Tag Archives: mercy

The Sandwich Man

Bible Study, , , ,

THE SANDWICH MAN

 “‘Doom, Chorazin! Doom, Bethsaida! If Tyre and Sidon had been given half the chances given you, they’d have been on their knees long ago, repenting and crying for mercy. Tyre and Sidon will have it easy on Judgment Day, compared to you.

‘And you, Capernaum! Do you think you’re about to be promoted to heaven? Think again. You’re on a mudslide to hell!

‘The one who listens to you, listens to me. The one who rejects you, rejects me. And rejecting me is the same as rejecting God, who sent me.'” Luke 10:13-16 (The Message).

It’s funny how people shrug off warnings like these as the raving of a religious fanatic!

Some 500 odd years before Jesus spoke these words, the prophet Ezekiel warned that the Phoenician city of Tyre, built on an island in the Mediterranean Sea, would disappear into the sea because of its wickedness. Alexander the Great did the unthinkable. When Tyre, thinking it was unconquerable, resisted his armies, he built a causeway from the mainland to the island and took the city, reducing it to rubble.

Although Tyre and Sidon were pagan cities, they had many links with Israel in the Old Testament era. Jesus visited the area and healed a persistent woman’s daughter who was plagued by demons. These cities did not have the opportunities to repent as did the towns of Chorazin and Bethsaida did who were visited by the very Son of God Himself.

Jesus was not sandwich man, wearing a board that said, “Prepare to meet thy doom!” He expressed His concern over their hardness of heart. Had Tyre and Sidon received the same opportunity as they had been given, they would have grabbed it and turned away from their wickedness. How tough it would be for the people of Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum which Jesus frequented, healing the sick and preaching the good news of God’s kingdom on many occasions, when they stood in the blinding light of God’s holiness to realise that they has wasted their opportunity to receive Jesus and live God’s way!

Even as you read these words, there is a reaction in your own heart as there is in mine. We can either read them as history or literature, or we can take seriously what the people of these towns did not do. Why did Jesus spend time with them? He had a passionate desire to reintroduce them to the God they had either forgotten or missed in the rubble of their religion. He wanted them to know and love His Father and return to a life of submission to Him in order to experience real life.

We are so conditioned by the persistent bombardment of the entertainment world to be spectators that we are inclined to take nothing seriously. We can watch the most evil and perverse programmes and feel nothing. Every form of wickedness is portrayed on the screen to entertain us so that we become so hardened by crime, violence, and sexual perversion that we are no longer horrified and outraged by them. Even so-called Christian television has become a form of spiritual entertainment.

Jesus’ words of warning should alert us to the reality of the most pernicious disease that afflicts people both inside and outside of the church — no fear of God! What does that mean? Put in very simplistic terms, we have the same attitude as the cities and towns Jesus warned — we don’t take Him seriously.

Let’s make a resolve today, if we consider ourselves to be His disciples, that we will read what Jesus said as though He really meant it and respond with faith and obedience to His Word. What difference would it make, what changes would happen to our lives, to our homes, to our work places and to our communities if we did that?

If we really love Him, we cannot afford not to.

Glimpses Of The Great God: Day Four

Devotion, , ,

DAY FOUR

 “Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.”

And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. 

I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy,

and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.

But,” He said, “You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”

 Exodus 33:18-20

“Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed His name, the Lord. 

And as He passed in front of Moses, proclaiming,

“The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God,

slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness,

maintaining love to thousands,

and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. 

Yet He does not leave the guilty unpunished;

He punishes the children and their children

for the sin of the fathers

to the third and fourth generation.”

Exodus 34:5-7 

Notice in this revelation of God’s nature, both His mercy and His justice. God showed Moses that His glory is evident, not so much in what He looks like but in whom He is.  Never forget that God’s mercy is the weightiest part of His character.  Jesus illustrated, both in the stories He told and in the way He treated people, that God is a merciful God.  Francis Frangipane, in his book, “Mercy Triumphs Over Judgment”, put it like this, “God is not looking for reasons to judge us but for opportunities to show mercy.”  Allow God’s mercy to soak into your soul as you read through and reflect on this Scripture.

 

 

 

 

 

Jesus Is Jesus!

Bible Study, , ,

JESUS IS JESUS!

“When He finished speaking to the people, He entered Capernaum. A Roman captain there had a servant who was on his deathbed. He prized him highly and didn’t want to lose him. When he heard Jesus was back, he sent leaders from the Jewish community asking Him to come and heal his servant. They came to Jesus and urged Him to do it, saying, ‘He deserves this. He loves our people. He even built our meeting place.'” Luke 7:1-5 (The Message).

