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YOU ARE YOUR OWN JUDGE

Christian Life, ,

YOU ARE YOUR OWN JUDGE

I have noticed, as I have walked and re-walked through the gospels with Jesus, that He was big on human responsibility. He never sanctioned the kind of prayers I often hear people pray – that God would do for us what He has already done or given us the responsibility to do for ourselves. Jesus always honoured the gift of choice. How often He ratified the choices people made! Take the rich young ruler, for instance. Did He go running after the man to beg him to follow Him, or to make things easier for him? Not a chance! He simply let the man go. The young man had made his decision, and that was that!

How will we, as prospective disciples of Jesus, respond to His warning? How will we measure our response to His yoke? I am sure we have no desire to disqualify ourselves or to lose what we already have because we have not understood the kernel of His teaching. What I am about to share with you is, I hope, in essence what Jesus was getting at.

I have an acquaintance who works for a small private company. She has worked extremely hard to help the company prosper, bringing in huge amounts of money through sales and service. She recently resigned to take up a position in her husband’s business, much to the disappointment of the company owners – not because of her value as a person but because of the wealth she brought to the company. The husband of the husband-and-wife team has shown his disdain for her decision. Where once he was her “friend”, he is now distant and unfriendly.

I think that this reveals in a nutshell the difference between those who have “the evil eye” and those who have “the eye of light”. Jesus was adamant that He had come to serve, not to be served. He expects those who follow Him to have to same attitude towards other people as His. My friend was useful to her employers if she brought in the money. The bottom line is: they used her. Their relationship stood only until the crunch of her leaving hit their bank balance.

What came to my mind through this incident was something like this: Whether they are believers or not is irrelevant. They have been diminished by their reaction to her resignation. Something of what they had has been lost. They measured her worth in terms of money and business. They did not value her as a person or share in her anticipation of bringing prosperity to her family. In fact, they did not even reward her or any of the other staff members by a bonus at the end of the year. They became their own judges.

This leads me to the heart of Jesus’s yoke. If we have chosen to walk in the way of Yahweh, our lives will be characterised by selfless service. We will not use people for our own ends. We will serve people at our own expense. The more we serve, the more we will increase in knowledge and understanding of God’s ways. It’s this “reciprocal” thing again. When we give ourselves away, God gives back by multiplication!

The opposite is also true. When we use people for our own purposes; when we disregard them as people and use them to enrich ourselves, we are diminished as people. We become more selfish and self-serving, less sensitive to the needs of others and dehumanised in our attitude to ourselves and other people.

Then Jesus said to His disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, he 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 will save it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?’ (Matt. 16: 24-26)

Another aspect of this principle is true. The shallow soil does not allow the seeds to produce roots to anchor the plant in all conditions so that it can mature and produce fruit.  Shallow people trust in God if it is beneficial for them. As soon as tests or adversity come, they fall away because their faith in God is opportunistic.

These kinds of people will also use rather than serve God just like they use rather than serve others. Is this not diagnostic of what kind of hearts shallow people have? When they are disillusioned with God because He doesn’t answer their prayers – in other words, He doesn’t do what they want – they give up their faith in Him and go back to their old life. Use or serve – this reveals the true nature of our hearts.

The soil adds nothing to the seed. It only provides the environment in which the seed grows. Whether the seed can reproduce itself or not depends on the nature of the soil. What is the purpose of the seed? It exists only to reproduce itself so that its fruit can nourish the eater and its seeds can continue the cycle of growth and reproduction in the hearts of other people.

It seems to me, then, that this is a picture of our lives. Our hearts are the soil into which the seed falls. Like the soil, we add nothing to the seed but, as it grows and reproduces in us, our spirits are nourished by its fruit. We in turn, continue to perpetuate the life of the seed by sowing it into the hearts of others. Their response will determine its effect on their lives and whether the seed it reproduces will continue to be passed on to others. 

What we eventually become in our efforts to follow Jesus and become true disciples is entirely our responsibility. The Holy Spirit will not make the choices for us, but He will give us grace and power to put into practice our decision to follow Jesus and to do what He instructs us to do. In the end, as we follow Him, we will become like our rabbi, maturing as we journey with Him, into true sons and daughters of God.

“Be careful how you hear,” Jesus warned. “You determine the measure of your own fruitfulness.”

Pray with me, then, the matchless prayer of David whom God called, “A man after my own heart.”

Teach me your way, O LORD, and I will walk in your truth.

Give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name. (Psa. 86:11)

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

THE GOSPEL OF MARK – THE WAY DOWN IS THE WAY UP

Bible Study, ,

THE WAY DOWN IS THE WAY UP

34 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to rlfbe 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

The disciples desperately needed a paradigm shift to give them the perspective and insight into the kingdom of God that would grasp the true nature of the enemy. Like the Pharisees, they were still too engrossed in their opposition to Roman occupation and their passion to be an independent nation once again to realise that a far more dangerous enemy lurked inside their own hearts, the yetzer harah (the evil  eye…a figure of speech meaning the inborn selfishness that only cares for number one) that was traitor to the rule of God.

Why did what Jesus had to say about suffering and submission to His Lordship cut across their way of thinking? It would take something as gruesome and violent as His own submission to death at the hands of the powers of darkness to transform their understanding. His victory over Satan and the dominion of darkness through the resurrection, and the divine energy of the Holy Spirit soaking and saturating their beings would transform their minds and bring them into ECHAD – unity – with Himself and His way. At this point, His words were just seeds, falling into unproductive soil and lying dormant until the power of the Holy Spirit triggered growth and bore fruit in their lives.

Jesus was calling them back to the place where Adam and Eve were before they chose their way over submission to God’s way. Now Jesus was demanding that they set themselves aside completely and yield their loyalty, love and obedience exclusively to Him. Discipleship demands a complete handover of ownership from self to Jesus. He said that no-one can serve two masters. Any master other than Him automatically cancels out His ownership.

This loyalty and obedience to Him opens the disciple to the same kind of rejection and persecution He received but this is a part of the purifying process that leads to true sonship. Suffering purges the heart from self and fosters humility and trust in the God who is always here – Emmanuel. This is the ECHAD that shows the world that Jesus is who He said He is, the Christ, Son of the living God.

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.

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