LORD OF THE NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL

On September 23, 2014September 23, 2014 By Pastor TomIn Bible, Bible Teaching, Christianity, House Church, Jesus, Matthew, Podcast, Religion, SermonLeave a comment

Sometimes it is hard to believe in the supernatural. But it should be obvious that there are giant swaths of reality that will never be explained as anything but supernatural. For example, take the idea of freedom. You can describe what the idea of freedom means, but you can’t study it in the same way you study what we call a “natural phenomenon” (like an eclipse). Instead, it is something “metaphysical,” or, in the old parlance, “supernatural.” There are many other supernatural things as well.

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Matthew Part 29

Matthew #29 . 8:28-34

When He had come to the other side, to the region of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men met Him as they came out of the tombs. They were so violent that no one could pass that way. Suddenly they shouted, “What do You have to do with us, Son of God? Have You come here to torment us before the time? ” Now a long way off from them, a large herd of pigs was feeding. “If You drive us out,” the demons begged Him, “send us into the herd of pigs.” “Go! ” He told them. So when they had come out, they entered the pigs. And suddenly the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and perished in the water. Then the men who tended them fled. They went into the city and reported everything — especially what had happened to those who were demon-possessed. At that, the whole town went out to meet Jesus. When they saw Him, they begged Him to leave their region. (Matt 8:28-34, HCSB)

Mark and Luke record this same incident, but with one fairly large difference from Matthew: they tell of only one demon possessed man (Mark 5:1-20; Luke 8:26-39). This is one of those places that is used by some people to suggest that the Bible contradicts itself and is not reliable. However, I think this misses the point entirely. It reminds me of an old joke. Joe and Jack went down to the lake with Joe’s dog. Joe said, “watch this!” He picked up a stick and hurled it far out into the lake. “Fetch, boy,” he said. The dog immediately went bounding toward the lake, but instead of swimming, the animal ran out on top of the water, picked up the stick, ran back, still on top of the water, and then lay down a few feet away and began gnawing on it. His fur wasn’t even wet.

“So, what do you think?” said Joe.

Jack shook his head sadly. “Pathetic. Your dog didn’t release the stick to you, and he can’t even swim.”

The point of this passage, and of the parallel ones in Mark and Luke, is how Jesus dealt with a serious case of demonization. All three of them agree about that. Changing the number of men involved does not change the message about what Jesus did and who he is.

Secondly, I think the supposed contradiction is easily resolved. First, Matthew was actually there, while Mark and Luke were not; they were reporting something they had heard from other apostles. Mark and Luke do not say “there was only one demon-possessed man.” Instead, it is just that the focus of their telling of the incident is on only the one man – that doesn’t mean there was no second man there with him.

Kari and I have been married for twenty-two years. There are certain stories from our lives and ministry together that we love to tell other people. But usually, Kari tells a story differently from the way I tell it. She focuses on details that are important to her, but don’t seem that significant to me. If you heard both of us tell the same incident, you might notice apparent discrepancies in various small details. If you probed what we were saying, however, you would find that we don’t actually contradict each other – we just tell the story in different ways, with emphasis on different things. I am quite certain that this is exactly the same kind of thing we find when we compare the gospels to each other.

What I think personally, is that there were two demonized men there, but one of them was in much worse shape than the other. I suspect that Mark and Luke decided to focus on the drama of the worst of the two, and kept the story simple by leaving his companion out of it. Matthew, however, experienced it as it happened. He probably didn’t know the back-story of the one man until later. At the time, the most dramatic thing for him was not the back-story of one of the men, but rather the person and actions of Jesus.

So let’s look at Matthew’s telling and see what the Holy Spirit tells us through it.

I find several things here remarkable, and worth looking at. First, there is something about this story that sort of pulls back the curtain, and gives us a glimpse into a corner of reality that frankly, we would often prefer to ignore. I call it the “spiritual dimension.” Others may call it the “spirit world,” or “the supernatural.” Frankly, the Bible doesn’t usually call it something special – in fact, the bible doesn’t really separate it from everyday life – it is just part of reality.

In the Western world, we’ve grown accustomed to the idea that science will eventually be able to account for everything, proving at last that there is no such thing as the spiritual world. For instance, primitive peoples used to think that eclipses of the sun or moon were caused by angry spirits. Now we know that spirits have nothing to do with eclipses. But to any truly thoughtful person, it should be obvious that there are giant swaths of reality that will never be accessible to science. For example, take the idea of freedom. You can describe what the idea of freedom means, but you can’t study it in the same way you study what we call a “natural phenomenon” (like an eclipse). You may come up with some reason, based upon evolution, for the idea of freedom – but that doesn’t explain what the idea actually is. Even if someday scientists are able to isolate the proteins, chemicals and electrical impulses used in the human brain when we think “freedom” they still will not be studying what freedom actually is. If you kill someone who has the idea of freedom, somehow the idea continues to exist. I think it is safe to say that if you raised a generation of people who had never been exposed to the idea, somehow the idea of freedom would find its way into some of those people. Freedom has profoundly influenced entire civilizations – in fact the entire history of the world. Even so, you can’t touch it, or smell it or look at it under a microscope. It has no body; in fact, freedom (strictly speaking) has no physical properties at all. But any intelligent person can see that freedom is a real thing, even if we can’t quite lay hold of it with science.

We know that our reality is filled with non-corporeal things like freedom and hope and love and hate which are real things, and yet cannot be adequately explained or quantified by science. In fact these things are not “natural phenomena” at all. Strictly speaking, we might call them “supernatural,” though most modern people prefer the term “metaphysical.” If we so easily accept supernatural/metaphysical things like these, why should we dismiss out of hand, the idea of non-corporeal spirits?

In any case, if we are to believe the bible, we must realize that this is part of the reality that the bible takes for granted. Jesus, Paul, Peter, Moses, Matthew – all of the biblical writers assume that spirits – both good and evil, are part of what we call reality. In general, it calls evil spirits “demons” and good spirits “angels.” It appears that demons are actually angels who chose to follow Satan when he rebelled against God (Revelation 12:4; Jude 1:6)

I think one of the questions many American Christians have is, “if this is just part of reality, why don’t we see it more?” We always hear missionary stories from places Africa, the Middle-East and my childhood home, New Guinea, describing encounters with demons, but not often from the United States or Europe. I think there are two main reasons why.

First, this passage shows us that in a straight up, power-to-power encounter, Jesus always wins. In other words, demons, when faced with the presence and authority of Jesus, must leave. America and Europe have had, at least until very recently (and perhaps still), a strong presence of Christian disciples throughout the population. If demons operate so obviously, they will be driven out by the authority of Jesus, exercised by his followers. In a culture where there are many disciples of Jesus, it is more effective for the devil to operate through deception and moral corruption, than to risk a direct confrontation with the power of Jesus. In Africa and New Guinea and many other places in the world, the church has not been so strong or present in great numbers. There, demons are less likely to be driven out by the authority of Jesus, even if they overtly torment people.

Second, what there is of overt demonic activity in the United States is often not recognized as such. A few weeks ago I shared a story of deliverance from demonic harassment. If you remember, the individual in question had been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder. Let me be clear, once again. I do not think that every psychological or mental disorder is demonic. Many, (perhaps most), of them are simply about brain chemistry or emotional injury. But I do know that there are some times when we mistakenly call something a psychological or emotional problem when in reality it is demonic.

I think is absolutely a mistake to suppose that every negative thing is caused directly by demonic activity. However, I think it is just as much a mistake to suppose that nothing is ever caused by it. For further reading I highly recommend reading The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis. He weaves a compelling picture of how the demonic might work in ordinary modern life.

Back to the text, we have these evil spirits, connected with the bodies of these two unfortunate men, recognizing the Spirit of Jesus, in spite of the fact that Jesus also present in physical bodily form. Though there are physically three men involved, the confrontation is almost entirely spiritual.

The demons immediately knew Jesus as the Son of God. This is actually very important, because it tells us something significant about faith. These demons obviously knew who Jesus was. They weren’t denying that he was the Son of God. They weren’t denying his power or divinity. But they did not willingly embrace his authority over their lives. They knew who he was, but they rejected him as Lord over them. James writes:

You believe that God is one; you do well. The demons also believe — and they shudder. (Jas 2:19, HCSB)

This goes along with the discipleship theme we spoke about a few weeks ago. Sometimes, we think that Christianity is simply about agreeing with a certain set of doctrines, but living our lives however we choose. Well, here we have demons who agree with the doctrine that Jesus is divine. But they did not follow him. They did not submit to him. With his power, he forced them to leave, but they did not leave out of willing obedience. You might say, in a narrow sense, that these demons held the correct doctrine about the identity of Jesus. But what they rejected was a relationship with him based upon love, grace and obedience. The demons weren’t wrong in their belief. They were wrong in attitude toward Jesus; specifically, they refused to willingly submit to him and obey him. They were rebellious.

So, as Jesus approaches and these rebellious spirits recognize him, they shout: “What have you to do with us, Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?”

