Tag Archives: bless

LUKE’S GOSPEL…THE UPSIDE DOWN KINGDOM – 12a

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“But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that… Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

‭‭Luke‬ ‭6‬:‭27‬-‭33‬, ‭36‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Jesus was a true revolutionary! His yoke, His interpretation of Torah that led to the demonstration of a lifestyle of mercy and non-retaliation, was as revolutionary as, for example, a military operation that invades enemy territory to provide medical help to those injured through war. 

“Love your enemies…” is as unpalatable to the human mind as expecting a millionaire to give his Lamborghini to a homeless beggar. This would be unnatural behaviour at its worst for the one whose natural bent is towards “You hit me and I’ll hit you twice as hard…”  

Yet, Jesus gave this instruction as part of His yoke as though it were the way the rule of God works in His divine system. God’s boundaries, His laws, are an expression of His nature. They give us a peek into who He is and how He operates, even in the hostile world over which He rules. 

In the main, the citizens of God’s world are His enemies and utter rebels against everything that He is and wants from them. He owns the world and its people, yet those who live in it refuse to acknowledge His authority. Some deny His very existence, while others do whatever they can to defy Him. 

How does God treat those who hate Him? Does He relish His right to punish and destroy? The witness of Scripture, from cover to cover, is the story of a God who loves, blesses, and acts in mercy to the worst of rebels. 

“But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.”

‭‭Luke‬ ‭6‬:‭35‬ ‭NIV‬‬

God’s mercy peaked in Jesus when He gave His own Son as a sacrifice for sinners. 

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

‭‭Romans‬ ‭5‬:‭8‬ ‭NIV‬‬

God’s kingdom is wide open for those who accept His sacrifice and, in response, pledge to live in His kingdom in keeping with the nature of His rule. There is no place in God’s realm for those who claim allegiance but demonstrate rebellion by rejecting His standards. 

Above all else, knowing that for the natural human to live by God’s standards is impossible, God has provided the way for ungodly rebels to be transformed into compliant sons and daughters. He gave us His own Spirit to live inside us, to transform rebels into saints by the power of His word. 

In Jesus, the Father has provided, by His grace, strength to overcome the ravages of our old nature and truth to renew our minds in the ways of righteousness, holiness and peace. 

“For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

‭‭John‬ ‭1‬:‭17‬ ‭NIV‬‬

So, for Jesus to require that we love our enemies by treating them as the Father has treated us, though it contradicts our natural bent towards selfishness, is more than a pipe dream. It is the response of grateful people whose lives are being transformed by His grace. It is the expression of obedience of a son to a father, and a response of trust that what God wants He will also do in us by His grace. It is a witness to the world that it is Christ in us who guarantees that we will be like Him when we see Him. 

God treats people out of who He is, the God who is in His essence, love….and so must we, and we can because of Him!

To be continued…

BE A LOSER TO BE A WINNER

Christian Life, ,

BE A LOSER TO BE A WINNER

27 “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. 30 Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Luke 6:27-30

“What are you saying, Jesus? You can’t be serious!”

Oh, but He was. If you want to know what power is, this is real power. There is no true power in retaliation. It only takes a bit of physical or emotional energy to hit back when someone hurts or offends you. But what kind of power does it take to absorb the blows and respond with kindness and generosity? It takes power over one’s own self not to give back blow for blow.

But it takes far more than sheer will-power to stop oneself from hitting back. That is a perfectly natural reaction coming from a human point of view, but Jesus was talking about an attitude that is far more than what comes out of our fallen human nature. He was talking about a changed disposition that comes from a completely different perspective.

What will it take to change us from reacting to responding? Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3 that, to “see” and enter the kingdom of God will take the equivalent of going back to the beginning of our life and starting over again with a new nature. That is impossible in the natural, as Nicodemus discovered, but God can do it through His power at work in our spirits.

