Tag Archives: Word

Footpaths And Rocks

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FOOTPATHS AND ROCKS

Then Jesus said to them, ‘Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable? The farmer sows the word. Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. (Mark 4: 13-17).

Parables are stories about everyday things that bring understanding of deeper things. Have you ever asked the question, ‘Why do people respond to the gospel differently? Why do some receive it and believe while others remain untouched by the same message?’

Is Jesus saying that understanding this parable is basic to understanding all parables? Is all mankind divided into four groups – according to their response to God’s word? What if they never hear the word?

Is seems that this story, if it does not answer our question fully, at least acknowledges that people are different and their response to the word is different. The problem does not lie with the seed. God’s word is a seed. Like any good-quality seed, the power to grow and reproduce lies within the seed itself. The environment in which it is placed influences its capacity to reproduce.  It needs good soil, sunshine and water to kick start the growth process. People’s attitudes affect the productivity of the seed.

Today we look at two kinds of soil. The first is the “footpath” ground – hard and impenetrable. Any seed dropped on this ground lies exposed. It cannot penetrate the soil because the ground where it fell has been tramped hard by many pairs of feet. The ever-vigilant opportunist, Satan, will snatch away the seed as soon as it lands on the footpath so that it will never have an opportunity to send out a root and anchor itself in the ground.

What makes people so hardened to God’s word that they don’t even hear it? I suppose there are many reasons, one of them being the religious ones. Jesus met some of them on His travels through Israel – self-righteous people who refused to acknowledge any need. They thought they were right and defended their right to be right at the expense of the truth. Anything He said to them bounced off their self-righteousness and made their hearts even harder until they eventually murdered Him to silence His voice.

Then there were the ones who were hardened by greed. Judas Iscariot may be a good example. We don’t really know the motive behind his betrayal of Jesus but money certainly came into it until he had a light-bulb moment when the money no longer mattered. What about the rich young ruler? He also heard the message but his money held his heart so tightly that he forfeited the opportunity to follow Jesus for the love of his possessions.

Others are so hardened by responding to life’s troubles in the same way over and over again so that they are no longer able to think differently. They see themselves as victims; God is often the reason for their hardness. He gets the blame for “allowing” these things to “happen” and any other explanation just rolls off them.

Sin is a common reason for hardness of heart. “The pleasures of sin” the Bible calls it. Sin either captivates people’s hearts or there are held captive by it. When people are enslaved by sin, they are ensnared by hopelessness and despair. They are deaf to whatever God’s word has to say about their situation. It might work for others, they think, but not for me.

What about the rocky ground? There may be a bit of soil in between the stones but not enough to sustain the growth of the seed. It germinates readily enough but the heat of the sun soon causes the seedling to wither and die. Life happens – the good and the bad, and we cannot escape it. Some people’s lives are filled with the “rocks” of wrong thinking – belief systems that do not give way to the truth which the seed brings. “Trouble or persecution,” Jesus said, “because of the word, causes the seed to be choked and the seedling dies.”

How does this happen? Bad experiences in childhood, for example, give rise to false notions about ourselves and God. Anything that triggers those memories and the wrong thinking that comes out of them causes us to doubt or blame God. The result – we become offended with God and walk away.

The solution to “rocky” thinking is to renew our minds with the truth. God loves us with a furious, crazy, unconditional love. What happens is not His fault but He is always with us and will turn bad to good if we trust Him. If we don’t believe that through thick and thin, His word in us will never take root and anchor us in times of trouble.

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.

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So Simple, Really

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SO SIMPLE, REALLY

“Moses writes this about the righteousness that is by the law: ‘The person who does these things will live by them.’ But the righteousness that is by faith says: ‘Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ (that is, to bring Christ down) or ‘Who will descend into the deep?’ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? ‘The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,’ that is, message concerning faith that we proclaim: 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.” Romans 10:5-9.

Why do we humans make complicated what God has made so simple that even a child can understand?

Righteousness which is achieved by keeping God’s law, takes hard work, is uncertain, and in the end is unattainable. No matter how hard anyone tries, he has already blotted his copybook because he was born with a sinful nature. He is not a sinner because he sins; he sins because he is a sinner.

Where does that leave us? Judged, condemned and sentenced to death! But God threw us a lifeline – Jesus. And Paul says, “You don’t have to try to find Him in heaven or in the grave. All you have to do is speak His name – Jesus, Lord – because He is alive and as near to you as your breath.”

“For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess faith and are saved. As Scripture says, ‘Anyone who believes in Him will never be put to shame.’ For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile – the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on Him, for ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.'” Romans 10:10-13.

Can it be any simpler? For the Jew and for the Gentile it is exactly the same. It takes no more than the conviction of the heart that God raised Jesus from the dead and  confession of the mouth that God made Him “both Lord and Messiah” (Acts 2:36) to catapult us into the blessings and benefits of a new life in Christ Jesus.

God is not asking for an emotional “meltdown” before we can experience His salvation. The realisation that Jesus is alive and that He is the Son of God, is all that is needed to change the direction of our lives and secure our destiny as sons and daughters of God. Repentance may or may not be the result of an emotional storm, but it does require a change of mind. All God asks of us is that we understand what He has done for us, and receive it by believing it in our hearts and confessing it with our mouths.

