lordship

Please, Don’t Be Offended, Entry #33

/ Bryan Lowe / 1 Comment

“And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”

Matthew 11:6, (context, vv. 2-6)

Being “blessed” is much more than having lots of money, a nice home or a fancy new car. First and foremost being blessed must be a spiritual word–it seems sometimes we have to rescue the true definition and then bring back its real meaning. The old hymn exhorts the enriched Christian to “count your many blessings, name them one by one.” Singing this will work something inside us.

We become spiritually prosperous when we begin to embrace the reality of Jesus–His words, actions, even His very person becomes the dearest thing we could ever dream of possessing. We’re also blessed when we receive deep inside us the many challenging things He says. We really must absorb these harder words without any reservations. It seems that He doles these things out very carefully.

We have to admit that being scandalized over Him is always a possibility. It can happened to a pastor, or a ‘newbie’ in the faith. No matter who we are, we’re always in the arena, being watched, and our faith in Jesus will be tested. Is it real? Will we be insulted or affronted by the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ? That dear one, it a very real possibility.

Jesus still offends people. There were those who embraced Him, and yet it seems to me that most ended up resisting and rejecting Him. He was a ‘wrench in their machinery,’ an obstacle in their theology. He was constantly doing things that didn’t seem right or proper.

Does Jesus offend you?

“When Jesus came to earth, demons recognized him, the sick flocked to him, and sinners doused his feet and head with perfume. Meanwhile he offended pious Jews with their strict preconceptions of what God should be like. Their rejection makes me wonder, could religious types be doing just the reverse now? Could we be perpetuating an image of Jesus that fits our pious expectations but does not match the person portrayed so vividly in the Gospels?”

-Philip Yancey, “The Jesus I Never Knew”

Being Worthy of Jesus, Entry #31

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“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”

Matthew 10:37-38 (context, vv. 34-38)

It’s funny, but we never realize that the challenges of following Jesus are never more than the cost of not following Him. The cross leads to death, most certainly. But let’s never forget that there is a resurrection that does happen after that death. We’ll never live unless we die first.

The problem is that we don’t want to die!

We cling to our lives with the intensity of a drowning man clinging to a ‘life ring.’ We dare not let go. We dare not simply give up and really call out to Jesus. We hang on to the old life, and as a result, will never, ever experience the new. We believe that we will really drown. We are afraid.

Jesus is demanding from us a preeminent love for Him. A love that ‘nullifies’ anything earthly; a love that surpasses anything “good and proper.” He wants it all! There will be no competition, no contesting our love for Him. Jesus is either all, or He will be nothing.

Yes, there is a “cross.”

There will be a awful terrible death to everything we think brings us life. The “disciples” understood crucifixion. A Roman general once did it to the members of a Jewish rebellion. He lined the highways with 2000 crosses, to declare the iron-clad sovereignty of Rome.

Yes, the disciples knew. They remembered the horrifying deaths of so many. They undoubtedly passed by these insurrectionists who hung on these crosses and died. They vividly understood that a cross wasn’t a piece of jewelry, but it meant an awful bloody death of a human being. They knew. The cross was gruesome.

Following Jesus means this kind of death.

It ends everything dear to us. It irrevocably ends life as we know it. Life now consists of having a first love, a renouncing everything else that we hold dear. The relationships we thought were good, are now stumbling blocks to the path to our cross.

Yes, there is always a resurrection. Life will be given back to us. But death comes first, and it is incredibly painful. Sometimes we preach and teach, we embrace a “resurrection” life that excludes a cross. We jump right into a Christianity that has circumvented a terrible death. We are now officially, “cross-less Christians.”

“Unless he obeys, a man cannot believe.”

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

 

Serpents and Doves, Entry #29

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“Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of men, for they will deliver you over to courts and flog you in their synagogues. 

Matthew 10:16-17 (context, vv. 16-24)

We are being sent into a dangerous place. There will be those who hate us, they take us and lead us into courts and they will bring out a whip. The world is not a kind place for believers in Jesus. He warns the disciples of a definite persecution that they face as His disciples. This deep darkness has teeth.