Paul speaks of this superanatural event as “being raised from the dead” — a spiritual resurrection that is like waking up to a new realm where we understand everything from God’s point of view.

God is not a tit-for-tat God. He treats us according to who He is, not according to the way we speak or behave. That’s the way His rule operates. Human parents would understand this. If your son misbehaves, he is still you son, no matter what. A good parent will address the behaviour, not bully or disown the child because he has behaved badly.

When we were born from above, God gave us the potential and the power to respond to situations out of who we are in Christ, not out of who we were in Adam. And He gives us opportunities to show the ones who offend us what He is like by absorbing the wrongdoing and not adding to it by retaliating.

But it’s even more than that. Jesus said that its not about non-retaliation. It’s about actively responding with generosity. That’s how God treats us. The best way to “destroy” your enemy is not to beat him up or kill him but to make him your friend. He will cease to exist as an enemy and come alongside you instead of standing against you.

What kind of perspective can change our attitude towards the ones we perceive as enemies? There are two things that have helped me see things from God’s point of view. Firstly, God wants us to treat everyone with dignity because we have all been created in His image. To dish out cruelty to another human being is to treat God with the same attitude. Who would want to do that?

Secondly, people’s words and behaviour reveal who they are, not who I am. I don’t have to mirror who they are by retaliating. I want to mirror who God is by offering kindness and generosity for unkindness and meanness. Absorbing the blows will stop them right there and offer your enemy the opportunity to change his mind as well.

Have you tried it? You can, with God’s grace.

An Unbreakable Promise

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AN UNBREAKABLE PROMISE 

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. People 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 (Heb. 6: 13-17).

We need to back up a bit to get the gist of what this writer was saying. His readers were suffering persecution at the hands of both Jews and Romans because of their allegiance to Jesus. To the Jews, Jesus was a blasphemer who had been executed by the Romans for treason because the charge of blasphemy was not on their list of crimes. To the Romans, Jesus’s claim to be the Son of God and Lord put Him at odds with Caesar. His followers, therefore, were to be exterminated.

To avoid persecution, they were tempted to go back to Judaism since the Roman government still tolerated the Jewish religion. The writer’s persuasive argument was that Jesus was greater than everything they held dear in Judaism because He was the fulfilment of the types and shadows of their religion. To go back would be to forfeit all the blessings and promises Jesus fulfilled.

God’s promises are backed by His unchangeable nature and are therefore unbreakable. Although Abraham was an old man and his wife both barren and beyond childbearing, God promised that he would be the father of a great nation and have many descendants. Abraham looked beyond the circumstances to the promise of God which had to be fulfilled or God was a liar.

Abraham received what God promised after many years of waiting because he believed God. What was his secret? Faith and patience! If God said it, He would do it, no matter how long it took to keep His promise. It was not about trustworthiness but about timing. God is always painting on a bigger canvas and writing a bigger story than we can see or understand. What He was doing in Abraham’s life had to fit in with every other circumstance around him.

God’s promise to Abraham was so crucial to His salvation plan that He confirmed it with an oath – not because His word was untrustworthy but because He wanted Abraham to know how important this promise was. In the natural it seemed an impossibility for him and Sarah to conceive a child. Abraham’s faith had to rise above human possibilities to take hold of the divine promise and to fix his faith on God’s word and not on his reason.

Intervening years were not an issue to God. The deadness of Abraham and Sarah’s reproductive organs were not a problem. God’s power to intervene overshadowed these natural obstacles. Abraham’s confidence in the trustworthiness of God’s promise was the crux of the matter. Was he prepared to take God at His word and see it through to fulfilment no matter what?

Abraham had to walk a long road of learning to trust God before he was willing to stake everything on God’s promise. He left his homeland on God’s instruction, a God he did not know, and went to a land he did not know because God had told him to go. He settled among strangers, sometimes hostile to him, as a nomad, because God said so. He had no idea what God was doing with him but he trusted Him anyway.

