Tag Archives: cross

THE GOSPEL OF MARK – IT’S ALL OR NOTHING

Bible Study, ,

IT’S ALL OR NOTHING

34 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. 36 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? 37 Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? 38 If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.” Mark 8:34-38

This entire incident at Caesarea Philippi was loaded. First of all, it was a shocking visual spectacle for the disciples to underscore the impact Jesus, His kingdom and His yoke will have on the world systems that ignore the revelation of God and set up their own ungodly system. No matter how tenacious the hold that man-made religions has on people, the power of God’s love, demonstrated by Jesus and His true followers, will break it.

Jesus is the pioneer of this way. He had to go before, unmask and destroy Satan’s deception of the whole world by submitting Himself to Satan’s way – power through control – and coming back from the dead to declare that it is a lie and doesn’t work. The only way that works is ECHAD with the Father so that His way of love is channelled through every believer. The only way to overcome this world system is to allow it to do its worst, and to trust and obey the Father by applying Jesus’ yoke in every situation – His gentleness and humility.

If that way causes embarrassment, Jesus said when you are ridiculed by the world, and then you will be an embarrassment to Him in the presence of the Father. The world’s way – the yetzer harah, and God’s way – the yetzer tov, are diametrically opposed to one another. They cannot function together in one life. Only one mind-set, only one philosophy of life, only one passion, will stand in God’s presence – the way of true discipleship – complete abandonment to Jesus as Lord, willingness to embrace the suffering that accompanies fellowship with Jesus, and the lifestyle of denying self, wearing the Rabbi’s yoke and reconnecting with God’s original man created in His image to be ECHAD with Him.

Every believer needs to make a non-negotiable decision that he no longer belongs to himself, that he has chosen, like Jesus, to let himself be nailed to the cross so that resurrection life may be revealed in him, and to allow God-awareness to overtake self-awareness so that his life will bring “up there, down here.”

The Foolishness Of The Cross

Gospel, , , , ,

THE FOOLISHNESS OF THE CROSS

We’ve travelled a while through a series I called “Things Jesus did not say.” As westerners – at least some of us who read this are – our worldview is different from the ancient Hebrew worldview which the Bible represents. When we understand what Jesus said from His perspective, many of the things He said which made no sense to us before, have come to mean something to us now. Then I asked myself, “Where now?”

A short while ago I was browsing on YouTube and came across a beautiful song with simple but powerful words called “The power of the cross”. I got to thinking about the title. What is it about the cross of Jesus that is so powerful? After all, He was just a man who was crucified – or was He? Paul wrote this in his letter to the Corinthian church over two thousand years ago:

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Cor. 1: 18)

In the Gentile and Jewish world of his day, Paul was up against huge opposition to his message.

Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. (1 Cor. 1: 22-24)

Throughout His private life with His disciples, Jesus referred to His approaching death on more than one occasion. He informed them that He was to die at the hands of the Jewish leaders.

From this time on Jesus began to explain to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that He must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. (Matt. 16: 21)

Apart from His time with His disciples in the upper room when they celebrated the last Passover together, Jesus told them nothing about the reason for His death. He indicated that He was to be the fulfilment of Passover when a lamb was killed for a family, and its blood painted on the doorposts of their houses to protect the family from the angel of death. That He would be killed, yes, but why? No.

He promised His disciples that the Holy Spirit would come to take His place, and that He would be within them. It would be left to Him to lead them into all truth and to teach them everything they needed to know about Him, including the ramifications of His death. God chose the great Jewish rabbi, Paul, a man who had a powerful legal mind and a thorough grasp of the Scriptures, to understand and explain the meaning of the cross for all who came after him.

Paul had studied under Gamaliel, one of the significant rabbis of his day, but one whose yoke led Paul into deep bondage to legalism and produced a fanatical persecutor of those who believed in Jesus. It was only through a personal encounter with the risen Christ that Paul recognised Him as his Messiah and his understanding of the cross was transformed from foolishness to power. He knew the way the Jews thought. He was one of them. He had also dismissed the crucified Jesus as nonsense until his eyes were opened on the Damascus road.

It was the power of the very cross he despised that had changed him from a vicious religious fanatic to a passionate lover of Jesus and preacher of the cross. From that moment on, his stance was:

I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom but on God’s power. (1 Cor. 2: 3-5)

There it is again; what to humans was foolishness was really God’s power.