The book of Revelation describes a lake of fire, where the devil and his followers are tormented forever (Revelation, chapters 19-20). Jude also predicts the final judgment of fallen angels:

And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day— (Jude 1:6, ESV2011)

These demons apparently have some sort of awareness of the great torment awaiting them. Once again, we sort of looking behind the curtain at things we might not fully understand. Even though they remained disobedient, the demons knew that Jesus had the power to force them to do whatever he commanded. That alone is worth a thought or two. We find this surprising thing: they begged Jesus to let them go into a nearby herd of pigs. The impression I get is that Jesus normally sent demons to a place of anguish and suffering; perhaps just being among themselves with no opportunity to torment anything else was a terrible punishment for them. So they ask that he doesn’t send them (presumably) to hell, but instead lets them escape into a herd of nearby pigs. Even more surprising, Jesus grants their request.

The irony, of course, is that the demons drove the pigs mad, and they all killed themselves in the lake, presumably leaving the demons with no place else to go but to the place of torment after all. Evil always finds a way to do harm not only to others, but to self also.

The reaction of the people in that area still surprises me. They ask Jesus to leave, please. Some commenters suppose that they didn’t like the fact that they lost all those pigs, which were certainly valuable economic assets. However, Matthew says that the men who told about the incident emphasized not the loss of the pigs, but the fact that the two demonized men were restored to wholeness. Even so, the townspeople begged Jesus to leave.

I think the unfortunate truth is that the presence of Jesus stirs things up, makes changes in people’s lives, and many people would rather not deal with that. In addition, many people are afraid when they realize the kind of power Jesus actually has. It was more comfortable for them if Jesus would simply leave them alone. Yes, it was a hassle that no one could go near the tombs where the demon-possessed men were, but they were used to it, and had learned to work around it. Now Jesus comes along, and anything might happen. It wasn’t a comfortable thought for them. They would rather remain comfortable and live with their issues, than have him come in and shake things up.

So what is the Lord saying to you through this scripture today? Did you need to be confronted with the reality of the spiritual dimension? Have you been ignoring the fact that we have enemies there who would do us harm?

Or maybe you needed to be reminded today that Jesus’ power is infinitely greater than that of any demon – even greater than the devil himself. One whiff of the presence of Jesus, one word spoken in His authority, sends any demonic power away. You can trust Jesus. He is Lord not only of nature (as he showed with the calming of the storm) but also of supernature – the spiritual dimension.

Perhaps for you the important thing to hear was that evil finds a way to harm itself. Maybe you’ve been toying with some sin, or some course of action that, deep in your heart, you know is not right. Maybe you think if God just leaves you alone, you’ll be fine. Perhaps you need to remember what happened to the pigs.

Or maybe you need to be confronted with the fact that you’ve been pushing Jesus off to the side in order to keep your life more comfortable. Maybe he’s showing you that, so that you can make a better, choice, a choice to let him work in your life, however painful or scary that may feel.

Another possibility is that you have been hiding behind the same faith that demons have. You believe in Jesus; you have no problem acknowledging that he is the Son of God. But frankly, you don’t want him to have much to do with your life. You want to be in control yourself, rather than let him be Lord. Don’t be fooled: that kind of faith isn’t Christian faith at all. Surrender your “right” to be in charge of your own life, and give it to Jesus instead.

Let the Spirit speak to you right now! Listen and obey.

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WHO IS JESUS? WHAT DID HE THINK OF HIMSELF?

On August 12, 2014August 6, 2014 By Pastor TomIn Bible, Bible Teaching, Christianity, Jesus, Matthew, Podcast, Religion, Sermon2 Comments

Most of the world seems to have an opinion about Jesus Christ. Those who aren’t Christians often view him as a good man, a great teacher or even a prophet. What is remarkable, however is that clearly, Jesus did not view Himself primarily in these ways, nor is it how He is portrayed in the Bible. In other words, what most of the world thinks about Jesus is not what Jesus thinks about Himself. These opinions about Jesus are not supported by the only records we have of his life and teaching.

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Matthew Part 24

Matthew #24 . Matthew 7:28-29

When Jesus finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed by his teaching, because he taught them like one who had authority, not like their experts in the law. (Matt 7:28-29, NET)

I want to return again this week to Matthew 7:13-29. We looked in detail at some of the teachings of Jesus. But there is an underlying assumption in His words that we just barely touched upon. Let me set it up, and then we’ll take look at what he said.

Most of the world seems to have an opinion about Jesus Christ. Many Jewish people, even today, view Jesus as a Rabbi – a good teacher. Islamic people consider him a prophet. Hindus and Buddhists view him as a good moral man. Mormons and Jehovah’s witnesses have more complicated and strange views, but both of those religions also have something to say about Jesus. Even many atheists today view Jesus as a good moral teacher. Some people think of him as an admirable revolutionary. Even people who call themselves Christians often seem to think of Jesus mostly as a teacher and a great moral example for us.

What is remarkable about all of this is that clearly, Jesus did not view Himself primarily in these ways, nor is it how He is portrayed in the Bible. In other words, what most of the world thinks about Jesus is not what Jesus thinks about Himself. What most of the world believes about Jesus is not supported by the only records we have of his life and teaching.

In this passage, Jesus says that the gate and road which lead to life are narrow. John records that he said “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except by me.” The Greek word that Matthew uses for “road” is the same word John uses for “way.” In other words, Jesus explicitly claims to be the only way, the narrow road.

Back up now. These are not the words of a great moral teacher. The truth is, Jesus is not a good teacher unless his teaching is accurate and righteous. He is not a good moral person unless he tells the truth. And what he said about Himself is not that he was a moral man, or a prophet or a good teacher. He said he was the only way of salvation.

There have been a few people from time to time who have said that they appreciate my biblical teaching. Some people have even said I’m a good teacher. I’m grateful to hear that. But imagine if I started saying things like this:

On that day many will say to Me, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in Your name, drive out demons in Your name, and do many miracles in Your name? ’ Then I will announce to them, ‘I never knew you! Depart from Me, you lawbreakers!’

Would I still be a good teacher if I said that? I would be implying that I will be in charge of your eternal destiny on judgment day. I would be implying that I deserve the title “Lord.” I would be implying that people will (and should) do miracles in the name of Tom Hilpert. That sort of thing does not make me a good teacher, or a moral man. Quite the opposite. That sort of talk would make me either insane, or an evil cult leader, or both.

You see, what Jesus said and implied about himself was very startling, and very controversial. If what he said about himself was not true, then it would be ridiculous to call him a good teacher.

Let’s review a few more things he said in the “sermon on the mount”:

“The poor in spirit are blessed, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs. (Matthew 5:2)” Wait a minute now. Who has the right say “the kingdom of heaven is theirs”? Jesus presumes that He has the authority to say to whom the kingdom will belong. That’s not good moral teaching. If He doesn’t have the authority to say it, it is mere arrogance and conceit.

How about this one: “If you are persecuted for my sake, you will have a great reward in heaven” (paraphrase of Matthew 5:11-12). Think on that again. To see how startling it is, imagine you said such a thing. All throughout this “great moral teaching,” Jesus assumes that He himself is the key to goodness, life and the kingdom of heaven. Who is He to say that what is inside someone’s heart (for instance, lust or hatred) is a sin? Who is He to say which person will receive a heavenly reward and which won’t?

Who is He indeed? That is the central question for every person on earth.

As I mentioned, Jesus says that on the last day, many will come to him and say “Lord, Lord…” This title of Lord is very significant. When God called Moses to lead the people out of Egypt, Moses essentially said “Who is talking to me?” God told Moses that his name is YHWH. There are no vowels in Hebrew, but it is generally pronounced “Yahweh.” This is God’s personal name, the name by which He interacts with His people throughout the Old Testament. After God instructed the Hebrew people not to take his name in vain, they began to pronounce it differently, incorporating the title “The Lord” into God’s name. (Incidentally, the result of that is the pronunciation “Jehovah.”) Many English translations today put “THE LORD” in where the Hebrew says “YHWH” because that reflects the Hebrew practice. The Greek translation of the Old Testament, finished two-hundred years before the time of Jesus, uses “kyrios” (“Lord”) for this personal name of God. Although “kyrios” can also mean “sir” or “person in authority” it is most definitely used for God’s personal name.

To sum it all up, when Jesus calls himself “Lord” (kyrios) he is claiming the name of God for himself. When the disciples call him Lord, they are doing the same thing. The phrase “Jesus is Lord” means exactly: “Jesus is Yahweh,” or “Jesus is Jehovah.”

Matthew uses the word “Lord” (kyrios) 73 times. Once, it refers to someone speaking with respect to Pontius Pilate. The other 73 times it refers to either the God of the Old Testament, or Jesus. [Sometimes it is used in parables told by Jesus, but in each case, the figure in the parable with that title represents Jesus or the Father].