The servant of Jesus will never be “above His master.” Since they called Jesus, “Beelzebul,” they’ll certainly “malign those of His household” (Matthew 10:24-25). We must accept this. At best they will criticize, and at worst they will kill us. We are facing a hostile world who hates our faith.

If a Christian is not having tribulation in the world, there’s something wrong!

And yet Jesus still sends us. We dare not step away from this viciousness. It’s part of the package He gives. We should expect to be treated this way. Jesus warns us honestly of the terrible things we can expect, He does not sugarcoat things. The Lord is well-acquainted with what the world is capable of.

When sheep and wolves meet each other it becomes a slaughter house. And yet there is another side to all of this. We are called to think like a serpent, to have a definite wisdom of all that must be faced, and what we must do to faithfully survive this persecution.

It troubles me somewhat that believers are called to be snakes. Somehow, that doesn’t seem to equate to an innocent faith in Jesus. (Snakes are bad, at least in my thinking). And yet Jesus clearly welds this holy innocence with a wisdom that is very much aware. I suppose that there is a thoughtful balance here, we must find it, and then live it out.

He calls us to vulnerability, most certainly, but mixed into this we need a grasp of being aware; a holy shrewdness (but never a naïvety) that knows how to face the darkness without becoming apostate. We need to use our brains, but be led by our hearts. We are His witnesses, but we must never become His victims.

“It has become a settled principle that nothing which is good and true can be destroyed by persecution, but that the effect ultimately is to establish more firmly, and to spread more widely, that which it was designed to overthrow. It has long since passed into a proverb that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”

-Albert Barnes

    

Laborers Wanted, # 27

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Then he said to his disciples, 

“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

Matthew 9:37-38, (context, vv. 35-38)

The issue here is laborers–this is our work, plain and simple. The fact is that there isn’t enough workers. It’s funny, it seems God is constrained by our prayers–earnest prayers for a harvest to be brought into the barns. But there aren’t enough hands. The harvest will be ruined if help doesn’t come soon.

God must have our help if it’s going to get done.

The harvest seems contingent on our prayer life. We decide what is going to happen. Prayer is the work of the authentic believer and our hearts must be for the fields. We are the people who work, who sweat, and get tired. That is our call. That is the true work of discipleship.

Mother Teresa once commented that what we see in front of us is our “Calcutta.” We have got to open our eyes and look, we must see the incredible needs of desperate people that surround us. We must have eternal eyes–God’s eyes. We do our work on behalf of others. I really do believe that it will be ‘sweaty’ prayers that will move the hand of God.

I think ‘prayer’ is the real work in evangelism.

Prayer is our effort that gets combined with the Holy Spirit’s great passion of lost souls. Our “earnest” prayer for the harvest will call workers to the fields. Every generation is responsible for their own part of the field.

For some reason God has chosen to limit Himself by our decision to pray. He patiently waits for us to intercede. Everything seems contingent on us, we can point no finger at God, or accuse Him of ignoring the work that must be done. We must make the decision. Evangelism, and missions, is God’s intense passion. He now shares with us this responsibility.

All of Heaven is standing on its tiptoes, waiting to hear our pleas for the lost.

“Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.”

-St. Augustine

 

“Centurion” Faith, #25

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“Jesus said to him, “I come and heal him.”

Matthew 8:7 (context, vv. 5-13)

See the remarkable faith of a Roman centurion. Can we really fathom the deep depth of such belief? He comes to Jesus with a desire for the healing of a servant. He was doing something that a Gentile would never stoop to do. He sought the healing from a homeless itinerant teacher who happened to be a Jew.

This Roman soldier was an enemy. They occupied the land of Israel. If Jesus decided to withhold a healing (to make a point) this was the time! I’m guessing that His refusal would be a good lesson to the disciples, and the watching crowds.

Although the numbers under the command of the centurion varied, he commonly oversaw up to 6,000 men. In battle, they took position in the very front, they were expected to be the first over a wall or through a breach. The centurion was responsible for every aspect of his men. Every centurion of Rome was expected to display ultimate courage on the battlefield.