In that one simple act of faith and confession, God sets us on the path to recovery; He begins the process of restoring us to who He designed us to be in the beginning, sons and daughters created in His image to be one with him; and what He made us to do – to manage the earth in partnership with Him as His vice-regents.

He is doing what the Hebrews called tekkun olam – fixing everything that was broken, to the horizon i.e., into eternity. What a hope! And He does this through His representative -Jesus. This is salvation – it is not a free ticket to heaven when we die; that is only one of the benefits and the end result of the process which begins when we believe and receive Jesus as Lord. Salvation is the journey to wholeness, back to where the human race began before sin intruded and interrupted God’s plan.

God has already determined, from before the foundation of the world, what we shall be and what we shall do as members of His forever family. He has an inheritance for us – our allotted possession which is ours by right as His sons and daughters. What is our inheritance and how do we possess it? According to Peter, our inheritance is His divine nature which we possess through His very great and precious promises.

“His divine power had given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness. Through these He has given us His very great and precious promises so that, through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.” 2 Peter 1:3, 4.

And all this by simply believing and receiving Jesus Christ as Lord!

Acknowledgement

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

 

Set Apart By The Truth

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SET APART BY THE TRUTH 

“‘Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.

“‘As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.

“‘For them I sanctify myself, that they, too, may be truly sanctified.'” John 17.17-19 NIV

“Sanctify”? The dictionary meaning of sanctify is to set apart for its proper purpose. If something is not sanctified, it is abused, i.e., not used for the purpose for which it was intended; for example, if a paring knife is used for any other purpose than peeling fruit or vegetables, it is being abused.

God created human beings to be holy, to be separated to Him to bring glory to Him that is to reflect Him in His nature and character. We do this by living our ordinary human lives for Him.

“…Everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” Isaiah 43:7 NIV.

What has separated us from God and caused us to be abused — i.e., not fulfilling the purpose for which God created us? Through our ancient ancestor, Adam, we declared independence from God, set up our own standards of right and wrong and overthrew His right to govern us in righteousness and truth. We became subject to the devil’s deception, followed his lies and set ourselves on a path of self-destruction.

There is only one way back from this suicidal rebellion — to change our way of thinking (repent) and return to the truth about God and ourselves. God made this possible by sending Jesus to remove the barrier of sin that separated us from Him, cancelling our debt by paying it Himself, and pushing the “reset to factory default” button by reconciling us to Himself and restoring His image in us.

When we follow His prescription for sanctification — returning to the purpose for which He created us, we embark on a twofold process which begins when we start again through repentance from our old rebellious life and faith in Jesus to forgive our sin and enable us to begin a new life of trust and obedience to Him. This process is both unlearning and re-learning — called repentance; not necessarily an emotional melt-down but rather the recognition that what we used to think about God and ourselves was wrong, lies spawned by the devil to degrade God and us and to take us away from God’s love. Lies must be replaced by the truth which God has set out in His Word for us.

There is only one antidote to lies — truth. Before we came to recognise that our thoughts about God were lies, we misjudged Him, were suspicious of Him and even outright hated Him. Why? The Bible says, “While we were God’s enemies…” Romans 5:10a NIV. Enemies? Isn’t that a rather strong word? Yes, but it’s true. Why were we God’s enemies? Because we were on the side of His arch enemy, the devil. We listened to him, followed him and believed his lies about God and hated God for no reason.

How are we sanctified? When we believe and receive the truth that God loved the world so much that He gave His Son as a sacrifice to pay the world’s debt so that we can be reconciled to Him, we took the first step towards returning to God to fulfil His purpose for creating us. We began a journey that lasts a life-time, replacing lies with truth, one lie at a time, one thought at a time by learning from God’s Word what He thinks and plans for us.

Jesus’ high priestly prayer was the expression of His deepest desires for His people before He went to the cross, and the reason for His willingness to be sacrificed for us. In the entire prayer He made only three requests for His disciples, both those whom the Father had given Him and those who would believe through them, and they summarise the purpose and outcome of His death:

1. That the character of God would be restored in them to immunise them against the devil’s deception (“Protect them by the power of your name”),

2. That the Word of God would be so deeply embedded in their minds that they would begin the journey of revealing God’s glory in the way they think and live (“Sanctify them by the truth”) and

3. That God’s image of oneness would be restored in them so that the world would believe that the Father had sent Him (“That all of them may be one. Father, just as you are in me and I am in you”).

This is the Saviour’s prayer for you and me. Will it be answered?

Both Lord And Christ

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BOTH LORD AND CHRIST 

“From this time many of His disciples turned back and no longer followed Him.’You do not want to leave too, do you?’ Jesus asked the Twelve. Simon Peter answered, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.’ Then Jesus replied, ‘Have I not chosen you, the Twelve? Yet one of you is a devil!’ (He meant Judas Iscariot who, though one of the Twelve, was later to betray Him).” John 6:66-71 (NIV)

Good old Peter! For once he got it right!