So what it comes down to is this: Jesus claimed to God Himself, the personal God of the Old Testament. When we look closely at the sermon on the mount, we see that underneath all of His teachings is the presumption that this is true. We will see that presumption lies underneath everything Jesus ever said.

If Jesus isn’t who he claimed to be, in fact, the Lord, he’s either a liar, or a lunatic. What he most definitely cannot be is a just a moral man, prophet or a good teacher. C.S. Lewis put it like this:

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell.

Just to encourage our faith, let’s consider these two other alternatives. Was Jesus a liar? Was he just pretending to be divine? People have reasons for the things they do. So what convincing reason would Jesus have to pretend to be God, even when he knew he was not? To ask it another way, what did he get out of it?

Cult leaders in this day and age often collect women for themselves and father children with dozens of their followers. They keep their followers insulated from the world around them, and set themselves up in opposition to the powers that be. So they gain sex and power over others from their lies. Many cult leaders also amass wealth, usually by getting their followers to turn over their assets to them.

Jesus did nothing like this. He did not marry even one woman. He did not gain power or wealth. He wasn’t even in charge of the finances of his little group, and there is no record of him asking anyone for money, though he did tell one person to give money to the poor (not to himself). He didn’t isolate his followers from the world around them.

Jesus turned away potential followers by the hundreds. He told many people not to speak of his miracles. He slipped away from a crowd that was ready to call him King and follow him (John 6:15). Even at his death, he continued to act as if he believed he was God (John 18:36; Luke 23:39-43). Surely, if he was deliberately lying he would have given it up before they killed him. To put it simply, from a human perspective, speaking and acting like he was God did not benefit Jesus in any discernible way. It is simply not realistic to suppose that Jesus deliberately lied when he claimed to be God. Everything he gained by pretending to be God, he gained in eternity, not this life. In other words, if it wasn’t true, he got nothing for his deception. Such a person would be utterly pathetic and pointless. But Jesus clearly acted like a man on a mission. There is nothing pathetic about him.

The second of the three alternatives is that Jesus was insane, that he truly believed he was God, but was not. We have evaluated his behavior as a liar, and found it is simply not plausible. So let me ask this. Does Jesus act like a crazy man?

Bear in mind, we aren’t talking about being “mildly unbalanced.” Consider this analogy. If I think I am the greatest writer of my generation, I am arrogant, and out of touch with reality, but it’s likely that I can still communicate lucidly, and get around in life just fine. I might need to be taken down a peg or two, but I don’t need to be institutionalized. However, if I think I am the 19^th century author Charles Dickens, that is much more removed from reality. People speaking with me would leave with the impression that there is something seriously wrong with me, and I would need significant medical intervention. Now, suppose I think I am a skunk, and I behave accordingly. I am so far removed from reality that I won’t even communicate effectively. I would be, to put it clinically, “bonkers.”

A man truly thinking he is the God of the Old Testament God is not just someone with an inflated ego. It is an even bigger break from reality than a man who thinks he is a skunk. If Jesus was wrong, he wasn’t just a few sandwiches short of a picnic – he was short the basket, the blanket and the entire outdoors.

If Jesus believed he was the Lord, and he was mistaken, his words would be the ravings of a lunatic. So I put it to you – does he sound like that to you? Does he come across like a man who thinks he is a skunk, or even a man who thinks he is a celebrity from a previous century? Are his words and ideas nonsensical?

I think anyone who has read the gospels knows that Jesus doesn’t sound or act like a lunatic. On the contrary, he seems to have a very clear grasp on human nature. His parables reveal an incisive awareness of the world around him, and how other people think and behave. He exhibits compassion and humor and even appropriate anger. Though he didn’t try to gather a large group of followers, certainly many people were drawn to him. Can you imagine large crowds following someone today who claimed to be Charles Dickens? How about someone who acted like a skunk? No, I don’t see this as a plausible alternative either.

The finally possibility – the only remaining reasonable alternative – is that Jesus is indeed Who and What He claimed to be, that is, the Lord. He was not a great teacher unless what he said is true. He was not a moral person unless his claim to be God is true. If he was a liar, he was surely the most pathetic and pointless figure in history. If he was crazy, then we are all skunks.

I bring all this up for three main reasons. First, I want to encourage you in your faith. There are many opinions about Jesus. That in and of itself should be a clue. Almost no one can manage to ignore Him. And we find out that that what Jesus says about Himself turns out to be the most reasonable and reliable alternative, though it is also undoubtedly the most remarkable one. Faith is still required. We cannot see Jesus in our day and age, but he still asks us to trust him. But perhaps the leap is not quite as far as you had thought. All things considered, it certainly sounds like Jesus was who He claimed to be.

Second, I think these things are good for us to know when we talk with others about Jesus. Again, faith is required, but reasonable investigations suggests that what we believe is quite likely to be true. It may be helpful for some of your friends, neighbors and co-workers to have the information in this sermon. It may help someone to decide to make that leap of faith. Because in the end, only two opinions about Jesus matter – His own opinion about Himself, and yours about Him. According to Jesus, eternity hinges upon those two things.

Third, I bring this up because I want make sure that in all the details and teachings, we don’t lose sight of Jesus Himself. The gospel message is about our salvation, yes. But more than that, it is about Jesus. Jesus is the focal point of all history and all creation. Our faith isn’t about ourselves, it is about Jesus Christ. Sometimes I get wrapped up in myself and how God can work in my life. But I think God prefers that I get wrapped up in Jesus, and how I fit in to His life. I need to be reminded to take my focus off myself, and put it on Jesus. The writer of Hebrews puts it this way:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. (Hebrews 12:1-3)

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus. That is the way to avoid growing weary, and losing heart. Why don’t we put that into practice right now?

Thanks again for making use of Clear Bible.

I want to remind you again that we are a listener-supported ministry, and that means, first and foremost, that we are supported by your prayers. We need and value your prayers for us.

You could also send a check to:

New Joy Fellowship

625 Spring Creek Road

Lebanon, TN 37087

Thank for your prayers, and your support!

“DO NOT JUDGE”: ONE OF THE WORLD’S MOST MISUSED BIBLE VERSES.

On July 15, 2014July 11, 2014 By Pastor TomIn Jesus, Matthew, Podcast, Religion, Sermon2 Comments

It has never made sense to me to try and get people who do not trust Jesus to live according to His teachings. Many Christians condemn where they should not, and fail to correct where they should.

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Matthew Part 21

Matthew #21 . Matthew 7:1-6

“Do not judge, so that you won’t be judged. For with the judgment you use, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye but don’t notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and look, there’s a log in your eye? Hypocrite! First take the log out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. Don’t give what is holy to dogs or toss your pearls before pigs, or they will trample them with their feet, turn, and tear you to pieces. (Matt 7:1-6, HCSB)

Matthew 7:1-5 has probably been one of the most misused, misunderstood passages in the Bible during my lifetime. Let me give you a few examples of how it is used wrongly.

· Suppose a friend of mine claims to be a Christian, but he watches pornographic movies and visits nude-bars. He sees nothing wrong with doing these things. I might say to him, “You claim to follow Jesus. But the lust in your heart is something wrong, Jesus died to make it right. You shouldn’t continue to feed your lust that way. Jesus is calling you to repent.” He replies to me (quoting the bible) “Jesus said, ‘Don’t judge others!’”

· Suppose someone else says, “I’m a Christian, and I don’t believe sex is wrong for gay people or unmarried people.” I might direct the person to Ephesians 5:1-5; Colossians 3:5-7; Galatians 5:19; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10; 7:8-9; 1 Timothy 1:10 and Romans 1:26-27. Their response is “Well, Jesus said, ‘Don’t Judge!’”

“Don’t Judge” has become a kind of rallying cry for many Christians who are ignorant about what the Bible teaches. They use it against anyone who ever dares to suggest that their actions might not be what Jesus wants from them.

It has also become a stock-response for people who are not Christians at all. If a Christian suggests in a public forum that any activity is immoral, or even harmful, we are quickly silenced with “Jesus said, ‘do not judge.’” In fact “judging” or “intolerance” has become one of the only things that our society as a whole is willing to call an evil thing. Why non-Christians care that Jesus said ‘do not judge,’ I have no idea. I suspect they don’t, and are only looking for a chance to accuse us of hypocrisy.

