story that reveals the character of God by contrast! A godless judge is moved to action by a shamelessly persistent ‘nobody’ widow to get her off his back. It was not her need or his compassion that drove him to action but her nagging that got him going.

We must not think for a moment that God is like that. He is, first and foremost, a Father. Does a father hold out against his child until the child’s persistent nagging gets him down? Not if he is a loving and caring father but, however loving and caring an earthly father he may be, he can never match the love of God for His children.

So why does God sometimes seem deaf or unmoved by the cries of His children? If I had the answer, I would be the first person in Christendom to solve this mystery! I can only make a few suggestions from the evidence of Scripture as to why God’s answers don’t come when we expect them.

God is painting His picture on a very big canvas. We often tend to think that we are the only people in the universe. When our need arises, God must step in and do something when we call. But He is working out His purposes, not only in our lives but also across communities, nations and the world.

He heard the cries of His slave people in Egypt but He had to prepare a Moses and a national and international situation that would be the right time to deliver His people from slavery and take them into the Promised Land. With a new dynasty in Egypt, He changed their status from pampered and protected people to slaves so that they would groan under their oppression and long for freedom. Then God was ready to take them out.

God gave sons to aged and childless couples like Abraham and Sarah, Manoah and his wife and Zachariah and Elizabeth to fulfil His greater purposes for His nation and for the eventual coming of His Messiah. God weaves the answers to our prayers into a much bigger picture in some mysterious way that is beyond our comprehension.

Jesus spoke of ‘persistent faith’. These two words are almost interchangeable. Real faith is confidence in God that does not give up, even when things seem really bad. Once again, Abraham is a good example. What father would deliberately take his own son, that one who was born to him in his old age, and raise a knife to kill him on a sacrificial altar? Only a man, whose confidence in God was unshakeable, would do that because his faith was tried and tested.

A statement I heard in a teaching long ago has helped me to understand why God’s delays seem like unanswered prayer: “God will not answer your prayers until He has put all the structures in place to maintain that answer,”

Now that makes a whole lot of sense. If He were to jump to attention every time we call, He would leave a string of disasters behind because every answer to prayer needs a supporting structure so that God’s work in our lives is not wasted.

Imagine if God had given Abraham his son when he first began to pray, or if God had delivered Israel when they first began to cry out. Abraham would not have grown a faith so strong that he trusted God for his son’s life. There would not have been a Moses, raised in the palace and honed in the desert to lead His people out of slavery.

So what’s the point? God is saying, “Will you trust me, even though nothing seems to be happening? Although you can’t see it yet, I am working and, if you believe, you will see your place in my great big picture.” 

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE – USE YOUR COMMON SENSE

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USE YOUR COMMON SENSE

“You don’t have to be a genius to understand these things. Just use your common sense, the kind you’d use if, while being taken to court, you decided to settle up with your accuser on the way, knowing that if the case went to the judge, you’d probably go to jail and pay every last penny of the fine. That’s the kind of decision I’m asking you to make.” Luke 12:57-59.

Who would be fool enough to risk going to jail just because you neglected to settle your issue with your accuser out of court? No-one wants a jail sentence as well as the criminal record that goes with it if it can be avoided.

Why is it, then, that people neglect to secure their eternal destiny before the final curtain comes down? How foolish is the idea that we can live as we like and then repent at the last minute before we die? Do we really think that we can trifle with God’s mercy like that? How much common sense do we need to secure our future before we are no longer able to do so?

Of course, Jesus was not dealing here with motive but with outcome. It would be bottom of the list to accept His offer of forgiveness and the hope of eternal life just to escape the punishment of hell but, unfortunately, the gospel is often presented as an escape route from hell nowadays. Bumper stickers on cars say it all – “Hell has no fire escape,” to quote just one of them.

This is not the most important reason to return to the most precious and wonderful of relationships that God intended for us – sonship. Imagine dutifully doing everything your earthly father required of you just to escape punishment! What a heartless and loveless experience that would be! Jesus calls us to return to Him because His passion is to take us to the Father who loves us with an everlasting love. “I am the way and the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me.” John14:6 (NIV).

Why did Jesus encourage His hearers to use their common sense? Was He aware that we are so self-centred that we will do anything to ensure our own comfort and convenience? Returning to the Father to save our own skin could be the beginning of a walk that would eventually take us deeper into a love relationship with Him.

Perhaps Jesus is not as concerned about how we get started as He is about getting on to the road so that we can learn to walk with Him on this journey toward freedom and wholeness. Perhaps the problem is not so much getting started as it is persuading us that He is the truth and that His way is the only way to experience the fullness of life that God has promised those who put their trust in Jesus.

How difficult it is for people to abandon their false belief system which holds them captive through fear, to embrace the Father’s love and mercy revealed in Jesus, His Son. They would rather hold onto something that has no foundation in fact and no historical or experiential proof of its reality than entrust themselves to one who predicted that He would be crucified and would rise again, and did it just as He said. Is the fanciful imagination of some human being that creates a religion based on human nature or man’s wisdom more reliable than the infallible word of the eternal God who came in person to tell us the truth? The proof that this life is real is God’s peace in the heart that has no human explanation.

Once again, you choose!

 

 

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE – JESUS MISUNDERSTOOD

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JESUS MISUNDERSTOOD

“Someone out of the crowd said, ‘Order my brother to give me a fair share of the family inheritance.’

He replied, ‘What makes you think it’s any of my business to be a judge or mediator for you?’ Luke 12:13, 14.

