Surrender, What Happens on God's End?
Last week, after I’d posted “Made in the Image of God, the Difference Maker,” it dawned on me that I had possibly hit some of my readers in the mouth with some hard truth but upon reflection, if I had it to do over again, I’d still write it like that. Truth is truth and I’m obligated to tell it. However, I would be remiss to just leave things that way because when a person surrenders to God there are two parties involved. There’s the person and then there’s God and up to this point much of what I’ve written has been from the perspective of the surrendering person. Today, to switch things up a bit, like a photographer changing positions to get a different perspective for the perfect shot, I’d like to shift over to God’s vantage point and briefly look at what Scripture says happens on God’s end during all this.
In Luke 15, it’s recorded that Jesus was eating with the tax collectors and notorious sinners (again!) and the Pharisees and teachers of the law were grumbling about it and pitching him flack (again!) and that Jesus, not being one to take anything from these people, especially on this issue, hit back….(also again!) Jesus proceeded to tell three parables, back to back, giving God’s perspective on this matter focusing especially on how God is relentlessly searching for people, however unworthy they might look on the surface, to follow Him. That relentless searching is an overriding theme in all three parables.
The first one is about this shepherd who has 100 sheep in his flock and when he comes home one night and counts them, he can only find 99. That’s a problem. Each individual sheep had great value and one was still out in the desert. The way that Jesus tells the story the shepherd goes to great lengths out into the desert that had harsh elements and was teaming with predators to rescue a lost lamb and bring it back into the safety of the fold. The fact that there are ninety nine sheep still nested safely behind the fence is irrelevant. One’s lost with no hope of survival without the shepherd’s intervention. He must go out and rescue it. From the shepherd’s perspective, failure is not an option.
In the second one, a woman has ten silver coins, each one worth about a day’s wages, and one gets lost so she grabs a lamp and searches diligently until she finds it. A couple of things to note about this is that, depending on the commentator, some have suggested that the coin is part of her dowry. Others have suggested that this woman is poor and that coin is probably 10% of her entire savings. In any case, all the commentators are in agreement that the coin has great value. The second point to be noted is that finding this one lost coin is no easy matter because houses back in Jesus’ time frequently had no windows and earthen floors. In other words, it’s a single coin on the dirt floor of a dark room with only a candle to light the place. Good luck with that. And then, there’s the coin itself. The coin has the king’s image and superscription on it. In this parable, this coin is a symbol representing the human soul. We too have the image and superscription of God, visibly manifested by our ability to think and exercise free volition, both attributes of God, stamped on us. Going back to the parable though, the lost coin has great value and the woman searches until she finds it.
Then there’s the third parable, the grand finale, the parable of the prodigal son. The cliff notes version is this. A man has two sons and the younger son comes to his father, who is obviously wealthy, with a request that’s a cold slap in the face. “Give me my share of the estate now,” is what the kid requested. I can see the eyebrows raise amongst Jesus’ audience as He tells this story. In that culture, you don’t ask for your share of the estate until after your father is dead and in the grave. News flash! The ol’ man is alive, well and still kicking. In fact, he still has the ability to run as we will see later. What the kid is saying to his father is this. “Dad, you are dead to me. I want nothing to do with you.” This is just my opinion, but I suspect that, if pressed to elaborate, Jesus would have said that the underlying issue here was an authority issue. The kid didn’t want to live under his father’s authority anymore, exclamation point, story’s over. Let that thought sink in for a minute, especially considering how both we as individuals and society in general, tend to approach God. Sobering thought. Let’s move on. The father had two options. Option A was to disown the kid right then and there. Then there’s Option B which was to divide the estate up and give the kid what he wanted and allow him the autonomy to do as he pleased. Surprisingly enough to the audience at least, the father chose the second option.
Shortly after he got his money, the kid took off to a distant land and squandered all of his wealth on wild living. More than likely he engaged in a series of selfish choices and, while it was not what he had intended to do, his life spiraled out of control. He hit rock bottom at the wrong time. There was a famine in the land and, in order to survive, this kid has to hire himself out to a local farmer to earn enough money to eat. His job was to feed the pigs; unclean, dirty, pigs. Quite demeaning for a Jewish kid. I also suspect that this job didn’t pay very well either. It didn’t keep up with inflation because Jesus said that this kid was so hungry that the pods he was feeding the pigs looked enticing. (It’s not written in the text per se, but logic dictates he didn’t earn enough money to buy food.) And it was at this point in his life, when he was at rock bottom, that this kid came to his senses. He remembers that even the servants in his fathers’ household have enough to eat, in fact, at that place, there’s food to spare. As he’s staring at the pig pen, the kid decides that enough is enough. He’s done. He’s going back to his father and he’s going to ask his father to take him back as a hired servant. And with that, he begins the long journey home.
Now, as this kid is still a long ways off, Jesus says that his father saw him and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. Stop right there. Think about it. This is not your Hollywood, Johnny’s come back from the war, feel good story. No, this is your Rebel Without a Cause, walk out of the house, slam the door and flip Dad off all the way to the property line, kind of story. In cultural context, he’d publicly shamed his father and made a public scandal out of the family name. When his father sees this kid from afar, he has three options. Option 1 is to disown the kid. The kid made his bed, now he can sleep in it. Option 2, be cold and distant. Maybe take pity on the kid but let him grovel and beg. Give him enough maybe so he doesn’t starve but that’s about it. And then there’s Option 3, his father does the unthinkable. He’s filled with compassion. He runs to his kid, throws both arms around him and kisses him. Once again, to fully appreciate the significance of this we have to go back to the context of the culture. Old men, especially if they are as wealthy as this man was, don’t run….anywhere. They walk in a dignified manner. And when they get where they are going, they don’t throw their arms around a dirty ragged rebel and kiss them. It’s the other party that pays respect to them. Those are the cultural expectations. Well, cultural expectations be damned! This is his son who was lost. He’s back and the father is overjoyed. A Christian song writer has called it a “scandal of grace” but there’s more.
What the father does next is over the top and it’s ripe with symbolism. The father calls for his servants to bring the best robe and put it on the kid, not just give him some clean clothes, but the best robe. It’s more than likely a robe from the father’s own wardrobe and it represents significance. He tells the servants to put a ring on the kid’s finger, the finger that’s right next to the one that the kid used to flip his father off when he’d left those many years ago. And, that’s not just any ring either. It’s a family ring, once again, one that likely belongs to the father. It has an image of the family seal on it and it represents the father’s authority delegated to the person who is wearing it. The father instructs the servants to put sandals on the kid’s feet. In cultural context, sons wore sandals, servants went barefoot. No, you aren’t misreading this. The father reinstated this kid to the family, the same kid who, probably in anger and rebellion, told his father that the old man was dead to him, has been restored to the family. But wait. His father isn’t quite done. He gives one last order. “Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” Once again, the significance of this act would not have been lost on the original audience. The fattened calf was an animal saved for special occasions like a milestone birthday party or something like that. The rich man had other, less expensive animals he could have slaughtered for this feast but he chose the best. And it wasn’t just a quiet meal either. There was music and dancing, loud music. It was one of those, “if it gets any louder they’re gonna call the cops on us for violating the noise ordinance,” loud kind of parties. Okay…..now Dad’s done, at least with that part of the story.
So let’s tie these loose ends up now as it relates to what happens on God’s end in this surrender process. One of the points that Jesus was making to his audience when He told these parables, and it’s why He told them back to back, was that He wanted to give his audience a good look at God’s heart. God wants people to return to him and He’s searching for them individually. I don’t think that it was any accident that it was one sheep, one coin, and one son in each of the parables. Like a wall is built one brick at a time, Jesus is building his kingdom individual by individual.
The second thing is that when repentance happens in an individual’s life, God isn’t just pleased, He celebrates it. In all three parables, when the lost are found, there’s a celebration that ensues. Its right there, recorded in Scripture.
Then there’s this matter of repentance. It’s a common theme in all three parables as well. The first two parables introduce it and the parable of the prodigal son expands on its meaning. In the parable of the prodigal son, the son rejects his father’s authority and moves away from his father. It’s worth noting here that the son does not merely distance himself from his father, he moves as far away as he possibly can. In the first part of the story, the son initiates the action. He is the one who demands his share of the inheritance prematurely, he’s the one who tells his father that his father is dead to him, he’s the one who moves as far away as he possibly can and once he gets there, establishes his own moral code and spirals into ruin. And it’s when he absolutely hits rock bottom that he remembers what life was like in his father’s house and longs for it. Now on the surface I suppose it could be argued that the process of repentance began in the son’s corner but I don’t think so. Hear me out. Yes, you have the son assessing his situation and remembering what life was like in his father’s house but ask yourself this question. Who was the source of those memories? It was the father. The son experienced them but the father caused them. And let me take this one step further if I may. God still does that with all of us. You know that unrest that always seems to be there, that never quite goes away? That’s God’s doing. So often there’s this underlying current as you sense that there’s got to be more to life than what you’re experiencing. Sometimes it’s subtle, sometimes it’s brutal, but in any case, it never quite goes away. It doesn’t seem to matter what you do, whether it’s good or bad, that hole is always there. That’s actually Jesus calling you. He’s the only one who can permanently fill that emptiness and that ache is his calling card, beckoning you to come home.
And lastly, did you see what the father did once his son returned? The son comes home barefoot, asking for a place as a hired servant. His father will have none of it. He embraces him and welcomes him. He puts the best robe on him, puts the family ring on his finger and shoes on his feet. He restores him back to his family position with full family rights and privileges. Let this sink in. Paul, in his epistles, expands on this but for the person who surrenders to Jesus and His authority over their life, God doesn’t just forgive the person, He adopts them into His family. The surrendered person is a son or a daughter of God with full family rights and privileges. Using Jesus’ words, before repentance, an individual is lost or dead, and after repentance, the person is found and alive and it’s all God’s doing. And why would a person repent? Look at the parables. Before repentance, the lost sheep is out in the wilderness, defenseless against the savage predators, the coin is lost on the ground forever, and the son was feeding the pigs while starving to death. After repentance, the lost sheep is safe back under the protection of the shepherd, the coin is reunited with the other coins, able to be used again, and the son is restored to his original position.
There’s one last thing and then I’ll let you go. Let’s come back to the idea that the son was restored to his original position. God wants to do that with us too. We were never created with the intention that we be separated from God, doing life on our own. We were created to live in intimate fellowship with God and be the administrators of planet Earth. The separation was our doing. God’s original purpose was to extend heaven to earth and have us rule this planet as His regents. For the record, that bringing heaven to earth part is going to happen someday. What that will look like exactly, I’m not sure of. The Bible clearly teaches that Jesus will come back to earth someday in his physical body just like He left and He will rule it. Now what that will actually look like in terms of how heaven and Earth will be connected, I’m sorry, I’m not that smart. I don’t know. He will come back though, that is crystal clear and Jesus wants us with Him.
So what we do? We’re the lost sheep, the lost coin, the prodigal son. We’re lost. We’re dead, at least that’s Jesus’ assessment of us. And now, we find ourselves feeding the pigs, for most of us that’s a figurative statement, but that’s where we are. Jesus is out there looking for us, hard. He’s fighting the elements, the wolves, trying to get to us. He’s sweeping the floor, patiently looking for us in the dark places. From His throne room He’s looking longingly – no, He doesn’t need us but He wants us and He’s respecting our right to choose, a right that, incidentally, He gave us when He created us. So what will we do? Will we repent of our rebellion, submit to His authority and come back to a loving God who is waiting for us with open arms, or will we persist in our rebellion, feeding the pigs, and end up starving to death? It’s our choice. For the record, surrendering to Jesus was the best thing I ever did. See you next week.
Made in the Image of God, the Difference Maker
Last week, I discussed the promise in Scripture that if we earnestly seek God that He said we will find Him and in the blog section last Monday, I discussed that one of the reasons that we are guaranteed success if we do this is that God has actually been looking for us for a lot longer than we have been looking for Him. I also briefly stated on Monday that God loves us unconditionally. Today, I want to unpack that a little more. I want to address the why of the statement and I’m going to suggest that one of the reasons why this is true is because of who we are.
Let’s look at this proposition shall we. God loves us because of who we are. You heard me. God loves us simply because of who we are which, incidentally, has much more to do with who God is than it ever did with us. Truly, we are not that wonderful but we’re all we got. Oh quit your bristling! You’re far from perfect and there’s days when even you can’t stand you. I’m not judging you, I’m stating a fact as someone who’s in the same boat. And, considering God is holy, our current state is a problem. And yet, God loves us because of who we are. You see, we are made in the image of God and that’s what’s making the difference.
We’re made in the image of God, what does that mean? It means that our body looks like His but that’s just window dressing. We have the ability to create, not to the degree that God does, He can create stuff out of nothing which we can’t do but we can still create to a degree. Technically, I guess that you could say when it comes to physical stuff, we upgrade things in unlimited proportions. Mentally, when it comes to anything dealing with thought, we actually do have the ability to create something out of nothing. We are sentient. We have a soul. Yes, we are made in God’s image, and that’s a big deal.
Also, as we discuss the fact that we’re made in the image of God, it’s worth noting that we’re God’s pride and joy. Think of it like this. If you live in the United States, on the 4th of July, communities always have a fireworks show. Now, at these fireworks shows there are varying degrees of bright lights and loud booms going off into the sky. And then comes the end, the grand finale. They save the best for last and they light them off all at once. It’s the exclamation point at the end of the sentence. It’s amazing and it’s designed to be what people will remember forever, or at least until next year. Guess what. When it comes to creation, the creation of the human race was the grand finale. Look at the order of things in Genesis 1. We came last and when God was done with us, He looked over all of creation and said that it was, “very good.” Everything else just got a, “good.” but we got the “very good,” comment. Granted, it was at the end of the process so it might be argued that the comment had more to do with all of creation than us specifically but we still got it and no one else, including the cat, can make that claim. Possession is nine tenths of the law cat, deal with it.
Consider also the job we were given to do. “Fill the earth and govern it,” was our mandate. “Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky and all of the animals that scurry on the earth.” We were vassals. Made in the image of our Creator, our job was to govern the earth, administrate its affairs just like God does over the rest of creation. We were to do the work of God on this planet. No one else in the creation order got that daunting task, it was given to us. Made in the image of God, yeah, it’s a big deal and God was pleased with us.
So does that mean that we’re good to go? Well, we were but then we decided that we wanted to be our own god and rebelled against the real One. One simple act of rebellion, done with our eyes wide open, set in motion an immeasurable number of consequences that we never intended to have happen even though God said they would. “You will surely die,” was what God said would happen if we rebelled and now, yes we do. Physical death is an experience common to everyone but it didn’t stop there. We died spiritually too. In rebellion against a holy, loving, God, we became unable to hear His voice or respond. Like an unplugged laptop with its battery removed, there we sat. Our reasoning became flawed and rather than governing the planet in the manner that God would govern it, we governed for our own gain at the expense of others. Proof? Read the news feeds. We have problems on every front. No facet of life is exempt. Exploitation and injustice abounds. There’s poverty and pollution, most of it preventable, on every continent. And, in the event that you’re thinking that my statement about our flawed reasoning is a bit harsh, consider the things that you think are evil, it’s pretty ugly isn’t it? Guess what. The odds are pretty good that somewhere in the world, there’s a group of people, perhaps even a whole society, that not only doesn’t think that what you call evil is bad, but it’s even good under normal circumstances. And before you go calling these people backwards and evil thugs, you should probably know that they look at you and how you think and say the same thing about you.
Where do we stand now? Here’s the Apostle Paul’s evaluation of us. Strike that, here’s God’s evaluation of us because all Paul was doing was quoting the Old Testament. “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” (Compared to what God wants.) Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes.” (Romans 3: 10 – 18)
Two chapters earlier, he wrote this about us. “Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.” (Romans 1: 28 – 32) This is an all wise God putting these thoughts into Paul’s head. This is His assessment of us. That’s tragic.
Moving on now, imagine that you are a business person. You devise a grand project and you set it up in ideal conditions for success. You give clear, concise instructions and only a fool would willingly mess it up. But that’s exactly what happened. To fix things, you put a plan in place and all that the people who are running the show have to do is cooperate and do things your way while this plan plays out. But these people who work for you refuse to follow your instructions. Not only do they mess up but they have contests to see who can screw things up worse than the last guy did. You’re losing money big time. It’s a downhill spiral, a bottomless pit with no end in sight. It’s a mess. That was the hand that God was dealt. (In the event that you think I’m lying just go back three paragraphs and re-read the paragraph.)
Let me ask you a question because you’re smarter than most people. Given the above stated circumstances, what would you advise the business person to do. If you said, “Can the entire staff and either start over from scratch or cut your losses and scrap the whole project,” you would be a wise person. God’s the wisest person out there and that’s probably what He should have done. In fact, that would have been the just thing to do and yet, that isn’t what He did. He chose to love us (yes, it was a conscious choice on His part) and make a way of reconciliation for us instead of scrapping the project. He did not overlook the justice piece of the equation. God the Son, the person of Jesus Christ, took our place on the cross, paid the penalty for our sin and offered us a way to be reconciled to our Creator, a way to go back to the way things were intended to be in the beginning. In business terms, it was a simple transaction. Here’s another way to think about it. Imagine you have an old 74 Chevy with a froze up engine, rusted to the point that it will never run and a transmission that’s shot. You need a good car, now. So you tow this junk pile piece of Chevelle to the local Toyota dealership and you try to work out a deal to get a new car. Here’s the problem though. You got no credit. Seriously, your credit score isn’t just poor, it’s 300, the lowest score possible. You got no job. Your car isn’t worth anything, in fact, you should have to pay them to take it because it’s going to cost them more to haul it to the metal recycling place than they’re going to get for it.
You try to work out a deal but it’s just not happenin’. You are toast. You have no car and no way to buy one. As you are preparing to leave, the manager of the dealership feels compassion for you and has mercy on you. He brings you into his office and proposes a solution…..it’s the only solution that’s going to work by the way, you’ve been to all of the other dealerships, new and used, in town. He proposes a trade. Your car, as is, for the top of the line car on the show room floor. Payments? There are none. He’s paying for it out of his own pocket. It’s a straight across trade. All you need to do is drive a Toyota from this point on. Amazing? Absolutely! Here’s the catch though. The manager won’t force you to take this deal, you have to agree to it.
That’s really what God did for us. Jesus took our sin, paid the penalty for it and is offering us His righteousness in return. All we have to do is admit that we are a sinner and cannot save ourselves, agree that Jesus is God and end our rebellion against Him. Why? God sees us as valuable. We are made in His image, that’s what’s making the difference.
Here’s the kicker though. God won’t force us to take the offer, we must choose to do that. This is what’s what. We have two options. We can agree to take God up on His offer or we can pay it ourselves. If we choose to reject Christ, we will spend eternity in hell. You see, God will take back His creation eventually and that includes this planet. The only place in existence where He will not be is hell. God will be everywhere else and He will not force a person to submit to His good rule. Hell, as presented in the Bible, is a horrible place. The Bible clearly teaches that it’s a literal place, not a figure of speech. The words used to describe it are garbage dump, (Gehenna was the name of the garbage dump outside of Jerusalem. The garbage was disposed of by being burned.) or the Lake of Fire. It’s a place where there’s “weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth”, Jesus’ words. And here’s the other part too worth noting. It was never intended for us. It was created for Satan and his angels.
So what are you going to do? Take God up on His offer, end your rebellion and let Jesus pay the penalty for it. Or will you insist on paying it yourself. To take God up on His offer is not a mystery. In fact, to take God up on His offer is much more about heart attitude than it is about saying the right words. Words just express the attitude of the heart. Basically, if a person wants to follow Jesus, the simplest way would be to pray something like. “God, I’ve been in rebellion against you. Sometimes that rebellion has been blatant disobedience, sometimes that rebellion has been a passive disregard for what you have said. Either way, I have been rebelling against you and I want to stop because right now, as it is, I am separated from you and I don’t want that anymore. Thank you for sending Jesus to pay the penalty that I deserved for my rebellion. I want to apply that to my life. I believe that you raised Jesus from the grave and I agree to end my rebellion against you. I don’t understand everything but I want to follow Jesus for the rest of my life. Thank you for forgiving me. In Jesus name, amen.”
If you just prayed that prayer, there’s something that I would advise you to do. If you know another person who follows Jesus, tell them about it. If you don’t know anyone like that, get a hold of me. I would like to help you connect with people who are following Jesus as you navigate this idea of what following Jesus looks like. One thing about following Jesus is this, it was never intended to be done in isolation. People were created to function in community and this is no different. You need people. See you next week.
The Prayer that God is Guaranteed to Answer
Okay, I’m not going to lie. I don’t exactly feel qualified to write this post but I’m just getting this impression that I’m supposed to write this so, out of obedience, here goes. That’s one thing about following Jesus, you don’t get a lot of flexibility when you get an assignment. You just get a notion and you just have to roll with it. I don’t get them very often but I did this time. I want to talk to you about the prayer that, if offered sincerely, God is guaranteed to respond to.
You’ll notice that the wording in this post is personal, like it’s just you and me talking at a table. That’s by design. It is just you and me today, well, almost. Actually, there’s a third person in this conversation as well. Jesus is in the middle of this one too. Yeah, He’s here. In fact, He’s the one who instigated this whole conversation so, as you’re reading, if you occasionally sense some nudges and prompts, that’s Him talking not me. I’m just the messenger here.
So what prompted this post? Well, it’s about you actually. There’s something going on in your life right now that’s heavy and it’s weighing you down and you know exactly what it is. In fact, you have a much better handle on the specifics of this one than I do. Like I said, I’m just the writer. I don’t know if it’s a health diagnosis you’ve just received, if it’s a legal mess that you know is about ready to blow up in your face, or if it’s relational. (That’s a loaded topic, I know. There’s all kinds of places that one could go.) Or maybe it’s something else entirely. Look, I have no idea what it’s about but I do know this much, you’re at a crossroads right now and assuming that you’ll let Him, God wants to talk to you.
What’s on His mind are several things. First, He knows about everything you’ve ever done or thought about doing and He still loves you unconditionally, He always has. The fact that you haven’t wanted to do things His way, or even that perhaps you have blatantly wanted nothing to do with Him, hasn’t changed that. You were created in His image and He loves you. Period. And He’s been calling you to Himself. Seriously, even though you haven’t been searching after Him, He’s had you on His radar from the day you were conceived. Throughout your life He’s been trying to get your attention. Sometimes He’s been subtle, sometimes He’s been obvious, so obvious that everyone has picked up on it, well, except for you. In any case, He’s here now and His motivation is pretty simple. He loves you.
Secondly, He wants you to know that you were designed to live in an intimate relationship with Him. Specifically, you were created to interact with God as a friend. It’s written into your DNA. You know how throughout your entire life, as long as you could remember, nothing has ever seemed to permanently satisfy you? You wanted something and when you got it, you were satisfied for the moment but then eventually that satisfaction just went away. That’s a normal experience, by the way, and it was actually God’s doing. You see, He designed all of us with what could best be described as a God sized hole in our chest that only He can fill. When that hole is empty, we know it. We have this gnawing sense of dissatisfaction, a hunger if you will, that can only be satisfied if we have an intimate relationship with God. The problem is that we try and fill that hole with other things besides God and it just doesn’t work. What we’re left with is temporary satisfaction that eventually goes away. The only thing that can satisfy us permanently is when we are in an intimate relationship with Him. Bottom line, you’re at a crossroads right now and Jesus is staring right at you with His hand stretched out inviting you to follow Him, inviting you to begin that intimate relationship with Him.
So what’s the problem? You have the same problem that we all do, it’s our rebellion against God. It goes back to doing things our own way and rejecting God’s leadership. We insist on writing our own moral code and what He calls bad, we’re gonna call good and vice versa. He says we should love our neighbors and we want to kill them – assassinate their character at least. Speaking in broad terms, we were created to live under God’s loving authority and we have usurped the control center but I’m not telling you anything right now that you don’t already know. Listen to this and tell me if it doesn’t sound familiar. It should. We’ve all done it. We’re confronted with a choice to do something and if we do it, it’ll be wrong on an infinite number of levels and we know it. However, we’re gonna do it anyway, if for no other reason than we just want to, and if anyone doesn’t like it, including God, well, they can just stick it. How do I know this? Been there, done that, got the shirt – or my butt kicked.
Now, up to this point in your life, you’ve been able to ignore all of this rebellion stuff and the consequences of it I suppose, either by providence, skill, or the grace of God, but there’s a principle in the Bible that keeps showing up over and over. You reap what you sow. In the real world back at the Roach place, for example, we planted corn in April and harvested it in July and August. We reaped what we sowed. Guess what, you’ve planted seeds of rebellion your entire life and it’s almost harvest time. And frankly, if this was a poker game, your hand doesn’t look so good. Am I lying? Look, if you read me at all, you know that this style of post is different from the way I usually write but I’m sensing that I’m supposed to tailor this post specifically for you and people like you. Examine your life for a minute. Is this really how you want it to play out? There is a way out, a way of escape, but in order for that to happen, you have to agree to end your rebellion against God before it’s too late.
Now maybe you’re reading this and this is the first time you’ve ever been confronted with your life, your future, in these terms and the emotions are bubbling up in the core of your being, not necessarily because of what I’ve written but rather just because that’s how life is right now. It is what it is, you know. And, perhaps, you’ve always believed that God exists but you’ve had absolutely no idea what to do with it or, for that matter, how it was relevant. Or, for all I know, you might be this person. Up until now you were either positive that God didn’t exist or just weren’t sure one way the other but now, like a dripping faucet at midnight, there’s a still small voice that’s not going away, whispering softly, “What if God does exist? Now what?” What are you going to do? This much you know, you know what’s staring you right in the face. You know that unless something changes, like now, life is going to steam roll you and the consequences will be ugly. You’re almost resigned to it but now, you’re reading this article. Hey, I don’t know how you got here, maybe you stumbled across this article accidentally or maybe someone forwarded it on to you. In any case, here you are and I’m telling you that God has taken an interest in you, and is reaching out to you. He’s plowing through the middle of your mess and He’s trying to get to you. He’s telling you that you don’t have to do this on your own and He’s inviting you to follow Him.
So now, back to you. Perhaps you aren’t sure about this at all and you honestly don’t know what to do. If you’re willing, let me suggest that you pray a prayer that God is sure to answer. It’s a simple, honest prayer that will give you clarity. It goes something like this. “God, I’m not even sure you exist, or if you do, that you care about me but, if you’re out there and you’re listening, I need you. Please reveal yourself to me.” And then, put your head on a swivel and, over the next few days, expect Him to answer. Understand this. If you honestly want to find Him, He will let Himself be found. That, He promised.
To my normal readers, I am going to close this article a little bit differently than I usually do. I am going to post some Bible verses that back up what I’ve been saying and wrap things up that way.
Now, to all my readers, I don’t know whether you’re reading this on post day, (July 18th, 2019) or whether it’s many years later, I’ve just had this impression that some of you need to hear this message. You’re at a crossroads right now and God is reaching out to you. My advice to you is to read the Bible verses that I’ve included. Think about what they’re saying and ask God to reveal Himself to you. You won’t be disappointed. I can tell you from personal experience that Jesus is worth following. See you next time.
“Those who seek me, find me.” Proverbs 8: 17
“’Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when seek me with all of your heart. I will be found by you,’ declares the LORD.” Jeremiah 29: 12 – 14
“Then Jesus said, ‘Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.’” Matthew 11: 28 – 30
“When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.” Romans 5:6 – 8
“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that everyone who believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16
‘Then he said to the crowd, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your selfish ways, take up your cross daily, and follow me.”’ Luke 9:23
“’Come, follow me,’ Jesus said.” Matthew 4:19
How Seriously do We Take Jesus?
Imagine for a minute, if this happened in real life. Pretend last week, a guy we’ll call Jake posted a meme on his Facebook wall. There was this cat sprawled on its back, with a newspaper on its stomach staring over a pair of glasses at the camera. The caption read, “I didn’t know you had the authority to judge me. Is Jesus hiring?” It got the normal responses. A few likes, a couple of comments here and there and then, 24 hours later, Jake received a notification on his phone. One of his friends had gotten the bright idea to tag Jesus and Jesus was responding. Yeah, Jesus had been called out and now He was answering.
“Like you’d bother to change anything if I did authorize someone to judge you.” Jesus wrote.
Jake stared at the screen. Oh crud! He could see someone was still typing. Thirty seconds later, another comment popped up. It was Jesus again. “For the record, I’ve never been hiring but I’ve been recruiting people to follow me from day one.” How was he supposed to field that? Jake employed the “say nothing and it will just go away,” approach.
An hour later, Phil chimed in, “LOL, I’d like to be recruited by Jesus.” So much for the post going away. With friends like he had, who needed enemies?
Shortly, another response appeared. It was Jesus for the third time. “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat – I am. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way. You know where I am if you want to talk about it.”
And with that, Jesus was gone. A few more people commented on the post but it fizzed out after that. Jake actually contemplated messaging Jesus back but life happened and he just didn’t get around to it. And with that, the post sort of faded into his Facebook archives.
So where did I get the idea for this? It is obviously fiction but it was based off an actual meme that one of my Facebook friends posted. My initial impression of that meme was that I was struck by how the arrogance of the message oozed onto the page and while my opinion hasn’t changed I guess I’m grateful. It’s a great launch point for a post.
The meme illustrates perfectly the average person’s response to anyone who calls them out. Face it, nobody likes to be told they’re wrong, by anyone, and their natural response is to push back either passively or aggressively whenever it happens. So much so that unless the other person calling them out has some kind of tangible authority, like a boss or something, they’re as likely as not to just blow that other person off and not change a thing. The problem is though, if it’s Jesus who is attempting to correct them, they’ll probably respond the same way. They’ll change nothing….nada.
Am I exaggerating? You tell me. Look how the Bible is treated. Now, while the Bible is more than just a manual for how to live, much more in fact, parts of it can serve as an instructional manual for life choices. The Ten Commandments, the Epistles, or Proverbs just to name a few, are prescriptive in nature and definitely serve as a life recipe for right living. But, that’s not Jesus, people say. That’s the Bible, there’s a difference. Oh really? 2 Timothy 3:16 reads, “All Scripture is God breathed….” In other words, all Scripture is God’s thoughts. But that’s just Paul’s opinion, they say. Excuse me while I give them the cat in the meme look. I even have the glasses to pull it off. In the Gospels, Jesus was just as apt to use the phrase, “I say to you,” as He was to say, “It is written,” like Scripture was His words and His thoughts. That was a major deviation from the Old Testament, incidentally, when the prophets almost always used the phrase, “thus says the Lord,” when they claimed to be speaking for God, and on many occasions Jesus did claim to be God. Now track with me. If Jesus’ claim to be God is true, and all Scripture is God breathed, then, logically, that means that the words written in the Bible are His thoughts. Does that mean then, that the Bible can be used as an absolute standard by which morality can be measured? It’s not rocket science. Connect the dots.
So how do people tend to respond to this line of reasoning, especially when the Bible says one thing but they are doing another? Some take the, in your face – aggressive approach. They’ll say something like, “I don’t worship your God,” or “I don’t believe in the Bible. It’s an outdated document with errors in it. It’s all depends how you interpret it. Just because it’s right for you doesn’t make it right for me.” In a manner of speaking, using the aggressive approach, they just flip Jesus off and tell him to stick it.
Then there’s the line of passive resistance. In many ways it’s not all that much different from the aggressive approach except it has better table manners. Using this approach people exchange the really bad sins for the more acceptable ones especially if they don’t break the law. Gossip, anger, greed, even racism, subtle and/or blatant, are symptoms of this approach. This, incidentally, includes us church attending people too. A lot of times we’ll ride both sides of the fence, looking like Jesus in one situation and living no differently than the most rebellious aggressive person described in the previous paragraph in another, sometimes on the same day. And, if we want to do the “bad stuff”, it’s okay to do it (not really!) as long as we don’t get caught and as long as we make sure to confess it later……much later. As an example, an unmarried couple in a church might take this approach if they are sleeping together. They are committing the same sin as the unchurched couple who are living together, they just won’t advertise it and will likely deny it if confronted.
And right now, the thinkers reading this blog are saying that aside from the table manners, there’s no difference between the two approaches. Precisely, it’s just two different flavors of rebellion. Incidentally, Jesus agrees. There’s this well-known sermon Jesus preached called, “The Sermon on the Mount” that’s recorded in Matthew 5, 6, and 7. Let me tell you, as sermons go, this one truly stirred the pot. Summarizing briefly, Jesus told his audience that their righteousness had to be better than that of the most religious people of the day, the Pharisees, and when it came to the definition of what was sin, Jesus didn’t lower the bar, he raised it……to the point that if you think about it, no one could clear it. He took the acts of sin to their motive level. He linked murder to the anger that was driving it. He linked adultery to the lust that preceded it. He called religious acts and ceremonies done only to impress other people sin. He told people that it was impossible to serve both God and money. You know, when you analyze the sermon, Jesus essentially condemned his entire audience and us as well.
And then there was His conclusion. It had to have just blown everyone’s minds. He claimed at the final judgement, that there would be people going to heaven and that there would be people going to hell. That part didn’t exactly surprise his audience but what had to have shocked them was when He said that He, and He alone, would make the final decision as to who went where.
So, right now, many of you are thinking, “No kidding Captain Obvious. He’s Jesus. He’s God, or at least He claimed to be. He’s supposed to do that. It’s in His job description.” Why yes, yes it is. And that brings us back full circle doesn’t it and raises some uncomfortable questions. If we believe that Jesus is God and that words written in the Bible are His words and thoughts, then how seriously are we going to take them? What about the parts that that make us uncomfortable, the parts that talk about lust or greed or condemn racism? What if Jesus, through the Bible, says one thing and it looks like our political party is saying another? What if there are parts of law of the land that say that we can do one thing but Scripture prohibits it? What are we going do? Cherry pick and dismiss a passage of Scripture or change our behavior and obey? (Radical concept? Hardly. The only people who don’t get that are those of us who live in North America or Western Europe. Christians in the rest of the world are confronted with that dilemma every day and when they choose Jesus, they know that it’s a choice that quite possibly could cost them their life. Apparently, they have counted the cost and decided that following Jesus is worth it.)
And then there’s the part about Jesus and judging. Hey, the cat in the meme brought that one up. Yes, Jesus will judge people, He will be fair, and yes, in His own words, He will condemn some people to hell. In Matthew 7: 21 -23, Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” He said a similar thing in Luke 13:27. The bottom line is this, if the Bible is true….then when it’s all over, Jesus will be the judge.
