Tag Archives: women

Dehumanised

Bible Study, , , ,

DEHUMANISED

“Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.” Romans 1:26-27.

What a sordid picture! What people call love, God calls lust. What’s the difference?

Although lust can have the neutral meaning of desire, in the New Testament, according to its context it is most often used to mean a craving or “strong inordinate desire for sexual relations.” (www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/lust/).

But lust does not only refer to the action. It begins in the mind with the desire. According to Jesus, “For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come – sexual immorality…All these evils come from inside and defile a person.” Mark 7:21.

James expanded on Jesus’ words. “…Each person is tempted when he is dragged away by his own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” James 1:14, 15.

The problem with sinful behaviour, and especially that which destroys another person, is that it dehumanises the ones who engage in it. Human beings were created to be like God, to have His nature and His capacity to be in perfect harmony with Himself and with humans. Anything that detracts from that robs those involved of their likeness to God and their true humanity. This is what the Bible calls “corruption” – moral perversion or depravity; putrefaction and decay.

Roman society in Paul’s day was rotten with sexual promiscuity and homosexuality. We should not be surprised because it was also full of idolatry. As Paul traversed the Roman Empire with the good news of Jesus, he encountered idol worship and the effects of it everywhere. Just as he said in his letter, when people refuse to acknowledge God, they have to invent gods for themselves who are to their liking because they accommodate human wickedness. Then their devotees can freely pursue their lusts with their gods’ approval because the gods are just like them.

Every false religion is a form of idolatry because human beings have expelled God from their thinking and set themselves up as the authority, creating gods in their own image. They become their own gods and then replicate themselves in their gods.

Sex is a powerful force in nature and in human beings. In the natural world, creatures need to reproduce to continue the species. They will fight to the death for the right to procreate. But God created humans to reflect Him as the highest order of creation. Contrary to the evolutionist teaching, which is just another attempt to oust God from His place as God and His right to rule His creation, humans have not evolved from animals. Human behaviour is sometimes so gross that even animal behaviour puts humans to shame. At least most of them use sex to do what they are supposed to do, to reproduce the next generation.

Humans, on the other hand, instead of using sex to express and foster unity between a husband and wife in a faithful monogamous union as God intended, as well as to give God godly offspring (Malachi 2:15), deliberately fracture themselves by using sex to satisfy lust in defiance of God’s purpose. When people connect sexually with a multiplicity of men and women, both homosexually and heterosexually with no regard to the spiritual union they create, they unwittingly fragment themselves.

“Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? “The two shall become one flesh.” …Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against his own body.” 1 Corinthians 6:16, 18.

Is it any wonder that such people become desperately unhappy because they have left bits of themselves all over and don’t even know who they are?

And all that because they refuse to acknowledge God and honour Him as God. Sadly, in the name of freedom, the only freedom they have is to destroy themselves, and God allows them to do it because it’s their choice.

Acknowledgement

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

 

 

God’s Girls!

Bible Study, , ,

GOD’S GIRLS!

 “He continued according to plan, travelling to town after town, village after village, preaching God’s kingdom, spreading the Message. The Twelve were with Him. There were also some women in their company who had been healed of various afflictions and illnesses: Mary, the one called Magdalene, from whom seven devils had gone out; Joanna, wife of Chuza, Herod’s manager; and Susanna — along with many others who used their considerable means to provide for the company.” Luke 8:1-3 (The Message).

Luke gives us an interesting little interlude that is not included in the other gospels — some titbits of information about Jesus’ travelling companions, a group of women who accompanied Him and His disciples. This must have been quite unusual. Jewish women were normally in the background and would certainly not have travelled around the country with a roving rabbi.

Luke’s inclusion of this bit of information about the women is in keeping with the theme of his gospel. He had a special focus on the humanity of Jesus, on His dependence on the Holy Spirit, on His prayer life and on the way He treated people, and especially women.

Unlike Roman society — and Theophilus, the recipient of Luke’s story, was a Roman — where women enjoyed elevated positions, women were nothing in Jewish society. Luke takes time to point out to Theophilus that Jesus had a different attitude to women from other Jewish men. He treated them with dignity and respect as equal to men rather than as subordinates or possessions.

These women who followed Jesus all had very personal reasons for loving Him. Mary Magdalene, for example, had been demon possessed until Jesus rescued her, probably from a life of prostitution, and gave her back her dignity. From that moment on she became a loyal disciple, following Him and ministering to Him and His disciples wherever they went.

She was there at the cross, unashamedly to let him know that she cared, even though she could do nothing for Him at that moment. She was at the tomb in the pre-dawn darkness to anoint His body. She was the first one to see Him alive and to tell the glad news to His disciples.

Why did Jesus choose Mary to be the first person to whom He revealed Himself? Was it to show His disciples and the world that women should be given the honour due to them as the crown of His creation?

There has been much speculation and even stories written about the relationship between Jesus and Mary. Was there a romantic connection which the Bible carefully kept hidden? I believe it is safe to say that we can trust the Bible to reveal the truth about something as important as this.

Right from Genesis, the writers of the books of the Bible, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, were brutally honest about their characters. Nothing was put under wraps, not even the lapses into sin of its most revered characters, Moses and David. The gospel writers would certainly not have ignored or neglected to write about any romantic connection Mary Magdalene had with Jesus.

They loved Him and served Him out of gratitude for who He was and for His gracious treatment of them as people of worth who deserved the dignity and respect given to them by their Creator. That’s who Jesus is.

No matter who you are, you can be sure that the Master sees you as He saw those women, beautiful, treasured and worthy of honour because He created you in His image to worship Him and to be one with Him.

 

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.