Tag Archives: lightning

Selective Deafness

Bible Study, , ,

SELECTIVE DEAFNESS

 “John spoke up, ‘Master, we saw a man using your name to expel demons and we stopped Him because he wasn’t of our group.’  Jesus said, ‘Don’t stop him. If he’s not an enemy, he’s an ally.’

“When it came close to the time for His Ascension, He gathered up His courage and steeled Himself for the journey to Jerusalem. He sent messengers on ahead. They came to a Samaritan village to make arrangements for His hospitality. But when the Samaritans learned that His destination was Jerusalem, they refused hospitality.

“When the disciples James and John learned of it, they said, ‘Master, do you want us to call a bolt of lightning down out of the sky and incinerate them?’ Jesus turned on them: ‘Of course not!’ And they travelled on to another village.”  Luke 9:49-55 (The Message)

Talk about selective hearing! James and John’s attitude was proof that they had not taken in a word Jesus had said about true greatness.

What had these men learned from their association with Jesus? From non-religious guys who were part of the “out” group as far as their religious leaders were concerned, they had developed the idea that they were now part of a new “in” group!

They were very protective of their status as followers of Jesus — disciples of the newest and most popular rabbi in Israel. Although He had many followers on the fringe, Jesus had not invited anyone else to be part of the “in” group and they wanted to be sure that no one gate-crashed their party.

Anyone of the “them” group who happened to “get” what Jesus had been teaching and act on it was frowned on, not encouraged, because he was not one of “us”. They proudly announced to Jesus that they had put a stop to a man’s enthusiastic participation in doing the “kingdom stuff” by casting out demons, thinking that He would applaud them for their loyalty to Him. They were not anticipating the surprising rebuke they received for their trouble! ‘Don’t stop him,’ Jesus said. ‘If he’s not an enemy, then he’s a friend.’

James and John were such fiery characters that they had earned the nickname, “sons of thunder”. To protect their inner circle they were prepared to use their new-found authority to incinerate people who dared to oppose them, especially the hated Samaritans! Thinking that Jesus would applaud their outrage for the snub they had received, they wanted His approval for their plan to wipe out the village.

What did Jesus think of these goings-on from His disciples? For all their response to His teaching and demonstrating His yoke, they were still thinking and acting in exactly the same way as they did before they met Him. It seems that everything He taught them bounced off them like a ball off a wall. In fact, an “outsider” had caught on to what they, the “insiders” had missed. To cast out demons “in His name” meant that the unknown man, who was not a disciple, was doing what their rabbi did in the disposition of their rabbi.

How sad that many of Jesus’ self-proclaimed “followers” today have just as much of a “we – they” mentality as the disciples had. Being a Christian is being part of an exclusive “club” and to be a Christian minister is to have an elevated position in this club.

To get the real picture, let’s go back to Jesus’ visual aid on greatness. He insisted that to be truly great, one must use one’s position to elevate others, not to put them down or lord it over them. Get down to the level of the lowest and treat them with dignity and respect.

Jesus was the greatest and truest model of what He taught, “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to His own advantage; rather, He made Himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to death — even death on a cross!” Philippians 2:6-8 (NIV).

Are you as selectively deaf as the disciples were?

Glimpses Of The Great God: Day Two

Devotion, , , ,

DAY TWO

On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain,

and a very loud trumpet blast.

Everyone in the camp trembled.

Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain.

Mount Sinai was covered with smoke,

because the Lord descended on it in fire.

The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace,

the whole mountain trembled violently,

and the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder.

Then Moses spoke and the voice of God answered him.

Exodus 19:16-19

You have not come to a mountain that can be touched

and that is burning with fire; to darkness, gloom and storm; …..but you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God.

Therefore since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably

with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.

Hebrews 12:18, 22a, 28, 29

As you read through these Scriptures aloud, remember that you have been made acceptable to God through the blood of Jesus.  We worship an awesome God, who is a consuming fire, but we worship the One who has made us holy through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus, and we no longer have to approach Him with terror and dread as the Israelites did.  We can worship Him with confidence because we are holy in His sight.

 

 

He Simply Comes

Christian Life, , ,

HE SIMPLY COMES

“He went on to say to His disciples, ‘The days are coming when you are going to be desperately homesick for just one glimpse of one of the days of the Son of Man, and you won’t see a thing. And they’ll say to you, ‘Look over there!’ or ‘Look here!’ Don’t fall for any of that nonsense. The arrival of the Son of Man is not something you go out to see. He simply comes,’” Luke 17:22-24 (The Message).

Jesus warned His disciples time and again that bad times were coming because His people had refused to receive Him. He wept over Jerusalem because of the people’s insensitivity to their opportunity. Because they had rejected their Messiah, the Roman army would come and raze Jerusalem to the ground, demolish their temple to a pile of rubble and kill their people until their blood ran like a river in the streets.

Like a thief in the night, Jesus appeared on the human scene, unexpected and unannounced except to the few who were looking for Him. Even His words and His works did not convince them and they killed Him as a fake. How they would long to turn the clock back when Rome finally took revenge for their rebellion against their overlords! They had foolishly called down His blood on their own heads, not realising that their own mouths had sealed their doom.

Jesus made it clear that He was no phenomenon to be viewed as an object of curiosity or interest. When He came the first time, He came quietly. No-one heard the angelic announcement except a few humble shepherds on a hillside outside Bethlehem. He simply came. Those who visited Him were invited by the Father Himself. The rest were unaware that Messiah had made His appearance in human form.

Even when He comes to dwell in the spirit of a human being, He comes quietly. Jesus assured Nicodemus that the work of the Spirit is like the wind. You cannot see the wind but you can see and feel its effects. So it is with the Spirit of God. When He comes, as Jesus’ personal representative on earth, to take up residence in a human heart, the effects of His coming are real as the new believer is rescued from the dominion of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of light.

His return will not be a phenomenon to be observed, but a sudden, visible and earth-encircling flash, like a flash of lightning which lights up the sky from east to west. His return heralds instantaneous changes, not like the ideas conjured up by the imagination of movie writers and producers. As much as they are intrigued by the concept of “the end of the world”, they all, strangely enough, ignore its association with the one who created it in the first place.

Nuclear war, heavenly bodies crashing into the earth, massive volcanic eruptions and earthquakes line up to take responsibility for the final demise of our planet, but God is omitted in the mix. However, the Bible tells us that He will destroy all evil by the word of His mouth and make all things new. This makes sense since it was His word that brought forth the world in which we live in the beginning.

It is not God’s plan to destroy the planet which He created to be the perfect home for man. Just as He did with the flood, He will destroy all the wickedness on it, and restore it to its former perfection to be the dwelling place of all those who have responded to His invitation to join His family through faith in his Son.

“Then I saw a new (renewed) heaven and a new (renewed) earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea….And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Now the dwelling of God is with men, and He will live with them…’ He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!'” Revelation 21:1-5 (NIV).

He did not say, “I am making all new things,” but “everything new”. When God renews all things, He comes full circle, completing what He started in the beginning and perfecting forever His family of men and women who have been recreated in the image of His Son. When Jesus returns, He will simply come and that’s it, forever.

The time to decide is now…