So is that the end of the story? No. The end game of the Bible is to describe God’s plan to rescue, redeem and restore his creation, including humanity. Here’s the thing though, when Jesus talked about it, He always framed that issue in terms of authority, or who is God, the individual, the great pretender, or Him. He talked about the Kingdom of Heaven and how He was the King of that Kingdom. His invitation was for people to repent of their sin and follow him. In other words, if they were going to take Him up on His offer and follow Him, then Jesus was to be the King and they weren’t, it was that simple. It meant that their pride, arrogance, rebellion….you name it, had to go. It means that their misguided sense of self-righteousness had to go too because they had none. It meant that they had to surrender control of their lives to Jesus.
And, today, nothing’s changed…..nada. That’s where we are too. The ball is now in our court. Look, Jesus can either be our judge or He can be our savior. Following the evidence trail, it’s quite clear that He’d much rather be our savior and He’s got five scars on His body that prove it. Deeply embedded in His message as He talked about His kingdom and what that meant, was also His love for humanity. “I did not come to judge the world but to save it.” John 3:17. Throughout His three year ministry, He wasn’t talking out of both sides of his mouth. He was stating fundamental truth, saying that every person will have to make a choice. For those who choose to repent and follow Him, which is what He really wants, He will be their savior and share His entire kingdom with them. For those who rebel and persist in their rejection of Him, however, He will sadly be their judge. The choice is theirs.
So now what do you do, especially if this article hit home and you desire to follow Jesus but you don’t know how. A restored relationship with God usually starts with prayer. If you don’t know what to say, try this. “God, I’m proud and I’m arrogant. I agree with your assessment that not only is pride and arrogance sin, but that I’m a sinner as well and that I cannot save myself. I agree with you that my sin is deserving of eternal separation from you but I really don’t want that. I’d like to change. Please forgive me of my pride and arrogance and make me the kind of person that you want me to be. Thank you for sending Jesus to die for my sin. I surrender and accept Jesus as Lord of my life. Thank you for forgiving me. In Jesus name, Amen.”
If that prayer expresses your desires, tell God either by praying that one or one of your own. Seriously, he’s much more concerned with your heart attitude than he is with your words.
Now if you prayed that prayer, you need to tell someone, someone who can help you in your walk with God. If you don’t have anyone like that in your life, get ahold of me. I can either help you or hook you up with someone in your city who can. You can either email me or find me on Instagram. I’m sam.roach.16 and my profile pic is a tan hat that covers half my face.
See you next week.
Messiah? Jesus? He Doesn’t Look the Part.
Why?
Imagine a coffee shop on a Saturday morning and in the lobby, a man and a woman are meeting who haven’t seen each other for some time. They hug warmly and, as they are waiting to order, the woman snaps a selfie of them, tags some people and posts it on Instagram. Instantly, in Conconully, Washington, Mary’s phone vibrates. She’s was one of the people who has been tagged. She taps on the screen and beams. It’s her brother and sister. It’s confirmed. They’ll be in town tomorrow. She shows the picture to her five year old daughter.
The little girl bursts out, “Mommy! It’s Jesus.”
Mary paused. Granted, her brother was sporting a beard but no one had ever mistaken that renegade for Jesus. “Nooo….that’s not Jesus. That’s your uncle.”
“I know who Uncle Jerry is, Mommy. Not him. Him!” she said, pointing at the screen. “The man behind him. That’s Jesus.”
Mary looked closely. In the background sitting in a comfy chair, looking away, was a man who had been captured in the picture, an inadvertent photo bomber.
Mary smiled. “That man does look kind of like Jesus doesn’t he. That’s not Jesus though. It’s just someone who looks like him, honey.”
The child, with a headstrong air, looked at Mary, her eyes flashing. “Mommy, that’s Jesus. I’d know him anywhere.”
Actually, the kid was right. It was Jesus sitting in that chair and he was in the middle of a divine appointment. He’d come into the coffee shop an hour earlier knowing that this guy named Michael was going to be there and they were now talking, except Michael didn’t know who he was talking to. He recognized that the guy he was conversing with was sharp but, Jesus? No way. This guy just didn’t look the part.
Stop. Stop what you’re doing right now and let those words sink in. This guy just didn’t look the part. In Michael’s opinion, Jesus didn’t look enough like Jesus to be Jesus. Is that just a line in a piece of fiction? Yes and no. Yes, it is just a line in a piece of fiction. I should know, I just wrote it. But no, it’s not just a line in a piece of fiction, because if Jesus were to walk the earth today in the same manner that He did over 2000 years ago, I suspect he would hear that a lot. After all, that’s what happened the first time around and it’s time to address why.
2000 years ago, the Jewish nation had this idea of what their Messiah was supposed to look like. They were looking for a political king, probably military, well connected with an agenda that would be to kick the Romans out of Judea and re-establish Israel as an independent nation. They were expecting their Messiah to look majestic. And Jesus, frankly, didn’t. Jesus was this carpenter turned rabbi, whose only possessions were the clothes on his back, from Nazareth. Nazareth? Yeah, Nazareth. Loosely translated, Jesus was from the sticks. One of His disciples sarcastically put it like this. “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” Apparently….that’s where the Messiah was from. However, when it came to being the Messiah, in the opinion of His contemporaries, Jesus didn’t look the part. Back at ‘em though, whose fault was that? Did Jesus drop the ball or were the expectations of the Jewish nation at the time so out of step with what God was trying to do that when their Messiah came and lived among them that they missed Him entirely? Did they blow it and, more importantly, are we in danger of doing the same thing? It’s time to unpack things.
In terms of being majestic, in the first chapter of John, the premise is made that Jesus was God and that He created the universe. Bounce back to Genesis now and read the account of creation in the first chapter. Creation is said to have taken place in seven days. For the sake of this article, don’t get caught up in whether or not these are literal days, instead, focus on the how of creation. The language that’s used in the original account is kingdom type language. It’s just one royal decree after another. “Let there be….” The command is issued and Boom! No hassle. It’s done. It’s not hard work for Jesus. In terms of substance, is that majestic enough for ya?
Too brief? Okay, try this then. Jump back up to the Gospel accounts. Jesus’ disciples saw Him walk on water once and silence storms on several occasions simply by issuing a command. The crowds saw Him make the lame walk, the blind see, and heal the sick often by simply issuing a command. And a smaller group that included both His friends and His enemies watched Him raise Lazarus from the grave who had been in there for four days. Was Lazarus really dead? He was dead enough that when Jesus told them to roll back the stone that Lazarus’ sister pushed back and said, “No way! By this time he stinks!” (I’d say that’s pretty dead.) However, Jesus’ will prevailed and the stone was rolled away. Then Jesus issued the command, “Lazarus! Come forth!” and out Lazarus came, alive, totally restored to life. Ladies and gentlemen, that’s power that’s off the charts and majesty that just oozes out all over the pages. And yet, Jesus was rejected by his own people, because in terms of expectations of what the Messiah was supposed to look like, He didn’t look the part. It was an image problem. Hmmm…..rejection based on image in spite of substance. Ponder that for a minute.
So what was his image anyway? What did He look like? That’s the problem. We don’t know. I heard an author once say that in the Bible, there’s nothing written describing the physical appearance of Jesus and he’s right. In terms of physical appearance, aside from a prophesy written 700 years before His birth where the Messiah was described as being, “a scrawny seedling, a scrubby plant in a parched field and there was nothing attractive about him,” there’s absolutely nothing giving us any indication of what he looked like. We know He only owned the clothes on His back during His three years of public ministry and that He was dependent on the financial support of others during that time but, what did He look like in terms of image? Who knows? What that same author did go on to say however was that while we know next to nothing about what His physical appearance was like, we have a very clear picture of what His character was like. That’s spot on. The writers of Scripture painted a clear picture of that.
Scripture records that He was humble and gentle in heart. He had compassion for people. He wept on at least two occasions. He had a zeal for godliness as evidenced when he overturned the money changers tables in the temple. And He was intelligent, sharp enough to debate with the brightest minds of his day and win decisively to the point that, in the end, no one dared debate Him. But He also had a servant’s heart. He met the needs of others even at His own expense. Laying the cards on the table, Jesus’ mission was to seek and save the lost, and He came to give His life as a ransom for the many. His words not mine.
So how does one make sense of this? Jesus is majesty and humility all tied up in one not so neat little package. To help wrap your mind around this, think of majesty as a robe that Jesus has worn and, incidentally is currently wearing, for all eternity except for 33 years. For 33 years Jesus willingly took it off. Now staying with the analogy, take this one step further. Any time someone takes off a robe, they can just as easily put it back on. So could Jesus. Keep up now because this idea that Jesus could take off divine privilege and put it back on at will means that Jesus could have called off the crucifixion, the whole reason that He came, at any time had He so desired…..and He knew it. For example, Jesus told Peter in the middle of his arrest that He had twelve legions of angels at His disposal. And trust me, had Jesus summoned them, those angels would have come with a vengeance. That was their king who was about to be murdered. But Jesus never called on them. Never. Instead, He allowed Himself to be subjected to one illegal trial after another, He allowed Himself to be mocked, beaten and scourged beyond recognition and then He allowed Himself to be stripped naked and crucified for the sins of all humanity while God the Father abandoned Him to his fate. Oh yeah, and His response in the middle of all of this? He prayed for the people who were killing Him, He made arrangements for His mother to be taken care of, and He responded to a repentant thief who was also being crucified that day by promising him that he would be joining Jesus in Paradise.
So why did He do this in the way that He did? I’m not just talking about the crucifixion, I mean the whole package from Bethlehem to Golgotha. Why do it like that? If you’re God, why stack the deck against yourself when you have the power to do it differently. Theologically, there’s a lot of reasons but I want to talk about the one that theologians generally don’t address. In terms of theological discussions it just gets pushed to the back burner and forgotten about.
It has to do with leadership and the kind of leader Jesus is. Many people don’t have a problem with the idea that Jesus is God and that He died for the sins of the world. Nor do they have a problem believing that the resurrection happened or that Jesus is now reigning at the right hand of God the Father in heaven. They accept all of that. What they have a problem with however, is something much more personal. Control. Jesus is asking them to give Him control of their life and what they aren’t sure of is if they can trust Him. They understand that He will change their agendas at the very core of their being and they are apprehensive about it to say the least.
Are their fears all that unfounded? If they were to give Jesus their lives, with the power He has, He could do anything He wanted. Think about it, that’s what they’ve seen modeled throughout history and so have we if we’re honest. Typically, the more power that a person has, the more apt that they are to abuse it. If the Genesis account is true, (and I personally believe that it is!) with the kind of power Jesus possesses, He could be the ultimate people user. So here’s the question of the hour. Can Jesus be trusted?
And that brings us back to the original premise that when it came to looking like the Messiah, or more to the point, not looking the part, Jesus did so by design. He did so to give a broken world a visual picture of what God was like and offered it up as Exhibit A for the case that can be made for the trustworthiness of God. Look, Luke 9:23 and 24 is a big ask on Jesus’ part but it’s the only way the fractured relationship between a person and their Creator can be restored. What Jesus was and is saying to us is this. “In answer to the question of whether or not I will abuse my power, you can trust me, I’m safe in that regard.” And then He offers the circumstances surrounding His life and death as evidence of that. He would point to the circumstances at the time of His birth, the Bethlehem barn and feed trough that He was laid in, and the fact that He was raised by poor working class parents. He would point out that He socialized with the marginalized of society and that He never forced His will on anyone. He would draw attention to how He elevated the status women and children, and how He ate with Gentiles, even Samaritans. For a Jewish male during His time, that was radically different. He would point to the fact that while He told the truth honestly, He did not impose His will on anyone and force them to accept it. Then He would point to what He’s offering people today. Forgiveness of sin, adoption into His family and the fact that He enables people to change. The bottom line, and this is why Jesus intentionally did not look the part, when it comes to leaders, Jesus is safe and He wanted to make sure humanity knew that. And that leads us to a final question. Why would you not follow Him? His offer on the table is a complete pardon for sin, a restoration of a fractured relationship with God and a future that includes God, through the Holy Spirit, transforming a person into the kind of person they were created to be, their best selves actually. What’s involved? A person confesses that they are a sinner, that they need a savior, that Jesus is that savior who was crucified for their sin and that God has raised Him from the dead. And they accept Jesus as Lord of their lives. It’s a gift that cost God everything but, in that regard, costs a person nothing. They place their faith in Jesus and surrender control. It’s that simple. But the ball is in our court. We have to choose.
Over the next couple of weeks I am going to explore a little bit the question of how safe a leader Jesus is. For those of you who wrestle with that question, I’d especially invite you to follow along. See you next week.
Can Jesus be Trusted?
(He’ll Tell You the Truth)
Last week, in a story involving a character I named Dennis, I explored the question whether or not Jesus could be trusted with our lives by having Dennis ask Jesus straight up. “How do I know I can trust you?” And I made this executive decision that Jesus would answer by comparing and contrasting Himself with His competition. 2700 or so words later, I was done. But what if I missed the boat? Not the compare and contrast deal, I’m confident that I nailed that part, but what if that wasn’t the deal breaker for Dennis? What if Dennis thrives on knowing the truth, even if it sucks? What if the underlying question that Dennis is asking is, “Jesus, can I trust you to tell me the truth and then let the chips fall where they may?” Yep, it’s executive decision time again. That’s what Dennis wants to know and Jesus, because He’s omniscient, knows it too.
Jesus always appreciates honest questions. However, He doesn’t always answer questions directly. In this case He might answer it in a way that would nudge Dennis to use his mind. Jesus might start by saying something like, “Consider my track record.” With a wink then he’d tell a couple of stories from His life and allow Dennis to draw his own conclusion.
Jesus might start with the story of Nicodemus that’s recorded in John 3. Briefly, Nicodemus was a high ranking Pharisee, one of the religious leaders in Jewish society, who came to see Jesus at night. Why at night? We aren’t told. I suppose we could be nice and say that he came at night because of the crowds that Jesus drew during the day. Those crowds were so large that having a conversation with Jesus at that time would have been impossible. Therefore, coming to see Jesus after dark was the only way to pull it off. Yeah, are you buying this line of bull? Me neither. Let’s try Plan B, the truth. More than likely Nicodemus came at night because he didn’t want his peers to see him talking to Jesus. In the opinion of most Pharisees, Jesus was this controversial wild card from the sticks of Galilee. In spite of that however, there was something about Jesus that intrigued Nicodemus so he did what he had to do to make it happen. Yeah, Nicodemus got a private sit down with the rabbi from Galilee.
That night, Nicodemus began the conversation by stating the obvious. He knew that Jesus was a teacher who had come from God because no one could do the miracles that Jesus did if God wasn’t with him. Jesus however, skipped the formalities and cut to the chase. He responded by getting right to the heart of the issue and telling Nicodemus exactly what he needed to hear, exposing his blind spot. “I tell you the truth, no one can see the Kingdom of God unless he is born again.” Jesus said.
Say what? Was Jesus talking about a physical birth, somehow going back and reentering his mother’s womb, Nicodemus wondered? Nope. Not even close. Jesus was talking about a spiritual birth. Jesus told Nicodemus that in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven a person had to be born of water (the physical birth) and be born of the Spirit as well. He lost Nicodemus entirely. “What in the world are you talking about?” the Pharisee asked.
Over the next few verses Jesus attempted to clarify this. In order to enter the Kingdom of God, a person had to be born spiritually as well as physically. That is, a person had to have the Spirit of God literally living inside of Him. Using that idea as a launch point, Jesus pointed out the fallacy in the way that Nicodemus was thinking and pointed him back toward the truth. You see, Nicodemus had this idea that if a person obeyed the Mosaic Law perfectly and participated in all the right religious ceremonies they could get to heaven. If you’re thinking incidentally, that Nicodemus’ belief system sounds like an, “if I do enough good stuff I can earn my way into heaven,” system, you’re right. That’s exactly what it was and Jesus, using an example that Nicodemus would have been familiar with revealed to him that it wasn’t so.
Jesus began with a story familiar to every Pharisee, the story of the bronze serpent that took place during Moses’ day. Cliff notes version. Israel rebelled against God in Numbers 21 by complaining miserably about God’s provision for their needs and God responded by sending a bunch of poisonous snakes into the camp as punishment. These snakes were deadly and, as people were bit they began dying – rapidly. Now these people may have been rebellious twits but they weren’t stupid. They realized what they had done and repented, probably out of terror, but they repented none-the-less. God then, in an act of mercy, had Moses make a bronze snake and put it on a pole in the middle of the camp. Then, if a person was struck, if they looked at the bronze snake, they were healed. It wasn’t difficult, it certainly wasn’t rocket science and it was available to anyone who needed it. All a person had to do was have enough faith to look at the statue of the bronze serpent and they were healed.
Then Jesus added a twist. He linked Himself to that bronze serpent. He said that in the same manner the bronze snake was lifted up, the Son of Man, one of His favorite titles for Himself, would be also be lifted up so that everyone who believed in Him would have eternal life. I can imagine the look on Nicodemus’ face as he attempted to process this. Jesus meanwhile, reemphasized the point by stating the verse that today we know as John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” And then Jesus drove home the dagger of truth. He told Nicodemus that anyone who did not believe in Jesus was condemned already, not because of the sin they had committed per se but because they hadn’t believed in Jesus.
For Nicodemus this had to have been a bombshell. Let’s wander into the poor man’s head for a minute. That night Jesus blew up just about everything that man had been taught from his childhood. Jesus told him that in order to enter heaven he needed to be born spiritually not just physically, a concept that had never occurred to Nicodemus. Jesus also told him that He, Jesus, was God, Messiah, and Savior of the world. (The term “Son of Man” would have cued Nicodemus into that one and, Nicodemus, regardless of whether he would have agreed with Jesus or not, would have picked right up on it.) And Jesus had ended their conversation telling Nicodemus that in order to be accepted by God (or be born spiritually), that Nicodemus had to place his faith in Jesus. If he didn’t do that, according to Jesus, Nicodemus was condemned already. Imagine the shock. Jesus just told Nicodemus, a religious teacher of the Mosaic Law, that all the churchy religious stuff that he’d done all his life wasn’t going to make a difference, it simply wasn’t enough. Was that painful for Nicodemus to hear? I imagine so. But Jesus loved him enough to tell him the truth and offer a solution to his underlying problem.
The next piece of evidence Jesus might offer proving He could be trusted to tell the truth would be from an event that happened towards the end of His ministry. Jesus and His disciples were on their way to Jerusalem in the days before He was crucified when this young man who was extremely rich came up and asked him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He was asking what he had to do to earn his way into heaven.
Jesus instantly baited him. Paraphrasing here, Jesus answered, “Why do you call me good? No one is good – except God alone. Obey the Commandments and you’ll be fine.” Jesus was leading this man to the truth. “No one is good but God alone.” That statement would have forced that young man to think. Is Jesus God? Yes, He is, but was that what that young man was thinking? We’ll never know. The dialogue continued.
“Which ones?” The man asked.
“Don’t murder, steal, commit adultery, don’t lie, don’t defraud your neighbor and honor your parents.”
“I’ve done all that.”
Now Jesus loved this man enough to tell him the truth, regardless of the consequences and Jesus didn’t sugar coat anything when He did. “One thing you lack,” Jesus replied. “Go sell all of your possessions and give it to the poor. Then you’ll have treasure in heaven. And then come and follow Me.”
This story was told in three of the Gospel accounts and all three accounts agree. When the young man heard this, he went away sad because he was extremely wealthy. What Jesus revealed to him was that he loved his money more than he loved God and that God will tolerate no rivals. And no, Jesus did not change anything as the man left. He told him the truth and then loved him enough to let him go when he turned Him down.
As Jesus concluded these stories, a fair question would be to ask how Jesus would wrap things up. He would probably point out in His conversation with Dennis, the similarities that Nicodemus and the young man shared. In terms of obeying the Mosaic Law, both men had exemplary track records. Nicodemus was a member of the Sanhedrin, the equivalent of the Supreme Court of Jewish society. He didn’t get where he got by doing things half baked. He obeyed that Law and, the young man? When the young man claimed that he had done all of the things that Jesus listed, he was probably being truthful. But both men had a similar problem. To borrow a poker analogy, they were going for broke, betting on a losing hand. Both were counting on being accepted by God first and foremost on their own merits as evidenced by their strict adherence to the Mosaic Law. The problem was the Mosaic Law could not save anyone. It never had and it never will. All it was and still is for that matter, was the perfect standard for righteousness with the bar set so high that no one could meet it, because you couldn’t fail – ever. Its purpose was to show people that they needed a savior, it could not save them. In their conversations, Jesus revealed that to both of them. Specifically, the rich young man, while he had followed the specifics of the six commandments Jesus listed, had missed the mark on the first commandment, the one that served as the foundation for the entire Mosaic Law. “You will have no other Gods in rival to Me,” is how it literally read. The young man loved money more than he loved God. And Nicodemus? He needed to be reborn spiritually. At the time of their conversation, that hadn’t happened yet. The bottom line is that in both cases Jesus gave truthful answers in what can only be described as tough conversations. That being said, coming back to Dennis’ question whether or not Jesus can be trusted to tell the truth regardless of the outcome, His track record would indicate that He can.
So what does all of this have to do with us? Aside from the obvious application about truth telling, there’s something else here. Remember the first thing Jesus told Nicodemus. “No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” That threw Nicodemus for a loop. He had no idea what Jesus was talking about, and you know what? I’d be willing to guess that neither do you. If you weren’t raised in a church, you’re probably reading that phrase and going, “Yeah, what does that mean? It looks like some kind of religious code phrase.” In context of 21st century English, I understand your confusion. And, if you were raised in a church, you kind of know what it is but try describing it using non-churchy terms. I’m smirking now because it’s harder than it sounds. Welcome to my world. Now you know what I wrestled with last night. How does one intelligently describe how to be born spiritually like what Jesus was talking about without using religious terminology? What’s a good analogy? Show time kids!
Imagine that you have bought a new computer or laptop and it is state of the art. I mean, you went out like you thought you were that neighbor who lives down the street who extravagantly buys everything and then flaunts it in everyone’s face. And don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about. Every neighborhood has one. Anyway, you went out with a high priced budget and went completely over the top because you thought this piece of technology was worth it. This device that you purchased does everything except tie your shoes. You, my friend, are set.
But then you did it. You went out and downloaded an “upgrade”, at least that’s what you thought it was. In reality, you downloaded a mega virus that some computer programmer with issues created out of spite. That guy may have screwed up projects before but not this time. His virus did exactly what he designed it to do and now it’s on your device just wreaking havoc. You know all of those things that your machine used to do? It can’t do them anymore. Thanks to that virus, for all practical purposes, unless you’re just looking for an overpriced keyboard, your device is dead.
So what do you do now? Throw the device away? Hardly. The device is expensive and still valuable but because of the virus, it needs to be cleaned out and re-imaged. You take it to a reputable computer programmer, the best guy in town, who specializes in repairs. He eradicates the virus, wipes the hard drive clean and re-installs all the programs. Your machine can now do what it was originally designed to do.
Now how this applies to a spiritual rebirth is like this. Humanity was originally created to live in perfect sinless fellowship with God. Back then, we were spiritually alive, able to commune with our Creator and life was good. Then we rebelled. We wanted to be our own god because we thought we could be a better god than God and with one simple act of rebellion, in the same way that a computer with a virus becomes unresponsive and dead to commands from its owner to perform functions for which it was designed, we became unresponsive and separated from our Creator. We died spiritually and we became alienated from God. We and God went from being friends to being enemies. The worst part about that however was that we couldn’t fix the problem. No matter how many good things we might do, we couldn’t save ourselves. The only one with the power to fix the problem was God. He was like the reputable computer programmer in the analogy.
And fix it, He did. Yep, God loved us so much that He took it upon Himself to fix the problem. The penalty for our rebellion required the death of someone who had never rebelled against God to be willing to die in our place and that’s what Jesus did when was crucified. He took the wrath of God on Himself for our rebellion. (Think of it this way. Imagine when you were a kid that you messed up big time and got caught but your big brother somehow managed to convince your parents to ground him for it instead of you. I know, said no big brother ever. Work with me though because that’s what Jesus did.) Jesus was crucified, buried and on the third day He was raised from the dead, signifying that God the Father was satisfied with the payment. The means for fellowship between God and humanity was now in place.
God did His part. Now it’s our turn. Going back to our virus in the device analogy, in the same way that we would have to take our infected device to the computer programmer in order to be fixed, so we must take our lives to God through Jesus in order to become spiritually alive. We must get to the root of the problem, namely our rebellion against God. It must be eradicated by agreeing with God that our wrong doing is what it is, rebellion against God. We must believe that Christ’s sacrifice is the only suitable payment and then turn our lives back over to God. When a person does that, what God does then is forgives the person of all rebellion, past, present and future and enters the person enabling them to respond on a daily basis to God’s loving leadership. The person becomes spiritually reborn which is what Jesus was talking about with Nicodemus.
We’re not told what Nicodemus decided to do that night. He had a lot to think about but we do know this much. By the time Jesus was crucified, Nicodemus was a follower and in the end, church tradition has it that he died a martyr’s death. He weighed the evidence and decided that following Jesus was worth it. How about you? Have you considered following Jesus? I would really encourage you to do so. I did it and my life has never been the same.
Next week I want to take a look at the character of God, both God the Father and God the Son as I continue to field the question, “Is Jesus worth following.” See you then.
Sam
Can Jesus be Trusted?
(A Contrast of Two Servants and Two Leaders)
A couple of weeks back I posted “How Seriously Do We Take Jesus,” a story about a Facebook meme that a guy named Jake posted on his wall that among other things, popped the question, “is Jesus hiring?” In that story, one of Jake’s friends decided that it would be funny to tag Jesus, not thinking that Jesus would actually take the bait and respond. News flash. Jesus responded and He said that while He’d never been hiring He’d been recruiting followers from day one. I strung out that story a little bit longer and had some guy named Phil say he’d like to be recruited by Jesus and after Jesus responded, I just kind of let it fade out. Last night however, I got to thinking. What if that story didn’t quite end there? I made this executive decision and determined that it didn’t. Let’s go back to the part where Phil posted and get the rest of the story……..
An hour later, Phil chimed in, “LOL, I’d like to be recruited by Jesus.” So much for the post going away.
Ten minutes later, Jesus responded for the third time. “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat – I am. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way. Message me if you want to talk about it.”
And with that, Jesus was gone. A few more people commented on the post but it fizzed out after that and faded into the Facebook archives, except it didn’t, at least its impact anyway.
Two weeks later Dennis, a casual Facebook friend who had been following the stream, messaged Jesus. “So if I want to follow you, I have to let you lead, huh? I have to let you be in the driver’s seat. That’s a gutsy ask. How do I know I can trust you?” Dennis was being honest. He was counting the cost, trying to decide if following Jesus was worth it.
So what would Jesus say? There’s any number of ways He could have answered and His response would have probably depended on Dennis I suppose, and on what Dennis’ deepest needs were. Now because I have neither the time nor the space to develop Dennis’ character, I’m just going to have to take a wild guess and suggest that Jesus would have responded something like this.
One thing about Jesus, He was a great story teller and there’s no doubt in my mind that His dialogue with Dennis would have included a story, perhaps one that would use contrast, one that would drive home the point that He was markedly different from his competition. His story would begin with the event known as the Triumphal Entry on Psalm Sunday.
For those of you not familiar with the story, one week before the event we know as Easter Sunday, Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey to a crowd that was going nuts. The abbreviated version of what was happening? They were buying into the fact that Jesus was the long awaited Messiah, which was true. However, they also thought that this was the time that Jesus would take over politically, kick the Romans out of Judea and reestablish Israel as an independent nation. Unfortunately, that was not true. (Jesus second coming hasn’t happened yet. It will someday, but not yet.) Anyway, back to the story. The crowds had laid down palm branches, a nationalistic symbol of Israel, in front of Him on His way in, and were shouting, “Hosanna! Hosanna in the Highest! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” The literal translation of the phrase, “Hosanna in the Highest,” is “Save now! We pray!” In context, there’s no doubt that this cry was aimed against the Roman Empire. Truly, this was an act of defiance against the Romans and, as publicity events go, this whole event was epic. There was one small problem however. Jesus wasn’t planning a political takeover, He was establishing a spiritual kingdom that would be global. His agenda would involve a public execution (His), and a total exchange of the agenda of the followers to His agenda. The bottom line when it came to politics, Jesus wasn’t taking over, and over the next several days, that fact became quite apparent.
Originally on Sunday, two of the disciples, Peter and Judas, were excited as they witnessed what they perceived to be a power play on Jesus’ part. His success would be their success so they thought but when it became apparent that wasn’t what Jesus was doing, they weren’t sure what to think. Judas especially must have been particularly frustrated as Jesus failed to seize the momentum that was there for the taking. Instead, the Rabbi kept talking about His death, which frankly, in Judas’ mind, didn’t have to happen. This frustration was likely coupled by fear as Judas realized that Jesus was in a precarious position where his enemies could make His prophesy a reality, and not only for Jesus but for the rest of the disciples too. His frustration teetered on the edge of anger and then, it happened, the event that pushed him over the top.
It was Monday and Jesus and the disciples were eating at the home of a man named Simon when a woman, one of Jesus followers, took a flask filled with expensive perfume, anointed Jesus’ feet with it and then wiped His feet with her hair. The market value of the perfume was estimated to be 300 days wages and Judas’ seeing what he perceived to be waste, hit the ceiling. “Why was this perfume not sold and the proceeds given to the poor?” He demanded. Now Judas, according John’s account, was the treasurer of the group and while he didn’t particularly care about the poor, he did have access to the group’s funds and regularly embezzled from it. Jesus however, shut him down, saying that this woman was pre-anointing Him for burial.
That was it! Scripture records that Satan literally entered into Judas, controlling his thinking and his reasoning. The next day, Judas went to the Jewish leaders asking what they were willing to pay if he betrayed Jesus so they could arrest him. The Jewish leaders offered 30 pieces of silver, the equivalent of about six months labor. Judas took the offer and waited.
His wait wasn’t long. Three days later at the most, at the Last Supper, Jesus revealed to the disciples that not only would He betrayed but who the betrayer was. Jesus, exposed Judas as the betrayer, except oddly enough, only Judas picked up on it. He was the only one who picked up on what Jesus said. (Don’t ask me how the others missed it. It’s as much of a mystery to me as it is to you because Jesus made it explicitly clear who the betrayer was.) Judas was dismissed from the dinner, and, knowing at that point that he’d been made, he knew he had to act quickly. Now Judas was privy to where Jesus would be that night. He went to the Jewish religious leaders and, a couple of hours later led them back to Jesus, betraying Him with a kiss. Jesus was promptly arrested and the deed was done.
As Jesus was telling this story, I can now imagine Him drawing attention to another character in the drama, Peter. Peter was likely the oldest of the disciples and the one person that, aside from Jesus, the disciples looked to for leadership. Unlike Judas however, Peter truly loved Jesus and was actually one of Jesus’ closest friends. He too, was probably confused by all this talk of death and burial and might have shared Judas’ sentiment concerning the perfume incident but, he trusted Jesus and when Jesus said to stand down, he obeyed.
Later in his life, as Peter would recall the events surrounding the Last Supper, I imagine his memories were a mixed bag of mush. Jesus washed the disciples’ feet, Peter’s included, He revealed the identity of His betrayer and He dropped another bombshell as well. After Jesus had changed the Passover Feast (another huge deal) and instituted Communion, He told the remaining eleven disciples that they would all desert Him before the night was over. Of course, each one of them denied it and Peter denied it most emphatically. As the words came out of Peter’s mouth however, Jesus turned to His disciple and told him plainly, “Really Peter? Before the rooster crows tonight, you will have denied even knowing me three times.”
Sadly, within the next six hours, events played out exactly as Jesus predicted. Jesus led His disciples to the Garden of Gethsemane, a place familiar to Judas, where He was arrested. The disciples all fled, although Peter came back to follow from a distance and later that, in the Temple courtyards, when accused of being one of Jesus’ disciples, Peter profanely denied three times that he even knew Jesus. As soon as the words came out of his mouth for the last time, the rooster crowd and Peter, realizing what he had done, went out and wept bitterly.
Now we might expect Jesus to end his story right here, but there’s still a couple of significant details to add. What happened to these two guys? Judas, upon seeing Jesus condemned to be executed was filled with remorse. He went back to the Jewish leaders and sorrowfully declared that he had betrayed an innocent man. Their response? “That’s your problem.” Judas threw the 30 pieces of silver onto the temple floor and went out and hung himself. This took place in the hours before the crucifixion.
Peter, on the other hand, went AWOL during the crucifixion. We can only assume that he was hiding somewhere, scared for his life. He reentered the story on Sunday morning. After the women went to the tomb that morning and found it empty, they went back to the disciples and told them what they had witnessed. Peter, upon hearing that Jesus body was gone, along with John ran to the tomb to confirm it.
The four gospel accounts tell the story of the next several days from different perspectives, with one author emphasizing this detail and another author emphasizing that detail. In this story though, in response the question regarding whether or not Jesus could be trusted as a leader, I think Jesus would have especially emphasized two important details. The first would be what an angel said to the women who originally came to the tomb that morning. “Go tell His disciples and Peter, to go to Galilee and He will meet you there.” “And Peter,” did you pick up on that? The guy who screwed up miserably was included in the invite.
And then there was a week or two later where Jesus, in front of the rest of the disciples, asked Peter the same pointed question, three times. The first time, Jesus pointed at the fish they had just caught, and asked Peter, “do you love Me more than these?” The fish detail was significant because before he was a disciple, Peter was a fisherman. That was his agenda. Jesus was asking Peter whose agenda would be the operating agenda for the rest of Peter’s life, Peter’s or Jesus’. Peter said that He loved Jesus. Peter affirmed that it was Jesus’ agenda that would be the operating agenda for the rest of his life. Jesus over the course of the next few minutes, repeated the question. Both times Peter’s answer was the same. “Yes Lord, I love you.” Actually, the last time in frustration I suppose, Peter added that Jesus knew all things and that He knew that Peter loved Him. Jesus then answered Peter by confirming what Peter said was indeed true and then He followed it up with a single command. “Follow Me.”