Quite a guy, this Roman captain! A most unusual man! Not like the run-of-the-mill Roman soldiers, it seems. He had a heart for people, unlike most of the others who were ruthless in the course of their duty. He cared about his servant and was distraught when the man lay dying.

He was also sympathetic towards Jesus. He knew about Him; he may have even been on the outskirts of the crowd, listening to Him while he was on duty doing crowd control. Was he perhaps one of those who were among the soldiers who had heard John the Baptist and had been baptised by him in the River Jordan? We will never know.

There was no doctor and no medicine to cure his servant and he stood by, helplessly watching as his servant began to slip away from him. Then he heard that Jesus was on His way to Capernaum. So desperate was he to get help that he sent some of the Jewish leaders to Jesus, hoping against hope that Jesus would not spurn a Roman’s cry for help.

He could not go himself because he was not sure of the reception he would receive. Surely Jesus would respond if the most respected Jews in his community would speak for him? He hoped against hope that this Jew would look past his people’s treatment of His fellow Jews and have mercy on him. He had no doubt about His ability to heal. That was not the issue. But would He help a Roman?

The Jewish leaders, whoever they were, Pharisees, elders of the town, men in charge of the synagogue…who knows?…were ready to plead his case with Jesus. Evidently they held the captain in high esteem because he wasn’t like the other Romans. He had a heart for them. He used his money to build a meeting place for them. He may have even stood outside on a Sabbath, listening to the reading of the Torah and feeling a tug of response in his heart to the God of whom they read.

The Jews were quite willing to act as messengers. They were keen to help the man who had helped them. They went to Jesus with the story of a warm-hearted man who needed help and was worthy of Jesus’ intervention because of all his good deeds.

How did that affect Jesus? Had we been in His place, we might have been impressed by the man’s credentials. The very fact that these Jewish leaders were willing to act as messengers was quite unusual. They came because they were friends, not because they were obeying orders. They were with him in his trouble.

Would Jesus respond to their plea because of whom the man was or because of whom He was? Would the fact that he was a Roman influence Him? Would He, a Jew, go into the home of a Gentile? Would He help him because it was a group of Jews who acted as mediators?

Luke does not comment on the reason for Jesus’ response. However, if we fast-forward the story, when Jesus was hanging on the cross, suspended on nails that Roman soldiers had driven into His wrists and feet, we hear words from His cracked lips that encompass not only the ones who were responsible for His being there, but also the ones who had carried out the orders. ‘Father, forgive them…!’

Now we understand that the commendation of the Jews was quite unnecessary. Had this Roman captain been a typical soldier, cruel and uncaring, Jesus would have still responded to his request. Why? Because Jesus is Jesus!

You can also have absolute confidence in His mercy!

Doomsday to the Traitor

Christian Life, , ,

DOOMSDAY TO THE TRAITOR

“‘Do you realise that the hand of the one who is betraying me is at this moment on the table? It’s true that the Son of Man is going down a path already marked out — no surprises there. But for the one who turns Him in, turns traitor to the Son of Man, this is doomsday.’

“They immediately became suspicious of each other and began quizzing one another, wondering who might be about to do this.” Luke 22:21-23 (The Message).

What a disconcerting experience this must have been for Judas! His “secret” plot was right out in the open. Jesus was actually advertising it to the whole group without disclosing the traitor’s identity. Why did He do this?

Was He wanting Judas to know that He was fully aware of what he was up to, and giving him an opportunity to back out of his plan, own up and save himself from the terrible judgment that awaited a traitor? The very fact that He had eaten a meal with him, treating him as the honoured guest, suggests that Jesus was offering Judas a way out and full forgiveness and restoration if he was willing to change his mind.

Was He indicating to Judas, ‘I know what you are up to and, boy, am I going to get you back!’? Would Jesus ever do a thing like that? No, that was not His yoke. His yoke was to show mercy and compassion and He was extending mercy to His enemy right up to the moment when Judas finished his dastardly deed with a kiss.

It was certainly not intended to make the disciples suspicious of one another. But, true to human nature, that is exactly how they reacted. Instead of taking stock of their own intentions, they became suspicious of one another which ended in their quizzing one another instead of searching their own hearts.

Jesus had spent more than three years with this bunch of men. He had handpicked them after a night in prayer with the Father. He had lived in intimate fellowship with them, day and night, teaching and modelling a true son of God, and giving them every opportunity to become like Him.