The Jews rejected Jesus’ claim to be the Son of God because they demanded signs, yet they dismissed as foolishness the greatest of all signs – God’s love demonstrated by His presence among them and His sacrifice for them. They were too blind to see in Jesus the fulfilment of all the prophetic signs in the very Scriptures they claimed to know and hold to.

How ironical that they had Him killed because they refused to believe that He was their Messiah, and yet His death, the very death they had engineered, was the greatest of all the signs that He was who He said He was, and that He had to die and rise again according to their Scriptures.

The Greeks dismissed the cross of Jesus as foolishness because it did not fit with their human “wisdom”. They had no understanding of sin because sin was not an issue in their religious beliefs. In fact, the very way they worshipped their idol gods was through the celebration of every fleshly lust. That God was holy and demanded payment for sin did not suit their lifestyle of indulgence. They wanted something to tickle their minds, not change their lives.

In our world nothing has changed. People still follow false religions and reject Jesus because he is too “nice” and His gift of forgiveness and salvation too easy. People either want to indulge their fleshly appetites without conscience or restriction or they slavishly follow the demands of their legalistic gods because it satisfies their need to “save” themselves.

The real foolishness lies, not in believing in Jesus, but in rejecting Him. If He said He would be crucified and raised again on the third day, and it happened, why would we not believe everything else He said? Why would we throw away the opportunity to get rid of our guilt, our fear and all our hangups and insecurities and live lives of peace and purpose because we don’t want to trust the most trustworthy person who ever walked this earth?

To me, that is sheer foolishness!

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 first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version, on www.takealot.com  or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

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Faithful Women

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FAITHFUL WOMEN

Some women were watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joseph, and Salome. In Galilee these women had followed Him and cared for His needs. Many other women who had come up with Him to Jerusalem were also there. (Mark 15: 40-41)

This was no place for a woman. They would have flashbacks of the horror of what they saw for months to come. It was only the most hardened and calloused of men who could look at so gruesome a scene and feel nothing.

But the faithful women were there, standing at a distance. No matter how terrible it was, they wanted to be near Him to show their love and gratitude and to support Him to the end. The soldiers ignored them because they could do no harm, standing there. At least He would know that they had not forsaken Him in His darkest hour.

Who were these women who loved Him so much that they were willing to put aside their own feelings to be near Him? Mary Magdalene needs no introduction. The subject of much speculation about a romantic connection with Jesus, she was a prominent female figure in the gospels. Strange that the writers were silent about any romance between her and Jesus when they were honest about the faults and failings of others. Did they cover it up because it was distasteful for them even to speculate about something like that?

I don’t think so. The love of Jesus for all people, including the outcasts of society and the women was more than human love. His love was “agape” love. What is “agape” love?

“The Greek word agape is often translated “love” in the New Testament. How is “agape love” different from other love? The essence of agape love is self-sacrifice. Unlike our English word “love,” agape is not used in the Bible to refer to romantic or sexual love. Nor does it refer to close friendship or brotherly love, for which the Greek word philia is used. Nor does agape mean “charity,” a term which the King James translators carried over from the Latin. Agape love is unique and is distinguished by its nature and character.”

(http://www.gotquestions.org/agape-love.html, retrieved September 2015)

Why were women so drawn to Jesus? Jesus treated all people with dignity and respect regardless of gender, social standing, religious persuasion, race, culture or physical condition. These women were comfortable with Him because He accepted them without criticism or judgment. They loved Him because He loved them openly, honestly and without any kind of suggestive attitude or behaviour. He treated them like human beings, not possessions to be exploited for His own ends.

Mary Magdalene was always in the forefront because “she who had been forgiven much, loved much”, in the words of the Master. Jesus had driven seven devils from her. How did they get there in the first place? Who knows but Mary might have been left fatherless and without support as a child or a young woman. She might have had no option but to turn to prostitution to survive or even to support her mother and siblings. However she got into it, there was no getting out of it. She was as effectively a prisoner as if she were in jail. Her owners saw to that.

But it was not only her livelihood that kept her enslaved. It was everything that went with it. Her choices had to fit her lifestyle, and the devil made sure she would never escape. Demons found entry wherever sin had become entrenched in her, until Jesus came and sent them packing. She relished her freedom and loved her liberator so much that she followed Him everywhere and could not do enough for Him.