Now coming back to our original story with Jesus and Dennis, I can see Jesus wrapping things up here and respectfully answering Dennis’ question. Can Jesus be trusted? Consider the evidence. In the story Jesus told, there are two servants and two masters. One servant did his master’s will perfectly while the other servant failed miserably. Consider shall we, the servant who did his master’s will perfectly. Judas. He did everything Satan asked him to do. He delivered Jesus to the Jewish religious leaders. Think about it. Satan, the great counterfeit god, rebelled against his Creator before the beginning of time and now, thanks one of Jesus’ disciples, actually got to murder that same Creator. In Satan’s mind, this was the ultimate victory. But wait, you say, what about the resurrection? Jesus rose on the third day. Satan didn’t win. True. But at the time of the crucifixion, Satan didn’t know the resurrection was coming. That event caught him totally off-guard. Understand this, Satan is a created being, powerful yes, but still created and no match for his Creator. Satan is finite, meaning that he can only be in one place at a time and he’s certainly not all knowing. Quick pit stop here. Satan is not stronger than Jesus, he never has been and he never will be. It’s not even close. Back to the original point, Satan used Judas and threw him away once he was no longer useful. This point can be further driven home once one realizes that Judas died before Jesus did.
Then there’s our second servant, Peter. He failed his master at every front. In the interest of time, I just gave you the high points. If there was anyone who deserved to be abandoned and discarded, it was Peter. But what did Jesus do? Jesus taking the initiative, extended mercy to Peter, forgave him and restored him to his position of leadership. On the night of Jesus’ arrest, Peter denied Jesus three times when Jesus was arrested, and two weeks later, Jesus gave Peter three chances to reaffirm his love for Jesus. And then He gave His restored disciple a simple command, “Follow Me.” Peter took Him up on it and never looked back.
So here is the question that Jesus would be asking Dennis and He’s actually asking us. Which leader do you want to follow, Satan or Jesus? And Dennis might respond back like this, “I don’t necessarily want to follow either one of you. I want to be my own god. I want to follow me.” That’s a problem, though because that option doesn’t technically exist. That option, while it appears to be door number three, isn’t really a door at all. It’s just a 3-D painting on the wall. There is no door number three. You see, in the Garden of Eden when humanity first sinned. Satan basically tempted Adam and Eve with his way of living which can be summed up like this. “Rebel against God and you can be your own god.” Adam and Eve bought into what he said and did precisely that, so by default, they followed Satan because he went there first and he suggested it.
That brings us back to the original question, who do we want to follow? Jesus or Satan? As a person ponders that question, they would do well to ask which of the two leaders can be trusted. When the cards were on the table at the time of the crucifixion, Satan acted in his own interests at the expense of others while Jesus acted in the interests of others at His own expense. The choice is ours. See you next week.
Incidentally, if you’re reading this and this has hit home and you’re wondering how to turn things around and follow Jesus, the Bible is clear how to do it. Romans 10: 9 and 10 reads like this. “If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved.” Basically it involves praying and admitting that you’re a sinner and in need of a savior because you cannot save yourself. It means thanking God for sending Jesus to die and pay the penalty for that sin and raising Jesus from the grave. Lastly it’s giving God control of your life. It’s a simple act of faith that will change your life forever.
Can Jesus be Trusted?
(His Character Matters)
For the past couple of weeks I’ve had some fun creating a fictitious dialogue between Jesus and this character I created named Dennis. Today, I’d like to continue on that train of thought except I want to add a twist. There’s this verse in the Bible where God says, “whoever seeks Me will find Me,” and Dennis, by virtue of initiating the original dialogue, would obviously qualify as being a seeker. I have to think that Jesus would honor that and perhaps up the ante just a bit. He would want to take the initiative and entice Dennis to keep asking questions. In fact, I could see Jesus leading Dennis to ask a question he hasn’t even considered yet. Kickstands up, we’re going for a ride.
Up to this point in their interaction, Dennis has been asking Jesus, based on the terms and requirements that Jesus put forth if someone were to follow Him, if He (Jesus) can be trusted and Jesus has responded with evidence pointing back to His track record. But I’m not sure if that goes far enough because Jesus is telling Dennis that if he wants to follow Him, he, Dennis, has got to go all in. Jesus isn’t asking Dennis for a half-baked, throw Him a religious bone on Sunday deal while he goes on about his business as usual for the rest of the week, using Jesus as this get out hell free card. Nope. Jesus is asking for an exchange that’s much more intrusive. Framing the issue in terms of an analogy that we would have been quite familiar with at the real Roach Place, Jesus is asking Dennis to take the agenda that he has for his life out behind the barn and kill it and take on Jesus’ agenda as the operating agenda for the rest of his life. Read Luke 9:23 – 24. In the original Aramaic, that’s exactly the idea Jesus presented. Or, better yet, read the first sentence of each of Paul’s epistles. Each one of these epistles was a personal letter to the churches in whatever region he was writing to and in each letter his greeting is the same. “Paul, a bond slave of Christ Jesus….” The Greek word for bond slave was “doulos” and it was the most slavish term in the Koine Greek, the language Paul wrote his epistles in. It meant that the will of the slave was entirely enveloped into the will of the master. Think about it. That’s a heavy ask and from Dennis’ perspective, forget about Jesus’ track record, the question is, is Jesus safe. Here’s the thing, and Dennis knows it, Jesus is the toughest dude in the universe, I mean He created it. “Let there be light….” Yeah, that was Him. Raised from the dead…..same one. Returning in the future to reign in power….yep, Him again. With power like that, if Jesus can’t be trusted, only a fool would not run as far away as possible. The bottom line is that Dennis’ reservations concerning following Jesus have less to do with Jesus’ track record and more to do with His character, and I could see Jesus taking that issue head on.
If Dennis and Jesus were talking face to face, I could see Jesus picking up a Bible and opening it to Philippians 2: 6 – 8. It’s just three short verses but those three short verses serve as a snapshot of Jesus character perfectly. The New Living Translation says it like this. “Though He (Jesus) was God, He did not think equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, He gave up His divine privileges, He took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When He appeared in human form, He humbled Himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on the cross.” After reading those three verses, I could see Him breaking it down, serving as His own attorney, arguing His case, all the while allowing Dennis to assume the role of jury with the responsibility to deliver a verdict.
In a nutshell, here’s how Jesus would do it. He would point out that, yes, He is God, just as much God as God the Father. Just as eternal, just as holy, and just as powerful. But He would also point out that He set all of this aside and took on human flesh. Or, to use a clothing analogy, He took off His high end expensive garments and replaced them with rags from the dumpster behind a thrift store.
He would explain that it was part of His mission to save humanity from sin and reconcile those who followed Him to God but there was more to it than just that. He needed to reveal His character. He needed to give the human race a visual hands on illustration that while yes, He was all powerful, He was also altogether different. Unlike everyone else out there with power, He could be trusted not to abuse it.
And with that statement, Jesus would put Himself on the hot seat because people, and Dennis would be no exception here, for the most part have an erroneous view of power and what happens to people who have it. In all fairness, it’s not entirely their fault. Throughout history people with power, especially those who possess absolute power, have tended to abuse it. Jesus however, claims not to be like that and I think He might exit from Philippians for just a minute to prove His point. In Matthew 11:29 Jesus described Himself as being “gentle and humble at heart.” Now, when we hear the word gentle, an image of weakness or softness often comes to mind but in the original language, its connotations were far different. The word the translators translated as gentle was the same word used during Jesus time to describe the powerful stallions that army generals rode into battle. Those stallions were physically strong enough to destroy their masters but they didn’t. They were tame, trained to do their master’s will. Those animals were the embodiment of power under control. And Jesus? He chose that word to describe Himself. Is He powerful? Absolutely. But His power is under control and He loves us. Now let’s get back to Philippians.
He took on the lowly position of a slave. A valid question would be, a slave to who? In context, Jesus was a slave to God the Father. He obeyed God the Father at the expense of His own well-being. So what’s God the Father like? The answer to that is found in Exodus 34 in the Old Testament. God described Himself there as, “The Self Existent God, (Yahweh) the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.” Compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in love and faithfulness. Those are terms that invite trust. Then there’s the phrase, “forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin.” Pay special attention here to the word forgive. The verbiage here in the ancient Hebrew is interesting in that the word translated forgiving actually doesn’t mean pardon. Now, the Hebrews had a word meaning pardon (salach) and they did usually use it when talking about forgiving someone. It meant something similar to our word pardon in English. Salach’s not used here however. The ancient Hebrew word that was used here was nasa and it means “to lift, to carry or to take”. Now nasa wasn’t generally used in context of forgiveness but when it was, it conveyed the idea of carrying a penalty. With that being the case then, especially in a conversation regarding whether or not Jesus or God the Father could be trusted as a leader, this is a game changer. God was saying that while the penalty that rebellion and sin carried would not go away, God himself, and not humanity, would pay it which Christ Jesus, God the Son, did when He died on the cross.
So let’s explore that death on the cross a minute. It’s been well documented that crucifixion was a slow and painful death but there was more to it than just that. In Roman society, it was a shameful death as well, so much so that Roman citizens were generally exempt from it. It was a death reserved for slaves and the worst criminals of society. And that was the death that Jesus chose.
Another thing, notice the word chose. Jesus’ personal choice is an interesting concept in any discussion about whether or not He could be trusted as a leader. He chose the cross because that was apparently the only form of death that would sufficiently pay for the sin of humanity. However, that wasn’t the only choice He made. Wealth, power and privilege were all around Him during His life but He avoided it. By choice. Look, He’s God. If this is true then to suggest that this avoidance wasn’t personal choice defies logic. Look at the miracles He performed. He turned water into premium wine but He couldn’t pull the strings to get in on the action of the wealth and privilege available to a chosen few of society had He so desired? I don’t buy it. If He didn’t get in on it, it was because He chose not to, not because He couldn’t.
Look, I’m running out of word space here so let me summarize Jesus’ life in one paragraph. He left the throne of heaven, with all its glory and mucked in the mud with the riff-raff of society. He ate with tax gathers, social outcasts and prostitutes. He socialized with the Samaritans. He elevated the status of women and children in the face of a legalistic religious Jewish system that was male dominated. He touched lepers when He healed them, making Himself ceremonially unclean. None of that seemed to faze Him though. He dove in head first to meet humanity at its deepest point of need. And here’s the final kicker. If, after presenting people with sufficient evidence of who He was and what He was, they still chose to reject Him, He didn’t force anything, He honored their God given gift of choice and let them go.
So there it is, sufficient evidence to answer the question of whether or not Jesus can be trusted as a leader. The over whelming evidence would indicate that yes, He can. The wild card is us and our deal, especially once we have examined the evidence, is not whether or not we can trust Him as our leader but rather whether or not we want Him to be our leader. It’s a control issue. If He’s our leader, He’s going to transform us from the inside out and we know it. If He’s our leader, He’s going to probably change how we treat people, how we spend our money, how we do business and how we approach entertainment. He’s possibly going to convict us of how we vote. And if that last one hit a nerve, if it’s any consolation, you probably aren’t alone. The person on the opposite end of the political spectrum from you, the person whose vote you cancel out, is wrestling with the exact same issue as they are considering whether or not to follow Jesus. So, what will we do? Jesus isn’t going away and we’re going to have to decide what we will do with Him. The ball is in our court. See you next week.
So What Kind of Person is Jesus Recruiting?
It had been a long day. Dennis had started work an hour earlier than usual and while he’d been focused and productive throughout the day, there was one distraction that he couldn’t get out of his head. Jesus. He’d been messaging Jesus back and forth now for probably a week and he’d been impressed with how Jesus had fielded his questions. Jesus was down to earth, not at all what he’d expected. Still, there was something holding Dennis back from committing to follow Him. You see, Dennis had been doing research on the side and one thing that was making him balk was what he’d learned about Jesus’ character. It wasn’t anything bad, on the contrary, it was the exact opposite. In his mind, the only way Dennis could describe Jesus’ character was to use the same words that the Bible used. Holy. Dennis had poked around the New Testament in general and Revelation specifically and, wow, there was what people usually thought of when they talked about holiness and then there was Jesus as described in Revelation. There was nothing to compare. As close as Dennis could discern, in terms of holiness, Jesus was off the charts above everyone else.
Now, that raised another question. What was Dennis doing talking to Jesus, or perhaps more accurately, what was Jesus doing talking to Dennis? Dennis, the guy who hadn’t set foot in a church since he was eight years old, once, at Christmas. It had something to do with a woman his father was trying to impress as he recalled. Long story….it was complicated. As Dennis grew up, the country song “Renegades, Rebels, and Rogues,” could have served as his autobiography. (It’s a real song. Google it.) Granted, he’d never needed bail money but that car he’d bought when he’d gotten out of college was fast, unfortunately not faster than radar or the vehicles that possessed that superpower, but it was fast. (Side comment: What was fortunate was his job at the time paid well enough that he could actually afford to perform the experiment needed to confirm that…..three times.) And then it happened. He got married and had a kid so he had to at least make pretenses that he’d matured. He did pretty well with that smoke and mirrors act but Dennis was still Dennis and suggesting that he and Jesus belonged in the same sentence was kind of like suggesting you put ketchup on vanilla ice cream. (Wait!? You actually do that? Well excuse me but the analogy makes sense for the rest of us.) Anyway, back to the story, there was something appealing about Jesus and since He didn’t seem to be put off by Dennis’ questions, Dennis took a gamble. In a two page message, Dennis told his life story and the last paragraph read something like this. “I’m not religious and I know next to nothing about church. But you said you’ve been recruiting from day one. So, what kind of person are you recruiting? What qualifications do they need?” And with that, Dennis hit send, shut down his computer and went to bed.
The next day, I could see Jesus responding with a story, perhaps an updated version of the parable that He told back in Luke 14. It might go something like this. There was this certain rich man (Bill Gates type of rich) we’ll call Jay, who wanted to throw a party and invited all of his friends to attend. It was gonna be a classy affair. Live music, choice food, a credit card with no limits kind of party. He hired a whole crew of people who worked for him in their day jobs to make it happen. (Time and a half plus you get invited to be part of the best party ever thrown.) Organized, he sent out invites far in advance, asking for RSVPs. Now of course, everyone responded back that they were coming because this was Jay who was throwing this party and nobody could throw a party like Jay could throw a party. As the RSVPs flooded back in, Jay upped his game and planned even more than he usually did. He just knew this party would be epic.
Epic huh? Yeah, about that. On the day of the party, at about 5 a.m. Judy, Jay’s wife, awoke and started checking emails. There were a lot of emails for a Saturday. As she began to screen them, her eyes got big. The details differed but the message on each one was the same. “I can’t come tonight because of…..fill in the blank.” She took a deep breath and began checking names off the guest list. Two hours later, the work crews arrived to make the final preparations for the evening. This wasn’t going to be as big of a party as they had thought. Jay would be disappointed. She wasn’t sure what to do when at 7:30, Jay came downstairs. He looked grumpy.
“My phone has been blowing up all morning with texts,” he growled as he kissed her cheek. “I emailed you a list of cancellations just now.”
She pulled up the email and opened it. Hopefully, it was a duplicate of the cancellation list that she already had started. Uh oh, this didn’t look good. That name wasn’t on her list. Neither was that one. Meanwhile, her husband continued to grouse to the work crew who had now gathered around. “Listen to these excuses. ‘I just got married so I need to spend time with my new wife’…..I know this guy. They got married six months ago. He can bring his wife to the party. In fact, yeah, her name was on the invite too. Here’s another one. ‘I bought a new car two days ago. I signed the paperwork and got a great deal on it. Tonight I need to test drive it.’”
Johnny, one of the workers, was connecting imaginary dots in the air as he processed that last text. His brow was furrowed. “Doesn’t the test drive usually come first?” He mumbled.
“Then there’s this one. ‘I just bought a new house. I need to go out and look at it for the first time. I’ll be doing that tonight so please excuse my absence at your party tonight. Thanks for the invite anyway.’ Do you believe that?”
“Boss….are you saying that he bought the house having never seen it?”
“So it would appear.”
“Wow. That’s the approach you take on a blind date, not a mortgage.”
“Seriously.”
About that time Judy, who had been reconciling the guest list, spoke up. “Honey, we have a problem. No one is coming tonight.” Jay stopped mid-sentence as she continued. “I made a cancellation list from the emails that came in overnight and the texts you received and compared that list with the guest list and the two lists are identical. Jay, I am so sorry.”
The work crew stared at each other in disbelief. Were these people crazy? Enraged, Jay said nothing but his eyes said it all. It’s been said that there’s a very fine line between righteous indignation and just being angry beyond belief and he was there. He looked out the window, then at the lists, and then back out the window.
Breaking the awkward silence, Judy asked. “Would you like me to start calling the caterers and the band to let them know that we’re cancelling tonight? I’ll see what I can do to minimize your losses.”
Jay slowly turned around. A wry smile creased his face. “Oh hell no. We’re not doing that.” His set up crew for the night had been divided into five groups, much like a business is divided into departments. He asked each group’s lead if they could still get everything set up if they were down one person. The leads looked at each other, shrugged and indicated they could. Jay then called out five names. When the people whose name he had called stepped forward, he gave them the plan. Pointing outside the window toward the city he said, “As drivers go, you five are maniacs but you’re perfect for this job. Take my company vans that are parked in the garage and pretend you’re driving my Ferrari. Divide the city up and scour it. Anybody who wants to come to a party tonight is invited. Load them up in the vans, bring them here, drop them off and go get another load. I don’t care if they’re poor, homeless, disabled, alien….I don’t what care what their back story is. If they want to come to the party, they can come. Any questions?” The drivers looked at each other with that kid in candy store smirk and raised eyebrows.
After they’d left, Jay said to his wife. “And Judy, yes, I do want you to call the caterers but I want you to order more food and then call the rental place get more folding tables and chairs. We’re gonna need them before this night is done.”
“You sure about that?”
“Never been surer about anything in my life.”
Within the hour the vans were back with their first loads of passengers and, as the day progressed, more and more people arrived. It was a motley crew but they were grateful to be there. By mid-day, the drivers covered the entire city and, as they dropped off their last load, Judy came into the Jay’s office.
“That’s it, we’ve been through the entire city and you have a crowd for tonight but….”
“But?”
“Well, because you had me order more food and tables and chairs, you’re still going to have empty seats and leftovers.”
Jay looked at the drivers who had just come in the room. “Nice job scouring the city but did you guys go to the unincorporated parts of the county?”
The drivers looked at each other and shook their heads.
“Okay, then. You know the drill. Gas up the vans and divide the unincorporated county. Same criteria, you got five hours to fill this place up.”
The drivers did their jobs and later that night the place was packed and the party that was thrown was the best party ever. Jay and Judy made a bunch of new friends, friends who were grateful they had been invited in spite of the fact they had no credentials whatsoever that qualified them to be there. There was one other thing as well. Each one of the guests had an open invite to come back if they ever wanted to and one of the guests as he was leaving, was heard to say, “That man has to be crazy to invite a guy like me back to his place, but you know what? If he’s crazy enough to invite me, I’m not going to be crazy enough to turn him down. This is an opportunity I don’t deserve but it’s the chance of a lifetime so I’m coming back.”
“Well, that went well,” Judy said after the guests finally left.
“Sure did.” Jay replied. "I always knew I wanted to reach these people. I just figured that my other so called friends would be here too.” There was a hint of sadness as the words left his mouth.
“Why do you think they turned you down?” Judy asked.
“They don’t want me. They’re too wrapped up in themselves and their own lives to want what I have to offer.”
“Are you going to try and reach out to them?”
“Well, yeah, sort of but they’ve pretty much made it clear what they want so I’ll honor that. Now if they change their mind the door is open but, the ball’s in their court on that one.” And with that, he called it a night.
Now as Jesus wrapped up the story for Dennis, he’d probably have to explain it because, like all parables, there were multiple meanings and applications and this one was no exception. For example, when Jesus told the original parable in Luke, his primary purpose was almost prophetic in that He was indicating to the Jewish nation that they would reject him and that the church would include Gentiles, lots of them. The problem with the primary meaning in this story however, is that it doesn’t answer Dennis’s question. So Jesus would need to dig a little deeper and so do we. Jesus would draw special attention to the people Jay had the drivers reach out to after it became apparent the original guests weren’t coming. In my story they went out after the homeless, the poor, the disabled, and the alien. In the original Luke passage, the master sent his servants out to gather the “poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.” These people were the marginalized. In fact, during Jesus’ day, these people, especially the crippled, the blind and the lame were not permitted to enter the Temple. These were the people the master went after. And then, to fill it up even more, in the original text, the master sent his servant out to the country roads and country lanes, and the original audience would have picked right up on Jesus’ meaning. He was talking about the Gentiles, the non-Jewish people. The Jews called them the Gentile dogs and they meant it. The bottom line, the people who the master sent his servant out to gather, and who Jay, the rich guy in my story ended up inviting, were people who had zero religious credentials. When Dennis wrote, “I’m not religious and I know next to nothing about church.” Jesus might have responded like this. “So what. Religious credentials don’t matter, but let me tell what does.”
Jesus just might point Dennis to another verse in Scripture, the opening statement in the Sermon on the Mount. “God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for Him.” Or, put another way, “Blessed are those who realize they are spiritually bankrupt and, when compared to Jesus, have no righteousness of their own.” Or, “Blessed are those who realize that they have nothing that qualifies them to come before a holy God but they really want to more than anything else in the world.” The issue here, and this is a point that Scripture makes time and again in both the Old and New Testament, is that in order to come to God, the first thing a person has to realize is that they have no righteousness of their own.
Also, going back to the parable, it’s necessary to understand the back story that prompted Jesus to tell it in the first place to fully understand the application. Jesus was at the home of a prominent Pharisee, a member of a group that basically believed that if they obeyed the Mosaic Law, participated in all of the right ceremonies, did everything just right, that God would accept them. They had turned Judaism into a, “do enough good works and God will accept you,” religion. Yes, they believed that faith in God was involved but good works obeying the Jewish Law was also a necessity. In other words, it was faith plus good works equaled salvation. Jesus throughout his ministry, challenged that heresy head on. It was faith in a savior, Him, that enabled them to receive God’s grace. The good works, incidentally, fit into Jesus gospel but only as a by-product of a person trusting in Him. Or another way to put it would be to say it like this. “My good works have nothing to do with my acceptance by God. That’s God’s gift that I accept by faith and because I have placed my faith in Jesus and God has accepted me based on that faith, I will now do good works out of gratitude to God, because it pleases Him.” The people who think they have religious credentials often have a real tough time with that one because they keep trying to prove they’re good enough on their own merits for God to accept them rather than admit they are spiritually bankrupt. The person who has none of those credentials, generally doesn’t. They realize that have no righteousness of their own and they need a savior so they go for it. They decide that following Jesus is worth it and they surrender their lives to God. But it all starts with the realization that they are spiritually bankrupt.
I don’t know where you’re at in your spiritual journey. Over the next couple of weeks I want to expand on the question that Dennis is asking, what kind of person is Jesus recruiting? I want to take a look at several examples from the Bible, of real people who ended up following Him. Spoiler alert….they aren’t high society, they’re the “where did this person come from?” kind of people. They were who Jesus chose though. So I’ll see you next week.
What About My Past?
Last week in the on-going story about a dialog between Jesus and Dennis, we explored the idea that Jesus isn’t worried about credentials when He’s looking for followers. That’s good news. That means that Jesus’ invitation is universal in terms of who He is reaching out to. The question then becomes what’s preventing people from taking Him up on His offer because there’s a lot of people who understand what’s involved and turn Him down anyway. For some, it’s a control issue and we’ve talked about those people but there’s another group of people out there that we haven’t begun to address yet and over the next couple of weeks, I want to do that because those people need to know that the offer is for them too.
Who are they? These are people with something in their past that they perceive is so egregious that there’s just no way that Jesus would want them. They figure that while Jesus’ offer is amazing and He says that it’s open to everyone, they aren’t convinced. They think they are the exception. It’s open to everyone except them. They think about their past and all they can see is that event, that horrible choice, whatever, and they think that because of what they’ve done, there’s no way He’d take them. Not now. Not after that. Oh really? Maybe it’s time to get a second opinion.
When Jesus chose His disciples, we aren’t exactly privy to what His criteria was for choosing them. That was a conversation left between His Heavenly Father and Him. I will say this much, He chose a motley crew. No world beaters, that’s for sure. They were almost entirely blue collar workers, mostly fishermen, but there was also this zealot, and a tax collector. Let’s check out the tax collector.
This tax collector’s story is recorded in all of the Gospels except for John’s and he is commonly known today as Matthew, but that wasn’t his birth name. His birth name was Levi, the name of the priestly tribe of Israel. That’s kind of ironic, a tax collector with a priest’s name. We’re told nothing about his past so we can only speculate about it but let’s use some logic and play some games with it. (To the reader, the next two paragraphs are simply my guesses regarding what might have happened. You are more than welcome to disagree with me.)
A child’s name is the first gift that a parent gives them and it usually has an important significance. Perhaps it’s a family name passed down through generations. Sometimes it might be an attempt by the parents to lay out a destiny for the child. Perhaps it’s a name that just has a ring to it. In any case, the child’s name is almost never flippant. No, the name means something and logic dictates that Levi’s name was probably no different.
So what were Levi’s parents thinking? With a name like that, it’s not a reach to suggest that they had visions of their son serving in a synagogue or even the Temple in Jerusalem. In our society, think in terms of being a pastor. But then something happened. We don’t know what but what is clear is that when Jesus crossed paths with Levi, Levi was about as far away from the Temple as a person could get. He was a Jewish man working for the enemy, the Romans, in a tax collectors’ booth. In the eyes of Jewish society, he was the scum of the earth, a traitor to his own people, and he wasn’t even allowed to enter the Temple. He was excluded by everyone. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that even his parents had disowned him.
Now there’s one other thing about him however that should probably be mentioned. Economically, he wasn’t poor. In fact, probably the opposite was true. You see, the tax collectors for the Romans worked on commission. They would collect the taxes that the Romans wanted and then they would tack on more for themselves. How much more was entirely up to them and the people had to pay it because the tax collector had the Roman armies muscle to enforce it. Loosely translated, a Roman tax collector was a legalized extortionist and they profited handsomely from it. That being said, if a person could stomach the idea that for the rest of their lives they would be a pariah in society, being a tax collector for the Romans was a lucrative gig. And Levi was right in the middle of it.
But then, one day, it happened. The Bible gives us no details, just the cliff notes version. Jesus walked up, saw Levi in his booth and dropped the invitation. “Follow Me.”
Jesus didn’t have to ask twice. All three Gospel accounts state that right then and there Levi left everything and followed Jesus for the rest of his life. A valid question is why he would do that. Once again, we can only speculate. Perhaps Levi learned that everything that glitters is not necessarily gold. He may have found that wealth, and everything that came with it, was a cruel task master. Even today, wealth can make harsh demands on its worshipers. Or, consider this. Based on the gospel account that he penned, Matthew was quite familiar with Jewish law. Leviticus, for example, specifically prohibited charging interest on a loan to a Jewish brother and the extortion that he was involved with would have made charging interest on a loan look like small potatoes. History records that Roman tax collectors took price gouging to a whole new lever. Therefore, it’s conceivable that his conscience got to him to the point that by the time Jesus ran into him, he utterly despised himself and what he had become. Or maybe his parents had hoped that he would someday be a priest, which he would have known about, and Levi had screwed it up and all of a sudden, Jesus is offering him a mulligan, a do over, a chance to fulfill his destiny and he jumped at the opportunity. In any case, for whatever the motive, when Jesus offered him the opportunity, Levi tossed whatever agenda he’d had for his life in the trash can, picked up Jesus agenda and never looked back.
Levi did one other thing as well. He went public with his decision. He threw a big banquet and invited Jesus as the guest of honor. He also invited all of his friends many of whom were tax collectors and disreputable sinners. And Jesus accepted the invite and ate with them, a sign of friendship and acceptance.
Now when the Pharisees saw this, they were indignant. “Why does He eat with such scum?” They asked His disciples.
Jesus, who apparently was within earshot, heard them and shot right back. “It’s not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I am here to call the outsiders not coddle the insiders.”
It’s interesting when you stop and think about it. The story of Matthew is another story where Jesus looks past the lack of credentials of someone and recruits them anyway. What sets this story apart from last week though is the kind of people who Jesus called. Last week it was the poor, the blind, the lame, the Gentile. Those people were considered outsiders but for reasons that were largely out of their control. This week’s group however, had control over their destiny. They were outsiders because of their choices. Yes, unlike last week’s group, this group earned their outsider label but Jesus reached out to them anyway.
Now it’s important to note that Jesus didn’t sugar coat anything here. He called it like it was. He called himself the doctor and the tax collectors and sinners, “spiritually sick.” He acknowledged they were outsiders and invited them in. It’s also important to notice that Jesus didn’t invite them in because they deserved it. On the contrary, by His own words, He extended a hand of mercy to them. Connect the dots. Would He have offered mercy if they hadn’t needed it?
The application for all of this today is fairly simple. Jesus is reaching out to a world that needs Him desperately and as we are going to see over the next couple of weeks, a past, if accompanied by repentance, does not have to disqualify anyone from following Him. Yes, repentance is a necessary component. Matthew, in his gospel, recorded his own story of conversion in what’s basically an autobiographical account. In context, he worded it in such a way that the original reader would have picked up on the fact that when Matthew or Levi made the choice to follow Jesus he left his former way of life behind and never went back to it. He, incidentally, died a martyr’s death. He counted the cost and came to the conclusion that following Jesus was worth it.
So where are you today? What’s in your past? Whatever it is, however bad it is, it doesn’t have to disqualify you from following Jesus. If you are willing to confess it and forsake it, do a Matthew if you will and follow Jesus, Jesus will accept you.
Or maybe, you’re reading this and thinking that there’s nothing that you need to repent of, essentially you don’t need Jesus’ mercy because you are good enough on your own merits. If that’s where you are, you’re in a dangerous place, my friend. That was the Pharisee’s deal. You know, as I read the gospel accounts of Jesus’ life, He only had harsh words for one group, the Pharisees. The reason is simple enough. They were proud and self-righteous. Externally, they obeyed the Mosaic Law, faultlessly. They were good upstanding righteous (at least in their own eyes) people. In the story of Levi’s conversion, when Jesus shot back at the Pharisees at the banquet, you can almost read the thought bubble over His head when he said, “only the sick need a doctor – which includes you but you’re too blind to see it.” And how did their story end up? In the end, they rejected Jesus and Jesus, sadly honored their decision and let them go to their graves condemned to an eternity in hell. He wasn’t happy about it. In fact, He wept about it on one occasion but He did honor their choice and let them go.
But back to the person who knows that they don’t measure up. It’s that past thing, whatever it is, that you keep thinking about. Jesus however, already knows about it and is offering forgiveness and a new life if you’ll just repent and follow Him. And perhaps you want to take Him up on it but you’re just not sure how. The way you do it is through surrender usually expressed through prayer. Read this one and see if it doesn’t make sense. “God, you know my past, that I don’t measure up because I’ve rebelled against you. My life is a mess and I’m separated from you but I want that to change. I know that Jesus died for my sin on the cross, was raised from the dead and now you’re offering to forgive and accept me if I surrender to you. I want to take you up on that. I repent of my sin and accept Jesus as my savior and Lord. I surrender control of my life to you. Thank you for forgiving me. In Jesus name, amen.” If this prayer makes sense and it’s something that you want to do, roll with it. If you want to pray a prayer of your own, that works too. God isn’t as worried about your words as He is the desire of your heart and your intentions.
There is one last thing, if you did surrender to Jesus, if there are other Christians in your life. Tell them. If, though, and this is important, there are no Christians in your life, get a hold of me. Email me. My email address is in the “Contact” section. The Christian life was never intended to be lived in isolation. This site can never take the place of a church so I will need to help connect you with other Christians in your community. Hope to hear from you. See you next week.
Yeah, But What About My Past? (Jared's story)
You know, I’ve been telling you this story for the past few weeks about Dennis and Jesus. I’ve given Dennis some questions to ask and I have to tell you, in my mind, I think that story turns out pretty cool. Dennis is sharp. He weighs the evidence and decides to give following Jesus a shot. He’s hesitant and he has his doubts but he takes a step of faith in spite of them. What He discovered was that following Jesus is worth it and, after a while his friends notice there’s something different about him. It’s nothing over the top exactly but he almost seems more at peace with himself. One of his friends at work, Jared, starts talking to him. They talk about some of the things at Jesus told Dennis and, one night, Dennis got this text from Jared.
“It’s okay that following Jesus works for you but me, I just don’t know. My past is about as ugly as it gets. Dude, there’s stuff I’ve done that you have no idea about and I just don’t have anything to bring to the table.”
So what’s Jared not telling? Let’s shift gears and imagine for a minute that Jared’s sitting across the table from us and we actually get him to open up. He stares into space for a minute, looks back, takes a deep breath and starts talking. “I’ve done some scary stuff over the years.” He says. “I mean damn, there’s a fine line between raising hell and breaking the law and that’s the story of my life. I try not to think about it because it scares the hell out of me. That 4th of July story from a few years back? The only reason I’m not in jail right now is because we didn’t get caught. I wish it would just go away…..I’m not sure where it falls under the statute of limitations. I can tell you this much. Whiskey and rational decision making don’t mix – especially when you add high grade fireworks purchased from the reservation to the equation. Granted, those guys had it coming but there’s a word for what we did. It’s more than likely spelled F – E – L – O – N – Y. If you were to tell me that my future includes a knock on my door because some zealous investigator opened up the cold case files, I wouldn’t be all that surprised. In any case, when it comes to following Jesus, I have a lot of baggage in the deficit column and absolutely nothing in the credit column. At the end of the day, I got not nothing to offer Him. There’s no way He’d take me.”
So how do we respond to that? Well, perhaps we don’t, but then again, maybe we don’t have to. You see, there’s another person sitting at the table. Jesus is there and he’s more than anxious to field Jerad’s doubt. He does it the way that He’s always done it. He tells a story.
He might just go back to Golgotha, Calvary, you know the place, the cross. He was crucified there but you know, He wasn’t the only one being executed that day. There were two others, one on His right and one on His left. We’re not told which one got on Jesus’ radar, and I’m not sure Jesus would tell us either, but one thief got Jesus’ attention. Here’s what happened.
All three men had been crucified but Jesus was getting the most attention. He had performed miracles, saved others, He’d claimed to be God even and now, He was hanging on a cross, shamefully condemned.
