Tag Archives: mediator

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE – JESUS MISUNDERSTOOD

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JESUS MISUNDERSTOOD

“Someone out of the crowd said, ‘Order my brother to give me a fair share of the family inheritance.’

He replied, ‘What makes you think it’s any of my business to be a judge or mediator for you?’ Luke 12:13, 14.

This is a typical misunderstanding about the way God works in human lives. Because we know He is all-powerful, we assume that His ‘power’ extends to pushing us around like puppets. But this is not true and Satan loves to use this lie to discredit God so that we have reason not to trust Him.

The greatest gift and the greatest snare God gave to man is his right to choose. God respects that gift far more than we humans do and He never violates it, even when we persistently choose against Him. This gift is a snare because it gives us the power to decide our own future and our own destiny. We are what we choose.

He placed us on the earth to rule over His creation as He vice-regent, under His authority and within the boundaries of His law. That rule does not include our ruling over another person’s right to choose. Of course that applies in our personal lives. God set governmental authority over us to maintain order in society. We also have the choice to obey civil law or not and to take the consequences of civil disobedience.

When man chose against God in the Garden of Eden, he transferred his allegiance from God to himself and unwittingly put himself under Satan’s influence. This opened a Pandora’s Box of unexpected and unpleasant consequences, including death, which God warned would happen. The outcome is the world we live in today. The mess we have made of the world is the outcome of our choices and God doesn’t just make them go away. We have to live with them because that’s what we keep choosing. Without consequences we never learn.

This man incorrectly assumed that Jesus had the right to decide for his brother. But Jesus quickly put him right. He said that, even if He were God, He still had no right to interfere with human choices. If the brother chose to be selfish and greedy, that was his choice and He would not step in and force him to act differently.

This is the point of our misunderstanding and accusation that God doesn’t care because He ‘let it happen’, a divorce, a fatal car accident, an unwanted pregnancy, a son or daughter gone astray or whatever tragedy has hit our lives. But who made those choices – God or us? So why blame God for what we did? Did He make us or anyone else who affected us do it? Of course not!

How, then, can we say that God is all-powerful? What’s the point of trusting Him if He can’t stop us from harming ourselves or others? This is exactly the point. The Apostle Paul said, ‘And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him.’ (Romans 8:28 NIV). God has the power to turn every bad thing that happens to us to our good if we love and trust Him.

Peter is a case in point. Jesus warned him that Satan had designs on him. Peter failed to heed His warning and fell headlong into Satan’s trap. He miserably denied Jesus when Jesus needed his support. But Jesus had assured him, ‘I have prayed for you that your faith will not fail.’ Was Peter destroyed? Not at all. Peter became a far more ‘real’ person because he had come face to face with his real self. All his blustering self-confidence was flattened in that moment.

When we finally ‘get’ this lesson, it will free us from trying to get other people to do what we want and it will release us from being suspicious about God because He doesn’t stop bad things from happening; He uses them to shape us for His glory. And that’s a much better deal!

What Changed Everything?

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WHAT CHANGED EVERYTHING?

You have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire; to darkness, gloom and storm; to a trumpet blast or to such a voice speaking words that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them, because they could not bear what was commanded: ‘If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned to death.’ The sight was so terrifying that Moses said, ‘I am trembling with fear.’ (Heb. 12: 18-21).

Why did God reveal Himself to His people in such a terrifying way? Could He not have tempered His appearance to them and made it a little less majestic and frightening?

We must remember that this is the same person who met Moses at the burning bush; the one who called Himself “I AM”. He was the same one who, when He was here in the flesh, said, “Before Abraham was, I AM.” The pre-incarnate Jesus revealed Himself to people time and again before He came to earth as a man. He often appeared as “the angel of the Lord” and spoke as God. This was the majesty and glory of the one who was to become the Son of God, a humble servant who came as a man.

The people of God had lived under the shadow of the Egyptians who worshipped the heavenly bodies and multiple other gods which were represented by idols. How was God going to impress upon them who He was so that they would take Him seriously and obey the word that He spoke to them through Moses?

His appearance on top of the mountain in blazing fire and smoke so dense that it shrouded the mountain top with darkness and gloom, and the terrifying noise of the accompanying trumpet and the sound of His voice, was something they ought never to have forgotten. It should have been a reminder to them and to their children, that their God was not one to be trifled with. He was holy and untouchable, unlike the Egyptian gods who were just like them.

