Tag Archives: Jerusalem

Selective Hearing

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SELECTIVE HEARING

They were on their way up to Jerusalem, with Jesus leading the way, and the disciples were astonished, while those who followed were afraid. Again He took the Twelve aside and told them what was to happen to Him.

‘We are going up to Jerusalem,’ He said, ‘and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn Him to death and will hand Him over to the Gentiles who will mock Him and spit on Him, flog Him and kill Him. Three days later He will rise.’ (Mark 10: 32-34).

How many times had Jesus told the disciples that He was going to suffer and die in Jerusalem? Read his words again. Could He have been more explicit and given them more detail than this? Step by step He told them what would happen to Him in Jerusalem. Surely they would have remembered at least some of His words when it happened.

What was it in His words that either cancelled out what He told them or, alternatively, sparked faith that would not have been fazed by His death? “Three days later He will rise again.’ Every time He spoke of His death, He told them that He would rise again. Since the two events were tied together, they refused to listen to Him because rising again was outside their experience.

O yes, they were with Jesus when He raised a few people from the dead. They had seen it but His words still didn’t penetrate their reluctant brains. They could not process the idea that their Master would be ripped away from them by violent death. Why would anyone want to kill Him? People from all over followed Him. Even then, He had to take them aside from the crowd to remind them of His words to them. Surely their very presence would protect Him from anyone who had evil intent.

They knew that Jesus was not afraid to tell people the truth, even if it offended them, and offend the religious leaders He did. Sometimes they worried that He had gone too far. He seemed to provoke them deliberately, accusing them of being blind guides and whited sepulchres. That kind of talk would not win their favour. Why did He do it? Why didn’t He just leave them alone? These men were powerful and influential. They could turn the Roman authorities against Him in a heartbeat.

What offended the religious authorities even more was His claim to be the Son of God. They just could not stomach those words because to them it was blasphemy. How could a mere man claim to be God? Of course, any other man claiming to be God would have been written off as crazy, but Jesus gave no evidence of being crazy. In fact, just the opposite. Even His mother and brothers thought He had lost it but Jesus ignored them and refused to go home with them so that they could keep an eye on Him.

What was the difference between His claim and any other claim that did not even warrant consideration? Evidence! Jesus kept insisting, ‘Look at the evidence.’ There were at least three witnesses to authenticate His claim – John the Baptist, the Father and His works. For anyone to be proved guilty of a charge, there had to be two or three witnesses. Jesus produced three witnesses to prove that He was guilty of being the Son of God.

But the authorities still dismissed His claim and so did the disciples even though Peter had confessed his conviction, on behalf of the Twelve, that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God. But, as far as Jesus was concerned, Peter might not have even bothered to make that confession because he had no idea what it meant.

The Holy Scriptures presented two streams of thought regarding the Messiah; He would be both a king and a Suffering Servant. Since the Suffering Servant did not fit their expectation of what Messiah would do, they dismissed it and refused to listen to His instruction about His impending death.

It was only after His resurrection that it began to make sense to them, and especially when the Holy Spirit fell on them at Pentecost and did what Jesus said He would do – lead them into all truth.

How often we are just like the disciples – uncomprehending and unbelieving until the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to the truth. It’s not just that we can’t understand. We actually don’t want to understand or believe because the truth is too painful to receive. But there is always “resurrection”, and understanding and faith come when we allow the Holy Spirit to interpret life, not according to our expectations but according to the truth.

The presence of Jesus in our pain makes all the difference because only He can make sense of it all. Even if nothing changes, He is there – Emmanuel – and that’s all that really matters.

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

 

 

 

 

 

Dead Wrong, Devil

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DEAD WRONG, DEVIL

Then He began to explain to them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that He must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him. But when Jesus turned and looked at His disciples, He rebuked Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan!’ He said. ‘You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns’. (Mark 8: 31-33).

Strange, isn’t it, how a person can be so right and yet so dead wrong at the same time! Peter got it right when he confessed Jesus to be the Messiah but, in the very next breath he cancelled his confession with his foolish rebuke.

