Tag Archives: judges

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE – GOD’S UNDERGROUND

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GOD’S UNDERGROUND

“‘When they drag you into their meeting places, or into police courts or before judges, don’t worry about defending yourselves – what you’ll say or how you’ll say it. The right words will be there. The Holy Spirit will give you the right words when the time comes.”’ Luke 12:11-12.

No matter how good an earthly father we might have (or have had), he cannot always be with us when we need him. Daddy is supposed to be his children’s protector but he is limited by his humanity. He has his own issues to contend with and fails us constantly because he is just like us and we are just like him, human, fallible and weak.

But the reality of our heavenly Father’s presence cannot be overstressed. When Jesus promised His disciples (and that includes us if we are serious followers of Jesus), ‘I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you,’ (John 14:18), He was promising us that we have a Father who is unlike the very best of all earthly fathers.

The tragedy for many us who believe and follow Jesus, is that we have not fully grasped the significance of Jesus’ promise. God is our Father and we are His sons and daughters. And the best of all is that Daddy will never leave us. It does not matter where, when or how we need Him, He is always with us, in fact even better; He is in us.

There is a word that does not exist in God’s vocabulary – the word ‘stress’. He has deleted it and replaced it with the word ‘rest’, and He promised that, when we live in His rest, He will fight our battles for us. He is available if we are ever put on trial for our faith in a court of law. However, for most of us that will not happen, but we are often on ‘trial’ in other situations where we need divine wisdom.

Jesus assures us, ‘You don’t need to think ahead. You have a divine ‘Underground’ who is with you and has gone before you, clearing the way and working on your behalf.’ Isn’t that an invitation to rest in God? This is non-negotiable. The Holy Spirit is in us; He is our advocate, answering through us, for us.

In this section of Luke’s Gospel (Luke 12:1-12), having exposed the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, Jesus tenderly instructs His disciples with the truth. What is He trying to get His disciples to understand? Unlike the Pharisees who believed that they had to work hard to keep God’s attention and approval, Jesus was assuring His followers, ‘God is your Father. He is a perfect Father. You don’t have to perform to earn His love. He knows what it means to be a father.’

God places a far higher value in us than any of His other creation because He has invested His own life in us. He paid the ultimate price to redeem us from our self-inflicted slavery. He is determined to shape us into a perfect family of sons and daughters just like His Son and He’s always with us, on the job, patiently completing what He started.

So He says, ‘Will you trust me to do what I said I would do?’ Trying to negotiate life’s obstacles and issues on our own only delays the process. We might as well learn quickly that God can do a much better job guiding us through than we can. So, just trust Him. He is Jehovah Shammah – the God who is there!

No Pushovers

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NO PUSHOVERS

“At daybreak, the court judges sent officers with the instructions, ‘Release these men.’ The jailer gave Paul the message, ‘The judges sent word that you’re free to go on your way. Congratulations! Go in peace!’

“But Paul wouldn’t budge. He told the officers, ‘They beat us up in public, and threw us in jail, Roman citizens in good standing! And now they want us to get out of the way on the sly without anyone knowing? Nothing doing! If they want us out of here, let them come themselves and lead us out in broad daylight.'” Acts 16:35-37 (The Message).

Hey, Paul! I thought you were supposed to be meek and humble, and take abuse without complaining, like Jesus did.

Why did Paul pull rank on these judges? Should they not have simply left quietly as though nothing had happened; turned the other cheek as Jesus taught His disciples?

Is that really what He taught? Does Jesus want His disciples to be jellyfish, pushovers?

What exactly did Jesus mean when He said, ‘Turn the other cheek’? If someone slapped another person on the right cheek, it was meant as an insult. To slap him on the right cheek, he had to use his left hand which was considered unclean because the left hand was used for toilet purposes. To turn the other cheek meant that he had to slap the other person with his right hand, forcing him to acknowledge that they were equals.

When Israel was rescued from slavery in Egypt, they had to unlearn centuries of abuse from their Egyptian masters in a new society where they were free. God built into their constitution and culture a new way of life where He taught them to treat one another with human dignity, recognising that every person was created in the image of God.

God hates oppression of any kind and, in the case of Paul and Silas, the Roman judges differentiated between Romans and Jews. They got the Jewish end of the stick because their oppressors hadn’t taken the trouble to carry out their job properly. Paul wanted the Roman judges to acknowledge their unjust treatment by publicly escorting them from the prison where they had been publicly humiliated by the treatment they had received.

Good for you, Paul! It was a lesson these arrogant Romans would not easily forget. Perhaps they were saving someone else from being treated as they had been treated.

“When the officers reported this, the judges panicked. They had no idea that Paul and Silas were Roman citizens. They hurried over and apologised, personally escorting them from the jail, and then asked them if they wouldn’t please leave the city. Walking out of the jail, Paul and Silas went straight to Lydia’s house, saw their friends again, encouraged them in the faith, and only then went on their way.” Acts 16:38-40 (The message).

Apparently, although this kind of behaviour was common practice, it was not Roman policy. The judges were using their position of power to abuse Jews whom they despised. If the authorities got to hear about it, they were in big trouble. Mistreating non-Romans was bad enough but mistreating Roman citizens, Jews or no Jews, was serious.

They not only personally escorted Paul and Silas out of jail, they also wanted them out of the city because they were a source of embarrassment to them. Having got the justice they deserved and taught these men a lesson, Paul and Silas reported back to Lydia who was their hostess and must have wondered what had happened to them, encouraged the fledgling believers and then went on their way as requested.

But it was not the last that Philippi had seen of them. There was a baby church to nurture and Paul had no intention of abandoning them, judges or no judges.