So how do we respond to these things? Remember, the entire New Testament – including the words of Jesus – comes to us through the teaching and writing of the apostles. We Christians believe that the Holy Spirit inspired the apostles to remember and record the words of Jesus. We believe equally that the Spirit inspired them to write down the other teachings found in the New Testament also. To put it another way, the teaching of Jesus is the teaching of the apostles, as the Holy Spirit inspired them to remember and write. So let’s look at what the Holy Spirit has to say about holding on to the truth, and telling others the truth:

“If your brother sins against you, go and rebuke him in private. If he listens to you, you have won your brother. But if he won’t listen, take one or two more with you, so that by the testimony of two or three witnesses every fact may be established. If he pays no attention to them, tell the church. But if he doesn’t pay attention even to the church, let him be like an unbeliever and a tax collector to you. (Matt 18:15-17, HCSB) [This one was said by Jesus, by the way, later on in this very same book written by Matthew]

Publicly rebuke those who sin, so that the rest will also be afraid. I solemnly charge you before God and Christ Jesus and the elect angels to observe these things without prejudice, doing nothing out of favoritism. (1Tim 5:19-21, HCSB)

I solemnly charge you before God and Christ Jesus, who is going to judge the living and the dead, and because of His appearing and His kingdom: Proclaim the message; persist in it whether convenient or not; rebuke, correct, and encourage with great patience and teaching. (2Tim 4:1-2, HCSB)

There are many more verses like those I have listed here. Jesus Himself, just a few minutes before saying this, was telling his disciples to avoid being like the Pagans and the Pharisees. Before that, he told them to avoid all kinds of different sins. Obviously then, “do not judge” should not prevent us from speaking the truth in love and gently correcting Christians who stray. It does not mean we cannot call something “sin” when the Bible calls it sin. It should not prevent us from having moral standards, or believing in certain absolute truths. It doesn’t mean we should never be discerning, or use our critical thinking. Paul describes it like this:

For the grace of God has appeared with salvation for all people, instructing us to deny godlessness and worldly lusts and to live in a sensible, righteous, and godly way in the present age, while we wait for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. He gave Himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to cleanse for Himself a people for His own possession, eager to do good works. Say these things, and encourage and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you. (Titus 2:11-15, HCSB)

But also obviously, Jesus did mean something by his statement. What was it? For “judge,” Jesus uses the word “krino.” It is a common word, used in ninety-seven different verses of the New Testament. Sometimes it simply means “to firmly decide.” More often it means something like “official judgment.” It is used frequently to describe God judging the world, or Jesus judging at the end-times. In these contexts, it might equally suggest condemnation. It is used many times for “sitting in judgment” as an official government magistrate does, or a court of law. At times, this words is clearly used to mean “condemn.”

I think when we consider all that New Testament has to say on this matter, I think there are three important aspects of Jesus’ command: “do not judge.” First, we should not condemn other people. We can say that something is wrong without condemning the person who is doing it. The approach I usually take is something like this: “Look, I want to make sure you know what the Bible says about this. What you do about what the Bible says is not my call. I’m telling you what I know of the Bible, and the rest is between you and God.”

The second aspect of not judging is that we should not set ourselves up in the place of God. It isn’t our place to decide someone’s eternal fate. It is our place to say what the Bible says. But we need to stop there. Saying what the Bible says is not the same as condemning someone. The Bible may say a particular behavior is sinful. If we pass that information along – with the goal of helping our fellow Christians – then we have not set ourselves up as judges. We are only saying what the Bible already says. What the other person does about it is between them and God. We need to bear in mind that we are not the authorities here – God is the one true judge.

Third, Jesus was talking to people in culture of First Century Judaism. The people in that culture, particularly the religious leaders, were prone to call out others and sit in judgment over them for things that were not even sins in the eyes of God. For example, they made up their own rules about the Sabbath, and then judged people for not obeying them. Understanding that context, I think we can safely say that Jesus is also telling us not to judge one another over things that are not in the Bible, or over man-man regulations. Once again, we have other passages in the New Testament that explain this:

Accept anyone who is weak in faith, but don’t argue about doubtful issues. One person believes he may eat anything, but one who is weak eats only vegetables. One who eats must not look down on one who does not eat, and one who does not eat must not criticize one who does, because God has accepted him.

Who are you to criticize another’s household slave? Before his own Lord he stands or falls. And he will stand. For the Lord is able to make him stand.

One person considers one day to be above another day. Someone else considers every day to be the same. Each one must be fully convinced in his own mind. Whoever observes the day, observes it for the honor of the Lord. Whoever eats, eats for the Lord, since he gives thanks to God; and whoever does not eat, it is for the Lord that he does not eat it, yet he thanks God.

For none of us lives to himself, and no one dies to himself. If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. Christ died and came to life for this: that He might rule over both the dead and the living.

But you, why do you criticize your brother? Or you, why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before the tribunal of God. For it is written: As I live, says the Lord, every knee will bow to Me, and every tongue will give praise to God. So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God. Therefore, let us no longer criticize one another. Instead decide never to put a stumbling block or pitfall in your brother’s way. (Rom 14:1-13, HCSB)

So the Holy Spirit is saying, through Jesus and through Paul, “There are some issues that should not be issues. Don’t sit in judgment or condemnation over each other. Especially, don’t get into fights about things that are not actually commanded or forbidden in scripture.”

I know someone who was in a church where they condemned you for wearing blue jeans. I’ve been judged and criticized for not being the kind of pastor that some people expected me to be. When I sat down with my critics, I learned that what they were upset about had nothing to do with what the Bible says pastors should be like, or do. Sometimes people are judged for the music they like, or what they wear, or for drinking a glass of wine with dinner.

The Bible does have certain standards of Christ-like behavior, including moral standards. Jesus is not telling us to ignore those, or throw them out, but rather to approach each other in gentleness and humility about those things. And there is also lot of freedom in how we live out and express our faith. Jesus is telling us not to judge each other at all in these areas of freedom.

Jesus did not only say: “do not judge.” He had more to say on the whole subject. Jesus actually says we should examine ourselves first, and then we will be able to help someone else who has a problem. He says we should recognize that the same standards apply to us, as well as the other person. In other words, when there is an issue of Biblical morality or false teaching, we need to be humble, and recognize our own faults before we approach someone else to help them with their problem. But Jesus’ words here (in context) assume that we should still approach the person, once we are appropriately humble. The Holy Spirit inspired Paul to flesh it out like this:

Brothers, if someone is caught in any wrongdoing, you who are spiritual should restore such a person with a gentle spirit, watching out for yourselves so you also won’t be tempted. Carry one another’s burdens; in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. (Gal 6:1-2, HCSB)

We are not to approach each other in condemnation. We are not to set ourselves up as judge in God’s place. We are to be humble, to let our own lives be under the authority of God’s Word (the Bible) and then – only then – in gentleness, with the goal of helping fellow-Christians, we can approach someone else about a sin.

Jesus’ last sentence in this section seems a little strange. He says:

Don’t give what is holy to dogs or toss your pearls before pigs, or they will trample them with their feet, turn, and tear you to pieces.

Make no mistake, this is also about judging others. I think what he is saying is that we should not waste time trying to bring grace-filled correction to people who are not humble or open enough to receive it. Proverbs says:

The one who corrects a mocker will bring dishonor on himself; the one who rebukes a wicked man will get hurt. Don’t rebuke a mocker, or he will hate you; rebuke a wise man, and he will love you. (Prov 9:7-8, HCSB)

In other words, we don’t take the log out of our own eye, and then graciously approach someone who isn’t even a follower of Jesus and try to help them stop sinning. When we share the truth about Jesus, the good news, of course we talk about how our sins have separated us from God and from each other. But our goal in sharing the good news is not really to get people to just quit sinning. It is to exhort people turn to Jesus for grace, forgiveness and help.

Look at it this way. Suppose you have a friend who is not a Christian, who gets drunk all the time. Your friend is sinning, and, according to the bible she will go to hell because she has not trusted in Jesus who call Himself the only Way, Truth and Life. Now, suppose you convince her that it is a sin to get drunk, and she stops doing it. She is now not sinning in that way, and yet she will still go to hell because she still isn’t trusting in Jesus. All your efforts to get her to stop sinning have not helped her at all spiritually.

Not only that, but it has never made sense to me to try and get people who do not trust Jesus to live according to Jesus’ teaching. Suppose one of my Muslim friends came to me and said, “Tom, you need to stop eating pork. According to the Koran, it is a sin to eat pork.”

I would say, politely, “I don’t follow the Koran. I don’t believe what it says. It doesn’t matter to me what it says about pork.”

But too many Christians try to get people who don’t even trust Jesus to follow what the Bible teaches. Jesus is saying here, “Don’t bother. There’s no point to it. It’s like feeding dogs a gourmet meal, or dressing pigs up with pearls. It’s a waste of time and effort, and the precious truth of God’s word will be trampled in the mud.”

I don’t think he means that we should view unbelievers like dogs or pigs. He’s just saying, trying to bring correction to people who do not believe is silly and pointless.

Paul wrote to the Corinthians about this subject:

I wrote to you in a letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. I did not mean the immoral people of this world or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters; otherwise you would have to leave the world. But now I am writing you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a believer who is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or verbally abusive, a drunkard or a swindler. Do not even eat with such a person. For what business is it of mine to judge outsiders? Don’t you judge those who are inside? But God judges outsiders. Put away the evil person from among yourselves. (1Cor 5:9-13, HCSB emphasis mine)

So, I actually have no moral problem with people who do not claim to be Christians, and live in sin. They are morally consistent. In fact, I would find it surprising if they refrained from sin even while they do not trust Jesus. Now, of course, I pray for such people to turn to Jesus. I pray that they see the futility of their lives without him. I pray that they fully experience how their sin separates them from God and from each other, and become desperate for the forgiveness and grace they can have in Him alone. But I’m not interested in making them clean up their lives first. I’ll let the Holy Spirit do that, once they have put their trust in Jesus.