There is no indication in the gospels of the other women’s debt of gratitude to Him. No doubt among the many unnamed ones who stood and watched from a distance, there were those who were equally indebted to Him for His mercy to them. Like the woman who washed His feet with her tears, they felt the glow of His forgiveness in their hearts and were heart-broken over His fate.

They were not ashamed to be associated with Him. After all, He had not been ashamed to extend love and forgiveness to them, and to welcome their company and support during His travels throughout Galilee. Some even supported the large group of thirteen from their own finances. O yes, there was an attachment to Jesus so strong that not even the spectacle of His broken body, His marred face and the blood that dripped from His open wounds, could keep them away.

They saw past His physical disfigurement to His compassionate heart, evident even in the last moments of His life, and stayed there to be with Him. Little did Mary know, in those final hours of agonising grief, that she would be the first one to see Him in His resurrection glory, and carry the message to His heart-broken and devastated disciples.

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.

Watch this space. My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), companion volume to Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master, will soon be on the bookshelves.

Check out my Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

 

 

 

Bullies Of The Worst Kind!

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BULLIES OF THE WORST KIND!

The written notice of the charge against Him read, ‘The king of the Jews.’ They crucified two rebels with Him, one on His right and one on His left. Those who passed by hurled insults at Him, shaking their heads and saying, ‘So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, come down from the cross and save yourself.’ In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked Him among themselves. ‘He saved others,’ they said, ‘but He can’t save Himself. Let this Messiah, this king of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe.’ Those crucified with Him also heaped insults on Him. (Mark 15: 26-32)

Why hit a man when he is down? These bullies had to rub it in when they had Jesus pinned down so that there was no escape. One day they would eat their words when the truth was exposed. Imagine their shock if Jesus did summon a legion of angels to rescue Him from their hands. Would they really have believed then? I don’t think so. They had every opportunity to believe in Him when He was among them but they refused.

Let’s examine their accusations and their taunts. The first came from the passers-by. They had no interest in Jesus except for what the religious leaders had said about Him. At the outset of His ministry, according to John, He had ripped into the merchants and money changers in the temple for turning the Court of the Gentiles, the only place in the temple where non-Jews were permitted to pray, into a corrupt market.

With the blessing of the chief priests and the religious rulers, opportunists had taken over the Court of the Gentiles to ply their trade under the guise of providing a service for the worshippers who came from out of town. Under the surface they were ripping the people off with their little business and, no doubt supplying the authorities with a cut of the profits.

The religious authorities were livid when Jesus upset their business by causing pandemonium among the birds and animals, and overturning the tables of those dealing in forex. They demanded an explanation for His behaviour. “Who gave you authority to do this?”

“Destroy this temple,” He retorted, “and in three days I will raise it up again.” It was an invitation to kill Him, but they didn’t get it. “Do you want to know where I get my authority?” He asked in effect. “Put me to death, and I’ll show you by coming back to life.”

False witnesses at His trial tried to pin His words on Him as a reason to condemn Him to death. No one could threaten to destroy God’s temple and get away with it. But, unfortunately for them, they couldn’t agree on His exact words and their testimony did not hold water. They accused Him of threatening to destroy the physical temple made of stone. Only a madman would make a threat like that,but the accusation stuck and was bandied about in Jerusalem until the words He was supposed to have spoken were on everyone’s lips.

He looked so vulnerable and powerless hanging there, skewered onto two pieces of wood like a kebab. It’s no wonder the uncomprehending and unfeeling passers-by could taunt Him without giving it another thought. They were just mindlessly mouthing their leaders’ words. To Jesus, what they had to say did not even merit a reply. He ignored them. All they were doing was exposing the foolishness and ignorance of their own hearts.

What about the spiritual leaders who were gazing at their handiwork? It was not enough that they had succeeded in getting Him executed. They had to be there to sign Him off to their great satisfaction. They had to add their bit to the insults of the rabble just to make sure that everyone around could witness the exposure of their own hearts as well.

“Save yourself and come down from the cross.” They thought that they were responsible for putting Him there because of their power. They were claiming, in effect, to have absolute power over Him. If He were the Son of God as He had claimed, why didn’t He show it by overriding their puny human control?