It was important for the disciples to understand the full extent of who and what the Messiah was. The Old Testament presented two streams of prophecy. Messiah would be both king and servant. What the disciples recognised in Jesus was His power and authority; they had no problem believing that He could overthrow the Roman occupation and set up His rule over David’s realm. They believed it and they wanted to believe it because they ached for the time when the Romans would be thrown out of their land once and for all.

They were so consumed by this expectation that anything Jesus said to the contrary went in one ear and out the other. After all, the very announcement that kicked off His public ministry had to do with the coming of God’s kingdom. They were commissioned to preach it and to demonstrate it by doing the same miracles He did.

What was this talk about being killed and rising again? The other stream in the Messianic prophecies that He would also be the Ebed Yahweh – the Servant of Yahweh – an office which included suffering, they dismissed without giving it a thought. They wanted and needed a powerful ruler to get rid of Rome – bottom line.

They did not understand that God’s agenda was very different from theirs. They were looking for a restoration of the greatness of David’s reign and a return to the comfort of their temporal circumstances. God was about dealing with a far more serious and sinister issue, sin and the alienation from Himself that it had caused. His kingdom was not about geographical boundaries and earthly kings but about restoring the righteousness in their hearts and lives by transforming them from within.

Why did Jesus call Peter Satan? Actually, He didn’t. He addressed the real but unwitting source of Peter’s rebuke. Just as Peter was open to the influence of God and accurately identified Jesus as the Messiah by divine inspiration, so he was equally open to the devil’s lies. He revealed his erroneous expectation of who Messiah really was by opening his mouth and blurting out his rebuke.

Jesus addressed the devil as though he were there in the flesh. “This time, Peter, it’s not God speaking through you but the devil and what he said is nothing but a distractor and I will have none of it.” At that moment, Peter was acting in the flesh. He had no understanding of God’s mind. It would take time and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit for Peter to learn to view life from God’s perspective.

Jesus tried hard to prepare His disciples for His passion so that they would not be thrown into disarray when it happened. But so strong was their desire and their expectation that Messiah would deal, not with sin but with Rome that all His efforts fell on deaf ears. Even His strong rebuke did not help to get His message across. He told them the same thing time and again but when the time came, and He was arrested, tried and nailed to a cross, they still didn’t get it.

It seems that Judas even tried to force His hand by betraying Him to the Jewish authorities, which proved all the more that Rome was not on His agenda. Rather than showing His hand as Judas expected and acting against Rome, He submitted to the cross and He rose from the dead, just as He said He would. Only then and finally, after Pentecost, did the penny drop and everything He said fall into place.

We are really no different, aren’t we? Our expectations of Jesus centre so much on our creature comforts that we turn away in disappointment and disillusionment when Jesus does not meet our expectations. God is less interested in our comfort than our character. It is sin that He deals with, not circumstances. His promise is that He will transform us into the image of His Son, so matter what it takes. In the end, we decide how tough it will be by our response to His training.

As one mom said to her son when he resisted going to bed, “You can go easy or you can go hard, but you are going to bed anyway!”

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

 

No Loose Cannon

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NO LOOSE CANNONS

“Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem, this time with Barnabas. I took Titus along also. I went in response to a revelation and, meeting privately with those esteemed as leaders, I presented to them the gospel that I preach among the Gentiles. I wanted to be sure that I was not running and had not been running my race in vain…” Galatians 2:1, 2.

In Paul’s autobiographical sketch, he was insistent that at no time did he get permission from the leaders of the Jerusalem church to preach to the Gentiles, and he also did not learn what to preach from them. He was God-ordained, God-instructed and God-commissioned to go to the Gentiles.

There was another reason why he was sent by revelation to Jerusalem. It was important that the leaders of the early church were in complete harmony with one another in what they taught and what they did, especially as there were many false teachers who were undermining the unity of the church. There were to be no loose cannons acting independently of the Body of Christ, inventing doctrines of their own and setting up splinter groups wherever they went.

Throughout his life as an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, Paul kept in touch with the church in Jerusalem and the church in Syrian Antioch, the two main centres of Christianity at the time. He and Barnabas functioned as leaders at Antioch for years before they were commissioned by the Holy Spirit through the leaders of the church there to go to the rest of the empire with the gospel (Acts 13).