On the other hand, if someone claims to be a believer, and yet persists in an ongoing pattern of sin, I will examine myself, and then humbly, gently try to remind them what the Bible says. Paul says (inspired by the Holy Spirit) to let them know they are no longer acting like believers. Even so we are supposed to do this without condemning, and without putting ourselves in God’s place, as if we are the ones who get to decide their fate.

This is a nuanced teaching. We are to try and bring correction to fellow believers (not outsiders) when they stray from what the Bible teaches. But we do so humbly and gently, and not judgmentally. We bring correction by reminding them what the Bible says; we are not supposed to bring judgment and condemnation. And we don’t even do that with those who are not Christians. In addition, we are not to bring any kind of judgment at all in areas where the Bible gives us freedom.

Let the Holy Spirit speak to you about this subject right now.

Thanks again for making use of Clear Bible.

I want to remind you again that we are a listener-supported ministry, and that means, first and foremost, that we are supported by your prayers. We need and value your prayers for us.

You could also send a check to:

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Lebanon, TN 37087

Thank for your prayers, and your support!

MARRIAGE = GOD’S FOUNDATION FOR CIVILIZATION

On June 17, 2014June 14, 2014 By Pastor TomIn Bible, Bible Teaching, Jesus, Matthew, Podcast, Religion, SermonLeave a comment

God offers grace to divorcees, like he does to each and every person. In the meantime, his plan is for those who are married to stay married.

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Matthew Part 17

Matthew #17. Matthew 5:31-32

Let’s get some things out in the open right away: It’s an awkward thing to teach on the topic of divorce. To put it bluntly, the reason it is awkward is that the Bible quite clearly condemns it, and yet literally half the people who have been married in this country have also been divorced – Christians included. So I realize that what scripture teaches on this subject may offend some people, hurt others, and even tempt some people to feel condemned. I want to strongly encourage you to resist all those feelings (which are often understandable), and instead listen today to the voice of the Holy Spirit.

Frankly, however, the divorce rate is what it is, in part because churches stopped teaching what the Bible really says about divorce. James 3:1 says that those of us who teach the scriptures will be judged more strictly, and so I believe I have a responsibility to teach clearly on this subject, even if I risk offending some people.

If you have been divorced, I want to plead with you to seriously consider what God says about it. I also want to assure you, on the basis of the Bible, that God certainly offers forgiveness to divorcees, exactly the same way he offers forgiveness to those who gossip and slander, to those who steal, lie, cheat, envy, lust, are selfish, or commit any other sin. Divorce has huge consequences on individuals and societies, but it is neither less nor more of a sin than any other sin. We have all sinned in various ways – not one of us is perfect, and we all deserve eternal punishment as a consequence. But the good news is, Jesus died to take the punishment for what we have done wrong, divorce included.

So please understand, when I teach on divorce, I am not singling anyone out, and I do not somehow think it is the most terrible thing anyone can do. But I have a serious responsibility to clearly explain what scripture says about it, just as I had to do with anger, and lust, and will have to do with everything else that Jesus said in the book of Matthew.

Let’s start with Jesus’ own words:

“It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.” (Matthew 5:31-32).

This is not the only place where Jesus talks about divorce. In Matthew 19:4, the Pharisees asked him if divorce was “ok.” He replied:

“Haven’t you read…that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female, and said ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore, what God has joined together, let man not separate.”

In other words, he is saying that human beings ought not to tamper with marriage, which is a union God has created and blessed. When the Pharisees asked him specifically why Moses allowed divorce, Jesus had this shocking reply:

“Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery.” (Matthew 19:8-9)

Just in case there was any question about how God feels about this topic, read Malachi 2:16

“I hate divorce, says the Lord God of Israel.”

Please be very clear on this – God does not hate divorced people – he hates the practice of divorce, the sin. If you are divorced and you have any doubt about whether God still loves you, please consider the cross that Jesus died on. Whipped raw with blows that had killed many lesser men, Jesus hung on the cross and drowned in his own body fluid in slow, barbaric, tortuous death. He did it for you. He had the power to avoid that terrible death – the thing that kept him there all the way to death was his love for you. When you consider that, there should be no doubt in your mind that he loves you.

Let’s think about this topic a little bit differently. Smoking cigarettes is bad for your health. There are many, wide-ranging and long-term health consequences to smoking. If you are presently a smoker, there’s no point beating yourself up because you got yourself hooked. Suppose you are suffering from the effects of smoking. The important thing is to figure out what to do now, and how to manage those health problems, now that you have them. Even if you recently got hooked, condemning yourself for the past won’t help you in the present.

On the other hand, it is vitally important to make sure that people who are not yet smokers understand that it is a really bad idea to start. Telling non-smokers to stay away from cigarettes is not the same thing as condemning those who smoke. And it is worthwhile to risk offending a few smokers in order to save others from the damage that smoking causes.

Teaching on divorce is kind of the same way. Divorce is a bad idea, most of the time. There are many, wide-ranging and long-term consequences to divorce. But if you’ve already done it, there’s no point in condemning yourself, or letting others condemn you. Acknowledge your mistake, receive the forgiveness of Jesus, and focus on what he wants to do in your life right now. And I think it is worthwhile to get the message out to others before they also experience some of the long-term problems caused by divorce.

Now that I have made people who both smoke and are divorced feel doubly bad, let’s move on. First, God views marriage as a permanent union. That’s why divorce is a sin. No matter what the laws of the government are, once two people are married, in God’s eyes they remain so until one of them dies. So if a couple divorces, and they remarry other people, in the eyes of God they are simply committing adultery. Now, I am aware that many of you reading this have already divorced and remarried. Please don’t compound the problem by divorcing again. That would only be to sin again. Do ask for forgiveness for your sinful action of divorce, and do thank the Lord for that forgiveness, and live in your new marriage as a forgiven person. The good news about Jesus is, he gives us a clean slate to work with. Jesus’ forgiveness is the answer; multiple divorces are not.

I think divorce breaks God’s heart. He created human beings to be in permanent community with each other. The means he gave to do this, is the family. And the foundation of family is marriage. When a marriage is torn apart, it destroys something God was creating. It does violence to our human need for permanent community based on love and relationship (in fact the Hebrew word for divorce is very closely related to the word for violence). It has now been proven that divorce usually has significant negative consequences on children of divorcees. In the early seventies, some ridiculous studies came out, claiming that divorce really doesn’t faze kids. Some kooky people claimed (and some still do) that divorce is actually better for the kids than a rocky marriage. But the longest most respectable study of the effect of divorce on children came out in the mid 1990s, and it showed that children of divorce struggle much more with long term depression, and they exhibit a whole host of emotional problems that stay with them well into adulthood. I think God weeps whenever divorce papers are signed. If you have had a part in putting your children in this situation, remember that God is available to them to bring them healing and wholeness. His grace and forgiveness covers this also. Commit your kids to him.

Now, many of you will have noticed that Jesus makes a sort of “exception.” He implies that when there has been “marital unfaithfulness,” it is not a sin for the partner who has not been unfaithful to divorce the other. Let’s make it clear that “marital unfaithfulness” in these passages, means simply and only, sexual activity outside the marriage. It doesn’t mean that Bob can divorce Sally because she hasn’t been “faithful” in meeting his needs for beer and backrubs. In fact the Greek word for “marital unfaithfulness” is porneia, and it means simply any sort of sexual activity with someone you are not married to. So when one partner commits adultery, the other is free to divorce. Even so, there is nothing in these passages to suggest that this person has to divorce his or her spouse, or even that he or she should – only that the spouse in this situation may do so without committing a sin. There are, of course many important factors in this sort of decision, and if there are children, they should be high on the list of considerations.

For those of you who are single, these teachings of Jesus ought to create very strong motivation for you to choose carefully when seeking a spouse. If God sees marriage as permanent, you had better start seeing it that way too. Divorce should never be “an option” for a Christian couple. This might also motivate you to do everything you can to help support the marriages of your married friends.

For those of you who are currently married, it is vital, if you haven’t already, to train yourself to see your marriage like God sees it – a permanent union until one of you passes away. When you have that viewpoint, it is possible to work through any difficulties, because you know that no one is going anywhere, that you have time a commitment on your side.

God doesn’t like divorce. It is a sin, and it breaks his heart. It violates the very way he created people to be. There is one instance where God allows it, though even then, reconciliation is God’s first choice. If you have committed the sin of divorce, be assured, it is not an unforgivable offense. But if you have never admitted to yourself and to God and to another person that it is a sin, I highly recommend that you do so right now, and ask God for forgiveness. And if you are married right now, please learn to view your marriage as absolutely permanent – the way God designed it to be.