This spectacle should have been indelibly imprinted on their hearts. They should have   taught it to their descendants, that the God who visited them in the desert, and who came to dwell among them in the tabernacle, was real. He required them to obey Him because the consequences of disobedience would be in keeping with who He was.

Why are we no longer terrified of this God? Has He changed? Has He relented and down-scaled His glory? What changed everything? Where is the unapproachable, untouchable God? Where is the God who demanded the death of an animal who strayed too near the mountain? Where is the God who demanded blood for every infringement of His holy standards?

But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, who names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel (Heb, 12: 22-24).

God has not changed, but He put in place, through Jesus, the plan He set up before the creation of the world, that would change the hearts of people. His appearance at Mount Sinai as the unapproachable God was the stark reality of the monstrous barrier of sin that separated people from Him. No amount of animal blood could remove that barrier. It could only remind them of the sin that stood between them and God as an insurmountable barrier.

The picture is different now – not terror but celebration; not fire and smoke and gloom and darkness and trembling and weeping and pleading with Moses to stop, but a huge party attended by angels and people of all races, languages and cultures. No longer Mount Sinai, but Mount Zion – the place where God has established His name forever. No longer a God who was hidden behind an impenetrable curtain but Emmanuel, God with us. No longer fear, but perfect love. No more guilt and shame but laughter and joy and worship and thanksgiving.

God has not changed. We have because He changed us. Abel’s blood cried for revenge. The blood of Jesus speaks mercy. Hallelujah!

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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Ratified In Blood

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RATIFIED BY BLOOD

For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance – now that He has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant. In the case of a will, it is necessary to prove the death of the one who made it, because a will is in force only when somebody has died; it never takes effect while the one who made it is living. This is why the first covenant was not put into effect without blood. (Heb. 9: 15-18).

How amazing – that God does everything by the book! He is God, after all. Can’t He do anything He wants? No He can’t because He has committed Himself, by His own nature, to act justly. We must never forget that He has a hostile audience under condemnation and awaiting judgment for aspiring to take over His throne. They are watching His every move, waiting to pounce on Him for any tiny deviation from what is perfectly just.

God could not change anything arbitrarily, without acting within His own legal framework. Therefore, to change the covenant, He had to prove that the first covenant was obsolete and did not work, and He had to set up a new covenant only after the requirements of the first covenant were fully met. How could He do this and be true to His own nature? Man was God’s test case.

The terms of the Mosaic covenant were clearly stated and the penalty for failing to uphold it inescapable – death. Centuries of history proved that God’s people could not remain true to His covenant. They all fell short and they were all under the penalty of death.

God’s solution was to send His own Son, born into His human family as every other person is born, to live under the same covenant as the one which His people failed to honour, with the same penalty for failure as applied to them.

If He kept all the requirements of God’s covenant perfectly, and then died as though He had broken them, His death pay the penalty for all His people and do away with the old, incompetent covenant once and for all, making it obsolete and freeing God to set up a new covenant with better promises and better provisions. Jesus then became, not only the penalty for breaking the old, but the mediator of a new agreement with God based on new and better promises.

All this time, the enemy was watching, waiting, hoping that God would put one foot outside the requirements of His own justice so that they could blow His new covenant out of the water!

But why blood? Because blood is symbolic of death. The Mosaic covenant was ratified by the death of an animal.

Moses then took the blood, sprinkled it on the people and said, ‘This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.’ (Ex. 24: 8).

This blood symbolised the death of the testator so that his will could be put into effect. God’s will was expressed in His covenant and set in motion through the death of an animal.

In the same way, after the supper He took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.’ (Luke 22: 20).

Jesus’s death put paid to the old covenant and set up the new covenant, ratified by His blood which was symbolised by the juice of the vine. After His death, the Father was free to establish His new covenant because the previous one’s requirements and penalty were fully met, once and for all.

God was now free to impute the perfect obedience of His Son to every person who puts his trust in Him. They receive, as a free gift, the nature of God and the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is acceptable to God as a human being. Therefore every person who is “in Christ” is acceptable to Him as well on the grounds of Jesus’s righteousness.

God’s justice is flawless and Satan watched is vain. All he can do now is falsely to accuse God’s people in the hopes that he can convince them that they are still under condemnation and awaiting judgment. Paul has an answer for that!

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because, through Christ Jesus, the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death (Rom. 8: 1).

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.