This is a typical misunderstanding about the way God works in human lives. Because we know He is all-powerful, we assume that His ‘power’ extends to pushing us around like puppets. But this is not true and Satan loves to use this lie to discredit God so that we have reason not to trust Him.

The greatest gift and the greatest snare God gave to man is his right to choose. God respects that gift far more than we humans do and He never violates it, even when we persistently choose against Him. This gift is a snare because it gives us the power to decide our own future and our own destiny. We are what we choose.

He placed us on the earth to rule over His creation as He vice-regent, under His authority and within the boundaries of His law. That rule does not include our ruling over another person’s right to choose. Of course that applies in our personal lives. God set governmental authority over us to maintain order in society. We also have the choice to obey civil law or not and to take the consequences of civil disobedience.

When man chose against God in the Garden of Eden, he transferred his allegiance from God to himself and unwittingly put himself under Satan’s influence. This opened a Pandora’s Box of unexpected and unpleasant consequences, including death, which God warned would happen. The outcome is the world we live in today. The mess we have made of the world is the outcome of our choices and God doesn’t just make them go away. We have to live with them because that’s what we keep choosing. Without consequences we never learn.

This man incorrectly assumed that Jesus had the right to decide for his brother. But Jesus quickly put him right. He said that, even if He were God, He still had no right to interfere with human choices. If the brother chose to be selfish and greedy, that was his choice and He would not step in and force him to act differently.

This is the point of our misunderstanding and accusation that God doesn’t care because He ‘let it happen’, a divorce, a fatal car accident, an unwanted pregnancy, a son or daughter gone astray or whatever tragedy has hit our lives. But who made those choices – God or us? So why blame God for what we did? Did He make us or anyone else who affected us do it? Of course not!

How, then, can we say that God is all-powerful? What’s the point of trusting Him if He can’t stop us from harming ourselves or others? This is exactly the point. The Apostle Paul said, ‘And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him.’ (Romans 8:28 NIV). God has the power to turn every bad thing that happens to us to our good if we love and trust Him.

Peter is a case in point. Jesus warned him that Satan had designs on him. Peter failed to heed His warning and fell headlong into Satan’s trap. He miserably denied Jesus when Jesus needed his support. But Jesus had assured him, ‘I have prayed for you that your faith will not fail.’ Was Peter destroyed? Not at all. Peter became a far more ‘real’ person because he had come face to face with his real self. All his blustering self-confidence was flattened in that moment.

When we finally ‘get’ this lesson, it will free us from trying to get other people to do what we want and it will release us from being suspicious about God because He doesn’t stop bad things from happening; He uses them to shape us for His glory. And that’s a much better deal!

THE BOOKOF ACTS – DEAD ACCURATE!

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CHAPTER 26

DEAD ACCURATE!

“Agrippa spoke directly to Paul: ‘Go ahead — tell us about yourself.’

“Paul took the stand and told his story: ‘I can’t think of anyone, King Agrippa, before whom I’d rather be answering all these Jewish accusations than you, knowing how well you are acquainted with Jewish ways and all our family quarrels.

“‘From the time of my youth, my life has been lived among my own people in Jerusalem. Practically every Jew in town who watched me grow up — and if they were willing to stick their necks out they would tell you in person — knows that I Iived as a strict Pharisee, the most demanding branch of our religion. It’s because I believed it and took it seriously, committed myself heart and soul to what God promised my ancestors — the identical hope, mind you, that that the twelve tribes have lived for night and day all these centuries — it’s because I held on to this tested and tried hope that I’m being called on the carpet by the Jews. They should be the one’s standing trial here, not me! For the life of me I can’t see why it’s a criminal offense to believe that God raises the dead.'” Acts 26:1-8 (The Message).

Paul was smart! Here was a golden opportunity to tell his story to the king himself and he grabbed it with both hands. Many years before, it had been prophesied that he would testify before kings. Did he recall those words at this moment when he stood in the dock before Agrippa? Did he recognise that this was not so much about defending himself against Jewish religious bigotry as it was about bearing witness to Jesus before an auspicious audience?

How attentively Agrippa, and Festus, must have listened to Paul’s story, hoping for a loophole or a slip of the tongue that they could latch onto for a legitimate case against him as the reason for sending him to Rome.

This moment had eternal significance for all who were present in the Great Hall that day. Before Paul stood before them, many of them were ignorant of the truth about Jesus, but once his story had been told, everyone, including the governor and the king, was faced with a choice. This is the real issue regarding the “good news”. Truth always demands a response. Every time Paul opened his mouth to inform his hearers about Jesus, they stood in the dock because even if they ignored the truth, it was a decision and made them guilty and culpable.

Jesus put it this way: “‘As for the person who hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge him. For I did not come to judge the world but to save it. There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day.'” John 12:47-48 (NIV).

Every lie about Jesus spoken by men in their rejection of Him will collapse like a house of cards. God has spoken! He has appointed Jesus to be the sovereign and supreme ruler over all His creation. Through His obedience, Jesus earned the right to be exalted to the highest place and given a name that is above every name, “Lord”; — the name Satan so desperately covets and deceives people into believing that it belongs to him!

All the exalted claims that humans may make in the name of religion will be exposed at the judgment seat of Christ, and only the truth will remain, for truth alone can never be destroyed because it the very essence of the living God. All the lofty claims in the name of a god, whatever that god or gods be called, will vanish like vapour in the brilliant light and searing heat of Jesus, the King of kings.

Little did these men with such lofty opinions of themselves know that this was the moment of their trial. In Paul’s testimony he was echoing the words of Moses: “This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.” Deuteronomy 30:19 (NIV).