Invite the Holy Spirit to speak to you right now, and lead you.

Thanks again for making use of Clear Bible.

I want to remind you again that we are a listener-supported ministry, and that means, first and foremost, that we are supported by your prayers. We need and value your prayers for us.

You could also send a check to:

New Joy Fellowship

625 Spring Creek Road

Lebanon, TN 37087

Thank for your prayers, and your support!

DOES JESUS FORGIVE RACISTS?

On May 6, 2014May 1, 2014 By Pastor TomIn Bible, Bible Teaching, Jesus, Matthew, Podcast, Religion, SermonLeave a comment

(picture from cnn.com)

By rushing to agree with everyone else and pile on with the condemnations, Christians often lose a chance to show the character of Jesus to the world.

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Matthew Part 12

Matthew #12 . Chapter 5:1-12

It seems to me that we could spend one week on each beatitude, however that would probably mean we’d never get to the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, let alone the rest of Matthew. So we are going to try to briefly examine the last five Christian character traits today.

First, a quick review. Jesus-followers should be spiritually poor, acknowledging our true position before God and our need of Jesus. Next, we should mourn our spiritual poverty (among other things) and bewail the sin that brought us to this place. We should face loss and brokenness with courage and determination to walk through it as we look to Jesus as the source of all comfort. In addition, we should wait quietly and meekly for God’s deliverance, not trusting in our own strength or resources to save us.

I want to make sure we understand that most of these things are very counter-cultural. Our culture blesses people who have it together, not the spiritually destitute. Our culture teaches us to avoid almost all mourning, in any way possible. Certainly, we do not learn from society to mourn sin and brokenness. Our culture teaches assertiveness and “going for it;” not humbly waiting on God to give “it” to you.

With that we come to the fourth character trait and its accompanying blessing: “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (matt 5:6). This is the natural continuation of the spiritual condition that is poor, mourning and meek. Once more, let me remind you that this character trait is not natural to our culture. What does our culture teach us to hunger and thirst for? Pleasure, comfort, wealth and recognition. It has been a very long time indeed since society at large has held up moral righteousness as goal to strive for, something to hunger after.

What does this character trait really mean? What does it look like in a 21^st century disciple?

I see a several aspects of righteousness that seem to apply here. The first is that the true disciple does more than just acknowledge his position before God, mourn his sin, and wait quietly. The true disciple yearns to be truly right with God. The righteousness that is so eagerly desired here is the very thing that is given to us by Jesus because of his death on the cross and resurrection to eternal life. It is the righteousness that is ours by faith. As an old praise song says:

I am covered over with the robe of righteousness that Jesus gives to me.

I am covered over with the precious blood of Jesus and He lives in me.

Oh, what a joy it is to know my Heavenly Father loves me so, He gives to me my Jesus.

And when He looks at me, He sees not what I used to be, but He sees Jesus.

The person who is truly spiritually poor, who truly mourns for her sins, who meekly waits for God, also desperately wants her condition changed. Such a person wants his old deeds to be wiped away as if they had never happened. He wants to stand tall without shame. Such a person hungers for the righteousness of Christ.

A second aspect of righteousness is that of continuing to do right. The disciple of Jesus, the person who follows him, has already been given the righteousness of faith. But the disciple doesn’t only want past sins covered by Jesus’ righteousness – those who trust in Jesus have the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit creates a yearning within us to live uprightly. Thus, I believe the Good News Bible is right in translating this verse:

“Happy are those whose greatest desire is to do what God requires; God will satisfy them fully!”

God’s satisfaction of this desire to live righteously is vitally important. We can’t live in a righteous way apart from God any more than we can attain our salvation apart from him. But when we hunger and thirst for righteousness, he releases his power through the Holy Spirit to enable us live rightly. We shall be satisfied!

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy” (Matt 5:7).

At first glance, this one does not seem so counter-cultural. The truth is, however, our culture isn’t merciful – it just has different standards than the bible. For example, modern society is not merciful to people who commit sexual sin. It’s just that the dominant idea is that there are no real sexual sins anymore. In other words it isn’t mercy that causes our culture to refrain from condemning people for sexual sin. It is simply that they agree in with what people are doing. Read carefully here, and learn what this means: You can’t give mercy to someone unless you think they deserve condemnation in the first place. Mercy is forgiving people who have truly done wrong.

We can test this idea when see how society reacts to people who do something that is actually considered a sin by the culture. For example, just this week (as I write this) the owner of the LA Clippers (an NBA Basketball team) was caught on tape making racist comments. There has been no mercy for him from anybody. Sadly, even Christians have joined in with the condemnation.

Some of you may say, “But wait a minute. Christians don’t support racism.” Of course we don’t. But the whole point of mercy is that it is given to someone who doesn’t deserve it, someone who has done wrong. You can’t give mercy to a person unless you think they deserve condemnation in the first place. The truth is, if Christians were going to condemn this man, we should have been doing so long before his racism came to light. He openly sinned (according to the Bible’s definition of sin) in many other ways before his racism was publicly known. The fact that Christians are now joining in the universal condemnation is a sign that we have drifted far from Biblical faith, and we are more concerned about being called racists than we are about manifesting the love of Jesus to sinners.

I affirm that racism is sinful and evil. As a Jesus follower, I also affirm that I must be ready to show mercy to anyone who will receive it. It may be offensive to say this, but I truly believe that Jesus would be merciful to a racist, if the racist gave him a chance by repenting. Now, I don’t have any evidence that this man has repented of racism, or of any of his other sins, either. That’s a whole different story. But I bring this all up to point out that our culture is not merciful at all; and if we intend to be merciful to people who don’t deserve it, it will offend people.

Jesus makes forgiving others central to the gospel message:

“For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your father will not forgive your sins.” (Matthew 6:14-15)

Forgiving others is not an option for the Christian. If we refuse to forgive, than we cannot receive forgiveness ourselves. I will deal with this subject in detail when we reach Matthew 6.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (Matt 5:8). Jesus was speaking to a crowd of Jewish people who were very concerned with external purity. He announces his counter-cultural aims by speaking of a purity of the heart. Even though the Old Testament speaks quite a bit about purity of heart, the Jewish religion by the time of Jesus had already begun to move beyond the Old Testament alone, and had started to rely on non-scriptural rabbinical proclamations and commentary. In other words, though Jesus’ focus on internal purity was a not a new teaching, it was a teaching largely ignored by Jews in Jesus day, and to some extent, since that time as well. If a person washed according to the proper ceremony, and ate kosher food and avoided dead bodies and so on, then he was pure. But Jesus, throughout the gospels, contests this idea, insisting that God is a God of relationship, not just ceremony, and what matters is what is in the heart.

I believe that in context, this purity of heart also refers to how Christians should deal with each other, and other people. What this means is that a follower of Jesus should be completely honest, sincere and well-intentioned in all dealings with others. We should not be hypocritical, or pretend to be a sort of person we are not.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God” (Matthew 5:9). As always, there are two points to make. First, I believe that Jesus is talking here about evangelism. Peace with God was a promise foretold by the ancient prophets, (see Ezekiel 37:26 for example) and fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Romans 5:1 says,

“Therefore since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

A peacemaker is therefore one who helps to spread this peace-with-God – a person who assists in the reconciliation (peacemaking) between God and human beings. This is to be characteristic of all Christians. I can think of no other good reason why the peacemaker should be called a ‘son of God.’

Second, a peacemaker is someone who helps reconcile people to other people. Now, there are many caveats (“buts”) to this sort of peacemaking. It does not mean compromising the truth. It does not mean appeasing rage-filled unrepentant sinners. Peacemaking does not forbid us from ever taking a stand, or standing our ground. It is not “peace at all costs.” And many times, it involves a painful process. As John Stott says:

“When we are ourselves involved in a quarrel there will be either the pain of apologizing to the person we have injured or the pain of rebuking the person who has injured us.”

We are, however called to try to end discord, rather than to create and perpetuate it by gossip, slander or even silence.

“Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 5:10). Jesus qualifies his statement here by saying “because of righteousness” because there is no special blessing in being persecuted when we deserve it – the blessing comes when we don’t. As Peter writes:

“For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God. But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and endure it, this is commendable before God. To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his steps.” (1 Peter 2:19-21).

This is becoming more and more relevant to our times. Christians, even in the Western World, are increasingly insulted and falsely accused. More and more people are willing to say “every kind of evil” against us when we take a stand for what the Bible actually says. I want to say that this is unfortunate; however Jesus says there is actually blessing in it.

Although many of us have experienced the pain of having our beliefs publicly distorted and derided, none of us in the Western world (as far as I know) have yet suffered physical persecution for following Jesus. Other brothers and sisters elsewhere in the world have, however. Throughout both communist and Muslim countries, Christians are censured, deprived of rights, imprisoned and sometimes even killed for their faith. The testimony of Richard Wurmbrand, a Lutheran pastor who was tortured by the communists in Romania, is that the presence of Jesus came in an incredibly tangible, special way when he was being tormented. He did indeed, testify that this special sense of God’s presence was a blessing that accompanied his persecution. I can only believe him and trust Jesus’ words. In the book of Revelation we also see a special honor reserved for martyrs of the faith. Persecution is something I tend to fear, but Jesus actually wants his followers to look upon it in a positive light as condition that is marked by his special blessing.