For all their blundering, misunderstandings, prejudices and misperceptions, of one thing the Twelve had become convinced, that Jesus was the Son of God. They did not fully understand all the implications and they certainly clung tenaciously to the hope that He would deliver them from Rome, but they never abandoned their conviction that He was someone far more than human.

John was careful to identify and isolate Judas Iscariot as the traitor, but that did not mean that Judas was not also convinced of His identity. Why he betrayed Jesus is not absolutely clear. It could have been purely for money or it could have been his way of trying to force Jesus to do what he thought He would do — move supernaturally against the Romans during the Passover when Jerusalem was filled with Jews from in and outside Israel.

John made a clear distinction between two groups of disciples — the ones who were following Him for opportunistic reasons and the Twelve whom He had chosen. The first group was obvious fascinated by and drawn to Him because of the possibilities of what He could do for them. He healed them; He got rid of tormenting demons and He even fed them supernaturally from very little. If they could have a king like that, their troubles would be over.

The problem with this kind of faith is that it places false expectations on Jesus which He is under no obligation to fulfil. It is unfortunate that He is often presented to people as the solution to all their problems. Prayer and faith are a way to get what we want. When He does not meet to our expectations and capitulate to our demands, we either do what we can to appease Him, as though He were some pagan idol, or we become disillusioned and walk away like these fickle “disciples” did.

 

The Twelve followed Jesus because they were chosen. He selected ordinary men from many walks of life; fishermen, tax collectors, political activists, nobodies who were not already fashioned by the religious system to have fixed ideas about God and His Messiah.

When He began to speak about things they could not understand; about suffering and dying, which made no sense to them, they were sufficiently convinced about His identity to wait it out. Their expectations might have differed, even from one another’s but they were prepared to give Him a hearing because they had bonded with Him as a person even if they did not understand everything He said.

Peter voiced the thoughts of the group, and they agreed with him by sticking with Jesus when the others left. It must have heartened Jesus to know that He had a loyal group, even if it was only His intimate group of disciples whom He had personally invited to be His followers. They were not part of the “anyone” and the “whoever”. He called them by name and that meant a lot to them.

The fact that He lost only Judas from the Twelve is also surprising, given the harshness of His words. They may have trembled with fear, abandoned Him and run for cover, hidden in the Upper Room and lost all hope when He died, but that was only part of the process. Resurrection day changed all that. His words, falling on deaf ears then, took on explosive meaning when the implications burst on their understanding.

No doubt, they must have remembered Peter’s expression of their collective faith: ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.’ How glad they must have been to have stuck with Him then! Their faith had paid off. It was not about what He could do for them. It was all about who He was — both Lord and Christ to whom every knee shall bow.

Have you bowed to Him?

He Is The Word

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HE IS THE WORD 

“Aware that His disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, ‘Does this  offend you? Then what if you see the Son of Man ascend to where He was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you — they are full of the Spirit and life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe.’ For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray Him. He went on to say, ‘This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him.'” John 6:60-65 (NIV).

Sobering words!

If there were among His disciples those who were offended by the talk about His death and the effect it would have on them, how would they swallow the reality of His return to the Father. They were already grumbling because He insisted that He had come from the Father but, to go back to where He had come from would be just too much for them. Little did they know that they would be witnesses of that very event!

Jesus brought these men to the heart of what He was all about — His Word. He and His Word are inseparable. John introduced Him to his readers as the Word who was with God in the beginning and who was God. According to Hebrew understanding, God’s Word is a manifestation of Himself in another form. Jesus was God in another form — in the flesh and the Word.

It is difficult for the human mind to understand the intimacy between the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit and the Word. What the Father speaks and what the Son speaks are the perfect expression of who they are. The Spirit equally participates in and energizes the Word to speak and effect what they say.

Faith in God’s Word is equal to faith in God. To believe what Jesus said is to stake one’s life on the one who said it. It was John’s purpose to present all the evidence necessary to authenticate Jesus’ claim to be the Son of God so that His readers would have confidence in His Word and therefore in Him.

How difficult it is for human beings to take the words of Jesus seriously! We are conditioned by the fickleness of our nature, to mistrust one another’s words because of experience. The word of human beings has proved so untrustworthy that we have to record on paper, sign and have witnessed every agreement for it to be believed.

“When God made His promise to Abraham, since there was no one greater for Him to swear by, He swore by Himself, saying, ‘I will surely bless you and give you many descendants.’ And so, after waiting patiently, Abraham received what was promised.” Hebrews 6:13, 14 (NIV).

Nowadays, not even an oath is trustworthy. It has to be recorded with ink on paper and signed for it to be binding.

“Men swear by someone greater than themselves, and the oath confirms what is said and puts an end to all argument. Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of His purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, He confirmed it with an oath. God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged.” Hebrews 6:15-18 (NIV).

If Jesus is God and His word is the essence of who He is, then His promise is infallible and unbreakable — “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.”

What anguish, what sorrow, what frustration went into the words He spoke. His constant refrain was, ‘You will not believe.’ Judas walked with Him for more than three years and he chose not to believe and walked away. What will it take for us who have all the hindsight we need to be convinced that He is who He said He is, to believe and to respond to what He had promised?

Do you believe?