Centurion
by Luc Viatour / www.Lucnix.be (CC BY-NC-SA)

Typically it took 15-20 hard years to become a centurion. Service was very difficult, living conditions were rough at best. The centurion was not married, he had no family. To be a centurion’s servant you would be responsible for every aspect of his master’s needs. But most of all, the servants became the centurion’s only family. They stayed with him for the duration of his service.

I suppose this explains much. The servant was paralyzed. The text in Matthew says that he was suffering terribly. No doubt the centurion sought out doctors and treatments, but apparently this didn’t help. He was at wit’s end and really didn’t know what to do. I suppose being helpless will often turn people to Jesus.

Jesus seems to have developed a reputation. Those in need, the desperate, sought out His healing power. It seems like that He was now becoming famous for His ability to heal diseases. It’s interesting but scripture clearly shows that Jesus really didn’t want to be this famous. He repeatedly told people not to tell anyone about their healing.

We can see the centurion’s respect for rank and authority.

He explains his own authority over his own soldiers. When he commands he is obeyed without question. He recognizes command and leadership. This man fully understands, and he clearly acknowledges the ultimate authority of Jesus Christ.

“When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him,” 

“Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith.”

Matthew 8:10

Emulating this man’s faith is the true task of every believer. We must continually put ourselves under the authority of Jesus. His lordship is to be supreme. His rule over us should never be questioned. He commands everything, and we must obey without any reservation. This new depth of faith must now become our true calling.

A couple of observations. 1) There exists a “quality” kind of faith in comparison to a weaker faith. There seems to be degrees of faith. 2) Quality faith recognizes the true authority and supreme lordship of Jesus. 3) Quality faith can be seen in very strange places. 4) This quality faith is meant to be sought and imitated. It is meant to be recognized by every disciple.

“Just as a servant knows that he must first obey his master in all things, so the surrender to an implicit and unquestionable obedience must become the essential characteristic of our lives.”

-Andrew Murray   

The Doves in the Temple, Entry #11

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“And he told those who sold the pigeons, 

“Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” 

John 2:16, (context 13-17)

The temple was meant to be a place where people could seek and find God. It was meant to be a place of seeking, of sacrifice, and a place of worship. It had no other purpose other than linking man to God. It wasn’t architecture, it was ‘reconciliation.’ The temple was God’s plan of making a way for sinners to engage Him.

Along the line somehow it became corrupted. Unscrupulous man had a way figured to make money off of pilgrims. The temple required temple currency, hence the money-changers who made a tidy little profit. The birds, lambs and bulls were suddenly provided to the worshipers as a convenient way to ‘sacrifice.’ (That made it easier if you had the cash to spend.)

“So he took some rope and made a whip. Then he chased everyone out of the temple, together with their sheep and cattle. He turned over the tables of the moneychangers and scattered their coins.”

John 2:15

Was this wrong? Did Jesus really make a “whip?” Did He really flip over tables like some sort of ‘religious’ brawl from some old western movie? I have to believe He did do this. Chapter 2:17 explains things like this:

“The disciples then remembered that the Scriptures say, “My love for your house burns in me like a fire.”

Jesus loved God’s house, at least for what it was designed for at the beginning. (Some translations use the word, “zeal.”) God’s heart is for fellowship with man. He desperately wants to engage us, to bring us directly into the “holy place of the Holies.”

He wants us there for the companionship. He seeks “friends.”

The doves? Jesus never hurt them. His anger wasn’t directed at them, but rather at the humans who made the birds available to be sacrificed. The Lord didn’t focus His displeasure at those fine feathered ones in the cage, rather He commanded that they be removed from the temple. No whip was used here, only understanding of the need for a kinder approach. (They’re just little birds after all.)

He really wants to fellowship with you. He will do whatever it takes to remove things that should’ve never been there in the first place. He ‘discerns’ the issues, and is very gentle, not an ounce more than is necessary will be applied to your life. He is supremely wise and astonishingly kind.

“Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength.”

-Francis de Sales