Now, I think Jesus provides us with an excellent summary to all this in the next few verses: we’ll look at that next time. But for now I want to reiterate something else: We can’t do this. There is no way we can really hunger for the righteousness we need, show the mercy we should show, be pure in heart, be a true peacemaker, or endure persecution as blessing. There is no way that we can form that sort of character inside of us just by trying harder.

This is the character that Jesus wants to form inside of us through the power of the Holy Spirit. Trying won’t get us there. What will get us there is surrendering to Jesus, saying to him: “Yes, I agree that this is the sort of person you want me to be. I agree that I want to be this sort of person. I can’t do it, but I ask you to do it, and I say ‘yes’ to you when you want to change me.”

Why don’t you take a minute and ask him to do that right now?

COMFORT IN MOURNING

On April 29, 2014April 25, 2014 By Pastor TomIn Bible, Bible Teaching, Jesus, Matthew, Podcast, Religion1 Comment

Therefore, as with all of these blessings, it is not so much the condition described which brings blessing, but rather, being in that condition at the same time as knowing and trusting Jesus

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Matthew Part 11

Matthew #11 . 5:4-5

As we return to Matthew this week, let me remind us where we are. Jesus has climbed a small mountain with his disciples, and he is teaching them what Jesus followers “look like” and how they are to live. He has begun with a list of character traits, which nowadays, for obscure reasons, we call “the beatitudes.” These character traits are key to understanding the entire sermon on the mount. In fact, one way to look at it is like this:

· Jesus first explains that these character traits (the beatitudes) should be part of the life of every disciple.

· Following that, in the rest of the sermon, he gives practical examples of these character traits in action.

For example, in chapter 6, he talks about depending upon the Father for everything we need in life – including finances and other material resources. We can’t totally rely on the Father like that unless we become “poor in spirit” – understanding our complete dependence upon the Lord, and his gracious desire to take care of us. “Blessed are the poor in spirit” is of course, the first character trait that Jesus spoke about, which we looked at last time. For now, we will move on to two more of these Jesus-follower character traits.

Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.

This statement of Jesus is full of meaning. I believe Jesus may have been thinking of several different kinds of “mourning” including:

a. The grief of lost loved ones. The Greek word used here for “mourn” describes lamenting for someone who has died. It is the sort of grief that consumes a person, and cannot be hidden. Therefore I believe that among other things, Jesus was referring literally to people who had lost loved ones to death. This is stunningly counter-cultural for me – how can we say someone who has lost a husband, a wife, a child, a sibling or a parent is blessed? The point is, of course, we can’t say that – but Jesus can. And the reason he does say it is simply and only because of his own resurrection. Remember, Jesus is talking here to Christians – people who know him, who have placed all their hope in him alone. Therefore, as with all of these blessings, it is not so much the condition described which brings blessing, but rather, being in that condition at the same time as knowing and trusting Jesus. In other words, not everyone who mourns the loss of a loved one is blessed – it is only those who know Jesus who receive true comfort for their mourning. When we lose a loved one who is in the care of Jesus, we know that we will see that person again. We know that in fact, we get to spend eternity with our Christian loved ones in the presence of God. We know that even before that, our loved ones are in a better place. Now, on the other hand I have often struggled with the idea of losing a loved one who doesn’t know Jesus – there doesn’t seem to be much comfort there. And yet, I receive in faith the promises of Revelation 21:4

“He [God] will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

There is a tremendous grief in losing someone who is close to you, but the blessing comes in the fact that this grief is temporary – for they shall be comforted.

b. There is another kind of mourning that brings blessing in Jesus. I call it the grief of brokenness. This is not so much mourning about losing someone else, but rather losing something inside yourself, or something that you desperately wanted or needed. For some, it might be that they didn’t receive the approval they sought from their parents. For others, perhaps they simply do not feel loved for who they are. Still others might be seeking self-significance, or a marriage partner, or healthy family relationships. What the world around us counsels in these situations is to do whatever it takes to make up for the loss in our lives. So people needing approval try to become successful or famous, hoping the adulation of the crowds will fill them up. Some try to make other people give them what they want – this is where we see unhealthy patterns of relationships developing. Jesus counsels us instead to mourn. The key to being comforted is first to mourn. So many of us (myself included) do not like to acknowledge those areas where we are truly weak and needy – it isn’t pleasant to go there. So we try to by-pass the mourning part, and go straight to the comfort. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. But when we acknowledge our brokenness, when we truly mourn the fact that we did not, and will not, get what we needed from circumstances or other people – then Jesus has an opportunity to heal us, and to bring comfort. This is a very deep truth, but very important. We can’t receive the blessing of comfort that Jesus promises unless we first learn to mourn. The mourning of brokenness, like the mourning of lost loved ones, is an acknowledgement that we can’t do anything about the situation, and that it grieves us to the core. It is only when we give up control that Jesus can begin to comfort. We must learn to mourn by giving up the right to try and fix ourselves. When we do mourn our own losses of love, approval, significance, relationship or anything else, we find the comfort of Jesus.

c. The grief of sin. The third sort of mourning I believe Jesus is talking about is heartfelt sadness and repentance for the sins we have committed. Our society has undergone a tremendous transformation in its attitude toward sin. Forty years ago, no one wanted to be a sinner, because everyone understood that there were consequences for sin. People cared about sin – it mattered. Today, most people freely acknowledge that they are sinners – but they don’t seem to care about it, and it doesn’t seem to matter to them. In short, although many people freely admit to sinning, they do not mourn about it. Sin does not grieve their hearts. Jesus is offering a better way. Listen to what James, the brother of Jesus writes about mourning for sin:

God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves then to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands you sinners, and purify your hearts you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will lift you up. (James 4:6-10, italics added by me)

When we truly, in our hearts, mourn for the sins we have committed, Jesus offers comfort. When we are sorrowful and grief stricken for the crimes we have perpetrated against Jesus and against our fellow human beings, God gives grace. We shall be comforted.

Very briefly, I want to consider the next blessing –unless we begin to move a little faster, we will never get through the sermon on the mount, let alone the book of Matthew.

Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. The way most of us remember this verse is something like “blessed are the meek…” This verse used to bother me, along with the poem “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild…” Meekness is not something which is initially attractive to me – frankly, it sounds wimpy. But what does Jesus mean by it? I think it is obvious when we read the gospels that Jesus was no wimp. So what does he mean when offers this meekness, or gentleness as an important trait of a disciple? While researching the Greek word for gentle/meek (“pra-us,” if anyone cares) I found an excellent definition that seems to me to really get at the heart of what Jesus is saying here in Matthew 5:5. I’m not sure that I could word it any better than the lexicon, so instead I will quote at length:

Meekness toward God is that disposition of spirit in which we accept His dealings with us as good, and therefore without disputing or resisting…The meek are those wholly relying on God rather than their own strength to defend them against injustice. Thus, meekness toward evil people means knowing God is permitting the injuries they inflict, that He is using them to purify His elect, and that He will deliver His elect in His time. (Is. 41:17, Lu. 18:1-8) Gentleness or meekness is the opposite to self-assertiveness and self-interest. It stems from trust in God’s goodness and control over the situation. The gentle person is not occupied with self at all. This is a work of the Holy Spirit, not of the human will. (Gal. 5:23)^{^[1]}

Therefore the key to gentleness and meekness is to trust God to act on our behalf and to not rely on our own strength, which in comparison to God’s, is pitiful anyway. The result of such meekness, such trust? We inherit the earth, or in other words, the promised land. The promise is very germane to the business of trusting and being meek, because we cannot grab the land, or get it for ourselves. We receive it only as we trust God to get it for us.

I want to remind us again, that we cannot, simply through sheer effort, manifest these character traits in ourselves. We can’t just suddenly feel blessed as we mourn, or suddenly give up our own self-interests. Instead, remember, these are character traits of Jesus himself. The way we “get them” is first. to trust Jesus, and second, to allow him to own our lives, and to express His life and will through us.

May we be blessed this week as we mourn and remain humble and trusting!

Thanks again for making use of Clear Bible.

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[1]Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon, (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.) 1995, emphasis added by me.

WHY CRUCIFIXION?

On April 18, 2014April 18, 2014 By Pastor TomIn Bible, Bible Teaching, Podcast, Religion4 Comments

Jesus was killed by torture. There is really no other way to say it. It began with three beatings during the course of about eighteen hours.