“You saved others, now let’s see you save yourself!”
“If you’re really the Son of God, prove it and come down off the cross!” The crowds and the soldiers mocked him incessantly.
Both thieves even reviled Him but then, the perspective of one of them changed. We’re not told what, but something changed one guy’s mind. It had to have been something about the way that Jesus was dying although Scripture doesn’t tell us anything for certain. Maybe it was the way that Jesus prayed for the people who were executing Him. Maybe it was the way that He made provision for His mother even as He was being executed. Maybe God the Father opened this man’s eyes to the truth…..we’re not told, but what we are told is this. While his buddy on the other side of Jesus was cursing Jesus, this man did the unexpected. He spoke up in defense of Jesus. “Don’t you fear God, since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.” And then, he took a chance, a leap of faith if you will. He made a request of Jesus. “Jesus,” he said, “remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
And Jesus turned his head and replied. “I guarantee it. Today you will be with Me in Paradise.”
That story is frankly one of my favorite stories in the Bible. It proves that in terms of being too late to come to Jesus, it’s not over until it’s over, until the last breath is taken. Think about it for a minute. If there was ever someone who was in a position where it looked like it was too late to follow Jesus, this guy was it. I mean based on his own testimony, “we’re being executed for our crimes,” and the circumstantial evidence, the guy in the middle was supposed to be Barabbas, a notorious murderer. Or worse yet, the just fact he was being crucified, the penalty reserved for the worst of the worst, indicates that he’d done something or a bunch of somethings that were absolutely horrible. Here’s something else to consider. What does this thief bring to the table? What does he have to offer Jesus? Nothing. All he has to offer Jesus is a terrified plea for mercy and Jesus granted it to him and a lot more. And the question that screams for an answer is why. Why did Jesus accept this man who had absolutely nothing to offer, this late in the game?
The answer lies in the words that the thief spoke to both his accomplice and to Jesus. Let’s break them down phrase by phrase. He was being crucified and Jesus was being crucified and at that moment the wheels in his head were turning. “Don’t you fear God, since you are under the same sentence?” He recognized that Jesus was God. He may not have understood it entirely, but he recognized and acknowledged it nonetheless. He also admitted that he was a sinner. “We are punished justly, we are getting what our deeds deserve.” His words are legal terms used in a court of law and convey an admission of guilt. Then there’s the request he made of Jesus, “remember me when you come into your kingdom.” His words are a statement of faith in that he decided to believe that Jesus was going to someday establish His kingdom. Did he understand the details? Hardly. But just because he didn’t understand it didn’t stop him from placing his faith in Jesus. And lastly, based on that same request, he placed himself under Jesus’ authority. He acknowledged that Jesus was a king and asked Him to remember him when He came into His kingdom. You don’t do that unless you are submitting to a king’s authority.
Jesus’ response was simple enough. “Today, you will be with Me in Paradise.” Based on the thief’s faith, Jesus accepted the thief in spite of his past. Grace was offered and by faith, the thief accepted it. Now one could argue that the thief had horrible timing. He did. He had his entire life to repent and he was just now getting around to it. But that’s not the issue here. In fact, it’s irrelevant. When that man was nailed to the cross, he had no intention of asking Jesus to remember him. Matthew recorded that both thieves in the beginning were hurling insults on Jesus. But then something happened. Like I said, we’re not told what, but something happened. Somehow, God reached out to him and he responded in faith. Was he sure that Jesus was going to accept him, you know, grant him his request? We aren’t told about anything that was going through that man’s head. We’re only told what he actually said and how Jesus responded. So what, going back to our story, does this mean for Jerad or getting even more personal, what’s it mean for us?
It means, God’s grace is greater than our past, no matter how ugly that past is. To get real personal, it means that if you’ve been living your life and no matter what you do, there’s still this guilt that you’re feeling for things you have done and it just won’t go away, and you’re just wishing that your conscience would just shut up and leave you alone. Is this striking a chord with you? If so, you know maybe, just maybe, that’s not just your conscience bothering you……….that’s Jesus calling you. And He’s not calling you so He can beat you up again, you’re doing a good enough job of that on your own, He’s calling you and convicting you so you can repent of your sin, get the forgiveness you need and follow Him. It’s too late, you’re saying? Dude! Jesus was on the cross – He was dying, paying for the sins of all of humanity and yet, when that thief asked Jesus for forgiveness, when he asked Jesus to remember him when He came into His kingdom, Jesus granted him his request. If it wasn’t too late for the thief, it’s not too late for you.
Jesus wants to save you but the ball is in your court now. Don’t forget, there were two thieves crucified with Jesus that day. We’ve already talked about the one guy but what about the other one? He had done the same things that his friend had done and he saw exactly what his friend saw. Was it that Jesus didn’t want to save the other guy? I don’t think that’s true. In 2 Peter 3:9, the Apostle Peter wrote, “God is not willing that any perish but that all come to repentance.” Jesus wanted to save both guys but only one guy let Him do it. So the question for us then is which thief we will model our response to Jesus after. Will we be like the thief that placed his faith in Jesus or the one who didn’t? The ball is in our court.
If you have never actually made a decision to follow Jesus but you would like to, here’s what you do. In simple prayer, admit to God you’re a sinner and you cannot save yourself. Acknowledge that Jesus died on the cross for your sin, and was raised from the dead. Lastly, ask God to forgive you for what you’ve done and surrender control of your life back to the leadership of Jesus. And in faith, thank Him for the gift of salvation that He’s given you. God’s not worried about the words and the prayer doesn’t have to be fancy, the thief’s certainly wasn’t. God is interested in the desire of your will and that’s what He honors. See you next week.
Let the Transformation Begin
In this story I’ve been telling about this character I’ve created named Dennis over the past few weeks, I’ve had him decide to become a follower of Jesus and yes, if and when he did that, his life would change. It would change not necessarily because Dennis would try to change, although he might, but it would happen because Jesus would be changing him from the inside out. Jesus would be empowering Dennis through the indwelling Holy Spirit changing him at the motive level. Using a computer analogy, the virus in Dennis’ operating system would be eradicated and he would be able once again to respond to his Creator. The bottom line in Dennis’ life, there’s a new sheriff in town, His name is Jesus and He’d be beginning the transformation process.
First, about this transformation process, although it might be gradual, there’s a group of people who would probably notice it right out of the blocks. Okay reader, here’s the deal. I am the author and Dennis is my character so he can be whatever I want him to be. I’ll leave his ethnicity to your imagination but, exercising my author’s prerogative, he’s married to Jackie and they have four kids. (They planned on stopping after three but can you spell t-w-i-n-s? Dennis and Jackie can.) The twins came last. High energy those two…..curious and smart. There’s nowhere in the house they haven’t at least tried to explore multiple times. Add two dogs and I think a ferret to the mix, plus all of the music lessons, T-ball, school projects and what not and yeah, it’s official, Dennis and Jackie run a bonafide zoo. And Jesus, playing the hand He’s dealt, starts the transformation process of Dennis right there and Jackie and the kids get a front row seat.
What’s happening? Jesus is now calling the shots and He’s doing a major overhaul. In 2 Corinthians 5:17, the Apostle Paul described the process like this, “if anyone is in Christ, they get a fresh start, they are created new. The old life is gone, a new life burgeons.” “A fresh start,” did you pick up on that? Yeah, that’s one of the first things that Jesus does and often, that fresh start manifests itself in interpersonal relationships, typically at the core level where it matters most, the family.
In the context of family relationships, Dennis has a new set of operating instructions. Once again, we need to go to the Apostle Paul to find out what they are. “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church,” is what was written in Ephesians 5:25. Park right there for a minute. How did Christ love the church? He put the best interests of the church ahead of His own and died an excruciating death for it. Today, He loves it unconditionally and is patient with it. As another visual, several hours before Jesus was betrayed, He stripped down to his waist, took on the role of a slave and washed his disciples’ feet. Think about it for a minute. Jesus, the Creator of the Universe, the King, washed the disciples’ feet. Jesus embodied servant leadership and that’s what He expects Dennis to do for Jackie and his kids.
So what does that look like? It may not be over the top per se, in fact, it might be quite subtle but this might be what Jackie would notice. Dennis is more patient, and not just with her but with the kids as well. Those twins, it’s amazing how even at a young age those two have button pushing down to an art form and they’ve even perfected the tag team move. And Dennis rolls with it better than he used to. Jackie also notices other things too. It’s the little stuff. He cleans up after himself. He’s less engaged with his phone and more engaged with her. He’s starting to listen better, he’s listening more to understand and less just to respond. He’s becoming a servant leader. He’s not lording his leadership over her but he’s treating her like she’s his helpmeet and best friend. Now don’t misunderstand anything here. This transformation is a lifelong process. Dennis is still Dennis and there are days when he reverts back to the old Dennis but, for the most part, he’s becoming Dennis under the leadership of Jesus.
Now, from Dennis’ point of view, there are several things that he’s intentionally doing to change. He prays more than he used to. In part because when he does things that the Bible defines as sin, it’s not as easy to blow it off as it used to be. His conscience bothers him more and it often won’t go away until he prays and asks for forgiveness both from God and his family and submits again to Jesus’ authority. He’s also reading the Bible regularly for the first time in his life. O.k. it’s the Bible app on his phone that he’s reading but it’s still the Bible and he’s making a concerted effort to actually do what it says to do. And, he’s started taking his family to a church where he’s beginning to get to know some people, including a couple of guys who have been doing this following Jesus thing longer than he has and they are helping him navigate the landscape so to speak. But he’s especially praying more and asking God for help, because especially when it comes to being the husband and father that God has called him to be, he’s discovering that he can’t do it on his own. It’s impossible.
So is this just an idealistic piece of fiction I just wrote? Not exactly. It is obviously fiction but it’s also kind of an overview for what happens to a person when they choose to follow Jesus, and it includes some best practices for what a person needs to do in order to follow Jesus without losing their minds in the process.
In the first place, regardless of who you are, following Jesus will generally impact your relationships in a big way, especially when it comes to family. Consider this, in your life, who was the first person to make you mad? Odds are pretty good it was a family member. Audible, how about yesterday? This morning? Tomorrow? I’ll bet it was or will be a family member. If it wasn’t a family member it was probably a roommate, co-worker/boss, or neighbor. (And if it wasn’t one of those people, congratulations. You’re the exception. Now shut up and keep reading.) In any case, when you follow Jesus, under His leadership, how you roll in these relationships changes dramatically. Once again, consulting Paul, here’s the instructions. “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others as more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to your own interests but also to the interests of others.” (Philippians 2: 3 – 4) When you start taking verses like that seriously, it makes getting angry, or at least staying angry with these people, a lot tougher to do.
“Yeah, but that’s just Paul,” you’re saying. “How about Jesus. What did He have to say about all of this?”
Sorry, Jesus won’t help you either. Listen to these verses that are sprinkled around in the gospels where Jesus is quoted as saying, “But among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave.” Jesus said that to His disciples and He followed it up with, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” And then He modeled that one from the cross. So, is this a reach? You tell me. Sometimes, at least momentarily, our worst enemies are family members. And, if we follow Jesus, Jesus is saying we have to love these people. (Love is patient, kind, not jealous, not boastful, not proud, or rude. It does not demand its own way. It’s not irritable, and keeps no record of wrongs. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful and endures through every circumstance. 1 Corinthians 13) Incidentally, these are marching orders, not suggestions and, at least from where I sit, to love someone without forgiving them is a major disconnect.
Where do we go from here? Well, I’m just going to ask the question that no one else is asking right now and that’s why? I mean, why would Jesus ask his followers to operate like this and the flip side of that question would be, why would His followers buy into this system that’s, at the end of the day, a counter culture way of operating? Now, I can’t speak for anyone else but I can tell you why I bought into it. When it came to God and me, I was the beneficiary of that system. You see, I rebelled against God just like everyone else did, I just did it differently. As I’ve examined my own life, if I could identify with any of the people in the New Testament, I would probably identify with the Pharisees. Born and raised in a conservative church, I knew the rules and I knew how to play the game. Know the right stuff and how to communicate it, pick your shots as to when to rebel, (like when you’re least likely to get caught). See how close you can get to the edge without crossing the line, it’s not rocket science. Sometimes it’s almost diplomatic skill that gets you off the hook and sometimes it’s just dumb luck. In any case, eventually your luck runs out and you find yourself doing things that you swore you would never do and just hoping to hell that you don’t get caught by the wrong people. You’re weaving this web of lies and living a double life. And the stupid thing about it is that both the people that you care most about and the people that you could care less about can see right through your façade but you’re blind to the whole thing. How you manage to somehow stay married and not lose everything financially is a testament of grace, in some cases of the people around you and in some cases, of God Himself. That folks, in a nutshell, was my story.
If you’re reading this right now and thinking that I was a self-deceived hypocrite, you’re right, I was. But God never gave up on me, He kept reaching out to me with what could best be described as a hand of grace. He was relentlessly persistent and one night, about sixteen years ago, He really got my attention. I was reading this book by Ray Comfort and Comfort framed life’s issues in a way that I had never thought of them before. He talked about the Ten Commandments and the crux of his argument was that they were all God’s laws and all humans were law breakers. Now, if you want to take issue with that, fine, that’s between you and God, but as for me, I couldn’t argue with him. In fact, based on the fact that Jesus had pretty much raised the bar of God’s law to the motive level in the Sermon on the Mount, where He properly interpreted that law, I came to the conclusion that if breaking the Ten Commandments was the supreme motive of life, then I was batting 1000. Yeah, sometimes in thought, sometimes by committing the actual deed, I had broken every one of them and that night I had to admit to God that I was a law breaker in His eyes. Law breaker, a criminal in God’s court, that’s what I had to admit to being that night. And as I admitted that, I also asked for His grace and forgiveness and I received it. Was that my night of conversion? Possibly, it’s a little bit murky however because for those of us who were born and raised in a church, there are cultural expectations and rites of passage almost where you ask Jesus to be your savior without necessarily understanding the issue of surrender in terms of what that actually looks like in the real world. Personally, yes, I did verbally surrender to Jesus when I was thirteen and I was baptized when I was fourteen. But here’s the thing, and my story isn’t all that different from many professing Christians that I knew back then, you live one way on Sunday and another way Monday through Saturday. You live one way when you’re around other Christians and another way when you’re around people who aren’t and when you’re alone…..well, all bets are off. Personally, for thirty-five years, my life was a mixed bag. So, was that night my conversion? I honestly don’t know but I can tell you this much, my life has never been the same since that night.
Now was that transformation instantaneous? Please!? I’m a work in progress. God’s not done with me yet and He won’t be until I die, but I can tell you this much, I’m not the man I was back then and I never will be. Jesus has changed my life and my relationships, primarily my marriage. Today, Dianna is my wife and my best friend. God changed the way I thought about how to treat her and I began to act like a true servant leader. What this looked like is when I began to put her best interests ahead of my own, things radically changed in our relationship and she in turn, responded in like fashion. It was a mutual submission to each other out of obedience to what the Bible talked about in the New Testament. As a result, today, when we are together, the best way to describe things is to say that we are content and satisfied. God did it through us though, we couldn’t have done it in our own strength.
So what’s my point? I guess it’s this. If you choose to follow Jesus and surrender to His leadership, you can expect your life to change. It may not be overnight and it may or may not be the way that you’re expecting it to change, but it will change. Will it be easier? Not necessarily. Jesus may ask you to do things that you don’t want to do. Your comfort zone will be stretched and He’ll ask you to do the hard thing because it’s the right thing. I know that this sounds vague but it has to be. I don’t know where you’re at and I’m not God anyway. I’m not that smart. But I can also tell you this much. It will be easier in that you won’t be doing it alone or in your own strength. It’s not this white knuckle, suck it up and try harder deal. One of the last things Jesus said before He ascended into heaven was, “I will be with you always.” (Matthew 28:20) Sorry to have to use churchy terms but this is the only way to describe it because it’s true, when you surrender to Jesus, God the Holy Spirit comes to live in you and empowers you to do the right thing. He changes you. Yes, you have to cooperate because, speaking from personal experience, life doesn’t go well when you don’t. I mean if you’re that insistent on doing stupid stuff and reaping the consequences, He might just let you. But yes, your life will change. Is the change worth it? Oh yeah. It’s worth it. And surrender is what God is calling all of us to do. That’s the constant. Our response? Well, that’s the variable. Will we surrender or not? See you next week.
So How Will Following Jesus Change My Career?
Recently I’ve been writing about following Jesus and how He will transform the life of the person who does that. Based on Jesus’ own words, it appears that if life was a car the transformation would resemble a major overhaul rather than just a tune up and a car wash. Last week I examined how that transformation would impact interpersonal relationships. This week, I want to take a look at the evidence and see how following Jesus would impact careers.
“What?” some of you might ask. “Jesus would change my career? How?” It’s a valid question I suppose but it’s kind of an old question also. Verbalized differently, it’s been around for at least 60 years. Back in the day it was asked like this. “If I follow Jesus, is He going to send me to some remote village in Africa to be a missionary for the rest of my life?”
He could, I suppose. In fact, now that I think about it, I personally know a couple who did that and were quite successful in Africa. Their kids grew up there and actually considered Kenya home more so than they did the United States. However, as I have observed Jesus’ followers over the past fifty years or so, the evidence overwhelmingly would indicate that Bill and Julie were the exception and not the rule. My personal guess is that if you decide to become a follower of Jesus, He probably won’t send you to Africa…..to the cul-de-sac to participate in the neighborhood garage sale, perhaps…….to the break room at work to interact with your colleagues at lunch, probably……but Africa? Eh, I doubt it, unless it’s for something like a short term mission trip. (Those are mission trips specifically designed to help with a project of some sort and typically last two to three weeks, after which time the person comes back home to their day job.) No, if you become a follower of Jesus, I’d be prepared to do just about anything, including staying right where you’re at.
Now, that being said, it’s important to remember that yes, Jesus could change your career entirely. Take the Apostle Peter for example. He was fisherman before he followed Jesus and became an apostle afterwards. A fisherman and an apostle, hmmmmm….those are two careers that didn’t have a lot in common. However, a careful analysis of Peter reveals this commonality. Peter was a leader. Even when he was an impulsive disciple, the rest of the disciples looked to him for leadership and followed his lead as they were being trained by Jesus. The evidence indicates that Peter was created to lead men and Jesus never shut that part down. In the New Testament, after Jesus ascended back to heaven, Peter was one of the primary leaders of the early church. So yes, while Peter’s means of making a living changed once he fully followed Jesus that leadership gene that was almost written into the core of his DNA did not. In fact, God enhanced it to its full potential.
Now, while we are on the topic of apostles and what not, let’s take a look at another apostle whose career didn’t change exactly. Paul, or Saul of Tarsus, as he was known in his early life, is our subject. Paul is an interesting study. By his own testimony he was born Jewish, and given the name Saul by his parents. He was also a Roman citizen by birth. (I have no idea how his parents pulled that one off!) When Saul first appeared in the Book of Acts, he was an Orthodox Jew who had trained under one of the most respected rabbis of his time. He was a Pharisee’s Pharisee and was on the fast track to becoming a member of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish equivalent of the Supreme Court. Zealous for Judaism, he was an enemy of Jesus. Then Jesus in a vision knocked him off his high horse, literally, and Saul switched sides and became a follower of Jesus. Over time, as his life mission became clear, he changed his name to Paul, (a Gentile name) and, using his extensive religious training, wrote much of the New Testament. In a nutshell, he was able to clearly articulate how the Old Testament pointed to Jesus as the Messiah that was promised from the beginning of time and was able to clearly explain how salvation was obtained by a person placing their faith in Jesus and not by diligent compliance to a religious code, in this case Judaism. In addition, Paul was an early church planter throughout the Roman Empire. It’s interesting, because of his Roman citizenship, he could go places and do things that the rest of the Apostles could not. His Roman citizenship, for example, allowed him to legally have an audience with Caesar, a right that he incidentally took advantage of, while his extensive training in the Jewish Scriptures allowed him to successfully articulate his faith while standing before both Jewish leaders and Roman officials at the same time. Using secular terminology, Paul was a religious leader before he became a follower of Jesus and he was a religious leader afterwards. The major difference was who he was following.
Now as we further unpack this question of how following Jesus will change a person’s career, there is one thing that will change. It’s our workplace ethics. Ethical behavior is important to God. Now the idea of being an ethical person as a prescription for how to live is saturated throughout Scripture so I’m just going to use two examples to prove the point. In Luke 3, John the Baptist was preaching and tax collectors and their Jewish escorts came to him and asked what they should do in preparation for the coming Messiah. John answered them. “Don’t collect any more than you are required to….Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely – be content with your pay.” It’s interesting to note that while the two professions mentioned here, tax collecting and the armed escort for those tax collectors, were considered to be almost treason by most people in Jewish society because they were collaborating with the occupying Roman Government, John didn’t take issue with the professions per se. What he did take issue with were the unethical practices that these tax collectors and their armed escorts would use to get rich at the expense of their fellow countrymen. If they wanted to follow Jesus, they were expected to change that. So, ethical behavior? Yeah, it’s a big deal with God and if a person follows Jesus, they can expect Jesus to meddle in that issue. It just comes with the territory.
Then there’s the issue of just working hard. In Colossians 3, Paul writes, “whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men…….it is the Lord that you serve.” The bottom line is that God expects His followers to be good employees and good employers as well. (Colossians 4) That might be, incidentally, one of the toughest things to do sometimes for all of us I think but it is, none-the-less, something we have to get done. We’re being watched both by God and the people we work with.
Now there is an issue here that needs to be addressed and it again has to do with ethics and Jesus’ expectations of His followers. Occasionally, following Jesus could possibly put us at odds with our employer especially if Jesus’ standards of ethics are over the top higher than those of our employer. Now, if that’s where you’re at, I’m not going to tell you exactly how to play your cards because I’m not there, you are and I’m certainly not an expert. I’m just a guy with the ability to tell stories who knows a thing or two because I’ve seen a thing or two.
The first story I can tell you, involves a friend of mine who worked for a fairly rich and powerful public figure many years ago. Now this employer demanded absolute loyalty from his employees. The company came before anything, family, friends, ethics, you name it. If you bend a rule or two, violate an ordinance maybe, well, as long as you didn’t get caught, you did what you had to do to get the job done. The man was a mini-god and his company was his kingdom. My friend became a follower of Jesus and one day he told his boss that he couldn’t give him that kind of loyalty anymore.
“Why not?” His boss asked.
“I’m a Christian and I have to do what the Bible says to do now.”
The man looked at my friend with a stone face and said coldly. “Well, I’m glad that you told me that now. You’re fired.” End of story.
Another friend of mine, in a different conversation about ethics and similar situations said it like this. “Sometimes, you have to set your keys on the desk and walk out the door.”
The bottom line is this, if you become a follower of Jesus, it may cost you your job. But here’s something else I have noticed. The people who experience this tend to land on their feet somewhere. God honors obedience and takes care of His own. Life story after life story confirms this. I don’t remember who said this but someone did. “God is responsible for the consequences of my obedience but I am responsible for the consequences of my disobedience.”
The point of all of this is that if a person becomes a follower of Jesus, while their career and vocation may or may not change, how they do their job most likely will. God will be actively working to change the ethics that we as his followers display as we do our jobs. The question that we need to ask ourselves is how are we doing with that? Are we cooperating with Him or not? We need to push for excellence in this area and if we aren’t, that’s an area where we need to repent, ask God’s forgiveness and change. We need to ask God to work through us. Will it be easy? Not likely. Will it be counter-culture? Perhaps. Along those same lines, will it be appreciated by everyone? Maybe ….. or maybe not. Will it be necessary however? Absolutely! God’s reputation is at stake. What’s it look like? One last story and then I’ll let you go.
The time was about 550ish B.C. and the place was Babylon. There was this elderly Jewish statesman named Daniel who was nearing the end of his career. The life he’d led had been anything but boring. Most likely born of a noble family in Judah during the time that Nebuchadnezzar invaded the region, he’d been carried off from his homeland and trained to serve the Babylonian Empire. A sharp young man who refused to compromise how he followed his God, he rose quickly through the ranks of government administration. In terms of wisdom, Nebuchadnezzar found his advice to be ten times better than his contemporaries. Now, fast forward many years. The Babylonian Empire had fallen to the Medes and the Persians and while the new empire obviously reorganized things, these people weren’t stupid. Competence was still competence and noble character was still noble character. They got rid of a lot of people but Daniel wasn’t one of them. In fact, Darius, the king in charge, appointed Daniel as one of his three vice regents in charge of governing the entire kingdom. Then, based on how well he performed his duties in this role, because Daniel so outclassed everyone else, Darius appointed him to a position that could best be described in 21st Century terms as Prime Minister. Yeah, Daniel was pretty much running the show.
Now Daniel had enemies who wanted him gone, primarily out of jealousy. They watched him and analyzed him and came away disappointed. Daniel was above reproach. Competent and honest, the man was squeaky clean. His enemies came to the conclusion that the only way they could bring him down was if they could come up with something to do with his devotion to God. They set a trap and Daniel, possibly with his eyes wide open, walked into it and left the results in God’s hands. A law was passed stating that the only one who anyone could pray to for 30 days was Darius. This was a deal breaker and Daniel could not compromise here. As was his custom, he prayed to God every day in an open window that faced Jerusalem. He was seen, arrested, and thrown into a den of lions. Darius did not want to do this but the law was the law and he’d been tricked. Daniel spent the entire night in the lions’ den but for some reason the lions weren’t hungry. They didn’t touch him. The next morning, having served his sentence, he emerged unscathed. God took care of him. As a side note, Darius then took the people who had set the trap and, along with their families, tossed them in the den. The lions got their appetite back and tore them to pieces before they hit the ground.
So what’s the point? We must be “Daniels” in the work place. The Message translates Daniel 6: 4 and 5 like this. “He was totally exemplary and trustworthy. They could find no evidence of negligence or misconduct.” That has to be us. We probably won’t be able to do this without surrendering to Jesus and relying on the power of the Holy Spirit but we must do this. The world is watching and Jesus’ reputation is at stake. See you next week.
How Did Jesus Teach His Followers to Pray?
One of the most common questions that Jesus was asked by His followers during His time on earth was how to pray. What prompted them to ask it was that throughout His three year ministry, they observed the crowds pulling Him in any number of directions and Jesus responding by ministering to the needs of these people to the point that He was physically exhausted. Was it stressful? It had to have been yet, in spite of it all, Jesus never lost it. He just kept giving of Himself and His followers had to wonder at times how He did it. Now, one of the obvious things that stood out was how much He prayed and how prayer was an integral part of His life. A second thing that became obvious was that if a person was going to follow Him that they were going to have to pray like Him as well. This wasn’t by coincidence, it was by design and several times during His ministry He was specifically asked how to pray. This is just my opinion but I have to think that He welcomed the question and whenever it came up, He always fielded it the same way. He gave a model prayer, a prayer of surrender to God the Father, a prayer that we know today as, “The Lord’s Prayer.”
The Lord’s Prayer is a prayer that’s become familiar to many people regardless of religious affiliation, especially if they are football fans who have watched football movies. I can think of several locker room scenes where it was almost a pre-game ritual where a team would kneel and recite the prayer, almost like they were throwing God a bone before they took the field for a big game. But is that what Jesus had in mind when He would use it as a model for how He prayed and for how He wanted His followers to pray? That it would just be a ritual and that’s it? That’s not what the evidence would indicate. Consider this. The first time that it’s recorded in Scripture where Jesus presents this model is in Matthew 6: 9 – 13 as part of the Sermon on the Mount where among other things, Jesus was contrasting the exclusively external religious rituals taught by the Pharisees as standards for righteousness with the righteousness that He was teaching. His was a righteousness that, while it certainly played out externally, went much deeper than mere external compliance to a religious code of ethics. He took things to the motive level and He talked about surrender to God and God’s agenda several times, including when He gave this model for prayer. It’s time to break it down.
“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.” The dictionary definition of hallowed is to regard something as holy or sacred. In other words, Jesus was teaching His followers to hold God’s name in highest regard. Now at this point, I suppose that it could be argued that this part could be construed as being merely ritualistic however, as He always did, Jesus took it to a whole new level.
Check out the next phrase. “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Stop right there. Is God’s will ever debated or defied in heaven? Think about it. In heaven, God does what He wants to do, in the manner in which He wants to do it, and in the time frame that He wants to do it in. Therefore, The Lord’s Prayer, first and foremost, is a surrender to God and a request that He bring His kingdom, heaven, to earth and that God will then reign on earth exactly as He does in heaven. Jesus is not teaching his followers to throw God a bone and go on their merry way, He’s teaching and modeling for His followers, a willful surrender to the reign of God the Father in the world. In light of the context here, especially when one examines the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, no other interpretation of that phrase makes sense.
“Give us today our daily bread.” Two things worth noting here. In the first place, Jesus is not ignoring our daily needs and to ask for their provision is an appropriate thing to do. But there’s the second part which requires discernment on the part of the listener or the reader. Why would a person ask God to provide for their daily needs if they could do it themselves? What is Jesus saying here? Is He saying that God is the source of provision for our daily needs? Yep. He sure is. What about the people who don’t ask for provision? They get along just fine. That actually says much more about the generosity of God than it does about the individual’s ability to provide for themselves. And for the reader who is hell bent on proving that they can get along fine without any help at all from God, I suppose they could pray this prayer, “God I want absolutely no help from you at all to provide for my needs. I can do it all myself and you need to just stay out of my business.” If you do pray that prayer by the way, that it is an absolutely gutsy thing to pray and personally, I would not advise you to do it. If you do decide to do that however, I think I’ll just get out of your way and watch this one from a distance……. By the same token, to pray the Lord’s Prayer is not to imply that we don’t have to do anything. Think of it like a partnership. Imagine God is the quarterback and we’re the wide receiver. God can throw us a perfect pass but it’s still up to us to put our hands out there and catch it.
“Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Jesus is using figurative language here and what He’s really talking about is reconciliation. He’s pointing back to the fact that we’ve all sinned and God has forgiven us and therefore, we should also forgive those who have done us wrong. Several things to note here. First and foremost, Jesus never sinned so in that regard, He never needed to be reconciled to God the Father, but He certainly forgave those who sinned against Him even when they didn’t ask for it. From the cross, for example, He asked God the Father to forgive the people who were murdering Him, but notice, once again, how He framed the issue. He asked God the Father to forgive these people but it was up to the Father to grant the request. It goes back to that, “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” phrase. In order to be totally forgiven, the offenders would have to ask for forgiveness however from Jesus’ perspective He, as the offended party, had released His right for revenge, back into the hands of God the Father. So what does that mean for us? It’s not complicated. It means that as we pray, that God is expecting us to forgive people as He has forgiven us and reconcile where possible. Incidentally, I get it, reconciliation may not be possible, but forgiveness on our part is. And if we don’t want to…….refer back to the, “your will be done,” part. Yeah, surrender. The Lord’s Prayer is about surrender.
“Lead us not into temptation, and deliver us from the evil one.” In other parts of Scripture, it’s clearly stated that God does not tempt anyone so what’s Jesus saying here? Two things probably. Like I said, God does not tempt anyone but He does allow people to be tested where their lusts and desires are often exposed. In part, the request here is that God will not lead us into a place where we might be tempted and sin but if we are there, that God would deliver us from the evil one. As a candid observation here, many times we’re in a place where we are tempted not because of anything that God has done but rather because we have insisted on going places either literally or figuratively that we have no business going. The blame for the fact that we are tempted in those cases lies clearly on our shoulders and not God’s. As Jesus is talking about prayer here, He’s assuming that the person praying sincerely wants to follow Him and therefore, the prayer is, “don’t bring me into a place where I could be tempted but, if you do, because there is no other way, please show me the way of escape so I don’t sin.” This phrase assumes that God is good and that in spite of the circumstances He’s working things out on my behalf.
So what does this mean to us? I want to go back to one phrase because I think it’s the key phrase in this prayer and, therefore, the key concept for prayer in general. “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Prayer, as Jesus taught it, is first and foremost, a surrender of my will to God’s will. Prayer is not a deal where I bring my requests before God and He automatically gives me what I ask. That’s the genie in Aladdin who does that and he’s a piece of fiction. No, what is happening here is that when I pray, I bring my requests to God and allow Him to answer them as He sees fit. It’s also an exercise in faith because I’m also saying that I believe that God is good and that He knows better than I do regarding how to do my business.
There’s one other thing worth noting when it comes to prayer and that’s what it does to me. As I come to God in prayer with a mindset of surrender, I become aligned with God and what He’s trying to do. There’s a story in the Old Testament that especially illustrates this. In Joshua 5, just before the Israelites attacked Jericho, Joshua went up to a high place to observe the city. As he got though, he discovered that there was also another warrior with a drawn sword who was on the scene. Joshua approached the warrior and asked him, “Are you for us or for our enemies?”
“Neither,” he replied, “but as commander of the armies of the LORD I have now come.” And Joshua fell face down on the ground in reverence and asked. “What message does my Lord have for his servant?”
I especially like the notes from the NIV Study Bible for this passage. “’Neither,’” Joshua and Israel had to know their place – it is not that God is on their side; rather, they must fight God’s battles.”
Author Gordon Mac Donald, said it like this in his book, Ordering Your Private World, “Prayer is much more about aligning my agenda with God’s agenda than it is about asking Him to align with mine.”
In an Instagram post I read the other day, Lori Dethlefs, a Christian blogger wrote, “Prayer does work. It changes us.” She’s right you know. When we approach God in prayer using the model that Jesus taught, that model of surrender, we become more like Jesus. Our faith becomes stronger, even if the answer to our prayer is, “no”. We trust the one we are praying to and our lives become transformed. We look, walk, talk and act like Jesus because He is a good God and in the words of Philip Yancey, He’s partnering with us as a senior partner partners with a junior partner. One thing about that analogy which Yancey does bring out is that in the business world, junior partners are generally there merely to rubber stamp what the senior partners want to do. Not so with God. He allows us a voice and, as He is transforming us so that we are becoming like Jesus, He values our input which we usually express through prayer. At the same time, like all senior partners, He is the senior partner and has full veto rights which He sometimes chooses to use for our benefit, but that doesn’t mean that He doesn’t value our input. He does.