Never in a million years did they understand that He was there by His own will because He had submitted Himself to the Father as an obedient son. Had He not declared, in the Garden of Gethsemane, ‘Not my will but yours be done’? This was the culmination of a plan set up by the triune God before creation. If they had really known their Scriptures as they claimed, they would have recognised Him as the one of whom Isaiah spoke.

Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush Him and cause Him to suffer . .  (Isa. 54: 10).

Why should He save Himself and come down from the cross when it was all going to plan? The Jews refused to believe that He was their Messiah because the cross was foolishness to them, but in effect, it was through the very thing they despised, death on a Roman execution stake, that provided forgiveness and new life, if they only believed Him. But not even His resurrection convinced them that He was their Messiah. How tragic to be right but in the end to be so wrong!

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.

Watch this space. My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), companion volume to Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master, will soon be on the bookshelves.

Check out my Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

 

 

 

The Cross Or Loss

Bible Study, , ,

THE CROSS OR LOSS

Then He called the crowd to Him along with His disciples and said, ‘Whoever wants to be my disciples must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world yet forfeit his soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for his soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His Father’s glory with the holy angels (Mark 8: 34-38).

Discipleship, according to Jesus, is an all-or-nothing transaction. Following Jesus is not like joining a club or a cause. Sign on the dotted line, pay your subscription for another year and you’re in. This time He didn’t have a private conversation with the Twelve; He went public to make sure that everyone understood the implications of His call.

At this point He had not yet extended an invitation to the crowd to join His band. In fact, He discouraged some of them who wanted to follow Him for the wrong reasons. “Foxes have dens and birds have nests,” He told would-be disciples, “but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” Was this an allusion to His poverty or His nomadic lifestyle? We could interpret it that way if we did not understand the Hebrew way of speaking.

Foxes don’t live in dens; nor do birds live on nests. That’s where their babies are born. This was Jesus’ way of telling people that He did not yet have a body upon which to place His head. His disciples were being trained to reproduce Him in others as they lived and spread the good news of the kingdom of God, but something had to happen first. Jesus had to die to reconcile the world to the Father. Sin was the great barrier between God and man. Jesus came to clear the way so the God’s alienated children could be restored to the family.

Jesus had just reassured His disciples that they were the flagship of the church – His body – which would be born on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was poured on once again. Head and body would come together in an unbreakable union to begin the process of reproduction.

However, there was a condition to this process of discipleship without which it would not work. Jesus could not take on board people who came with their own agenda. Following Jesus meant ditching their own plans, putting to death once and for all any ambitions other that being absolutely one with Him.

Taking up the cross does not mean being resigned to our fate. We sometimes think that our cross in life is some responsibility thrust on us, some disability or disadvantage we can do nothing about or some relationship that is like a noose around our necks.

That’s not what Jesus meant. Taking up the cross is voluntary. It’s what He calls His disciples to do but the choice, in the end, is ours. Like the rich young ruler, we can also walk away and lose the opportunity to experience real life in fellowship with Jesus, or we can identify with Him, embrace His will and walk with Him in obedience and self-sacrificing love on our journey to the Father.

This kind of commitment is life-long and demands a “dying”. Paul even declared that it was a daily dying. Have you ever tried dying when you are provoked, irritated, impatient, frustrated, angry, anxious, or afraid? That’s where the rubber meets the road. Taking up the cross means being “dead” to the world – non-reactive to the inconveniences, annoyances, interruptions, frustrations and temptations of life and alive to the presence of the Holy Spirit within. It’s a tall order but, if Jesus could do it, so can we. That’s what being a disciple of Jesus is all about. The Holy Spirit creates a union with Him so intense and intimate that we literally become fused to Jesus. He is in us and we are in Him. Our job is to foster and maintain that union by allowing Him to live His life through us.

There cannot be two wills at work in one person. It’s either my will or His will. It’s a choice I have to make, not once but a thousand times a day. Jesus said that the way to life is narrow. The path is littered with choices. There are many wrong choices and only one right one. Whose will am I going to follow, His or mine? I cannot give Him my will. That is impossible because God gave it to me as a non-returnable gift. I can only choose to do His will.

That’s what it means to follow Jesus – living in such intimacy with Him that we become one. Dead but alive! Nothing less!

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