God gave him a son when his heart was ready to receive the child and to raise him to believe in God. He even went to the point of sacrificing his son because God told him to do it. So confident had Abraham become in the promises of God that he was in perfect harmony with Him no matter what He told him to do.

It was this kind of faith that God needed and that He honoured in a man who was tried and tested. The way was open for Him to keep His word because His promise, backed by His oath was Abraham’s anchor.

Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’ Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead – since he was about a hundred years old – and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had the power to do what He had promised. That is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.” (Rom. 4: 18-22).

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.

 

Today Is Salvation Day

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TODAY IS SALVATION DAY

“Then Jesus entered and walked through Jericho. There was a man there…Zaccheus, the head tax man and quite rich. He wanted desperately to see Jesus, but the crowd was in his way…so he ran on ahead and climbed up in a sycamore tree…

“When Jesus got to the tree, He looked up and said, ‘Zaccheus, hurry down. Today is my day to be a guest at your house.’ Zaccheus scrambled out of the tree…delighted to take Jesus home with him. Everyone who saw the incident was indignant…’What business does He have getting cosy with this crook?’ Zaccheus stammered apologetically, ‘Master, I give away half my income to the poor…’

“Jesus said, ‘Today is salvation day in this home! Here he is: Zaccheus, son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to find and restore the lost.'” Luke 19:1-10 (The Message).

Another much-loved Sunday school story with so much in it that we can miss!

This incident epitomises the difference between the attitude of Jesus and the people around Him (and all of us as well because we are all infected with the same tunnel vision).

Zaccheus was a man with a conscience who did bad things. He made a comfortable living preying on the public who hated him but could do nothing about it. But there came a time when he became sick of his way of life and his alienation from his fellow Jews. How do we know that? What crook would climb a tree to catch a glimpse of a rabbi whose sheer goodness would be repulsive to him unless there was a deep-seated yearning to change?

Why did he climb a tree? Just to get a close-up view of Jesus, or because he was too embarrassed to get close to Him? What did he hope to achieve by getting a passing glimpse? To satisfy his curiosity or to fix in his imagination a picture of the person he would like to be? We don’t know but, once again, Jesus’ spiritual radar picked up the blip of a man who wanted to see Him.

As always, His response was immediate and, as always, He was not put off by the external trappings of the man’s life. He zeroed in on Zaccheus’ heart and stopped under the tree. Knowing that Zaccheus would feel too unworthy to invite Him home, He invited Himself, sweeping aside all the tax man’s false notions and emotions about himself. Jesus saw him, not as a rotten, thieving henchman of the Roman government as those around Him did, but as a son of Abraham!

Zaccheus’ response to Jesus’ generous attitude towards him is startling. How could a greedy and conniving crook suddenly become generous and open-handed to the poor and to those he had outwitted? It just does not happen in the natural. Something had transpired in the man’s heart in his encounter with Jesus that radically and permanently changed his disposition.

Light had exposed and dispelled darkness and the result was transformation! His money, unlike the other rich man who refused to let go of his wealth, even for the prize of eternal life, was tossed out of the way because it stood between him and Jesus and Jesus knew that Zaccheus had been rescued from his self-destroying choices and was back on the path to the Father.

There are so many beautiful lessons for those of us who are disciples of Jesus to learn. As disciples, we are called to be imitators of Jesus. Our first major lesson is to look at people through the eyes of our Master. To Him they had no past. His atoning sacrifice took care of that. He never accused or blamed. He accepted and embraced every returning prodigal with generosity and compassion. They were lost sons coming home.

Secondly, Jesus never saw failure but always, potential. As a son of Abraham, this one-time criminal had a renewed calling: “…All peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” Genesis 12:3b (NIV). With the Messiah in charge of his life, he could bless the very people he had robbed by sharing his faith and his wealth.

The crowd were indignant with Jesus for associating with a robber. Jesus was elated because the robber had returned home as a son!