He had spent precious hours with them in the upper room, sharing a meal with all its rich symbolism, establishing a new covenant which He would sign with His own blood, pleading with them to model His love for them as the hallmark of His disciples and praying for their protection from the evil one and their unity with Him and with one another.

How much fruit had all His efforts borne? Seemingly nothing at this point! A lesser man would have given up, walked away and gone to his death a broken and disillusioned loser. But not Jesus! Even at this eleventh-hour apparent failure, Jesus demonstrated His absolute confidence in the success of His mission and the power of God to transform losers into winners and a messed up, self-centred, bickering bunch of men into passionately loyal, single-minded apostles who would turn the world upside down.

Jesus had painstakingly sown the seed of God’s word. Although it was lying dormant then, given the circumstances that were about to unfold in the next few days, that seed would begin to germinate and grow. These same men, except Judas, would be transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit into fearless witnesses of the resurrection, living and working together in unity and taking on the greatest power of their day, Caesar and the Roman Empire.

Once again, because Jesus looked beyond the present circumstances to the predetermined outcome of His suffering, He could go with confidence into the fire, knowing that He would emerge the victor, not those who were scheming to eliminate Him. Instead of planning and carrying out their extermination plot, Judas and his accomplices were playing right into God’s hands! But they would still have to take responsibility and pay the price.

Complacent or Repentant

Christian Life, , , ,

COMPLACENT OR REPENTANT

“He told His next story to those who were complacently pleased with themselves over their moral performance and looked down their noses at the common people. ‘Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax man. The Pharisee posed and prayed like this: ‘O God, I thank you that I am not like other people — robbers, crooks, adulterers or, heaven forbid, like this tax man. I fast twice a week and tithe on all my income.’

“Meanwhile, the tax man, slumped in the shadows, face in his hands, not daring to look up, said, ‘God, give mercy. Forgive me, a sinner,’

“Jesus commented, ‘This tax man, not the other, went home made right with God. If you walk around with your nose in the air, you’re going to end up on your face, but if you’re content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself.'” Luke 18:9-14 (The Message).

Since prayer is essentially the interaction between the Father and His child, it is easy to recognise that the Pharisee in Jesus’ story did not, for one moment, fit into the category of a son. His attitude and words were completely foreign to a Father/son relationship. No true son would talk to his father the way this man talked to God. He was not praying. He was preening and boasting. His prayer was an unashamed, ‘Look at me, God. See how good I am. Aren’t you proud of me?’

Did his ‘thank you’ express true gratitude? Not at all! It was his way of congratulating himself on being a self-made man. The rest of his ‘eulogy’ was a summary of his religious achievements – his so-called ‘tsidaqahs’, his acts of generosity, but they were done out of duty, to gather ‘brownie points’ and for self-congratulation, not from a generous and loving heart that gladly obeyed God’s directives.

Who was the measure of his achievements and his judgement of everyone else? He was, of course. He did not realise that, if you measure imperfection against imperfection, you get imperfection! Since his standard was based on his own performance and not on his attitude and character, he would naturally judge himself top of the list. What he did not understand was that he was using entirely the wrong measure.

The tax man was fully aware that his life fell far short of what God required of him. He was so broken by guilt and shame that he did not even have the courage to be seen. He hid in the shadows with his eyes downcast and his face in his hands. His prayer was, ‘Don’t look at me, God. If you do, you might wipe me out of your sight.’

Which of these two men were accepted by God, the Pharisee who was so proud of his achievements or the tax man who was so ashamed of what he had done? Strangely enough, it was the tax man whom Jesus commended, not the Pharisee. But why? Surely what the tax man had been doing was abhorrent to God? Was he not robbing people to line his own pocket? Was he not a liar, a thief and a fraudster? How could God even listen to him, let alone accept him?

He was all of these things but he was also something else — honest and repentant. He saw himself in the light of who God is and was so broken up that he pleaded for forgiveness and threw himself on the mercy of God. This is the heart attitude that God hears and the foundation of a renewed relationship with God as Father. You see, every wayward person is actually a son who has strayed from the Father and for whom the Father waits to return.

The Pharisee saw no need and had no desire for forgiveness. He was completely satisfied with his own standards and performance. What God thought about him was irrelevant. He was not yet a returning prodigal. He was a self-satisfied, self-righteous elder brother who had no felt need to repent. “Religion is the most difficult disease to cure because it infects with such self-righteousness that no sense of need remains.”

As always, Jesus told this story for identification. Which of the two men are you?