So how are we praying these days? Are we surrendered to God or not? Do we trust Him? Heavy stuff, I know. But we need to wrestle with it anyway. That should be enough for you to ponder for at least a couple of days. See you next week.
copyright 2019 by Sam Roach
Last week, after I’d posted “Made in the Image of God, the Difference Maker,” it dawned on me that I had possibly hit some of my readers in the mouth with some hard truth but upon reflection, if I had it to do over again, I’d still write it like that. Truth is truth and I’m obligated to tell it. However, I would be remiss to just leave things that way because when a person surrenders to God there are two parties involved. There’s the person and then there’s God and up to this point much of what I’ve written has been from the perspective of the surrendering person. Today, to switch things up a bit, like a photographer changing positions to get a different perspective for the perfect shot, I’d like to shift over to God’s vantage point and briefly look at what Scripture says happens on God’s end during all this.
In Luke 15, it’s recorded that Jesus was eating with the tax collectors and notorious sinners (again!) and the Pharisees and teachers of the law were grumbling about it and pitching him flack (again!) and that Jesus, not being one to take anything from these people, especially on this issue, hit back….(also again!) Jesus proceeded to tell three parables, back to back, giving God’s perspective on this matter focusing especially on how God is relentlessly searching for people, however unworthy they might look on the surface, to follow Him. That relentless searching is an overriding theme in all three parables.
The first one is about this shepherd who has 100 sheep in his flock and when he comes home one night and counts them, he can only find 99. That’s a problem. Each individual sheep had great value and one was still out in the desert. The way that Jesus tells the story the shepherd goes to great lengths out into the desert that had harsh elements and was teaming with predators to rescue a lost lamb and bring it back into the safety of the fold. The fact that there are ninety nine sheep still nested safely behind the fence is irrelevant. One’s lost with no hope of survival without the shepherd’s intervention. He must go out and rescue it. From the shepherd’s perspective, failure is not an option.
In the second one, a woman has ten silver coins, each one worth about a day’s wages, and one gets lost so she grabs a lamp and searches diligently until she finds it. A couple of things to note about this is that, depending on the commentator, some have suggested that the coin is part of her dowry. Others have suggested that this woman is poor and that coin is probably 10% of her entire savings. In any case, all the commentators are in agreement that the coin has great value. The second point to be noted is that finding this one lost coin is no easy matter because houses back in Jesus’ time frequently had no windows and earthen floors. In other words, it’s a single coin on the dirt floor of a dark room with only a candle to light the place. Good luck with that. And then, there’s the coin itself. The coin has the king’s image and superscription on it. In this parable, this coin is a symbol representing the human soul. We too have the image and superscription of God, visibly manifested by our ability to think and exercise free volition, both attributes of God, stamped on us. Going back to the parable though, the lost coin has great value and the woman searches until she finds it.
Then there’s the third parable, the grand finale, the parable of the prodigal son. The cliff notes version is this. A man has two sons and the younger son comes to his father, who is obviously wealthy, with a request that’s a cold slap in the face. “Give me my share of the estate now,” is what the kid requested. I can see the eyebrows raise amongst Jesus’ audience as He tells this story. In that culture, you don’t ask for your share of the estate until after your father is dead and in the grave. News flash! The ol’ man is alive, well and still kicking. In fact, he still has the ability to run as we will see later. What the kid is saying to his father is this. “Dad, you are dead to me. I want nothing to do with you.” This is just my opinion, but I suspect that, if pressed to elaborate, Jesus would have said that the underlying issue here was an authority issue. The kid didn’t want to live under his father’s authority anymore, exclamation point, story’s over. Let that thought sink in for a minute, especially considering how both we as individuals and society in general, tend to approach God. Sobering thought. Let’s move on. The father had two options. Option A was to disown the kid right then and there. Then there’s Option B which was to divide the estate up and give the kid what he wanted and allow him the autonomy to do as he pleased. Surprisingly enough to the audience at least, the father chose the second option.
Shortly after he got his money, the kid took off to a distant land and squandered all of his wealth on wild living. More than likely he engaged in a series of selfish choices and, while it was not what he had intended to do, his life spiraled out of control. He hit rock bottom at the wrong time. There was a famine in the land and, in order to survive, this kid has to hire himself out to a local farmer to earn enough money to eat. His job was to feed the pigs; unclean, dirty, pigs. Quite demeaning for a Jewish kid. I also suspect that this job didn’t pay very well either. It didn’t keep up with inflation because Jesus said that this kid was so hungry that the pods he was feeding the pigs looked enticing. (It’s not written in the text per se, but logic dictates he didn’t earn enough money to buy food.) And it was at this point in his life, when he was at rock bottom, that this kid came to his senses. He remembers that even the servants in his fathers’ household have enough to eat, in fact, at that place, there’s food to spare. As he’s staring at the pig pen, the kid decides that enough is enough. He’s done. He’s going back to his father and he’s going to ask his father to take him back as a hired servant. And with that, he begins the long journey home.
Now, as this kid is still a long ways off, Jesus says that his father saw him and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. Stop right there. Think about it. This is not your Hollywood, Johnny’s come back from the war, feel good story. No, this is your Rebel Without a Cause, walk out of the house, slam the door and flip Dad off all the way to the property line, kind of story. In cultural context, he’d publicly shamed his father and made a public scandal out of the family name. When his father sees this kid from afar, he has three options. Option 1 is to disown the kid. The kid made his bed, now he can sleep in it. Option 2, be cold and distant. Maybe take pity on the kid but let him grovel and beg. Give him enough maybe so he doesn’t starve but that’s about it. And then there’s Option 3, his father does the unthinkable. He’s filled with compassion. He runs to his kid, throws both arms around him and kisses him. Once again, to fully appreciate the significance of this we have to go back to the context of the culture. Old men, especially if they are as wealthy as this man was, don’t run….anywhere. They walk in a dignified manner. And when they get where they are going, they don’t throw their arms around a dirty ragged rebel and kiss them. It’s the other party that pays respect to them. Those are the cultural expectations. Well, cultural expectations be damned! This is his son who was lost. He’s back and the father is overjoyed. A Christian song writer has called it a “scandal of grace” but there’s more.
What the father does next is over the top and it’s ripe with symbolism. The father calls for his servants to bring the best robe and put it on the kid, not just give him some clean clothes, but the best robe. It’s more than likely a robe from the father’s own wardrobe and it represents significance. He tells the servants to put a ring on the kid’s finger, the finger that’s right next to the one that the kid used to flip his father off when he’d left those many years ago. And, that’s not just any ring either. It’s a family ring, once again, one that likely belongs to the father. It has an image of the family seal on it and it represents the father’s authority delegated to the person who is wearing it. The father instructs the servants to put sandals on the kid’s feet. In cultural context, sons wore sandals, servants went barefoot. No, you aren’t misreading this. The father reinstated this kid to the family, the same kid who, probably in anger and rebellion, told his father that the old man was dead to him, has been restored to the family. But wait. His father isn’t quite done. He gives one last order. “Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” Once again, the significance of this act would not have been lost on the original audience. The fattened calf was an animal saved for special occasions like a milestone birthday party or something like that. The rich man had other, less expensive animals he could have slaughtered for this feast but he chose the best. And it wasn’t just a quiet meal either. There was music and dancing, loud music. It was one of those, “if it gets any louder they’re gonna call the cops on us for violating the noise ordinance,” loud kind of parties. Okay…..now Dad’s done, at least with that part of the story.
So let’s tie these loose ends up now as it relates to what happens on God’s end in this surrender process. One of the points that Jesus was making to his audience when He told these parables, and it’s why He told them back to back, was that He wanted to give his audience a good look at God’s heart. God wants people to return to him and He’s searching for them individually. I don’t think that it was any accident that it was one sheep, one coin, and one son in each of the parables. Like a wall is built one brick at a time, Jesus is building his kingdom individual by individual.
The second thing is that when repentance happens in an individual’s life, God isn’t just pleased, He celebrates it. In all three parables, when the lost are found, there’s a celebration that ensues. Its right there, recorded in Scripture.
Then there’s this matter of repentance. It’s a common theme in all three parables as well. The first two parables introduce it and the parable of the prodigal son expands on its meaning. In the parable of the prodigal son, the son rejects his father’s authority and moves away from his father. It’s worth noting here that the son does not merely distance himself from his father, he moves as far away as he possibly can. In the first part of the story, the son initiates the action. He is the one who demands his share of the inheritance prematurely, he’s the one who tells his father that his father is dead to him, he’s the one who moves as far away as he possibly can and once he gets there, establishes his own moral code and spirals into ruin. And it’s when he absolutely hits rock bottom that he remembers what life was like in his father’s house and longs for it. Now on the surface I suppose it could be argued that the process of repentance began in the son’s corner but I don’t think so. Hear me out. Yes, you have the son assessing his situation and remembering what life was like in his father’s house but ask yourself this question. Who was the source of those memories? It was the father. The son experienced them but the father caused them. And let me take this one step further if I may. God still does that with all of us. You know that unrest that always seems to be there, that never quite goes away? That’s God’s doing. So often there’s this underlying current as you sense that there’s got to be more to life than what you’re experiencing. Sometimes it’s subtle, sometimes it’s brutal, but in any case, it never quite goes away. It doesn’t seem to matter what you do, whether it’s good or bad, that hole is always there. That’s actually Jesus calling you. He’s the only one who can permanently fill that emptiness and that ache is his calling card, beckoning you to come home.
And lastly, did you see what the father did once his son returned? The son comes home barefoot, asking for a place as a hired servant. His father will have none of it. He embraces him and welcomes him. He puts the best robe on him, puts the family ring on his finger and shoes on his feet. He restores him back to his family position with full family rights and privileges. Let this sink in. Paul, in his epistles, expands on this but for the person who surrenders to Jesus and His authority over their life, God doesn’t just forgive the person, He adopts them into His family. The surrendered person is a son or a daughter of God with full family rights and privileges. Using Jesus’ words, before repentance, an individual is lost or dead, and after repentance, the person is found and alive and it’s all God’s doing. And why would a person repent? Look at the parables. Before repentance, the lost sheep is out in the wilderness, defenseless against the savage predators, the coin is lost on the ground forever, and the son was feeding the pigs while starving to death. After repentance, the lost sheep is safe back under the protection of the shepherd, the coin is reunited with the other coins, able to be used again, and the son is restored to his original position.
There’s one last thing and then I’ll let you go. Let’s come back to the idea that the son was restored to his original position. God wants to do that with us too. We were never created with the intention that we be separated from God, doing life on our own. We were created to live in intimate fellowship with God and be the administrators of planet Earth. The separation was our doing. God’s original purpose was to extend heaven to earth and have us rule this planet as His regents. For the record, that bringing heaven to earth part is going to happen someday. What that will look like exactly, I’m not sure of. The Bible clearly teaches that Jesus will come back to earth someday in his physical body just like He left and He will rule it. Now what that will actually look like in terms of how heaven and Earth will be connected, I’m sorry, I’m not that smart. I don’t know. He will come back though, that is crystal clear and Jesus wants us with Him.
So what we do? We’re the lost sheep, the lost coin, the prodigal son. We’re lost. We’re dead, at least that’s Jesus’ assessment of us. And now, we find ourselves feeding the pigs, for most of us that’s a figurative statement, but that’s where we are. Jesus is out there looking for us, hard. He’s fighting the elements, the wolves, trying to get to us. He’s sweeping the floor, patiently looking for us in the dark places. From His throne room He’s looking longingly – no, He doesn’t need us but He wants us and He’s respecting our right to choose, a right that, incidentally, He gave us when He created us. So what will we do? Will we repent of our rebellion, submit to His authority and come back to a loving God who is waiting for us with open arms, or will we persist in our rebellion, feeding the pigs, and end up starving to death? It’s our choice. For the record, surrendering to Jesus was the best thing I ever did. See you next week.
Made in the Image of God, the Difference Maker
Last week, I discussed the promise in Scripture that if we earnestly seek God that He said we will find Him and in the blog section last Monday, I discussed that one of the reasons that we are guaranteed success if we do this is that God has actually been looking for us for a lot longer than we have been looking for Him. I also briefly stated on Monday that God loves us unconditionally. Today, I want to unpack that a little more. I want to address the why of the statement and I’m going to suggest that one of the reasons why this is true is because of who we are.
Let’s look at this proposition shall we. God loves us because of who we are. You heard me. God loves us simply because of who we are which, incidentally, has much more to do with who God is than it ever did with us. Truly, we are not that wonderful but we’re all we got. Oh quit your bristling! You’re far from perfect and there’s days when even you can’t stand you. I’m not judging you, I’m stating a fact as someone who’s in the same boat. And, considering God is holy, our current state is a problem. And yet, God loves us because of who we are. You see, we are made in the image of God and that’s what’s making the difference.
We’re made in the image of God, what does that mean? It means that our body looks like His but that’s just window dressing. We have the ability to create, not to the degree that God does, He can create stuff out of nothing which we can’t do but we can still create to a degree. Technically, I guess that you could say when it comes to physical stuff, we upgrade things in unlimited proportions. Mentally, when it comes to anything dealing with thought, we actually do have the ability to create something out of nothing. We are sentient. We have a soul. Yes, we are made in God’s image, and that’s a big deal.
Also, as we discuss the fact that we’re made in the image of God, it’s worth noting that we’re God’s pride and joy. Think of it like this. If you live in the United States, on the 4th of July, communities always have a fireworks show. Now, at these fireworks shows there are varying degrees of bright lights and loud booms going off into the sky. And then comes the end, the grand finale. They save the best for last and they light them off all at once. It’s the exclamation point at the end of the sentence. It’s amazing and it’s designed to be what people will remember forever, or at least until next year. Guess what. When it comes to creation, the creation of the human race was the grand finale. Look at the order of things in Genesis 1. We came last and when God was done with us, He looked over all of creation and said that it was, “very good.” Everything else just got a, “good.” but we got the “very good,” comment. Granted, it was at the end of the process so it might be argued that the comment had more to do with all of creation than us specifically but we still got it and no one else, including the cat, can make that claim. Possession is nine tenths of the law cat, deal with it.
Consider also the job we were given to do. “Fill the earth and govern it,” was our mandate. “Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky and all of the animals that scurry on the earth.” We were vassals. Made in the image of our Creator, our job was to govern the earth, administrate its affairs just like God does over the rest of creation. We were to do the work of God on this planet. No one else in the creation order got that daunting task, it was given to us. Made in the image of God, yeah, it’s a big deal and God was pleased with us.
So does that mean that we’re good to go? Well, we were but then we decided that we wanted to be our own god and rebelled against the real One. One simple act of rebellion, done with our eyes wide open, set in motion an immeasurable number of consequences that we never intended to have happen even though God said they would. “You will surely die,” was what God said would happen if we rebelled and now, yes we do. Physical death is an experience common to everyone but it didn’t stop there. We died spiritually too. In rebellion against a holy, loving, God, we became unable to hear His voice or respond. Like an unplugged laptop with its battery removed, there we sat. Our reasoning became flawed and rather than governing the planet in the manner that God would govern it, we governed for our own gain at the expense of others. Proof? Read the news feeds. We have problems on every front. No facet of life is exempt. Exploitation and injustice abounds. There’s poverty and pollution, most of it preventable, on every continent. And, in the event that you’re thinking that my statement about our flawed reasoning is a bit harsh, consider the things that you think are evil, it’s pretty ugly isn’t it? Guess what. The odds are pretty good that somewhere in the world, there’s a group of people, perhaps even a whole society, that not only doesn’t think that what you call evil is bad, but it’s even good under normal circumstances. And before you go calling these people backwards and evil thugs, you should probably know that they look at you and how you think and say the same thing about you.
Where do we stand now? Here’s the Apostle Paul’s evaluation of us. Strike that, here’s God’s evaluation of us because all Paul was doing was quoting the Old Testament. “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” (Compared to what God wants.) Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes.” (Romans 3: 10 – 18)
Two chapters earlier, he wrote this about us. “Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.” (Romans 1: 28 – 32) This is an all wise God putting these thoughts into Paul’s head. This is His assessment of us. That’s tragic.
Moving on now, imagine that you are a business person. You devise a grand project and you set it up in ideal conditions for success. You give clear, concise instructions and only a fool would willingly mess it up. But that’s exactly what happened. To fix things, you put a plan in place and all that the people who are running the show have to do is cooperate and do things your way while this plan plays out. But these people who work for you refuse to follow your instructions. Not only do they mess up but they have contests to see who can screw things up worse than the last guy did. You’re losing money big time. It’s a downhill spiral, a bottomless pit with no end in sight. It’s a mess. That was the hand that God was dealt. (In the event that you think I’m lying just go back three paragraphs and re-read the paragraph.)
Let me ask you a question because you’re smarter than most people. Given the above stated circumstances, what would you advise the business person to do. If you said, “Can the entire staff and either start over from scratch or cut your losses and scrap the whole project,” you would be a wise person. God’s the wisest person out there and that’s probably what He should have done. In fact, that would have been the just thing to do and yet, that isn’t what He did. He chose to love us (yes, it was a conscious choice on His part) and make a way of reconciliation for us instead of scrapping the project. He did not overlook the justice piece of the equation. God the Son, the person of Jesus Christ, took our place on the cross, paid the penalty for our sin and offered us a way to be reconciled to our Creator, a way to go back to the way things were intended to be in the beginning. In business terms, it was a simple transaction. Here’s another way to think about it. Imagine you have an old 74 Chevy with a froze up engine, rusted to the point that it will never run and a transmission that’s shot. You need a good car, now. So you tow this junk pile piece of Chevelle to the local Toyota dealership and you try to work out a deal to get a new car. Here’s the problem though. You got no credit. Seriously, your credit score isn’t just poor, it’s 300, the lowest score possible. You got no job. Your car isn’t worth anything, in fact, you should have to pay them to take it because it’s going to cost them more to haul it to the metal recycling place than they’re going to get for it.
You try to work out a deal but it’s just not happenin’. You are toast. You have no car and no way to buy one. As you are preparing to leave, the manager of the dealership feels compassion for you and has mercy on you. He brings you into his office and proposes a solution…..it’s the only solution that’s going to work by the way, you’ve been to all of the other dealerships, new and used, in town. He proposes a trade. Your car, as is, for the top of the line car on the show room floor. Payments? There are none. He’s paying for it out of his own pocket. It’s a straight across trade. All you need to do is drive a Toyota from this point on. Amazing? Absolutely! Here’s the catch though. The manager won’t force you to take this deal, you have to agree to it.
That’s really what God did for us. Jesus took our sin, paid the penalty for it and is offering us His righteousness in return. All we have to do is admit that we are a sinner and cannot save ourselves, agree that Jesus is God and end our rebellion against Him. Why? God sees us as valuable. We are made in His image, that’s what’s making the difference.
Here’s the kicker though. God won’t force us to take the offer, we must choose to do that. This is what’s what. We have two options. We can agree to take God up on His offer or we can pay it ourselves. If we choose to reject Christ, we will spend eternity in hell. You see, God will take back His creation eventually and that includes this planet. The only place in existence where He will not be is hell. God will be everywhere else and He will not force a person to submit to His good rule. Hell, as presented in the Bible, is a horrible place. The Bible clearly teaches that it’s a literal place, not a figure of speech. The words used to describe it are garbage dump, (Gehenna was the name of the garbage dump outside of Jerusalem. The garbage was disposed of by being burned.) or the Lake of Fire. It’s a place where there’s “weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth”, Jesus’ words. And here’s the other part too worth noting. It was never intended for us. It was created for Satan and his angels.
So what are you going to do? Take God up on His offer, end your rebellion and let Jesus pay the penalty for it. Or will you insist on paying it yourself. To take God up on His offer is not a mystery. In fact, to take God up on His offer is much more about heart attitude than it is about saying the right words. Words just express the attitude of the heart. Basically, if a person wants to follow Jesus, the simplest way would be to pray something like. “God, I’ve been in rebellion against you. Sometimes that rebellion has been blatant disobedience, sometimes that rebellion has been a passive disregard for what you have said. Either way, I have been rebelling against you and I want to stop because right now, as it is, I am separated from you and I don’t want that anymore. Thank you for sending Jesus to pay the penalty that I deserved for my rebellion. I want to apply that to my life. I believe that you raised Jesus from the grave and I agree to end my rebellion against you. I don’t understand everything but I want to follow Jesus for the rest of my life. Thank you for forgiving me. In Jesus name, amen.”
If you just prayed that prayer, there’s something that I would advise you to do. If you know another person who follows Jesus, tell them about it. If you don’t know anyone like that, get a hold of me. I would like to help you connect with people who are following Jesus as you navigate this idea of what following Jesus looks like. One thing about following Jesus is this, it was never intended to be done in isolation. People were created to function in community and this is no different. You need people. See you next week.
The Prayer that God is Guaranteed to Answer
Okay, I’m not going to lie. I don’t exactly feel qualified to write this post but I’m just getting this impression that I’m supposed to write this so, out of obedience, here goes. That’s one thing about following Jesus, you don’t get a lot of flexibility when you get an assignment. You just get a notion and you just have to roll with it. I don’t get them very often but I did this time. I want to talk to you about the prayer that, if offered sincerely, God is guaranteed to respond to.
You’ll notice that the wording in this post is personal, like it’s just you and me talking at a table. That’s by design. It is just you and me today, well, almost. Actually, there’s a third person in this conversation as well. Jesus is in the middle of this one too. Yeah, He’s here. In fact, He’s the one who instigated this whole conversation so, as you’re reading, if you occasionally sense some nudges and prompts, that’s Him talking not me. I’m just the messenger here.
So what prompted this post? Well, it’s about you actually. There’s something going on in your life right now that’s heavy and it’s weighing you down and you know exactly what it is. In fact, you have a much better handle on the specifics of this one than I do. Like I said, I’m just the writer. I don’t know if it’s a health diagnosis you’ve just received, if it’s a legal mess that you know is about ready to blow up in your face, or if it’s relational. (That’s a loaded topic, I know. There’s all kinds of places that one could go.) Or maybe it’s something else entirely. Look, I have no idea what it’s about but I do know this much, you’re at a crossroads right now and assuming that you’ll let Him, God wants to talk to you.
What’s on His mind are several things. First, He knows about everything you’ve ever done or thought about doing and He still loves you unconditionally, He always has. The fact that you haven’t wanted to do things His way, or even that perhaps you have blatantly wanted nothing to do with Him, hasn’t changed that. You were created in His image and He loves you. Period. And He’s been calling you to Himself. Seriously, even though you haven’t been searching after Him, He’s had you on His radar from the day you were conceived. Throughout your life He’s been trying to get your attention. Sometimes He’s been subtle, sometimes He’s been obvious, so obvious that everyone has picked up on it, well, except for you. In any case, He’s here now and His motivation is pretty simple. He loves you.
Secondly, He wants you to know that you were designed to live in an intimate relationship with Him. Specifically, you were created to interact with God as a friend. It’s written into your DNA. You know how throughout your entire life, as long as you could remember, nothing has ever seemed to permanently satisfy you? You wanted something and when you got it, you were satisfied for the moment but then eventually that satisfaction just went away. That’s a normal experience, by the way, and it was actually God’s doing. You see, He designed all of us with what could best be described as a God sized hole in our chest that only He can fill. When that hole is empty, we know it. We have this gnawing sense of dissatisfaction, a hunger if you will, that can only be satisfied if we have an intimate relationship with God. The problem is that we try and fill that hole with other things besides God and it just doesn’t work. What we’re left with is temporary satisfaction that eventually goes away. The only thing that can satisfy us permanently is when we are in an intimate relationship with Him. Bottom line, you’re at a crossroads right now and Jesus is staring right at you with His hand stretched out inviting you to follow Him, inviting you to begin that intimate relationship with Him.
So what’s the problem? You have the same problem that we all do, it’s our rebellion against God. It goes back to doing things our own way and rejecting God’s leadership. We insist on writing our own moral code and what He calls bad, we’re gonna call good and vice versa. He says we should love our neighbors and we want to kill them – assassinate their character at least. Speaking in broad terms, we were created to live under God’s loving authority and we have usurped the control center but I’m not telling you anything right now that you don’t already know. Listen to this and tell me if it doesn’t sound familiar. It should. We’ve all done it. We’re confronted with a choice to do something and if we do it, it’ll be wrong on an infinite number of levels and we know it. However, we’re gonna do it anyway, if for no other reason than we just want to, and if anyone doesn’t like it, including God, well, they can just stick it. How do I know this? Been there, done that, got the shirt – or my butt kicked.
Now, up to this point in your life, you’ve been able to ignore all of this rebellion stuff and the consequences of it I suppose, either by providence, skill, or the grace of God, but there’s a principle in the Bible that keeps showing up over and over. You reap what you sow. In the real world back at the Roach place, for example, we planted corn in April and harvested it in July and August. We reaped what we sowed. Guess what, you’ve planted seeds of rebellion your entire life and it’s almost harvest time. And frankly, if this was a poker game, your hand doesn’t look so good. Am I lying? Look, if you read me at all, you know that this style of post is different from the way I usually write but I’m sensing that I’m supposed to tailor this post specifically for you and people like you. Examine your life for a minute. Is this really how you want it to play out? There is a way out, a way of escape, but in order for that to happen, you have to agree to end your rebellion against God before it’s too late.
Now maybe you’re reading this and this is the first time you’ve ever been confronted with your life, your future, in these terms and the emotions are bubbling up in the core of your being, not necessarily because of what I’ve written but rather just because that’s how life is right now. It is what it is, you know. And, perhaps, you’ve always believed that God exists but you’ve had absolutely no idea what to do with it or, for that matter, how it was relevant. Or, for all I know, you might be this person. Up until now you were either positive that God didn’t exist or just weren’t sure one way the other but now, like a dripping faucet at midnight, there’s a still small voice that’s not going away, whispering softly, “What if God does exist? Now what?” What are you going to do? This much you know, you know what’s staring you right in the face. You know that unless something changes, like now, life is going to steam roll you and the consequences will be ugly. You’re almost resigned to it but now, you’re reading this article. Hey, I don’t know how you got here, maybe you stumbled across this article accidentally or maybe someone forwarded it on to you. In any case, here you are and I’m telling you that God has taken an interest in you, and is reaching out to you. He’s plowing through the middle of your mess and He’s trying to get to you. He’s telling you that you don’t have to do this on your own and He’s inviting you to follow Him.
So now, back to you. Perhaps you aren’t sure about this at all and you honestly don’t know what to do. If you’re willing, let me suggest that you pray a prayer that God is sure to answer. It’s a simple, honest prayer that will give you clarity. It goes something like this. “God, I’m not even sure you exist, or if you do, that you care about me but, if you’re out there and you’re listening, I need you. Please reveal yourself to me.” And then, put your head on a swivel and, over the next few days, expect Him to answer. Understand this. If you honestly want to find Him, He will let Himself be found. That, He promised.
To my normal readers, I am going to close this article a little bit differently than I usually do. I am going to post some Bible verses that back up what I’ve been saying and wrap things up that way.
Now, to all my readers, I don’t know whether you’re reading this on post day, (July 18th, 2019) or whether it’s many years later, I’ve just had this impression that some of you need to hear this message. You’re at a crossroads right now and God is reaching out to you. My advice to you is to read the Bible verses that I’ve included. Think about what they’re saying and ask God to reveal Himself to you. You won’t be disappointed. I can tell you from personal experience that Jesus is worth following. See you next time.
“Those who seek me, find me.” Proverbs 8: 17
“’Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when seek me with all of your heart. I will be found by you,’ declares the LORD.” Jeremiah 29: 12 – 14
“Then Jesus said, ‘Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.’” Matthew 11: 28 – 30
“When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.” Romans 5:6 – 8
“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that everyone who believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16
‘Then he said to the crowd, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your selfish ways, take up your cross daily, and follow me.”’ Luke 9:23
“’Come, follow me,’ Jesus said.” Matthew 4:19
How Seriously do We Take Jesus?
Imagine for a minute, if this happened in real life. Pretend last week, a guy we’ll call Jake posted a meme on his Facebook wall. There was this cat sprawled on its back, with a newspaper on its stomach staring over a pair of glasses at the camera. The caption read, “I didn’t know you had the authority to judge me. Is Jesus hiring?” It got the normal responses. A few likes, a couple of comments here and there and then, 24 hours later, Jake received a notification on his phone. One of his friends had gotten the bright idea to tag Jesus and Jesus was responding. Yeah, Jesus had been called out and now He was answering.
“Like you’d bother to change anything if I did authorize someone to judge you.” Jesus wrote.
Jake stared at the screen. Oh crud! He could see someone was still typing. Thirty seconds later, another comment popped up. It was Jesus again. “For the record, I’ve never been hiring but I’ve been recruiting people to follow me from day one.” How was he supposed to field that? Jake employed the “say nothing and it will just go away,” approach.
An hour later, Phil chimed in, “LOL, I’d like to be recruited by Jesus.” So much for the post going away. With friends like he had, who needed enemies?
Shortly, another response appeared. It was Jesus for the third time. “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat – I am. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way. You know where I am if you want to talk about it.”
And with that, Jesus was gone. A few more people commented on the post but it fizzed out after that. Jake actually contemplated messaging Jesus back but life happened and he just didn’t get around to it. And with that, the post sort of faded into his Facebook archives.
So where did I get the idea for this? It is obviously fiction but it was based off an actual meme that one of my Facebook friends posted. My initial impression of that meme was that I was struck by how the arrogance of the message oozed onto the page and while my opinion hasn’t changed I guess I’m grateful. It’s a great launch point for a post.
The meme illustrates perfectly the average person’s response to anyone who calls them out. Face it, nobody likes to be told they’re wrong, by anyone, and their natural response is to push back either passively or aggressively whenever it happens. So much so that unless the other person calling them out has some kind of tangible authority, like a boss or something, they’re as likely as not to just blow that other person off and not change a thing. The problem is though, if it’s Jesus who is attempting to correct them, they’ll probably respond the same way. They’ll change nothing….nada.
Am I exaggerating? You tell me. Look how the Bible is treated. Now, while the Bible is more than just a manual for how to live, much more in fact, parts of it can serve as an instructional manual for life choices. The Ten Commandments, the Epistles, or Proverbs just to name a few, are prescriptive in nature and definitely serve as a life recipe for right living. But, that’s not Jesus, people say. That’s the Bible, there’s a difference. Oh really? 2 Timothy 3:16 reads, “All Scripture is God breathed….” In other words, all Scripture is God’s thoughts. But that’s just Paul’s opinion, they say. Excuse me while I give them the cat in the meme look. I even have the glasses to pull it off. In the Gospels, Jesus was just as apt to use the phrase, “I say to you,” as He was to say, “It is written,” like Scripture was His words and His thoughts. That was a major deviation from the Old Testament, incidentally, when the prophets almost always used the phrase, “thus says the Lord,” when they claimed to be speaking for God, and on many occasions Jesus did claim to be God. Now track with me. If Jesus’ claim to be God is true, and all Scripture is God breathed, then, logically, that means that the words written in the Bible are His thoughts. Does that mean then, that the Bible can be used as an absolute standard by which morality can be measured? It’s not rocket science. Connect the dots.
So how do people tend to respond to this line of reasoning, especially when the Bible says one thing but they are doing another? Some take the, in your face – aggressive approach. They’ll say something like, “I don’t worship your God,” or “I don’t believe in the Bible. It’s an outdated document with errors in it. It’s all depends how you interpret it. Just because it’s right for you doesn’t make it right for me.” In a manner of speaking, using the aggressive approach, they just flip Jesus off and tell him to stick it.
Then there’s the line of passive resistance. In many ways it’s not all that much different from the aggressive approach except it has better table manners. Using this approach people exchange the really bad sins for the more acceptable ones especially if they don’t break the law. Gossip, anger, greed, even racism, subtle and/or blatant, are symptoms of this approach. This, incidentally, includes us church attending people too. A lot of times we’ll ride both sides of the fence, looking like Jesus in one situation and living no differently than the most rebellious aggressive person described in the previous paragraph in another, sometimes on the same day. And, if we want to do the “bad stuff”, it’s okay to do it (not really!) as long as we don’t get caught and as long as we make sure to confess it later……much later. As an example, an unmarried couple in a church might take this approach if they are sleeping together. They are committing the same sin as the unchurched couple who are living together, they just won’t advertise it and will likely deny it if confronted.
And right now, the thinkers reading this blog are saying that aside from the table manners, there’s no difference between the two approaches. Precisely, it’s just two different flavors of rebellion. Incidentally, Jesus agrees. There’s this well-known sermon Jesus preached called, “The Sermon on the Mount” that’s recorded in Matthew 5, 6, and 7. Let me tell you, as sermons go, this one truly stirred the pot. Summarizing briefly, Jesus told his audience that their righteousness had to be better than that of the most religious people of the day, the Pharisees, and when it came to the definition of what was sin, Jesus didn’t lower the bar, he raised it……to the point that if you think about it, no one could clear it. He took the acts of sin to their motive level. He linked murder to the anger that was driving it. He linked adultery to the lust that preceded it. He called religious acts and ceremonies done only to impress other people sin. He told people that it was impossible to serve both God and money. You know, when you analyze the sermon, Jesus essentially condemned his entire audience and us as well.
And then there was His conclusion. It had to have just blown everyone’s minds. He claimed at the final judgement, that there would be people going to heaven and that there would be people going to hell. That part didn’t exactly surprise his audience but what had to have shocked them was when He said that He, and He alone, would make the final decision as to who went where.
So, right now, many of you are thinking, “No kidding Captain Obvious. He’s Jesus. He’s God, or at least He claimed to be. He’s supposed to do that. It’s in His job description.” Why yes, yes it is. And that brings us back full circle doesn’t it and raises some uncomfortable questions. If we believe that Jesus is God and that words written in the Bible are His words and thoughts, then how seriously are we going to take them? What about the parts that that make us uncomfortable, the parts that talk about lust or greed or condemn racism? What if Jesus, through the Bible, says one thing and it looks like our political party is saying another? What if there are parts of law of the land that say that we can do one thing but Scripture prohibits it? What are we going do? Cherry pick and dismiss a passage of Scripture or change our behavior and obey? (Radical concept? Hardly. The only people who don’t get that are those of us who live in North America or Western Europe. Christians in the rest of the world are confronted with that dilemma every day and when they choose Jesus, they know that it’s a choice that quite possibly could cost them their life. Apparently, they have counted the cost and decided that following Jesus is worth it.)
And then there’s the part about Jesus and judging. Hey, the cat in the meme brought that one up. Yes, Jesus will judge people, He will be fair, and yes, in His own words, He will condemn some people to hell. In Matthew 7: 21 -23, Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” He said a similar thing in Luke 13:27. The bottom line is this, if the Bible is true….then when it’s all over, Jesus will be the judge.