Paul’s brief visit to Jerusalem after his years in Arabia was just an introduction of the erstwhile persecutor to Peter to reassure him of Paul’s authenticity in case Peter thought that he was an infiltrator with another agenda.

“…As for those who were held in high esteem – whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not show favouritism – they added nothing to my message. On the contrary, they recognised that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been to the circumcised. For God, who was at work in Peter as an apostle to the circumcised, was also at work in me as an apostle to the Gentiles.” Galatians 2:6-8

Paul’s visit to Jerusalem after his second missionary journey (Acts 18:22), achieved his purpose. The Jerusalem church leaders could have no doubts about him when they listened to his story. And what a story! He didn’t major on his achievements as much as on the things he suffered for the sake of the gospel; beatings, imprisonment and even stoning at Lystra and being left for dead. No fake apostle would ever endure experiences like that for a lie.

He would also have told them of the miracles God did for him and his companions; like Peter, a miraculous release from jail in Philippi through an earthquake, and the even more miraculous conversion of the jailor and his entire family; deliverance of a demon-possessed girl which landed him and Silas in prison; his survival of the stoning episode; his escape from the murderous intentions of fanatical Jews time and again, all told one story – God was with him and working though him.

He would also have related to them the leading of the Holy Spirit – how he and Barnabas were chosen and commissioned by the church leaders in Antioch after a season of prayer and fasting; how he was blocked for going further into Asia Minor and redirected, through a dream, to move westwards into Macedonia. How he was directed towards the Gentiles because of the hostile attitude of his fellow Jews.

Paul had to learn to read his circumstances because this was mostly the way that the Spirit led him. There were times when the Lord Himself encouraged and reassured him by a personal visit when he was at the end of his tether. Throughout all his experiences, good and bad, Paul was learning how to walk with the Lord and to be led by the Spirit.

There could be no doubt in the minds of Peter and his fellow leaders that Paul was a genuine apostle; that the message he preached was the same message they preached and that he was a God-ordained apostle to the Gentiles. They were united in heart and gladly endorsed Paul’s ministry.

“James, Cephas and John, those esteemed as pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognised the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcised. All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along.” Galatians 2:9, 10.

How much better it would have been for the witness of the church, had leaders down the ages followed the example of the apostles and worked hard to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There were and are too many loose cannons with agendas of their own, building their own kingdoms with teachings they invented instead of doing what Jesus commanded – “Follow me!”

Acknowledgement

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.

 

Persecutor Turned Preacher

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PERSECUTOR TURNED PREACHER

“Then, after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days. I saw none of the other apostles – only James, the Lord’s brother. I assure you before God that what I am writing is no lie. Then I went to Syria and Cilicia. I was personally unknown to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. They only heard the report: ‘The man who formerly persecuted the church is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.’ And they praised God because of me.” Galatians 1:18-24.

Paul’s story takes some beating! How could this happen? “The man who formerly persecuted the church is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.” It doesn’t happen every day. It’s like Hitler turning Jewish! And yet it did.

If ever there was a reason to believe that Paul had the right to defend the sufficiency of Jesus’ death for salvation, it was his own story. He had discovered for himself that all his efforts to satisfy the requirements of the law to gain access to God’s favour, were useless and futile. He spelled it out clearly in his letter to the Roman church. The harder he tried to change himself on the inside, the more he was sucked into his sinful ways. Trying to obey the law could not break the power of sin within him.

Paul knew what it was like to struggle with guilt, but he also knew the reality of God’s peace. Out of his own personal experience he could write:

“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Romans 5:1

“…and the peace of God which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds through Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:7.

This peace was unknown to him until he came face to face with Jesus and received by faith and without lifting a finger, the righteousness he had tried so hard to earn. How could he ever go back to the old way and how could he sit by and say nothing when others were trying to persuade Gentiles to buy into a life of futile self-effort? He would fight the false teaching with every breath and with every ounce of energy in his body.

Paul was a man with a brilliant mind. He could think and argue like an astute lawyer. He was trained as a rabbi and a Pharisee under the best religious teachers of his day. Just as he once contended for Judaism, now he contended for the faith which he clearly understood from the Scriptures he knew so well. From the moment he met Jesus, everything he had learned as a rabbi fell into place. He did not invent a new faith. He preached with conviction what was already proclaimed in the Old Testament and fulfilled in Jesus, the Messiah.