So is that the end of the story? No. The end game of the Bible is to describe God’s plan to rescue, redeem and restore his creation, including humanity. Here’s the thing though, when Jesus talked about it, He always framed that issue in terms of authority, or who is God, the individual, the great pretender, or Him. He talked about the Kingdom of Heaven and how He was the King of that Kingdom. His invitation was for people to repent of their sin and follow him. In other words, if they were going to take Him up on His offer and follow Him, then Jesus was to be the King and they weren’t, it was that simple. It meant that their pride, arrogance, rebellion….you name it, had to go. It means that their misguided sense of self-righteousness had to go too because they had none. It meant that they had to surrender control of their lives to Jesus.
And, today, nothing’s changed…..nada. That’s where we are too. The ball is now in our court. Look, Jesus can either be our judge or He can be our savior. Following the evidence trail, it’s quite clear that He’d much rather be our savior and He’s got five scars on His body that prove it. Deeply embedded in His message as He talked about His kingdom and what that meant, was also His love for humanity. “I did not come to judge the world but to save it.” John 3:17. Throughout His three year ministry, He wasn’t talking out of both sides of his mouth. He was stating fundamental truth, saying that every person will have to make a choice. For those who choose to repent and follow Him, which is what He really wants, He will be their savior and share His entire kingdom with them. For those who rebel and persist in their rejection of Him, however, He will sadly be their judge. The choice is theirs.
So now what do you do, especially if this article hit home and you desire to follow Jesus but you don’t know how. A restored relationship with God usually starts with prayer. If you don’t know what to say, try this. “God, I’m proud and I’m arrogant. I agree with your assessment that not only is pride and arrogance sin, but that I’m a sinner as well and that I cannot save myself. I agree with you that my sin is deserving of eternal separation from you but I really don’t want that. I’d like to change. Please forgive me of my pride and arrogance and make me the kind of person that you want me to be. Thank you for sending Jesus to die for my sin. I surrender and accept Jesus as Lord of my life. Thank you for forgiving me. In Jesus name, Amen.”
If that prayer expresses your desires, tell God either by praying that one or one of your own. Seriously, he’s much more concerned with your heart attitude than he is with your words.
Now if you prayed that prayer, you need to tell someone, someone who can help you in your walk with God. If you don’t have anyone like that in your life, get ahold of me. I can either help you or hook you up with someone in your city who can. You can either email me or find me on Instagram. I’m sam.roach.16 and my profile pic is a tan hat that covers half my face.
See you next week.
Messiah? Jesus? He Doesn’t Look the Part.
Why?
Imagine a coffee shop on a Saturday morning and in the lobby, a man and a woman are meeting who haven’t seen each other for some time. They hug warmly and, as they are waiting to order, the woman snaps a selfie of them, tags some people and posts it on Instagram. Instantly, in Conconully, Washington, Mary’s phone vibrates. She’s was one of the people who has been tagged. She taps on the screen and beams. It’s her brother and sister. It’s confirmed. They’ll be in town tomorrow. She shows the picture to her five year old daughter.
The little girl bursts out, “Mommy! It’s Jesus.”
Mary paused. Granted, her brother was sporting a beard but no one had ever mistaken that renegade for Jesus. “Nooo….that’s not Jesus. That’s your uncle.”
“I know who Uncle Jerry is, Mommy. Not him. Him!” she said, pointing at the screen. “The man behind him. That’s Jesus.”
Mary looked closely. In the background sitting in a comfy chair, looking away, was a man who had been captured in the picture, an inadvertent photo bomber.
Mary smiled. “That man does look kind of like Jesus doesn’t he. That’s not Jesus though. It’s just someone who looks like him, honey.”
The child, with a headstrong air, looked at Mary, her eyes flashing. “Mommy, that’s Jesus. I’d know him anywhere.”
Actually, the kid was right. It was Jesus sitting in that chair and he was in the middle of a divine appointment. He’d come into the coffee shop an hour earlier knowing that this guy named Michael was going to be there and they were now talking, except Michael didn’t know who he was talking to. He recognized that the guy he was conversing with was sharp but, Jesus? No way. This guy just didn’t look the part.
Stop. Stop what you’re doing right now and let those words sink in. This guy just didn’t look the part. In Michael’s opinion, Jesus didn’t look enough like Jesus to be Jesus. Is that just a line in a piece of fiction? Yes and no. Yes, it is just a line in a piece of fiction. I should know, I just wrote it. But no, it’s not just a line in a piece of fiction, because if Jesus were to walk the earth today in the same manner that He did over 2000 years ago, I suspect he would hear that a lot. After all, that’s what happened the first time around and it’s time to address why.
2000 years ago, the Jewish nation had this idea of what their Messiah was supposed to look like. They were looking for a political king, probably military, well connected with an agenda that would be to kick the Romans out of Judea and re-establish Israel as an independent nation. They were expecting their Messiah to look majestic. And Jesus, frankly, didn’t. Jesus was this carpenter turned rabbi, whose only possessions were the clothes on his back, from Nazareth. Nazareth? Yeah, Nazareth. Loosely translated, Jesus was from the sticks. One of His disciples sarcastically put it like this. “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” Apparently….that’s where the Messiah was from. However, when it came to being the Messiah, in the opinion of His contemporaries, Jesus didn’t look the part. Back at ‘em though, whose fault was that? Did Jesus drop the ball or were the expectations of the Jewish nation at the time so out of step with what God was trying to do that when their Messiah came and lived among them that they missed Him entirely? Did they blow it and, more importantly, are we in danger of doing the same thing? It’s time to unpack things.
In terms of being majestic, in the first chapter of John, the premise is made that Jesus was God and that He created the universe. Bounce back to Genesis now and read the account of creation in the first chapter. Creation is said to have taken place in seven days. For the sake of this article, don’t get caught up in whether or not these are literal days, instead, focus on the how of creation. The language that’s used in the original account is kingdom type language. It’s just one royal decree after another. “Let there be….” The command is issued and Boom! No hassle. It’s done. It’s not hard work for Jesus. In terms of substance, is that majestic enough for ya?
Too brief? Okay, try this then. Jump back up to the Gospel accounts. Jesus’ disciples saw Him walk on water once and silence storms on several occasions simply by issuing a command. The crowds saw Him make the lame walk, the blind see, and heal the sick often by simply issuing a command. And a smaller group that included both His friends and His enemies watched Him raise Lazarus from the grave who had been in there for four days. Was Lazarus really dead? He was dead enough that when Jesus told them to roll back the stone that Lazarus’ sister pushed back and said, “No way! By this time he stinks!” (I’d say that’s pretty dead.) However, Jesus’ will prevailed and the stone was rolled away. Then Jesus issued the command, “Lazarus! Come forth!” and out Lazarus came, alive, totally restored to life. Ladies and gentlemen, that’s power that’s off the charts and majesty that just oozes out all over the pages. And yet, Jesus was rejected by his own people, because in terms of expectations of what the Messiah was supposed to look like, He didn’t look the part. It was an image problem. Hmmm…..rejection based on image in spite of substance. Ponder that for a minute.
So what was his image anyway? What did He look like? That’s the problem. We don’t know. I heard an author once say that in the Bible, there’s nothing written describing the physical appearance of Jesus and he’s right. In terms of physical appearance, aside from a prophesy written 700 years before His birth where the Messiah was described as being, “a scrawny seedling, a scrubby plant in a parched field and there was nothing attractive about him,” there’s absolutely nothing giving us any indication of what he looked like. We know He only owned the clothes on His back during His three years of public ministry and that He was dependent on the financial support of others during that time but, what did He look like in terms of image? Who knows? What that same author did go on to say however was that while we know next to nothing about what His physical appearance was like, we have a very clear picture of what His character was like. That’s spot on. The writers of Scripture painted a clear picture of that.
Scripture records that He was humble and gentle in heart. He had compassion for people. He wept on at least two occasions. He had a zeal for godliness as evidenced when he overturned the money changers tables in the temple. And He was intelligent, sharp enough to debate with the brightest minds of his day and win decisively to the point that, in the end, no one dared debate Him. But He also had a servant’s heart. He met the needs of others even at His own expense. Laying the cards on the table, Jesus’ mission was to seek and save the lost, and He came to give His life as a ransom for the many. His words not mine.
So how does one make sense of this? Jesus is majesty and humility all tied up in one not so neat little package. To help wrap your mind around this, think of majesty as a robe that Jesus has worn and, incidentally is currently wearing, for all eternity except for 33 years. For 33 years Jesus willingly took it off. Now staying with the analogy, take this one step further. Any time someone takes off a robe, they can just as easily put it back on. So could Jesus. Keep up now because this idea that Jesus could take off divine privilege and put it back on at will means that Jesus could have called off the crucifixion, the whole reason that He came, at any time had He so desired…..and He knew it. For example, Jesus told Peter in the middle of his arrest that He had twelve legions of angels at His disposal. And trust me, had Jesus summoned them, those angels would have come with a vengeance. That was their king who was about to be murdered. But Jesus never called on them. Never. Instead, He allowed Himself to be subjected to one illegal trial after another, He allowed Himself to be mocked, beaten and scourged beyond recognition and then He allowed Himself to be stripped naked and crucified for the sins of all humanity while God the Father abandoned Him to his fate. Oh yeah, and His response in the middle of all of this? He prayed for the people who were killing Him, He made arrangements for His mother to be taken care of, and He responded to a repentant thief who was also being crucified that day by promising him that he would be joining Jesus in Paradise.
So why did He do this in the way that He did? I’m not just talking about the crucifixion, I mean the whole package from Bethlehem to Golgotha. Why do it like that? If you’re God, why stack the deck against yourself when you have the power to do it differently. Theologically, there’s a lot of reasons but I want to talk about the one that theologians generally don’t address. In terms of theological discussions it just gets pushed to the back burner and forgotten about.
It has to do with leadership and the kind of leader Jesus is. Many people don’t have a problem with the idea that Jesus is God and that He died for the sins of the world. Nor do they have a problem believing that the resurrection happened or that Jesus is now reigning at the right hand of God the Father in heaven. They accept all of that. What they have a problem with however, is something much more personal. Control. Jesus is asking them to give Him control of their life and what they aren’t sure of is if they can trust Him. They understand that He will change their agendas at the very core of their being and they are apprehensive about it to say the least.
Are their fears all that unfounded? If they were to give Jesus their lives, with the power He has, He could do anything He wanted. Think about it, that’s what they’ve seen modeled throughout history and so have we if we’re honest. Typically, the more power that a person has, the more apt that they are to abuse it. If the Genesis account is true, (and I personally believe that it is!) with the kind of power Jesus possesses, He could be the ultimate people user. So here’s the question of the hour. Can Jesus be trusted?
And that brings us back to the original premise that when it came to looking like the Messiah, or more to the point, not looking the part, Jesus did so by design. He did so to give a broken world a visual picture of what God was like and offered it up as Exhibit A for the case that can be made for the trustworthiness of God. Look, Luke 9:23 and 24 is a big ask on Jesus’ part but it’s the only way the fractured relationship between a person and their Creator can be restored. What Jesus was and is saying to us is this. “In answer to the question of whether or not I will abuse my power, you can trust me, I’m safe in that regard.” And then He offers the circumstances surrounding His life and death as evidence of that. He would point to the circumstances at the time of His birth, the Bethlehem barn and feed trough that He was laid in, and the fact that He was raised by poor working class parents. He would point out that He socialized with the marginalized of society and that He never forced His will on anyone. He would draw attention to how He elevated the status women and children, and how He ate with Gentiles, even Samaritans. For a Jewish male during His time, that was radically different. He would point to the fact that while He told the truth honestly, He did not impose His will on anyone and force them to accept it. Then He would point to what He’s offering people today. Forgiveness of sin, adoption into His family and the fact that He enables people to change. The bottom line, and this is why Jesus intentionally did not look the part, when it comes to leaders, Jesus is safe and He wanted to make sure humanity knew that. And that leads us to a final question. Why would you not follow Him? His offer on the table is a complete pardon for sin, a restoration of a fractured relationship with God and a future that includes God, through the Holy Spirit, transforming a person into the kind of person they were created to be, their best selves actually. What’s involved? A person confesses that they are a sinner, that they need a savior, that Jesus is that savior who was crucified for their sin and that God has raised Him from the dead. And they accept Jesus as Lord of their lives. It’s a gift that cost God everything but, in that regard, costs a person nothing. They place their faith in Jesus and surrender control. It’s that simple. But the ball is in our court. We have to choose.
Over the next couple of weeks I am going to explore a little bit the question of how safe a leader Jesus is. For those of you who wrestle with that question, I’d especially invite you to follow along. See you next week.
Can Jesus be Trusted?
(He’ll Tell You the Truth)
Last week, in a story involving a character I named Dennis, I explored the question whether or not Jesus could be trusted with our lives by having Dennis ask Jesus straight up. “How do I know I can trust you?” And I made this executive decision that Jesus would answer by comparing and contrasting Himself with His competition. 2700 or so words later, I was done. But what if I missed the boat? Not the compare and contrast deal, I’m confident that I nailed that part, but what if that wasn’t the deal breaker for Dennis? What if Dennis thrives on knowing the truth, even if it sucks? What if the underlying question that Dennis is asking is, “Jesus, can I trust you to tell me the truth and then let the chips fall where they may?” Yep, it’s executive decision time again. That’s what Dennis wants to know and Jesus, because He’s omniscient, knows it too.
Jesus always appreciates honest questions. However, He doesn’t always answer questions directly. In this case He might answer it in a way that would nudge Dennis to use his mind. Jesus might start by saying something like, “Consider my track record.” With a wink then he’d tell a couple of stories from His life and allow Dennis to draw his own conclusion.
Jesus might start with the story of Nicodemus that’s recorded in John 3. Briefly, Nicodemus was a high ranking Pharisee, one of the religious leaders in Jewish society, who came to see Jesus at night. Why at night? We aren’t told. I suppose we could be nice and say that he came at night because of the crowds that Jesus drew during the day. Those crowds were so large that having a conversation with Jesus at that time would have been impossible. Therefore, coming to see Jesus after dark was the only way to pull it off. Yeah, are you buying this line of bull? Me neither. Let’s try Plan B, the truth. More than likely Nicodemus came at night because he didn’t want his peers to see him talking to Jesus. In the opinion of most Pharisees, Jesus was this controversial wild card from the sticks of Galilee. In spite of that however, there was something about Jesus that intrigued Nicodemus so he did what he had to do to make it happen. Yeah, Nicodemus got a private sit down with the rabbi from Galilee.
That night, Nicodemus began the conversation by stating the obvious. He knew that Jesus was a teacher who had come from God because no one could do the miracles that Jesus did if God wasn’t with him. Jesus however, skipped the formalities and cut to the chase. He responded by getting right to the heart of the issue and telling Nicodemus exactly what he needed to hear, exposing his blind spot. “I tell you the truth, no one can see the Kingdom of God unless he is born again.” Jesus said.
Say what? Was Jesus talking about a physical birth, somehow going back and reentering his mother’s womb, Nicodemus wondered? Nope. Not even close. Jesus was talking about a spiritual birth. Jesus told Nicodemus that in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven a person had to be born of water (the physical birth) and be born of the Spirit as well. He lost Nicodemus entirely. “What in the world are you talking about?” the Pharisee asked.
Over the next few verses Jesus attempted to clarify this. In order to enter the Kingdom of God, a person had to be born spiritually as well as physically. That is, a person had to have the Spirit of God literally living inside of Him. Using that idea as a launch point, Jesus pointed out the fallacy in the way that Nicodemus was thinking and pointed him back toward the truth. You see, Nicodemus had this idea that if a person obeyed the Mosaic Law perfectly and participated in all the right religious ceremonies they could get to heaven. If you’re thinking incidentally, that Nicodemus’ belief system sounds like an, “if I do enough good stuff I can earn my way into heaven,” system, you’re right. That’s exactly what it was and Jesus, using an example that Nicodemus would have been familiar with revealed to him that it wasn’t so.
Jesus began with a story familiar to every Pharisee, the story of the bronze serpent that took place during Moses’ day. Cliff notes version. Israel rebelled against God in Numbers 21 by complaining miserably about God’s provision for their needs and God responded by sending a bunch of poisonous snakes into the camp as punishment. These snakes were deadly and, as people were bit they began dying – rapidly. Now these people may have been rebellious twits but they weren’t stupid. They realized what they had done and repented, probably out of terror, but they repented none-the-less. God then, in an act of mercy, had Moses make a bronze snake and put it on a pole in the middle of the camp. Then, if a person was struck, if they looked at the bronze snake, they were healed. It wasn’t difficult, it certainly wasn’t rocket science and it was available to anyone who needed it. All a person had to do was have enough faith to look at the statue of the bronze serpent and they were healed.
Then Jesus added a twist. He linked Himself to that bronze serpent. He said that in the same manner the bronze snake was lifted up, the Son of Man, one of His favorite titles for Himself, would be also be lifted up so that everyone who believed in Him would have eternal life. I can imagine the look on Nicodemus’ face as he attempted to process this. Jesus meanwhile, reemphasized the point by stating the verse that today we know as John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” And then Jesus drove home the dagger of truth. He told Nicodemus that anyone who did not believe in Jesus was condemned already, not because of the sin they had committed per se but because they hadn’t believed in Jesus.
For Nicodemus this had to have been a bombshell. Let’s wander into the poor man’s head for a minute. That night Jesus blew up just about everything that man had been taught from his childhood. Jesus told him that in order to enter heaven he needed to be born spiritually not just physically, a concept that had never occurred to Nicodemus. Jesus also told him that He, Jesus, was God, Messiah, and Savior of the world. (The term “Son of Man” would have cued Nicodemus into that one and, Nicodemus, regardless of whether he would have agreed with Jesus or not, would have picked right up on it.) And Jesus had ended their conversation telling Nicodemus that in order to be accepted by God (or be born spiritually), that Nicodemus had to place his faith in Jesus. If he didn’t do that, according to Jesus, Nicodemus was condemned already. Imagine the shock. Jesus just told Nicodemus, a religious teacher of the Mosaic Law, that all the churchy religious stuff that he’d done all his life wasn’t going to make a difference, it simply wasn’t enough. Was that painful for Nicodemus to hear? I imagine so. But Jesus loved him enough to tell him the truth and offer a solution to his underlying problem.
The next piece of evidence Jesus might offer proving He could be trusted to tell the truth would be from an event that happened towards the end of His ministry. Jesus and His disciples were on their way to Jerusalem in the days before He was crucified when this young man who was extremely rich came up and asked him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He was asking what he had to do to earn his way into heaven.
Jesus instantly baited him. Paraphrasing here, Jesus answered, “Why do you call me good? No one is good – except God alone. Obey the Commandments and you’ll be fine.” Jesus was leading this man to the truth. “No one is good but God alone.” That statement would have forced that young man to think. Is Jesus God? Yes, He is, but was that what that young man was thinking? We’ll never know. The dialogue continued.
“Which ones?” The man asked.
“Don’t murder, steal, commit adultery, don’t lie, don’t defraud your neighbor and honor your parents.”
“I’ve done all that.”
Now Jesus loved this man enough to tell him the truth, regardless of the consequences and Jesus didn’t sugar coat anything when He did. “One thing you lack,” Jesus replied. “Go sell all of your possessions and give it to the poor. Then you’ll have treasure in heaven. And then come and follow Me.”
This story was told in three of the Gospel accounts and all three accounts agree. When the young man heard this, he went away sad because he was extremely wealthy. What Jesus revealed to him was that he loved his money more than he loved God and that God will tolerate no rivals. And no, Jesus did not change anything as the man left. He told him the truth and then loved him enough to let him go when he turned Him down.
As Jesus concluded these stories, a fair question would be to ask how Jesus would wrap things up. He would probably point out in His conversation with Dennis, the similarities that Nicodemus and the young man shared. In terms of obeying the Mosaic Law, both men had exemplary track records. Nicodemus was a member of the Sanhedrin, the equivalent of the Supreme Court of Jewish society. He didn’t get where he got by doing things half baked. He obeyed that Law and, the young man? When the young man claimed that he had done all of the things that Jesus listed, he was probably being truthful. But both men had a similar problem. To borrow a poker analogy, they were going for broke, betting on a losing hand. Both were counting on being accepted by God first and foremost on their own merits as evidenced by their strict adherence to the Mosaic Law. The problem was the Mosaic Law could not save anyone. It never had and it never will. All it was and still is for that matter, was the perfect standard for righteousness with the bar set so high that no one could meet it, because you couldn’t fail – ever. Its purpose was to show people that they needed a savior, it could not save them. In their conversations, Jesus revealed that to both of them. Specifically, the rich young man, while he had followed the specifics of the six commandments Jesus listed, had missed the mark on the first commandment, the one that served as the foundation for the entire Mosaic Law. “You will have no other Gods in rival to Me,” is how it literally read. The young man loved money more than he loved God. And Nicodemus? He needed to be reborn spiritually. At the time of their conversation, that hadn’t happened yet. The bottom line is that in both cases Jesus gave truthful answers in what can only be described as tough conversations. That being said, coming back to Dennis’ question whether or not Jesus can be trusted to tell the truth regardless of the outcome, His track record would indicate that He can.
So what does all of this have to do with us? Aside from the obvious application about truth telling, there’s something else here. Remember the first thing Jesus told Nicodemus. “No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” That threw Nicodemus for a loop. He had no idea what Jesus was talking about, and you know what? I’d be willing to guess that neither do you. If you weren’t raised in a church, you’re probably reading that phrase and going, “Yeah, what does that mean? It looks like some kind of religious code phrase.” In context of 21st century English, I understand your confusion. And, if you were raised in a church, you kind of know what it is but try describing it using non-churchy terms. I’m smirking now because it’s harder than it sounds. Welcome to my world. Now you know what I wrestled with last night. How does one intelligently describe how to be born spiritually like what Jesus was talking about without using religious terminology? What’s a good analogy? Show time kids!
Imagine that you have bought a new computer or laptop and it is state of the art. I mean, you went out like you thought you were that neighbor who lives down the street who extravagantly buys everything and then flaunts it in everyone’s face. And don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about. Every neighborhood has one. Anyway, you went out with a high priced budget and went completely over the top because you thought this piece of technology was worth it. This device that you purchased does everything except tie your shoes. You, my friend, are set.
But then you did it. You went out and downloaded an “upgrade”, at least that’s what you thought it was. In reality, you downloaded a mega virus that some computer programmer with issues created out of spite. That guy may have screwed up projects before but not this time. His virus did exactly what he designed it to do and now it’s on your device just wreaking havoc. You know all of those things that your machine used to do? It can’t do them anymore. Thanks to that virus, for all practical purposes, unless you’re just looking for an overpriced keyboard, your device is dead.
So what do you do now? Throw the device away? Hardly. The device is expensive and still valuable but because of the virus, it needs to be cleaned out and re-imaged. You take it to a reputable computer programmer, the best guy in town, who specializes in repairs. He eradicates the virus, wipes the hard drive clean and re-installs all the programs. Your machine can now do what it was originally designed to do.
Now how this applies to a spiritual rebirth is like this. Humanity was originally created to live in perfect sinless fellowship with God. Back then, we were spiritually alive, able to commune with our Creator and life was good. Then we rebelled. We wanted to be our own god because we thought we could be a better god than God and with one simple act of rebellion, in the same way that a computer with a virus becomes unresponsive and dead to commands from its owner to perform functions for which it was designed, we became unresponsive and separated from our Creator. We died spiritually and we became alienated from God. We and God went from being friends to being enemies. The worst part about that however was that we couldn’t fix the problem. No matter how many good things we might do, we couldn’t save ourselves. The only one with the power to fix the problem was God. He was like the reputable computer programmer in the analogy.
And fix it, He did. Yep, God loved us so much that He took it upon Himself to fix the problem. The penalty for our rebellion required the death of someone who had never rebelled against God to be willing to die in our place and that’s what Jesus did when was crucified. He took the wrath of God on Himself for our rebellion. (Think of it this way. Imagine when you were a kid that you messed up big time and got caught but your big brother somehow managed to convince your parents to ground him for it instead of you. I know, said no big brother ever. Work with me though because that’s what Jesus did.) Jesus was crucified, buried and on the third day He was raised from the dead, signifying that God the Father was satisfied with the payment. The means for fellowship between God and humanity was now in place.
God did His part. Now it’s our turn. Going back to our virus in the device analogy, in the same way that we would have to take our infected device to the computer programmer in order to be fixed, so we must take our lives to God through Jesus in order to become spiritually alive. We must get to the root of the problem, namely our rebellion against God. It must be eradicated by agreeing with God that our wrong doing is what it is, rebellion against God. We must believe that Christ’s sacrifice is the only suitable payment and then turn our lives back over to God. When a person does that, what God does then is forgives the person of all rebellion, past, present and future and enters the person enabling them to respond on a daily basis to God’s loving leadership. The person becomes spiritually reborn which is what Jesus was talking about with Nicodemus.
We’re not told what Nicodemus decided to do that night. He had a lot to think about but we do know this much. By the time Jesus was crucified, Nicodemus was a follower and in the end, church tradition has it that he died a martyr’s death. He weighed the evidence and decided that following Jesus was worth it. How about you? Have you considered following Jesus? I would really encourage you to do so. I did it and my life has never been the same.
Next week I want to take a look at the character of God, both God the Father and God the Son as I continue to field the question, “Is Jesus worth following.” See you then.
Sam
Can Jesus be Trusted?
(A Contrast of Two Servants and Two Leaders)
A couple of weeks back I posted “How Seriously Do We Take Jesus,” a story about a Facebook meme that a guy named Jake posted on his wall that among other things, popped the question, “is Jesus hiring?” In that story, one of Jake’s friends decided that it would be funny to tag Jesus, not thinking that Jesus would actually take the bait and respond. News flash. Jesus responded and He said that while He’d never been hiring He’d been recruiting followers from day one. I strung out that story a little bit longer and had some guy named Phil say he’d like to be recruited by Jesus and after Jesus responded, I just kind of let it fade out. Last night however, I got to thinking. What if that story didn’t quite end there? I made this executive decision and determined that it didn’t. Let’s go back to the part where Phil posted and get the rest of the story……..
An hour later, Phil chimed in, “LOL, I’d like to be recruited by Jesus.” So much for the post going away.
Ten minutes later, Jesus responded for the third time. “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat – I am. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way. Message me if you want to talk about it.”
And with that, Jesus was gone. A few more people commented on the post but it fizzed out after that and faded into the Facebook archives, except it didn’t, at least its impact anyway.
Two weeks later Dennis, a casual Facebook friend who had been following the stream, messaged Jesus. “So if I want to follow you, I have to let you lead, huh? I have to let you be in the driver’s seat. That’s a gutsy ask. How do I know I can trust you?” Dennis was being honest. He was counting the cost, trying to decide if following Jesus was worth it.
So what would Jesus say? There’s any number of ways He could have answered and His response would have probably depended on Dennis I suppose, and on what Dennis’ deepest needs were. Now because I have neither the time nor the space to develop Dennis’ character, I’m just going to have to take a wild guess and suggest that Jesus would have responded something like this.
One thing about Jesus, He was a great story teller and there’s no doubt in my mind that His dialogue with Dennis would have included a story, perhaps one that would use contrast, one that would drive home the point that He was markedly different from his competition. His story would begin with the event known as the Triumphal Entry on Psalm Sunday.
For those of you not familiar with the story, one week before the event we know as Easter Sunday, Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey to a crowd that was going nuts. The abbreviated version of what was happening? They were buying into the fact that Jesus was the long awaited Messiah, which was true. However, they also thought that this was the time that Jesus would take over politically, kick the Romans out of Judea and reestablish Israel as an independent nation. Unfortunately, that was not true. (Jesus second coming hasn’t happened yet. It will someday, but not yet.) Anyway, back to the story. The crowds had laid down palm branches, a nationalistic symbol of Israel, in front of Him on His way in, and were shouting, “Hosanna! Hosanna in the Highest! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” The literal translation of the phrase, “Hosanna in the Highest,” is “Save now! We pray!” In context, there’s no doubt that this cry was aimed against the Roman Empire. Truly, this was an act of defiance against the Romans and, as publicity events go, this whole event was epic. There was one small problem however. Jesus wasn’t planning a political takeover, He was establishing a spiritual kingdom that would be global. His agenda would involve a public execution (His), and a total exchange of the agenda of the followers to His agenda. The bottom line when it came to politics, Jesus wasn’t taking over, and over the next several days, that fact became quite apparent.
Originally on Sunday, two of the disciples, Peter and Judas, were excited as they witnessed what they perceived to be a power play on Jesus’ part. His success would be their success so they thought but when it became apparent that wasn’t what Jesus was doing, they weren’t sure what to think. Judas especially must have been particularly frustrated as Jesus failed to seize the momentum that was there for the taking. Instead, the Rabbi kept talking about His death, which frankly, in Judas’ mind, didn’t have to happen. This frustration was likely coupled by fear as Judas realized that Jesus was in a precarious position where his enemies could make His prophesy a reality, and not only for Jesus but for the rest of the disciples too. His frustration teetered on the edge of anger and then, it happened, the event that pushed him over the top.
It was Monday and Jesus and the disciples were eating at the home of a man named Simon when a woman, one of Jesus followers, took a flask filled with expensive perfume, anointed Jesus’ feet with it and then wiped His feet with her hair. The market value of the perfume was estimated to be 300 days wages and Judas’ seeing what he perceived to be waste, hit the ceiling. “Why was this perfume not sold and the proceeds given to the poor?” He demanded. Now Judas, according John’s account, was the treasurer of the group and while he didn’t particularly care about the poor, he did have access to the group’s funds and regularly embezzled from it. Jesus however, shut him down, saying that this woman was pre-anointing Him for burial.
That was it! Scripture records that Satan literally entered into Judas, controlling his thinking and his reasoning. The next day, Judas went to the Jewish leaders asking what they were willing to pay if he betrayed Jesus so they could arrest him. The Jewish leaders offered 30 pieces of silver, the equivalent of about six months labor. Judas took the offer and waited.
His wait wasn’t long. Three days later at the most, at the Last Supper, Jesus revealed to the disciples that not only would He betrayed but who the betrayer was. Jesus, exposed Judas as the betrayer, except oddly enough, only Judas picked up on it. He was the only one who picked up on what Jesus said. (Don’t ask me how the others missed it. It’s as much of a mystery to me as it is to you because Jesus made it explicitly clear who the betrayer was.) Judas was dismissed from the dinner, and, knowing at that point that he’d been made, he knew he had to act quickly. Now Judas was privy to where Jesus would be that night. He went to the Jewish religious leaders and, a couple of hours later led them back to Jesus, betraying Him with a kiss. Jesus was promptly arrested and the deed was done.
As Jesus was telling this story, I can now imagine Him drawing attention to another character in the drama, Peter. Peter was likely the oldest of the disciples and the one person that, aside from Jesus, the disciples looked to for leadership. Unlike Judas however, Peter truly loved Jesus and was actually one of Jesus’ closest friends. He too, was probably confused by all this talk of death and burial and might have shared Judas’ sentiment concerning the perfume incident but, he trusted Jesus and when Jesus said to stand down, he obeyed.
Later in his life, as Peter would recall the events surrounding the Last Supper, I imagine his memories were a mixed bag of mush. Jesus washed the disciples’ feet, Peter’s included, He revealed the identity of His betrayer and He dropped another bombshell as well. After Jesus had changed the Passover Feast (another huge deal) and instituted Communion, He told the remaining eleven disciples that they would all desert Him before the night was over. Of course, each one of them denied it and Peter denied it most emphatically. As the words came out of Peter’s mouth however, Jesus turned to His disciple and told him plainly, “Really Peter? Before the rooster crows tonight, you will have denied even knowing me three times.”
Sadly, within the next six hours, events played out exactly as Jesus predicted. Jesus led His disciples to the Garden of Gethsemane, a place familiar to Judas, where He was arrested. The disciples all fled, although Peter came back to follow from a distance and later that, in the Temple courtyards, when accused of being one of Jesus’ disciples, Peter profanely denied three times that he even knew Jesus. As soon as the words came out of his mouth for the last time, the rooster crowd and Peter, realizing what he had done, went out and wept bitterly.
Now we might expect Jesus to end his story right here, but there’s still a couple of significant details to add. What happened to these two guys? Judas, upon seeing Jesus condemned to be executed was filled with remorse. He went back to the Jewish leaders and sorrowfully declared that he had betrayed an innocent man. Their response? “That’s your problem.” Judas threw the 30 pieces of silver onto the temple floor and went out and hung himself. This took place in the hours before the crucifixion.
Peter, on the other hand, went AWOL during the crucifixion. We can only assume that he was hiding somewhere, scared for his life. He reentered the story on Sunday morning. After the women went to the tomb that morning and found it empty, they went back to the disciples and told them what they had witnessed. Peter, upon hearing that Jesus body was gone, along with John ran to the tomb to confirm it.
The four gospel accounts tell the story of the next several days from different perspectives, with one author emphasizing this detail and another author emphasizing that detail. In this story though, in response the question regarding whether or not Jesus could be trusted as a leader, I think Jesus would have especially emphasized two important details. The first would be what an angel said to the women who originally came to the tomb that morning. “Go tell His disciples and Peter, to go to Galilee and He will meet you there.” “And Peter,” did you pick up on that? The guy who screwed up miserably was included in the invite.
And then there was a week or two later where Jesus, in front of the rest of the disciples, asked Peter the same pointed question, three times. The first time, Jesus pointed at the fish they had just caught, and asked Peter, “do you love Me more than these?” The fish detail was significant because before he was a disciple, Peter was a fisherman. That was his agenda. Jesus was asking Peter whose agenda would be the operating agenda for the rest of Peter’s life, Peter’s or Jesus’. Peter said that He loved Jesus. Peter affirmed that it was Jesus’ agenda that would be the operating agenda for the rest of his life. Jesus over the course of the next few minutes, repeated the question. Both times Peter’s answer was the same. “Yes Lord, I love you.” Actually, the last time in frustration I suppose, Peter added that Jesus knew all things and that He knew that Peter loved Him. Jesus then answered Peter by confirming what Peter said was indeed true and then He followed it up with a single command. “Follow Me.”
Now coming back to our original story with Jesus and Dennis, I can see Jesus wrapping things up here and respectfully answering Dennis’ question. Can Jesus be trusted? Consider the evidence. In the story Jesus told, there are two servants and two masters. One servant did his master’s will perfectly while the other servant failed miserably. Consider shall we, the servant who did his master’s will perfectly. Judas. He did everything Satan asked him to do. He delivered Jesus to the Jewish religious leaders. Think about it. Satan, the great counterfeit god, rebelled against his Creator before the beginning of time and now, thanks one of Jesus’ disciples, actually got to murder that same Creator. In Satan’s mind, this was the ultimate victory. But wait, you say, what about the resurrection? Jesus rose on the third day. Satan didn’t win. True. But at the time of the crucifixion, Satan didn’t know the resurrection was coming. That event caught him totally off-guard. Understand this, Satan is a created being, powerful yes, but still created and no match for his Creator. Satan is finite, meaning that he can only be in one place at a time and he’s certainly not all knowing. Quick pit stop here. Satan is not stronger than Jesus, he never has been and he never will be. It’s not even close. Back to the original point, Satan used Judas and threw him away once he was no longer useful. This point can be further driven home once one realizes that Judas died before Jesus did.
Then there’s our second servant, Peter. He failed his master at every front. In the interest of time, I just gave you the high points. If there was anyone who deserved to be abandoned and discarded, it was Peter. But what did Jesus do? Jesus taking the initiative, extended mercy to Peter, forgave him and restored him to his position of leadership. On the night of Jesus’ arrest, Peter denied Jesus three times when Jesus was arrested, and two weeks later, Jesus gave Peter three chances to reaffirm his love for Jesus. And then He gave His restored disciple a simple command, “Follow Me.” Peter took Him up on it and never looked back.
So here is the question that Jesus would be asking Dennis and He’s actually asking us. Which leader do you want to follow, Satan or Jesus? And Dennis might respond back like this, “I don’t necessarily want to follow either one of you. I want to be my own god. I want to follow me.” That’s a problem, though because that option doesn’t technically exist. That option, while it appears to be door number three, isn’t really a door at all. It’s just a 3-D painting on the wall. There is no door number three. You see, in the Garden of Eden when humanity first sinned. Satan basically tempted Adam and Eve with his way of living which can be summed up like this. “Rebel against God and you can be your own god.” Adam and Eve bought into what he said and did precisely that, so by default, they followed Satan because he went there first and he suggested it.
That brings us back to the original question, who do we want to follow? Jesus or Satan? As a person ponders that question, they would do well to ask which of the two leaders can be trusted. When the cards were on the table at the time of the crucifixion, Satan acted in his own interests at the expense of others while Jesus acted in the interests of others at His own expense. The choice is ours. See you next week.
Incidentally, if you’re reading this and this has hit home and you’re wondering how to turn things around and follow Jesus, the Bible is clear how to do it. Romans 10: 9 and 10 reads like this. “If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved.” Basically it involves praying and admitting that you’re a sinner and in need of a savior because you cannot save yourself. It means thanking God for sending Jesus to die and pay the penalty for that sin and raising Jesus from the grave. Lastly it’s giving God control of your life. It’s a simple act of faith that will change your life forever.
Can Jesus be Trusted?
(His Character Matters)
For the past couple of weeks I’ve had some fun creating a fictitious dialogue between Jesus and this character I created named Dennis. Today, I’d like to continue on that train of thought except I want to add a twist. There’s this verse in the Bible where God says, “whoever seeks Me will find Me,” and Dennis, by virtue of initiating the original dialogue, would obviously qualify as being a seeker. I have to think that Jesus would honor that and perhaps up the ante just a bit. He would want to take the initiative and entice Dennis to keep asking questions. In fact, I could see Jesus leading Dennis to ask a question he hasn’t even considered yet. Kickstands up, we’re going for a ride.
Up to this point in their interaction, Dennis has been asking Jesus, based on the terms and requirements that Jesus put forth if someone were to follow Him, if He (Jesus) can be trusted and Jesus has responded with evidence pointing back to His track record. But I’m not sure if that goes far enough because Jesus is telling Dennis that if he wants to follow Him, he, Dennis, has got to go all in. Jesus isn’t asking Dennis for a half-baked, throw Him a religious bone on Sunday deal while he goes on about his business as usual for the rest of the week, using Jesus as this get out hell free card. Nope. Jesus is asking for an exchange that’s much more intrusive. Framing the issue in terms of an analogy that we would have been quite familiar with at the real Roach Place, Jesus is asking Dennis to take the agenda that he has for his life out behind the barn and kill it and take on Jesus’ agenda as the operating agenda for the rest of his life. Read Luke 9:23 – 24. In the original Aramaic, that’s exactly the idea Jesus presented. Or, better yet, read the first sentence of each of Paul’s epistles. Each one of these epistles was a personal letter to the churches in whatever region he was writing to and in each letter his greeting is the same. “Paul, a bond slave of Christ Jesus….” The Greek word for bond slave was “doulos” and it was the most slavish term in the Koine Greek, the language Paul wrote his epistles in. It meant that the will of the slave was entirely enveloped into the will of the master. Think about it. That’s a heavy ask and from Dennis’ perspective, forget about Jesus’ track record, the question is, is Jesus safe. Here’s the thing, and Dennis knows it, Jesus is the toughest dude in the universe, I mean He created it. “Let there be light….” Yeah, that was Him. Raised from the dead…..same one. Returning in the future to reign in power….yep, Him again. With power like that, if Jesus can’t be trusted, only a fool would not run as far away as possible. The bottom line is that Dennis’ reservations concerning following Jesus have less to do with Jesus’ track record and more to do with His character, and I could see Jesus taking that issue head on.
If Dennis and Jesus were talking face to face, I could see Jesus picking up a Bible and opening it to Philippians 2: 6 – 8. It’s just three short verses but those three short verses serve as a snapshot of Jesus character perfectly. The New Living Translation says it like this. “Though He (Jesus) was God, He did not think equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, He gave up His divine privileges, He took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When He appeared in human form, He humbled Himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on the cross.” After reading those three verses, I could see Him breaking it down, serving as His own attorney, arguing His case, all the while allowing Dennis to assume the role of jury with the responsibility to deliver a verdict.
In a nutshell, here’s how Jesus would do it. He would point out that, yes, He is God, just as much God as God the Father. Just as eternal, just as holy, and just as powerful. But He would also point out that He set all of this aside and took on human flesh. Or, to use a clothing analogy, He took off His high end expensive garments and replaced them with rags from the dumpster behind a thrift store.
He would explain that it was part of His mission to save humanity from sin and reconcile those who followed Him to God but there was more to it than just that. He needed to reveal His character. He needed to give the human race a visual hands on illustration that while yes, He was all powerful, He was also altogether different. Unlike everyone else out there with power, He could be trusted not to abuse it.
And with that statement, Jesus would put Himself on the hot seat because people, and Dennis would be no exception here, for the most part have an erroneous view of power and what happens to people who have it. In all fairness, it’s not entirely their fault. Throughout history people with power, especially those who possess absolute power, have tended to abuse it. Jesus however, claims not to be like that and I think He might exit from Philippians for just a minute to prove His point. In Matthew 11:29 Jesus described Himself as being “gentle and humble at heart.” Now, when we hear the word gentle, an image of weakness or softness often comes to mind but in the original language, its connotations were far different. The word the translators translated as gentle was the same word used during Jesus time to describe the powerful stallions that army generals rode into battle. Those stallions were physically strong enough to destroy their masters but they didn’t. They were tame, trained to do their master’s will. Those animals were the embodiment of power under control. And Jesus? He chose that word to describe Himself. Is He powerful? Absolutely. But His power is under control and He loves us. Now let’s get back to Philippians.
He took on the lowly position of a slave. A valid question would be, a slave to who? In context, Jesus was a slave to God the Father. He obeyed God the Father at the expense of His own well-being. So what’s God the Father like? The answer to that is found in Exodus 34 in the Old Testament. God described Himself there as, “The Self Existent God, (Yahweh) the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.” Compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in love and faithfulness. Those are terms that invite trust. Then there’s the phrase, “forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin.” Pay special attention here to the word forgive. The verbiage here in the ancient Hebrew is interesting in that the word translated forgiving actually doesn’t mean pardon. Now, the Hebrews had a word meaning pardon (salach) and they did usually use it when talking about forgiving someone. It meant something similar to our word pardon in English. Salach’s not used here however. The ancient Hebrew word that was used here was nasa and it means “to lift, to carry or to take”. Now nasa wasn’t generally used in context of forgiveness but when it was, it conveyed the idea of carrying a penalty. With that being the case then, especially in a conversation regarding whether or not Jesus or God the Father could be trusted as a leader, this is a game changer. God was saying that while the penalty that rebellion and sin carried would not go away, God himself, and not humanity, would pay it which Christ Jesus, God the Son, did when He died on the cross.
So let’s explore that death on the cross a minute. It’s been well documented that crucifixion was a slow and painful death but there was more to it than just that. In Roman society, it was a shameful death as well, so much so that Roman citizens were generally exempt from it. It was a death reserved for slaves and the worst criminals of society. And that was the death that Jesus chose.
Another thing, notice the word chose. Jesus’ personal choice is an interesting concept in any discussion about whether or not He could be trusted as a leader. He chose the cross because that was apparently the only form of death that would sufficiently pay for the sin of humanity. However, that wasn’t the only choice He made. Wealth, power and privilege were all around Him during His life but He avoided it. By choice. Look, He’s God. If this is true then to suggest that this avoidance wasn’t personal choice defies logic. Look at the miracles He performed. He turned water into premium wine but He couldn’t pull the strings to get in on the action of the wealth and privilege available to a chosen few of society had He so desired? I don’t buy it. If He didn’t get in on it, it was because He chose not to, not because He couldn’t.
Look, I’m running out of word space here so let me summarize Jesus’ life in one paragraph. He left the throne of heaven, with all its glory and mucked in the mud with the riff-raff of society. He ate with tax gathers, social outcasts and prostitutes. He socialized with the Samaritans. He elevated the status of women and children in the face of a legalistic religious Jewish system that was male dominated. He touched lepers when He healed them, making Himself ceremonially unclean. None of that seemed to faze Him though. He dove in head first to meet humanity at its deepest point of need. And here’s the final kicker. If, after presenting people with sufficient evidence of who He was and what He was, they still chose to reject Him, He didn’t force anything, He honored their God given gift of choice and let them go.
So there it is, sufficient evidence to answer the question of whether or not Jesus can be trusted as a leader. The over whelming evidence would indicate that yes, He can. The wild card is us and our deal, especially once we have examined the evidence, is not whether or not we can trust Him as our leader but rather whether or not we want Him to be our leader. It’s a control issue. If He’s our leader, He’s going to transform us from the inside out and we know it. If He’s our leader, He’s going to probably change how we treat people, how we spend our money, how we do business and how we approach entertainment. He’s possibly going to convict us of how we vote. And if that last one hit a nerve, if it’s any consolation, you probably aren’t alone. The person on the opposite end of the political spectrum from you, the person whose vote you cancel out, is wrestling with the exact same issue as they are considering whether or not to follow Jesus. So, what will we do? Jesus isn’t going away and we’re going to have to decide what we will do with Him. The ball is in our court. See you next week.
So What Kind of Person is Jesus Recruiting?
It had been a long day. Dennis had started work an hour earlier than usual and while he’d been focused and productive throughout the day, there was one distraction that he couldn’t get out of his head. Jesus. He’d been messaging Jesus back and forth now for probably a week and he’d been impressed with how Jesus had fielded his questions. Jesus was down to earth, not at all what he’d expected. Still, there was something holding Dennis back from committing to follow Him. You see, Dennis had been doing research on the side and one thing that was making him balk was what he’d learned about Jesus’ character. It wasn’t anything bad, on the contrary, it was the exact opposite. In his mind, the only way Dennis could describe Jesus’ character was to use the same words that the Bible used. Holy. Dennis had poked around the New Testament in general and Revelation specifically and, wow, there was what people usually thought of when they talked about holiness and then there was Jesus as described in Revelation. There was nothing to compare. As close as Dennis could discern, in terms of holiness, Jesus was off the charts above everyone else.
Now, that raised another question. What was Dennis doing talking to Jesus, or perhaps more accurately, what was Jesus doing talking to Dennis? Dennis, the guy who hadn’t set foot in a church since he was eight years old, once, at Christmas. It had something to do with a woman his father was trying to impress as he recalled. Long story….it was complicated. As Dennis grew up, the country song “Renegades, Rebels, and Rogues,” could have served as his autobiography. (It’s a real song. Google it.) Granted, he’d never needed bail money but that car he’d bought when he’d gotten out of college was fast, unfortunately not faster than radar or the vehicles that possessed that superpower, but it was fast. (Side comment: What was fortunate was his job at the time paid well enough that he could actually afford to perform the experiment needed to confirm that…..three times.) And then it happened. He got married and had a kid so he had to at least make pretenses that he’d matured. He did pretty well with that smoke and mirrors act but Dennis was still Dennis and suggesting that he and Jesus belonged in the same sentence was kind of like suggesting you put ketchup on vanilla ice cream. (Wait!? You actually do that? Well excuse me but the analogy makes sense for the rest of us.) Anyway, back to the story, there was something appealing about Jesus and since He didn’t seem to be put off by Dennis’ questions, Dennis took a gamble. In a two page message, Dennis told his life story and the last paragraph read something like this. “I’m not religious and I know next to nothing about church. But you said you’ve been recruiting from day one. So, what kind of person are you recruiting? What qualifications do they need?” And with that, Dennis hit send, shut down his computer and went to bed.
The next day, I could see Jesus responding with a story, perhaps an updated version of the parable that He told back in Luke 14. It might go something like this. There was this certain rich man (Bill Gates type of rich) we’ll call Jay, who wanted to throw a party and invited all of his friends to attend. It was gonna be a classy affair. Live music, choice food, a credit card with no limits kind of party. He hired a whole crew of people who worked for him in their day jobs to make it happen. (Time and a half plus you get invited to be part of the best party ever thrown.) Organized, he sent out invites far in advance, asking for RSVPs. Now of course, everyone responded back that they were coming because this was Jay who was throwing this party and nobody could throw a party like Jay could throw a party. As the RSVPs flooded back in, Jay upped his game and planned even more than he usually did. He just knew this party would be epic.
Epic huh? Yeah, about that. On the day of the party, at about 5 a.m. Judy, Jay’s wife, awoke and started checking emails. There were a lot of emails for a Saturday. As she began to screen them, her eyes got big. The details differed but the message on each one was the same. “I can’t come tonight because of…..fill in the blank.” She took a deep breath and began checking names off the guest list. Two hours later, the work crews arrived to make the final preparations for the evening. This wasn’t going to be as big of a party as they had thought. Jay would be disappointed. She wasn’t sure what to do when at 7:30, Jay came downstairs. He looked grumpy.
“My phone has been blowing up all morning with texts,” he growled as he kissed her cheek. “I emailed you a list of cancellations just now.”
She pulled up the email and opened it. Hopefully, it was a duplicate of the cancellation list that she already had started. Uh oh, this didn’t look good. That name wasn’t on her list. Neither was that one. Meanwhile, her husband continued to grouse to the work crew who had now gathered around. “Listen to these excuses. ‘I just got married so I need to spend time with my new wife’…..I know this guy. They got married six months ago. He can bring his wife to the party. In fact, yeah, her name was on the invite too. Here’s another one. ‘I bought a new car two days ago. I signed the paperwork and got a great deal on it. Tonight I need to test drive it.’”
Johnny, one of the workers, was connecting imaginary dots in the air as he processed that last text. His brow was furrowed. “Doesn’t the test drive usually come first?” He mumbled.
“Then there’s this one. ‘I just bought a new house. I need to go out and look at it for the first time. I’ll be doing that tonight so please excuse my absence at your party tonight. Thanks for the invite anyway.’ Do you believe that?”
“Boss….are you saying that he bought the house having never seen it?”
“So it would appear.”
“Wow. That’s the approach you take on a blind date, not a mortgage.”
“Seriously.”
About that time Judy, who had been reconciling the guest list, spoke up. “Honey, we have a problem. No one is coming tonight.” Jay stopped mid-sentence as she continued. “I made a cancellation list from the emails that came in overnight and the texts you received and compared that list with the guest list and the two lists are identical. Jay, I am so sorry.”
The work crew stared at each other in disbelief. Were these people crazy? Enraged, Jay said nothing but his eyes said it all. It’s been said that there’s a very fine line between righteous indignation and just being angry beyond belief and he was there. He looked out the window, then at the lists, and then back out the window.
Breaking the awkward silence, Judy asked. “Would you like me to start calling the caterers and the band to let them know that we’re cancelling tonight? I’ll see what I can do to minimize your losses.”
Jay slowly turned around. A wry smile creased his face. “Oh hell no. We’re not doing that.” His set up crew for the night had been divided into five groups, much like a business is divided into departments. He asked each group’s lead if they could still get everything set up if they were down one person. The leads looked at each other, shrugged and indicated they could. Jay then called out five names. When the people whose name he had called stepped forward, he gave them the plan. Pointing outside the window toward the city he said, “As drivers go, you five are maniacs but you’re perfect for this job. Take my company vans that are parked in the garage and pretend you’re driving my Ferrari. Divide the city up and scour it. Anybody who wants to come to a party tonight is invited. Load them up in the vans, bring them here, drop them off and go get another load. I don’t care if they’re poor, homeless, disabled, alien….I don’t what care what their back story is. If they want to come to the party, they can come. Any questions?” The drivers looked at each other with that kid in candy store smirk and raised eyebrows.
After they’d left, Jay said to his wife. “And Judy, yes, I do want you to call the caterers but I want you to order more food and then call the rental place get more folding tables and chairs. We’re gonna need them before this night is done.”
“You sure about that?”
“Never been surer about anything in my life.”
Within the hour the vans were back with their first loads of passengers and, as the day progressed, more and more people arrived. It was a motley crew but they were grateful to be there. By mid-day, the drivers covered the entire city and, as they dropped off their last load, Judy came into the Jay’s office.
“That’s it, we’ve been through the entire city and you have a crowd for tonight but….”
“But?”
“Well, because you had me order more food and tables and chairs, you’re still going to have empty seats and leftovers.”
Jay looked at the drivers who had just come in the room. “Nice job scouring the city but did you guys go to the unincorporated parts of the county?”
The drivers looked at each other and shook their heads.
“Okay, then. You know the drill. Gas up the vans and divide the unincorporated county. Same criteria, you got five hours to fill this place up.”
The drivers did their jobs and later that night the place was packed and the party that was thrown was the best party ever. Jay and Judy made a bunch of new friends, friends who were grateful they had been invited in spite of the fact they had no credentials whatsoever that qualified them to be there. There was one other thing as well. Each one of the guests had an open invite to come back if they ever wanted to and one of the guests as he was leaving, was heard to say, “That man has to be crazy to invite a guy like me back to his place, but you know what? If he’s crazy enough to invite me, I’m not going to be crazy enough to turn him down. This is an opportunity I don’t deserve but it’s the chance of a lifetime so I’m coming back.”
“Well, that went well,” Judy said after the guests finally left.
“Sure did.” Jay replied. "I always knew I wanted to reach these people. I just figured that my other so called friends would be here too.” There was a hint of sadness as the words left his mouth.
“Why do you think they turned you down?” Judy asked.
“They don’t want me. They’re too wrapped up in themselves and their own lives to want what I have to offer.”
“Are you going to try and reach out to them?”
“Well, yeah, sort of but they’ve pretty much made it clear what they want so I’ll honor that. Now if they change their mind the door is open but, the ball’s in their court on that one.” And with that, he called it a night.
Now as Jesus wrapped up the story for Dennis, he’d probably have to explain it because, like all parables, there were multiple meanings and applications and this one was no exception. For example, when Jesus told the original parable in Luke, his primary purpose was almost prophetic in that He was indicating to the Jewish nation that they would reject him and that the church would include Gentiles, lots of them. The problem with the primary meaning in this story however, is that it doesn’t answer Dennis’s question. So Jesus would need to dig a little deeper and so do we. Jesus would draw special attention to the people Jay had the drivers reach out to after it became apparent the original guests weren’t coming. In my story they went out after the homeless, the poor, the disabled, and the alien. In the original Luke passage, the master sent his servants out to gather the “poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.” These people were the marginalized. In fact, during Jesus’ day, these people, especially the crippled, the blind and the lame were not permitted to enter the Temple. These were the people the master went after. And then, to fill it up even more, in the original text, the master sent his servant out to the country roads and country lanes, and the original audience would have picked right up on Jesus’ meaning. He was talking about the Gentiles, the non-Jewish people. The Jews called them the Gentile dogs and they meant it. The bottom line, the people who the master sent his servant out to gather, and who Jay, the rich guy in my story ended up inviting, were people who had zero religious credentials. When Dennis wrote, “I’m not religious and I know next to nothing about church.” Jesus might have responded like this. “So what. Religious credentials don’t matter, but let me tell what does.”
Jesus just might point Dennis to another verse in Scripture, the opening statement in the Sermon on the Mount. “God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for Him.” Or, put another way, “Blessed are those who realize they are spiritually bankrupt and, when compared to Jesus, have no righteousness of their own.” Or, “Blessed are those who realize that they have nothing that qualifies them to come before a holy God but they really want to more than anything else in the world.” The issue here, and this is a point that Scripture makes time and again in both the Old and New Testament, is that in order to come to God, the first thing a person has to realize is that they have no righteousness of their own.
Also, going back to the parable, it’s necessary to understand the back story that prompted Jesus to tell it in the first place to fully understand the application. Jesus was at the home of a prominent Pharisee, a member of a group that basically believed that if they obeyed the Mosaic Law, participated in all of the right ceremonies, did everything just right, that God would accept them. They had turned Judaism into a, “do enough good works and God will accept you,” religion. Yes, they believed that faith in God was involved but good works obeying the Jewish Law was also a necessity. In other words, it was faith plus good works equaled salvation. Jesus throughout his ministry, challenged that heresy head on. It was faith in a savior, Him, that enabled them to receive God’s grace. The good works, incidentally, fit into Jesus gospel but only as a by-product of a person trusting in Him. Or another way to put it would be to say it like this. “My good works have nothing to do with my acceptance by God. That’s God’s gift that I accept by faith and because I have placed my faith in Jesus and God has accepted me based on that faith, I will now do good works out of gratitude to God, because it pleases Him.” The people who think they have religious credentials often have a real tough time with that one because they keep trying to prove they’re good enough on their own merits for God to accept them rather than admit they are spiritually bankrupt. The person who has none of those credentials, generally doesn’t. They realize that have no righteousness of their own and they need a savior so they go for it. They decide that following Jesus is worth it and they surrender their lives to God. But it all starts with the realization that they are spiritually bankrupt.
I don’t know where you’re at in your spiritual journey. Over the next couple of weeks I want to expand on the question that Dennis is asking, what kind of person is Jesus recruiting? I want to take a look at several examples from the Bible, of real people who ended up following Him. Spoiler alert….they aren’t high society, they’re the “where did this person come from?” kind of people. They were who Jesus chose though. So I’ll see you next week.
What About My Past?
Last week in the on-going story about a dialog between Jesus and Dennis, we explored the idea that Jesus isn’t worried about credentials when He’s looking for followers. That’s good news. That means that Jesus’ invitation is universal in terms of who He is reaching out to. The question then becomes what’s preventing people from taking Him up on His offer because there’s a lot of people who understand what’s involved and turn Him down anyway. For some, it’s a control issue and we’ve talked about those people but there’s another group of people out there that we haven’t begun to address yet and over the next couple of weeks, I want to do that because those people need to know that the offer is for them too.
Who are they? These are people with something in their past that they perceive is so egregious that there’s just no way that Jesus would want them. They figure that while Jesus’ offer is amazing and He says that it’s open to everyone, they aren’t convinced. They think they are the exception. It’s open to everyone except them. They think about their past and all they can see is that event, that horrible choice, whatever, and they think that because of what they’ve done, there’s no way He’d take them. Not now. Not after that. Oh really? Maybe it’s time to get a second opinion.
When Jesus chose His disciples, we aren’t exactly privy to what His criteria was for choosing them. That was a conversation left between His Heavenly Father and Him. I will say this much, He chose a motley crew. No world beaters, that’s for sure. They were almost entirely blue collar workers, mostly fishermen, but there was also this zealot, and a tax collector. Let’s check out the tax collector.
This tax collector’s story is recorded in all of the Gospels except for John’s and he is commonly known today as Matthew, but that wasn’t his birth name. His birth name was Levi, the name of the priestly tribe of Israel. That’s kind of ironic, a tax collector with a priest’s name. We’re told nothing about his past so we can only speculate about it but let’s use some logic and play some games with it. (To the reader, the next two paragraphs are simply my guesses regarding what might have happened. You are more than welcome to disagree with me.)
A child’s name is the first gift that a parent gives them and it usually has an important significance. Perhaps it’s a family name passed down through generations. Sometimes it might be an attempt by the parents to lay out a destiny for the child. Perhaps it’s a name that just has a ring to it. In any case, the child’s name is almost never flippant. No, the name means something and logic dictates that Levi’s name was probably no different.
So what were Levi’s parents thinking? With a name like that, it’s not a reach to suggest that they had visions of their son serving in a synagogue or even the Temple in Jerusalem. In our society, think in terms of being a pastor. But then something happened. We don’t know what but what is clear is that when Jesus crossed paths with Levi, Levi was about as far away from the Temple as a person could get. He was a Jewish man working for the enemy, the Romans, in a tax collectors’ booth. In the eyes of Jewish society, he was the scum of the earth, a traitor to his own people, and he wasn’t even allowed to enter the Temple. He was excluded by everyone. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that even his parents had disowned him.
Now there’s one other thing about him however that should probably be mentioned. Economically, he wasn’t poor. In fact, probably the opposite was true. You see, the tax collectors for the Romans worked on commission. They would collect the taxes that the Romans wanted and then they would tack on more for themselves. How much more was entirely up to them and the people had to pay it because the tax collector had the Roman armies muscle to enforce it. Loosely translated, a Roman tax collector was a legalized extortionist and they profited handsomely from it. That being said, if a person could stomach the idea that for the rest of their lives they would be a pariah in society, being a tax collector for the Romans was a lucrative gig. And Levi was right in the middle of it.
But then, one day, it happened. The Bible gives us no details, just the cliff notes version. Jesus walked up, saw Levi in his booth and dropped the invitation. “Follow Me.”
Jesus didn’t have to ask twice. All three Gospel accounts state that right then and there Levi left everything and followed Jesus for the rest of his life. A valid question is why he would do that. Once again, we can only speculate. Perhaps Levi learned that everything that glitters is not necessarily gold. He may have found that wealth, and everything that came with it, was a cruel task master. Even today, wealth can make harsh demands on its worshipers. Or, consider this. Based on the gospel account that he penned, Matthew was quite familiar with Jewish law. Leviticus, for example, specifically prohibited charging interest on a loan to a Jewish brother and the extortion that he was involved with would have made charging interest on a loan look like small potatoes. History records that Roman tax collectors took price gouging to a whole new lever. Therefore, it’s conceivable that his conscience got to him to the point that by the time Jesus ran into him, he utterly despised himself and what he had become. Or maybe his parents had hoped that he would someday be a priest, which he would have known about, and Levi had screwed it up and all of a sudden, Jesus is offering him a mulligan, a do over, a chance to fulfill his destiny and he jumped at the opportunity. In any case, for whatever the motive, when Jesus offered him the opportunity, Levi tossed whatever agenda he’d had for his life in the trash can, picked up Jesus agenda and never looked back.
Levi did one other thing as well. He went public with his decision. He threw a big banquet and invited Jesus as the guest of honor. He also invited all of his friends many of whom were tax collectors and disreputable sinners. And Jesus accepted the invite and ate with them, a sign of friendship and acceptance.
Now when the Pharisees saw this, they were indignant. “Why does He eat with such scum?” They asked His disciples.
Jesus, who apparently was within earshot, heard them and shot right back. “It’s not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I am here to call the outsiders not coddle the insiders.”
It’s interesting when you stop and think about it. The story of Matthew is another story where Jesus looks past the lack of credentials of someone and recruits them anyway. What sets this story apart from last week though is the kind of people who Jesus called. Last week it was the poor, the blind, the lame, the Gentile. Those people were considered outsiders but for reasons that were largely out of their control. This week’s group however, had control over their destiny. They were outsiders because of their choices. Yes, unlike last week’s group, this group earned their outsider label but Jesus reached out to them anyway.
Now it’s important to note that Jesus didn’t sugar coat anything here. He called it like it was. He called himself the doctor and the tax collectors and sinners, “spiritually sick.” He acknowledged they were outsiders and invited them in. It’s also important to notice that Jesus didn’t invite them in because they deserved it. On the contrary, by His own words, He extended a hand of mercy to them. Connect the dots. Would He have offered mercy if they hadn’t needed it?
The application for all of this today is fairly simple. Jesus is reaching out to a world that needs Him desperately and as we are going to see over the next couple of weeks, a past, if accompanied by repentance, does not have to disqualify anyone from following Him. Yes, repentance is a necessary component. Matthew, in his gospel, recorded his own story of conversion in what’s basically an autobiographical account. In context, he worded it in such a way that the original reader would have picked up on the fact that when Matthew or Levi made the choice to follow Jesus he left his former way of life behind and never went back to it. He, incidentally, died a martyr’s death. He counted the cost and came to the conclusion that following Jesus was worth it.
So where are you today? What’s in your past? Whatever it is, however bad it is, it doesn’t have to disqualify you from following Jesus. If you are willing to confess it and forsake it, do a Matthew if you will and follow Jesus, Jesus will accept you.
Or maybe, you’re reading this and thinking that there’s nothing that you need to repent of, essentially you don’t need Jesus’ mercy because you are good enough on your own merits. If that’s where you are, you’re in a dangerous place, my friend. That was the Pharisee’s deal. You know, as I read the gospel accounts of Jesus’ life, He only had harsh words for one group, the Pharisees. The reason is simple enough. They were proud and self-righteous. Externally, they obeyed the Mosaic Law, faultlessly. They were good upstanding righteous (at least in their own eyes) people. In the story of Levi’s conversion, when Jesus shot back at the Pharisees at the banquet, you can almost read the thought bubble over His head when he said, “only the sick need a doctor – which includes you but you’re too blind to see it.” And how did their story end up? In the end, they rejected Jesus and Jesus, sadly honored their decision and let them go to their graves condemned to an eternity in hell. He wasn’t happy about it. In fact, He wept about it on one occasion but He did honor their choice and let them go.
But back to the person who knows that they don’t measure up. It’s that past thing, whatever it is, that you keep thinking about. Jesus however, already knows about it and is offering forgiveness and a new life if you’ll just repent and follow Him. And perhaps you want to take Him up on it but you’re just not sure how. The way you do it is through surrender usually expressed through prayer. Read this one and see if it doesn’t make sense. “God, you know my past, that I don’t measure up because I’ve rebelled against you. My life is a mess and I’m separated from you but I want that to change. I know that Jesus died for my sin on the cross, was raised from the dead and now you’re offering to forgive and accept me if I surrender to you. I want to take you up on that. I repent of my sin and accept Jesus as my savior and Lord. I surrender control of my life to you. Thank you for forgiving me. In Jesus name, amen.” If this prayer makes sense and it’s something that you want to do, roll with it. If you want to pray a prayer of your own, that works too. God isn’t as worried about your words as He is the desire of your heart and your intentions.
There is one last thing, if you did surrender to Jesus, if there are other Christians in your life. Tell them. If, though, and this is important, there are no Christians in your life, get a hold of me. Email me. My email address is in the “Contact” section. The Christian life was never intended to be lived in isolation. This site can never take the place of a church so I will need to help connect you with other Christians in your community. Hope to hear from you. See you next week.
Yeah, But What About My Past? (Jared's story)
You know, I’ve been telling you this story for the past few weeks about Dennis and Jesus. I’ve given Dennis some questions to ask and I have to tell you, in my mind, I think that story turns out pretty cool. Dennis is sharp. He weighs the evidence and decides to give following Jesus a shot. He’s hesitant and he has his doubts but he takes a step of faith in spite of them. What He discovered was that following Jesus is worth it and, after a while his friends notice there’s something different about him. It’s nothing over the top exactly but he almost seems more at peace with himself. One of his friends at work, Jared, starts talking to him. They talk about some of the things at Jesus told Dennis and, one night, Dennis got this text from Jared.
“It’s okay that following Jesus works for you but me, I just don’t know. My past is about as ugly as it gets. Dude, there’s stuff I’ve done that you have no idea about and I just don’t have anything to bring to the table.”
So what’s Jared not telling? Let’s shift gears and imagine for a minute that Jared’s sitting across the table from us and we actually get him to open up. He stares into space for a minute, looks back, takes a deep breath and starts talking. “I’ve done some scary stuff over the years.” He says. “I mean damn, there’s a fine line between raising hell and breaking the law and that’s the story of my life. I try not to think about it because it scares the hell out of me. That 4th of July story from a few years back? The only reason I’m not in jail right now is because we didn’t get caught. I wish it would just go away…..I’m not sure where it falls under the statute of limitations. I can tell you this much. Whiskey and rational decision making don’t mix – especially when you add high grade fireworks purchased from the reservation to the equation. Granted, those guys had it coming but there’s a word for what we did. It’s more than likely spelled F – E – L – O – N – Y. If you were to tell me that my future includes a knock on my door because some zealous investigator opened up the cold case files, I wouldn’t be all that surprised. In any case, when it comes to following Jesus, I have a lot of baggage in the deficit column and absolutely nothing in the credit column. At the end of the day, I got not nothing to offer Him. There’s no way He’d take me.”
So how do we respond to that? Well, perhaps we don’t, but then again, maybe we don’t have to. You see, there’s another person sitting at the table. Jesus is there and he’s more than anxious to field Jerad’s doubt. He does it the way that He’s always done it. He tells a story.
He might just go back to Golgotha, Calvary, you know the place, the cross. He was crucified there but you know, He wasn’t the only one being executed that day. There were two others, one on His right and one on His left. We’re not told which one got on Jesus’ radar, and I’m not sure Jesus would tell us either, but one thief got Jesus’ attention. Here’s what happened.
All three men had been crucified but Jesus was getting the most attention. He had performed miracles, saved others, He’d claimed to be God even and now, He was hanging on a cross, shamefully condemned.