He did not need Peter or the other disciples to teach him the truth. His three years in Arabia alone with the Holy Spirit, entrenched God’s Word which he had memorised from childhood and now understood. The truth became so deeply embedded in his spirit that he became God’s replacement for Judas, the betrayer. He paid a brief visit to Jerusalem to introduce himself to Peter and to reassure him that he, Paul, was no longer a persecutor but a preacher of the one he tried to destroy. He met none of the other apostles, only Jesus’ half-brother, James.

Then he returned to Damascus and back home to Cilicia. Paul did not record here that he became a danger to the church in Jerusalem because of his fiery preaching, so they shipped him back home to Tarsus (Acts 9:28-30). The church had rest for a while after he left until the next wave of persecution hit them when God opened the door of faith to the Gentiles.

The outcome of Paul’s encounter with Jesus and his years of training in Arabia was a convinced and loyal apostle of Jesus and colleague of the men whom Jesus commissioned to take His message to the ends of the earth. After Peter’s initial visibility in the first few chapters of Acts, Paul took centre stage, and the rest of the book is his story. He became the champion of Jesus, not only in the work he did across the empire but, even more, in the legacy he left the church down the ages through his letters.

What an encouragement to know that, if God could change a vicious persecutor, He can change anyone!

Acknowledgement

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.

 

Nailed!

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NAILED! 

“He told her, ‘Go, call your husband and come back.’ ‘I have no husband,’ she replied. Jesus said to her, ‘You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.’

‘Sir,’ the woman said, ‘I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.'” John 4:16-20 (NIV).

O-oh! This conversation is getting a bit uncomfortable. How did Jesus know that?

If this woman was to admit her thirst and come clean, she had to open up the cupboard and get all the skeletons out. Jesus didn’t pussyfoot around. He could read her like a book. Why did He expose her, just like that?

First of all, they were alone at the well. There was no-one around to eavesdrop on her private life. Jesus would never have exposed her in front of His disciples. It was not His intention to shame or embarrass her but to open up the lines of communication between them so that He could speak to her heart.

Secondly, as long as she kept secrets, there would be a wall between them. He knew and she knew but, until she knew that He knew, she would not hear Him or receive what He was offering her. He told her that He knew exactly what was going on, not to accuse but to show her that her lifestyle was a symptom of her real thirst. She thought she needed a man to love her but what she really need was to reconnect with the God who loved her unconditionally for who she was.

She did what every person does when faced with having to own up to what they are doing — she became religious. ‘This is scary. You must be a prophet. We Samaritans go to this church, but you Jews insist that your church is the right one. So which one is the right one?’ A convenient “red herring” to take the heat off her!

But, whether she liked it or not, her interest was aroused. This was not just a casual conversation — small talk at the well while she was getting water; this man was getting very personal and she had to change direction before He embarrassed her even more. Let’s talk religion. That’s safe ground, so she thought.

 

But her question got Jesus even more fired up. This exchange was going somewhere and He was nudging it on. “‘Woman,’ Jesus replied, ‘believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is of the Jews.”’  John 4: 21, 22 (NIV).

‘It’s not about where you worship, but who you worship. It’s not about this church or that denomination. It’s about worshipping the Father.’ That must have startled her. Her religion was a hotchpotch of religions, man-made and futile because it was not the truth. Her problem began with a false idea about God. She had no foundation upon which to build her life and so she was doing what Adam did — making her own rules which didn’t work and left her heart empty and thirsty.

Jesus gently took her back to basics. ‘Who are you worshipping? There is only one God and He is your Father, the source of your life. All other gods are products of someone’s imagination, and worthless substitutes for the true God.’

She had to learn that God was neither an intrusion nor an add-on to her life but the source and foundation of everything that would provide peace and wholeness. Her life was in tatters because she had no Father to give her identity and stability, no one to worship and honour, to follow and obey and to be the authority in her life. Like a captain-less ship she was trying to navigate life without knowing who she was, where she was going and who was in charge. And it wasn’t working for her.

Only the Creator knows how His creation should function. Without Him, nothing works. You have to get reconnected. Have you?