“You saved others, now let’s see you save yourself!”
“If you’re really the Son of God, prove it and come down off the cross!” The crowds and the soldiers mocked him incessantly.
Both thieves even reviled Him but then, the perspective of one of them changed. We’re not told what, but something changed one guy’s mind. It had to have been something about the way that Jesus was dying although Scripture doesn’t tell us anything for certain. Maybe it was the way that Jesus prayed for the people who were executing Him. Maybe it was the way that He made provision for His mother even as He was being executed. Maybe God the Father opened this man’s eyes to the truth…..we’re not told, but what we are told is this. While his buddy on the other side of Jesus was cursing Jesus, this man did the unexpected. He spoke up in defense of Jesus. “Don’t you fear God, since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.” And then, he took a chance, a leap of faith if you will. He made a request of Jesus. “Jesus,” he said, “remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
And Jesus turned his head and replied. “I guarantee it. Today you will be with Me in Paradise.”
That story is frankly one of my favorite stories in the Bible. It proves that in terms of being too late to come to Jesus, it’s not over until it’s over, until the last breath is taken. Think about it for a minute. If there was ever someone who was in a position where it looked like it was too late to follow Jesus, this guy was it. I mean based on his own testimony, “we’re being executed for our crimes,” and the circumstantial evidence, the guy in the middle was supposed to be Barabbas, a notorious murderer. Or worse yet, the just fact he was being crucified, the penalty reserved for the worst of the worst, indicates that he’d done something or a bunch of somethings that were absolutely horrible. Here’s something else to consider. What does this thief bring to the table? What does he have to offer Jesus? Nothing. All he has to offer Jesus is a terrified plea for mercy and Jesus granted it to him and a lot more. And the question that screams for an answer is why. Why did Jesus accept this man who had absolutely nothing to offer, this late in the game?
The answer lies in the words that the thief spoke to both his accomplice and to Jesus. Let’s break them down phrase by phrase. He was being crucified and Jesus was being crucified and at that moment the wheels in his head were turning. “Don’t you fear God, since you are under the same sentence?” He recognized that Jesus was God. He may not have understood it entirely, but he recognized and acknowledged it nonetheless. He also admitted that he was a sinner. “We are punished justly, we are getting what our deeds deserve.” His words are legal terms used in a court of law and convey an admission of guilt. Then there’s the request he made of Jesus, “remember me when you come into your kingdom.” His words are a statement of faith in that he decided to believe that Jesus was going to someday establish His kingdom. Did he understand the details? Hardly. But just because he didn’t understand it didn’t stop him from placing his faith in Jesus. And lastly, based on that same request, he placed himself under Jesus’ authority. He acknowledged that Jesus was a king and asked Him to remember him when He came into His kingdom. You don’t do that unless you are submitting to a king’s authority.
Jesus’ response was simple enough. “Today, you will be with Me in Paradise.” Based on the thief’s faith, Jesus accepted the thief in spite of his past. Grace was offered and by faith, the thief accepted it. Now one could argue that the thief had horrible timing. He did. He had his entire life to repent and he was just now getting around to it. But that’s not the issue here. In fact, it’s irrelevant. When that man was nailed to the cross, he had no intention of asking Jesus to remember him. Matthew recorded that both thieves in the beginning were hurling insults on Jesus. But then something happened. Like I said, we’re not told what, but something happened. Somehow, God reached out to him and he responded in faith. Was he sure that Jesus was going to accept him, you know, grant him his request? We aren’t told about anything that was going through that man’s head. We’re only told what he actually said and how Jesus responded. So what, going back to our story, does this mean for Jerad or getting even more personal, what’s it mean for us?
It means, God’s grace is greater than our past, no matter how ugly that past is. To get real personal, it means that if you’ve been living your life and no matter what you do, there’s still this guilt that you’re feeling for things you have done and it just won’t go away, and you’re just wishing that your conscience would just shut up and leave you alone. Is this striking a chord with you? If so, you know maybe, just maybe, that’s not just your conscience bothering you……….that’s Jesus calling you. And He’s not calling you so He can beat you up again, you’re doing a good enough job of that on your own, He’s calling you and convicting you so you can repent of your sin, get the forgiveness you need and follow Him. It’s too late, you’re saying? Dude! Jesus was on the cross – He was dying, paying for the sins of all of humanity and yet, when that thief asked Jesus for forgiveness, when he asked Jesus to remember him when He came into His kingdom, Jesus granted him his request. If it wasn’t too late for the thief, it’s not too late for you.
Jesus wants to save you but the ball is in your court now. Don’t forget, there were two thieves crucified with Jesus that day. We’ve already talked about the one guy but what about the other one? He had done the same things that his friend had done and he saw exactly what his friend saw. Was it that Jesus didn’t want to save the other guy? I don’t think that’s true. In 2 Peter 3:9, the Apostle Peter wrote, “God is not willing that any perish but that all come to repentance.” Jesus wanted to save both guys but only one guy let Him do it. So the question for us then is which thief we will model our response to Jesus after. Will we be like the thief that placed his faith in Jesus or the one who didn’t? The ball is in our court.
If you have never actually made a decision to follow Jesus but you would like to, here’s what you do. In simple prayer, admit to God you’re a sinner and you cannot save yourself. Acknowledge that Jesus died on the cross for your sin, and was raised from the dead. Lastly, ask God to forgive you for what you’ve done and surrender control of your life back to the leadership of Jesus. And in faith, thank Him for the gift of salvation that He’s given you. God’s not worried about the words and the prayer doesn’t have to be fancy, the thief’s certainly wasn’t. God is interested in the desire of your will and that’s what He honors. See you next week.
Let the Transformation Begin
In this story I’ve been telling about this character I’ve created named Dennis over the past few weeks, I’ve had him decide to become a follower of Jesus and yes, if and when he did that, his life would change. It would change not necessarily because Dennis would try to change, although he might, but it would happen because Jesus would be changing him from the inside out. Jesus would be empowering Dennis through the indwelling Holy Spirit changing him at the motive level. Using a computer analogy, the virus in Dennis’ operating system would be eradicated and he would be able once again to respond to his Creator. The bottom line in Dennis’ life, there’s a new sheriff in town, His name is Jesus and He’d be beginning the transformation process.
First, about this transformation process, although it might be gradual, there’s a group of people who would probably notice it right out of the blocks. Okay reader, here’s the deal. I am the author and Dennis is my character so he can be whatever I want him to be. I’ll leave his ethnicity to your imagination but, exercising my author’s prerogative, he’s married to Jackie and they have four kids. (They planned on stopping after three but can you spell t-w-i-n-s? Dennis and Jackie can.) The twins came last. High energy those two…..curious and smart. There’s nowhere in the house they haven’t at least tried to explore multiple times. Add two dogs and I think a ferret to the mix, plus all of the music lessons, T-ball, school projects and what not and yeah, it’s official, Dennis and Jackie run a bonafide zoo. And Jesus, playing the hand He’s dealt, starts the transformation process of Dennis right there and Jackie and the kids get a front row seat.
What’s happening? Jesus is now calling the shots and He’s doing a major overhaul. In 2 Corinthians 5:17, the Apostle Paul described the process like this, “if anyone is in Christ, they get a fresh start, they are created new. The old life is gone, a new life burgeons.” “A fresh start,” did you pick up on that? Yeah, that’s one of the first things that Jesus does and often, that fresh start manifests itself in interpersonal relationships, typically at the core level where it matters most, the family.
In the context of family relationships, Dennis has a new set of operating instructions. Once again, we need to go to the Apostle Paul to find out what they are. “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church,” is what was written in Ephesians 5:25. Park right there for a minute. How did Christ love the church? He put the best interests of the church ahead of His own and died an excruciating death for it. Today, He loves it unconditionally and is patient with it. As another visual, several hours before Jesus was betrayed, He stripped down to his waist, took on the role of a slave and washed his disciples’ feet. Think about it for a minute. Jesus, the Creator of the Universe, the King, washed the disciples’ feet. Jesus embodied servant leadership and that’s what He expects Dennis to do for Jackie and his kids.
So what does that look like? It may not be over the top per se, in fact, it might be quite subtle but this might be what Jackie would notice. Dennis is more patient, and not just with her but with the kids as well. Those twins, it’s amazing how even at a young age those two have button pushing down to an art form and they’ve even perfected the tag team move. And Dennis rolls with it better than he used to. Jackie also notices other things too. It’s the little stuff. He cleans up after himself. He’s less engaged with his phone and more engaged with her. He’s starting to listen better, he’s listening more to understand and less just to respond. He’s becoming a servant leader. He’s not lording his leadership over her but he’s treating her like she’s his helpmeet and best friend. Now don’t misunderstand anything here. This transformation is a lifelong process. Dennis is still Dennis and there are days when he reverts back to the old Dennis but, for the most part, he’s becoming Dennis under the leadership of Jesus.
Now, from Dennis’ point of view, there are several things that he’s intentionally doing to change. He prays more than he used to. In part because when he does things that the Bible defines as sin, it’s not as easy to blow it off as it used to be. His conscience bothers him more and it often won’t go away until he prays and asks for forgiveness both from God and his family and submits again to Jesus’ authority. He’s also reading the Bible regularly for the first time in his life. O.k. it’s the Bible app on his phone that he’s reading but it’s still the Bible and he’s making a concerted effort to actually do what it says to do. And, he’s started taking his family to a church where he’s beginning to get to know some people, including a couple of guys who have been doing this following Jesus thing longer than he has and they are helping him navigate the landscape so to speak. But he’s especially praying more and asking God for help, because especially when it comes to being the husband and father that God has called him to be, he’s discovering that he can’t do it on his own. It’s impossible.
So is this just an idealistic piece of fiction I just wrote? Not exactly. It is obviously fiction but it’s also kind of an overview for what happens to a person when they choose to follow Jesus, and it includes some best practices for what a person needs to do in order to follow Jesus without losing their minds in the process.
In the first place, regardless of who you are, following Jesus will generally impact your relationships in a big way, especially when it comes to family. Consider this, in your life, who was the first person to make you mad? Odds are pretty good it was a family member. Audible, how about yesterday? This morning? Tomorrow? I’ll bet it was or will be a family member. If it wasn’t a family member it was probably a roommate, co-worker/boss, or neighbor. (And if it wasn’t one of those people, congratulations. You’re the exception. Now shut up and keep reading.) In any case, when you follow Jesus, under His leadership, how you roll in these relationships changes dramatically. Once again, consulting Paul, here’s the instructions. “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others as more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to your own interests but also to the interests of others.” (Philippians 2: 3 – 4) When you start taking verses like that seriously, it makes getting angry, or at least staying angry with these people, a lot tougher to do.
“Yeah, but that’s just Paul,” you’re saying. “How about Jesus. What did He have to say about all of this?”
Sorry, Jesus won’t help you either. Listen to these verses that are sprinkled around in the gospels where Jesus is quoted as saying, “But among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave.” Jesus said that to His disciples and He followed it up with, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” And then He modeled that one from the cross. So, is this a reach? You tell me. Sometimes, at least momentarily, our worst enemies are family members. And, if we follow Jesus, Jesus is saying we have to love these people. (Love is patient, kind, not jealous, not boastful, not proud, or rude. It does not demand its own way. It’s not irritable, and keeps no record of wrongs. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful and endures through every circumstance. 1 Corinthians 13) Incidentally, these are marching orders, not suggestions and, at least from where I sit, to love someone without forgiving them is a major disconnect.
Where do we go from here? Well, I’m just going to ask the question that no one else is asking right now and that’s why? I mean, why would Jesus ask his followers to operate like this and the flip side of that question would be, why would His followers buy into this system that’s, at the end of the day, a counter culture way of operating? Now, I can’t speak for anyone else but I can tell you why I bought into it. When it came to God and me, I was the beneficiary of that system. You see, I rebelled against God just like everyone else did, I just did it differently. As I’ve examined my own life, if I could identify with any of the people in the New Testament, I would probably identify with the Pharisees. Born and raised in a conservative church, I knew the rules and I knew how to play the game. Know the right stuff and how to communicate it, pick your shots as to when to rebel, (like when you’re least likely to get caught). See how close you can get to the edge without crossing the line, it’s not rocket science. Sometimes it’s almost diplomatic skill that gets you off the hook and sometimes it’s just dumb luck. In any case, eventually your luck runs out and you find yourself doing things that you swore you would never do and just hoping to hell that you don’t get caught by the wrong people. You’re weaving this web of lies and living a double life. And the stupid thing about it is that both the people that you care most about and the people that you could care less about can see right through your façade but you’re blind to the whole thing. How you manage to somehow stay married and not lose everything financially is a testament of grace, in some cases of the people around you and in some cases, of God Himself. That folks, in a nutshell, was my story.
If you’re reading this right now and thinking that I was a self-deceived hypocrite, you’re right, I was. But God never gave up on me, He kept reaching out to me with what could best be described as a hand of grace. He was relentlessly persistent and one night, about sixteen years ago, He really got my attention. I was reading this book by Ray Comfort and Comfort framed life’s issues in a way that I had never thought of them before. He talked about the Ten Commandments and the crux of his argument was that they were all God’s laws and all humans were law breakers. Now, if you want to take issue with that, fine, that’s between you and God, but as for me, I couldn’t argue with him. In fact, based on the fact that Jesus had pretty much raised the bar of God’s law to the motive level in the Sermon on the Mount, where He properly interpreted that law, I came to the conclusion that if breaking the Ten Commandments was the supreme motive of life, then I was batting 1000. Yeah, sometimes in thought, sometimes by committing the actual deed, I had broken every one of them and that night I had to admit to God that I was a law breaker in His eyes. Law breaker, a criminal in God’s court, that’s what I had to admit to being that night. And as I admitted that, I also asked for His grace and forgiveness and I received it. Was that my night of conversion? Possibly, it’s a little bit murky however because for those of us who were born and raised in a church, there are cultural expectations and rites of passage almost where you ask Jesus to be your savior without necessarily understanding the issue of surrender in terms of what that actually looks like in the real world. Personally, yes, I did verbally surrender to Jesus when I was thirteen and I was baptized when I was fourteen. But here’s the thing, and my story isn’t all that different from many professing Christians that I knew back then, you live one way on Sunday and another way Monday through Saturday. You live one way when you’re around other Christians and another way when you’re around people who aren’t and when you’re alone…..well, all bets are off. Personally, for thirty-five years, my life was a mixed bag. So, was that night my conversion? I honestly don’t know but I can tell you this much, my life has never been the same since that night.
Now was that transformation instantaneous? Please!? I’m a work in progress. God’s not done with me yet and He won’t be until I die, but I can tell you this much, I’m not the man I was back then and I never will be. Jesus has changed my life and my relationships, primarily my marriage. Today, Dianna is my wife and my best friend. God changed the way I thought about how to treat her and I began to act like a true servant leader. What this looked like is when I began to put her best interests ahead of my own, things radically changed in our relationship and she in turn, responded in like fashion. It was a mutual submission to each other out of obedience to what the Bible talked about in the New Testament. As a result, today, when we are together, the best way to describe things is to say that we are content and satisfied. God did it through us though, we couldn’t have done it in our own strength.
So what’s my point? I guess it’s this. If you choose to follow Jesus and surrender to His leadership, you can expect your life to change. It may not be overnight and it may or may not be the way that you’re expecting it to change, but it will change. Will it be easier? Not necessarily. Jesus may ask you to do things that you don’t want to do. Your comfort zone will be stretched and He’ll ask you to do the hard thing because it’s the right thing. I know that this sounds vague but it has to be. I don’t know where you’re at and I’m not God anyway. I’m not that smart. But I can also tell you this much. It will be easier in that you won’t be doing it alone or in your own strength. It’s not this white knuckle, suck it up and try harder deal. One of the last things Jesus said before He ascended into heaven was, “I will be with you always.” (Matthew 28:20) Sorry to have to use churchy terms but this is the only way to describe it because it’s true, when you surrender to Jesus, God the Holy Spirit comes to live in you and empowers you to do the right thing. He changes you. Yes, you have to cooperate because, speaking from personal experience, life doesn’t go well when you don’t. I mean if you’re that insistent on doing stupid stuff and reaping the consequences, He might just let you. But yes, your life will change. Is the change worth it? Oh yeah. It’s worth it. And surrender is what God is calling all of us to do. That’s the constant. Our response? Well, that’s the variable. Will we surrender or not? See you next week.
So How Will Following Jesus Change My Career?
Recently I’ve been writing about following Jesus and how He will transform the life of the person who does that. Based on Jesus’ own words, it appears that if life was a car the transformation would resemble a major overhaul rather than just a tune up and a car wash. Last week I examined how that transformation would impact interpersonal relationships. This week, I want to take a look at the evidence and see how following Jesus would impact careers.
“What?” some of you might ask. “Jesus would change my career? How?” It’s a valid question I suppose but it’s kind of an old question also. Verbalized differently, it’s been around for at least 60 years. Back in the day it was asked like this. “If I follow Jesus, is He going to send me to some remote village in Africa to be a missionary for the rest of my life?”
He could, I suppose. In fact, now that I think about it, I personally know a couple who did that and were quite successful in Africa. Their kids grew up there and actually considered Kenya home more so than they did the United States. However, as I have observed Jesus’ followers over the past fifty years or so, the evidence overwhelmingly would indicate that Bill and Julie were the exception and not the rule. My personal guess is that if you decide to become a follower of Jesus, He probably won’t send you to Africa…..to the cul-de-sac to participate in the neighborhood garage sale, perhaps…….to the break room at work to interact with your colleagues at lunch, probably……but Africa? Eh, I doubt it, unless it’s for something like a short term mission trip. (Those are mission trips specifically designed to help with a project of some sort and typically last two to three weeks, after which time the person comes back home to their day job.) No, if you become a follower of Jesus, I’d be prepared to do just about anything, including staying right where you’re at.
Now, that being said, it’s important to remember that yes, Jesus could change your career entirely. Take the Apostle Peter for example. He was fisherman before he followed Jesus and became an apostle afterwards. A fisherman and an apostle, hmmmmm….those are two careers that didn’t have a lot in common. However, a careful analysis of Peter reveals this commonality. Peter was a leader. Even when he was an impulsive disciple, the rest of the disciples looked to him for leadership and followed his lead as they were being trained by Jesus. The evidence indicates that Peter was created to lead men and Jesus never shut that part down. In the New Testament, after Jesus ascended back to heaven, Peter was one of the primary leaders of the early church. So yes, while Peter’s means of making a living changed once he fully followed Jesus that leadership gene that was almost written into the core of his DNA did not. In fact, God enhanced it to its full potential.
Now, while we are on the topic of apostles and what not, let’s take a look at another apostle whose career didn’t change exactly. Paul, or Saul of Tarsus, as he was known in his early life, is our subject. Paul is an interesting study. By his own testimony he was born Jewish, and given the name Saul by his parents. He was also a Roman citizen by birth. (I have no idea how his parents pulled that one off!) When Saul first appeared in the Book of Acts, he was an Orthodox Jew who had trained under one of the most respected rabbis of his time. He was a Pharisee’s Pharisee and was on the fast track to becoming a member of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish equivalent of the Supreme Court. Zealous for Judaism, he was an enemy of Jesus. Then Jesus in a vision knocked him off his high horse, literally, and Saul switched sides and became a follower of Jesus. Over time, as his life mission became clear, he changed his name to Paul, (a Gentile name) and, using his extensive religious training, wrote much of the New Testament. In a nutshell, he was able to clearly articulate how the Old Testament pointed to Jesus as the Messiah that was promised from the beginning of time and was able to clearly explain how salvation was obtained by a person placing their faith in Jesus and not by diligent compliance to a religious code, in this case Judaism. In addition, Paul was an early church planter throughout the Roman Empire. It’s interesting, because of his Roman citizenship, he could go places and do things that the rest of the Apostles could not. His Roman citizenship, for example, allowed him to legally have an audience with Caesar, a right that he incidentally took advantage of, while his extensive training in the Jewish Scriptures allowed him to successfully articulate his faith while standing before both Jewish leaders and Roman officials at the same time. Using secular terminology, Paul was a religious leader before he became a follower of Jesus and he was a religious leader afterwards. The major difference was who he was following.
Now as we further unpack this question of how following Jesus will change a person’s career, there is one thing that will change. It’s our workplace ethics. Ethical behavior is important to God. Now the idea of being an ethical person as a prescription for how to live is saturated throughout Scripture so I’m just going to use two examples to prove the point. In Luke 3, John the Baptist was preaching and tax collectors and their Jewish escorts came to him and asked what they should do in preparation for the coming Messiah. John answered them. “Don’t collect any more than you are required to….Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely – be content with your pay.” It’s interesting to note that while the two professions mentioned here, tax collecting and the armed escort for those tax collectors, were considered to be almost treason by most people in Jewish society because they were collaborating with the occupying Roman Government, John didn’t take issue with the professions per se. What he did take issue with were the unethical practices that these tax collectors and their armed escorts would use to get rich at the expense of their fellow countrymen. If they wanted to follow Jesus, they were expected to change that. So, ethical behavior? Yeah, it’s a big deal with God and if a person follows Jesus, they can expect Jesus to meddle in that issue. It just comes with the territory.
Then there’s the issue of just working hard. In Colossians 3, Paul writes, “whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men…….it is the Lord that you serve.” The bottom line is that God expects His followers to be good employees and good employers as well. (Colossians 4) That might be, incidentally, one of the toughest things to do sometimes for all of us I think but it is, none-the-less, something we have to get done. We’re being watched both by God and the people we work with.
Now there is an issue here that needs to be addressed and it again has to do with ethics and Jesus’ expectations of His followers. Occasionally, following Jesus could possibly put us at odds with our employer especially if Jesus’ standards of ethics are over the top higher than those of our employer. Now, if that’s where you’re at, I’m not going to tell you exactly how to play your cards because I’m not there, you are and I’m certainly not an expert. I’m just a guy with the ability to tell stories who knows a thing or two because I’ve seen a thing or two.
The first story I can tell you, involves a friend of mine who worked for a fairly rich and powerful public figure many years ago. Now this employer demanded absolute loyalty from his employees. The company came before anything, family, friends, ethics, you name it. If you bend a rule or two, violate an ordinance maybe, well, as long as you didn’t get caught, you did what you had to do to get the job done. The man was a mini-god and his company was his kingdom. My friend became a follower of Jesus and one day he told his boss that he couldn’t give him that kind of loyalty anymore.
“Why not?” His boss asked.
“I’m a Christian and I have to do what the Bible says to do now.”
The man looked at my friend with a stone face and said coldly. “Well, I’m glad that you told me that now. You’re fired.” End of story.
Another friend of mine, in a different conversation about ethics and similar situations said it like this. “Sometimes, you have to set your keys on the desk and walk out the door.”
The bottom line is this, if you become a follower of Jesus, it may cost you your job. But here’s something else I have noticed. The people who experience this tend to land on their feet somewhere. God honors obedience and takes care of His own. Life story after life story confirms this. I don’t remember who said this but someone did. “God is responsible for the consequences of my obedience but I am responsible for the consequences of my disobedience.”
The point of all of this is that if a person becomes a follower of Jesus, while their career and vocation may or may not change, how they do their job most likely will. God will be actively working to change the ethics that we as his followers display as we do our jobs. The question that we need to ask ourselves is how are we doing with that? Are we cooperating with Him or not? We need to push for excellence in this area and if we aren’t, that’s an area where we need to repent, ask God’s forgiveness and change. We need to ask God to work through us. Will it be easy? Not likely. Will it be counter-culture? Perhaps. Along those same lines, will it be appreciated by everyone? Maybe ….. or maybe not. Will it be necessary however? Absolutely! God’s reputation is at stake. What’s it look like? One last story and then I’ll let you go.
The time was about 550ish B.C. and the place was Babylon. There was this elderly Jewish statesman named Daniel who was nearing the end of his career. The life he’d led had been anything but boring. Most likely born of a noble family in Judah during the time that Nebuchadnezzar invaded the region, he’d been carried off from his homeland and trained to serve the Babylonian Empire. A sharp young man who refused to compromise how he followed his God, he rose quickly through the ranks of government administration. In terms of wisdom, Nebuchadnezzar found his advice to be ten times better than his contemporaries. Now, fast forward many years. The Babylonian Empire had fallen to the Medes and the Persians and while the new empire obviously reorganized things, these people weren’t stupid. Competence was still competence and noble character was still noble character. They got rid of a lot of people but Daniel wasn’t one of them. In fact, Darius, the king in charge, appointed Daniel as one of his three vice regents in charge of governing the entire kingdom. Then, based on how well he performed his duties in this role, because Daniel so outclassed everyone else, Darius appointed him to a position that could best be described in 21st Century terms as Prime Minister. Yeah, Daniel was pretty much running the show.
Now Daniel had enemies who wanted him gone, primarily out of jealousy. They watched him and analyzed him and came away disappointed. Daniel was above reproach. Competent and honest, the man was squeaky clean. His enemies came to the conclusion that the only way they could bring him down was if they could come up with something to do with his devotion to God. They set a trap and Daniel, possibly with his eyes wide open, walked into it and left the results in God’s hands. A law was passed stating that the only one who anyone could pray to for 30 days was Darius. This was a deal breaker and Daniel could not compromise here. As was his custom, he prayed to God every day in an open window that faced Jerusalem. He was seen, arrested, and thrown into a den of lions. Darius did not want to do this but the law was the law and he’d been tricked. Daniel spent the entire night in the lions’ den but for some reason the lions weren’t hungry. They didn’t touch him. The next morning, having served his sentence, he emerged unscathed. God took care of him. As a side note, Darius then took the people who had set the trap and, along with their families, tossed them in the den. The lions got their appetite back and tore them to pieces before they hit the ground.
So what’s the point? We must be “Daniels” in the work place. The Message translates Daniel 6: 4 and 5 like this. “He was totally exemplary and trustworthy. They could find no evidence of negligence or misconduct.” That has to be us. We probably won’t be able to do this without surrendering to Jesus and relying on the power of the Holy Spirit but we must do this. The world is watching and Jesus’ reputation is at stake. See you next week.
How Did Jesus Teach His Followers to Pray?
One of the most common questions that Jesus was asked by His followers during His time on earth was how to pray. What prompted them to ask it was that throughout His three year ministry, they observed the crowds pulling Him in any number of directions and Jesus responding by ministering to the needs of these people to the point that He was physically exhausted. Was it stressful? It had to have been yet, in spite of it all, Jesus never lost it. He just kept giving of Himself and His followers had to wonder at times how He did it. Now, one of the obvious things that stood out was how much He prayed and how prayer was an integral part of His life. A second thing that became obvious was that if a person was going to follow Him that they were going to have to pray like Him as well. This wasn’t by coincidence, it was by design and several times during His ministry He was specifically asked how to pray. This is just my opinion but I have to think that He welcomed the question and whenever it came up, He always fielded it the same way. He gave a model prayer, a prayer of surrender to God the Father, a prayer that we know today as, “The Lord’s Prayer.”
The Lord’s Prayer is a prayer that’s become familiar to many people regardless of religious affiliation, especially if they are football fans who have watched football movies. I can think of several locker room scenes where it was almost a pre-game ritual where a team would kneel and recite the prayer, almost like they were throwing God a bone before they took the field for a big game. But is that what Jesus had in mind when He would use it as a model for how He prayed and for how He wanted His followers to pray? That it would just be a ritual and that’s it? That’s not what the evidence would indicate. Consider this. The first time that it’s recorded in Scripture where Jesus presents this model is in Matthew 6: 9 – 13 as part of the Sermon on the Mount where among other things, Jesus was contrasting the exclusively external religious rituals taught by the Pharisees as standards for righteousness with the righteousness that He was teaching. His was a righteousness that, while it certainly played out externally, went much deeper than mere external compliance to a religious code of ethics. He took things to the motive level and He talked about surrender to God and God’s agenda several times, including when He gave this model for prayer. It’s time to break it down.
“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.” The dictionary definition of hallowed is to regard something as holy or sacred. In other words, Jesus was teaching His followers to hold God’s name in highest regard. Now at this point, I suppose that it could be argued that this part could be construed as being merely ritualistic however, as He always did, Jesus took it to a whole new level.
Check out the next phrase. “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Stop right there. Is God’s will ever debated or defied in heaven? Think about it. In heaven, God does what He wants to do, in the manner in which He wants to do it, and in the time frame that He wants to do it in. Therefore, The Lord’s Prayer, first and foremost, is a surrender to God and a request that He bring His kingdom, heaven, to earth and that God will then reign on earth exactly as He does in heaven. Jesus is not teaching his followers to throw God a bone and go on their merry way, He’s teaching and modeling for His followers, a willful surrender to the reign of God the Father in the world. In light of the context here, especially when one examines the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, no other interpretation of that phrase makes sense.
“Give us today our daily bread.” Two things worth noting here. In the first place, Jesus is not ignoring our daily needs and to ask for their provision is an appropriate thing to do. But there’s the second part which requires discernment on the part of the listener or the reader. Why would a person ask God to provide for their daily needs if they could do it themselves? What is Jesus saying here? Is He saying that God is the source of provision for our daily needs? Yep. He sure is. What about the people who don’t ask for provision? They get along just fine. That actually says much more about the generosity of God than it does about the individual’s ability to provide for themselves. And for the reader who is hell bent on proving that they can get along fine without any help at all from God, I suppose they could pray this prayer, “God I want absolutely no help from you at all to provide for my needs. I can do it all myself and you need to just stay out of my business.” If you do pray that prayer by the way, that it is an absolutely gutsy thing to pray and personally, I would not advise you to do it. If you do decide to do that however, I think I’ll just get out of your way and watch this one from a distance……. By the same token, to pray the Lord’s Prayer is not to imply that we don’t have to do anything. Think of it like a partnership. Imagine God is the quarterback and we’re the wide receiver. God can throw us a perfect pass but it’s still up to us to put our hands out there and catch it.
“Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Jesus is using figurative language here and what He’s really talking about is reconciliation. He’s pointing back to the fact that we’ve all sinned and God has forgiven us and therefore, we should also forgive those who have done us wrong. Several things to note here. First and foremost, Jesus never sinned so in that regard, He never needed to be reconciled to God the Father, but He certainly forgave those who sinned against Him even when they didn’t ask for it. From the cross, for example, He asked God the Father to forgive the people who were murdering Him, but notice, once again, how He framed the issue. He asked God the Father to forgive these people but it was up to the Father to grant the request. It goes back to that, “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” phrase. In order to be totally forgiven, the offenders would have to ask for forgiveness however from Jesus’ perspective He, as the offended party, had released His right for revenge, back into the hands of God the Father. So what does that mean for us? It’s not complicated. It means that as we pray, that God is expecting us to forgive people as He has forgiven us and reconcile where possible. Incidentally, I get it, reconciliation may not be possible, but forgiveness on our part is. And if we don’t want to…….refer back to the, “your will be done,” part. Yeah, surrender. The Lord’s Prayer is about surrender.
“Lead us not into temptation, and deliver us from the evil one.” In other parts of Scripture, it’s clearly stated that God does not tempt anyone so what’s Jesus saying here? Two things probably. Like I said, God does not tempt anyone but He does allow people to be tested where their lusts and desires are often exposed. In part, the request here is that God will not lead us into a place where we might be tempted and sin but if we are there, that God would deliver us from the evil one. As a candid observation here, many times we’re in a place where we are tempted not because of anything that God has done but rather because we have insisted on going places either literally or figuratively that we have no business going. The blame for the fact that we are tempted in those cases lies clearly on our shoulders and not God’s. As Jesus is talking about prayer here, He’s assuming that the person praying sincerely wants to follow Him and therefore, the prayer is, “don’t bring me into a place where I could be tempted but, if you do, because there is no other way, please show me the way of escape so I don’t sin.” This phrase assumes that God is good and that in spite of the circumstances He’s working things out on my behalf.
So what does this mean to us? I want to go back to one phrase because I think it’s the key phrase in this prayer and, therefore, the key concept for prayer in general. “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Prayer, as Jesus taught it, is first and foremost, a surrender of my will to God’s will. Prayer is not a deal where I bring my requests before God and He automatically gives me what I ask. That’s the genie in Aladdin who does that and he’s a piece of fiction. No, what is happening here is that when I pray, I bring my requests to God and allow Him to answer them as He sees fit. It’s also an exercise in faith because I’m also saying that I believe that God is good and that He knows better than I do regarding how to do my business.
There’s one other thing worth noting when it comes to prayer and that’s what it does to me. As I come to God in prayer with a mindset of surrender, I become aligned with God and what He’s trying to do. There’s a story in the Old Testament that especially illustrates this. In Joshua 5, just before the Israelites attacked Jericho, Joshua went up to a high place to observe the city. As he got though, he discovered that there was also another warrior with a drawn sword who was on the scene. Joshua approached the warrior and asked him, “Are you for us or for our enemies?”
“Neither,” he replied, “but as commander of the armies of the LORD I have now come.” And Joshua fell face down on the ground in reverence and asked. “What message does my Lord have for his servant?”
I especially like the notes from the NIV Study Bible for this passage. “’Neither,’” Joshua and Israel had to know their place – it is not that God is on their side; rather, they must fight God’s battles.”
Author Gordon Mac Donald, said it like this in his book, Ordering Your Private World, “Prayer is much more about aligning my agenda with God’s agenda than it is about asking Him to align with mine.”
In an Instagram post I read the other day, Lori Dethlefs, a Christian blogger wrote, “Prayer does work. It changes us.” She’s right you know. When we approach God in prayer using the model that Jesus taught, that model of surrender, we become more like Jesus. Our faith becomes stronger, even if the answer to our prayer is, “no”. We trust the one we are praying to and our lives become transformed. We look, walk, talk and act like Jesus because He is a good God and in the words of Philip Yancey, He’s partnering with us as a senior partner partners with a junior partner. One thing about that analogy which Yancey does bring out is that in the business world, junior partners are generally there merely to rubber stamp what the senior partners want to do. Not so with God. He allows us a voice and, as He is transforming us so that we are becoming like Jesus, He values our input which we usually express through prayer. At the same time, like all senior partners, He is the senior partner and has full veto rights which He sometimes chooses to use for our benefit, but that doesn’t mean that He doesn’t value our input. He does.
So how are we praying these days? Are we surrendered to God or not? Do we trust Him? Heavy stuff, I know. But we need to wrestle with it anyway. That should be enough for you to ponder for at least a couple of days. See you next week.
copyright 2019 by Sam Roach