On Good Friday, we remember the crucifixion of Jesus – how we was killed by torture on a Roman cross. On Easter Sunday, we celebrate his resurrection – the fact that he physically came alive again and appeared to many of his followers. But the truth is, the two go together. If we had a crucifixion with no resurrection, the result would be simply despair. It would mean that Jesus was not who he said he was, and there would be no hope for us for forgiveness or eternal life. But a resurrection without the crucifixion first would also be meaningless. Jesus wouldn’t be dead in the first place, so there would be no need for one. But if Jesus simply revealed his full glory, and then went back to heaven, it would be great for him, and everything he said would be proven true…but we would still have no way of receiving forgiveness or eternal life.

Jesus was killed by torture. There is really no other way to say it. It began with three beatings during the course of about eighteen hours. First, Jesus was taken to the high priest’s house – and you can bet they weren’t gentle in the taking. Most likely they pushed him and perhaps even struck him on their way there. Once there, he was surrounded by an angry mob, and beaten with fists (Matthew 26:67-68; Mark 14:65; Luke 22:63-64). At least some of the blows were to his head. This kind of beating alone would probably put most of us in the hospital, at least overnight. Picture an LA street gang finding the member of a rival gang alone, and deciding to teach him a lesson. You can imagine several people holding the poor man up, while others took turns punching him. It is possible that Jesus sustained a concussion from this, and certainly he received multiple bruises; possibly even broken ribs or teeth. Remember, there was no pain medication in those days.

After a mock trial from the Jewish religious leaders, they took him to the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, who did not live in Jerusalem, but was there to try and keep the peace during the Passover festival. A standard Roman response to suspected trouble makers was to have them “scourged.” Pilate had this done to Jesus. In common language, this means he was whipped – not horse-whipped, but beaten with an instrument designed to inflict pain on human beings. Instead of one “tail” to the whip, it had several strips leather. At the end of each strip was fastened rocks or bits of glass or even pieces of lead. So each strike of the whip caused multiple gashes, laying open the flesh, and bruising the muscles as well. Most probably Jesus was given the 39 lashes, which had been known to kill people occasionally. Remember, Jesus had been beaten up by a mob, just hours earlier. In addition to his other injuries, Jesus certainly lost a lot of blood from the whipping, and perhaps sustained more broken ribs. Between these two beatings, the overall physical shock to his body was enormous. Coming so close together, there is no doubt that many men would have died from the combination of these two traumas.

After that, Jesus was turned over to the Roman cohort for crucifixion. Before they did their job, however, the entire cohort had fun mocking him. This involved about 600 brutal, hardened soldiers. They jammed a crown made of thorns on his head. They took a staff most likely made out of a cane stem (something like bamboo, but smaller in diameter) and gave it to him, and then took it away and used it to beat him over the head. This cane rod would probably not have created any serious injury, unless it was used to strike Jesus on the face, and thus open up cuts on his cheeks. Even so, they were likely hitting the crown of thorns, driving thorns into his head, and the direct blows themselves would have been very painful.

But all that stuff – physical punishment which could easily have killed many men – was only preliminary to the suffering which killed the Son of God. After these severe beatings, they strapped a big beam to his back and made him carry it a mile or two. The beam was likely equivalent to a 4”x4”, perhaps six or eight feet long. Considering what he had been through, it was no wonder he needed help. When they got to the place, they put metal spikes through his hands, into the crosspiece. Though tradition pictures these as going through the palms of the hands, it is more likely that they put the spikes through his wrists between the two bones of the forearm, so that the flesh would not tear away and drop him from the cross. Either way, that alone would have been painful beyond belief. His legs were slightly bent, and then they pressed his feet, one on top of the other, and drove a spike through them into the upright beam of the cross. Tradition pictures a kind of triangular piece of wood for his feet to rest on, but this is doubtful. Then they raised it up.

At this point, Jesus had two choices. He could let the weight of his body hang from his wrists, tearing away at the flesh, and rubbing on bare bone. Or he could straighten his legs, and push up against the spike driven through his feet, inflaming the wounds there, and grinding against broken metatarsals and tendons. Each movement probably drove splinters into his raw, lacerated back. If he he had an itch, he couldn’t even scratch it. If he had to go to the bathroom, it would be right there in front of everyone.

Over time, victims of crucifixion spend more and more time hanging from their arms, since pushing up on the spike through the feet was intensely painful, and required effort. As Jesus’ body weight pulled on his arms, and kept them above shoulder-level, his lungs gradually began to fill with fluid, and breathing became difficult. The only relief for this came from thrusting against the spike in the feet. By pushing himself up this way, he could straighten his body and breathe more freely. But the pain was such that no one could endure this for long. It also required strength and energy. He was undoubtedly weakened by his beatings to start with, and as his body grew weaker through this torture, he got less and less air. In this position, fluid also collected around his heart, putting pressure on it. As a result the organs slowly got less blood and oxygen.

Incidentally, this was why, late in the day, they broke the legs of the other men who were crucified alongside Jesus. By breaking their legs, it became impossible for them to straighten up and get air, and so they died more rapidly.

Jesus was taken to the Roman governor early in the morning. He was put up on the cross before noon, possibly as early as eight or nine in the morning. He endured this suffering until it killed him, about eight hours later. It killed him, either by filling his lungs with fluid and suffocating him, or by the pressure of the fluids surrounding his heart, which could have caused it to stop.

This was actually a relatively short time for death by crucifixion. When we read the gospels, we find that Pilate was surprised when he heard that Jesus had died by late afternoon. But then, most people being crucified were not beaten three times with hours before they were put on the cross. Jesus’ suffering began not when he was put on the cross, but in the early hours of the morning, with the first beating.

But the suffering wasn’t only physical. He also went through emotional and spiritual agony.

First, he endured the anticipation of suffering. He knew, long before what happened, what was waiting for him. When I have some special event approaching in the future, anticipation is almost half the joy of it. I enjoy the feeling of looking forward to a good thing coming. But the reverse is also true. If you know about something you dread that is coming up, part of the negative experience is anticipating what you don’t want to go through. It is clear that Jesus knew about his approaching suffering, and that he dreaded it. That is why he said hours before he experienced any physical torment:

“My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”

³⁹Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” (Matt 26:36-39)

He also experienced humiliation. He was the King of the Universe, the very One whom everyone around him professed to worship. And yet, in order to accomplish his purpose, he had to allow them to mock him, to spit on him, to humiliate him as if they were right and he was wrong. There was a physical aspect to the humiliation as well. It is a terrible experience to be a man, and be struck, and yet not be able to strike back. In addition, they almost certainly stripped him completely naked when the put him on the cross.

In addition, Jesus experienced abandonment. All his followers ran away and left him to his fate. His faithful lieutenant, Peter, denied him publicly. But even worse, he was abandoned by God. 2 Corinthians 5:20 says this:

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

God the Father abandoned Jesus the Son in a way that he has never abandoned any human being, ever, nor ever will. The bible teaches us that if we choose to reject God’s grace through Jesus, then ultimately God allows us to do that. In other words, God doesn’t reject us, but he gives us the freedom to reject Him. If we choose that, we will experience what it is like to be without God – but it will be our doing not His. He does not willingly forsake us. But in the case of Jesus on the cross, it was the opposite. Jesus never turned away from the Father. He followed him obediently, and perfectly to the end. But when the Father made Jesus into sin – for our sake – He turned away and abandoned him. He had to, if Jesus indeed took our sin on himself.

All this is the depth of God’s love for us. This is picture of the true horror of our sin. This crucifixion is the gulf that would exist between us and God if Jesus had not taken our place.

But the devil mis-stepped. Death is Satan’s most potent weapon. But it didn’t work on someone who had never sinned. When he twisted Judas into betraying Jesus, when he gloried in the sadistic death that he had no doubt inspired the Romans to develop, when he rejoiced at the evil that destroyed the physical body of God’s son, he was actually embracing a time-bomb. The bible suggests that Jesus descended to hell (1 Peter 3:18-20). I think he went to hell, and there it all blew up in the devil’s face.

I’ve preached at length in the past about how all the evidence points to an actual, physical resurrection of the body of Jesus. He was raised by God. His body was the same and yet different, just like the grain of wheat, and the wheat plant, are both completely wheat, and yet the plant is more, different and better than the single grain from which it rose.

Jesus’ resurrection proved that his suffering was not in vain. It means that it truly was all on our behalf, and not for his own sake. It means that death is not longer the end, or just the dark doorway into into an evil eternity of suffering or oblivion, but rather just a portal that we pass through into eternal life and joy. As the writer of Hebrews says:

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2)

As we consider all this, I want us to be very aware of one thing. God’s grace is free to us, but it was not free to Him. It was very costly. It is free in the same sense that a diamond is free to the girl who is getting engaged. It is free, but it still costs a lot. And like the diamond engagement ring, it is offered not just as a trinket, but as an invitation into a lifelong relationship that will change the course of our future forever. A single woman doesn’t accept a diamond ring from the man she loves and then go on in her life without him, except for maybe occasionally remembering him fondly. No, when she accepts that gift, she enters a new relationship, a relationship that is strengthened and reaffirmed daily as they make their lives together. The acceptance of that gift is life-changing.

What Jesus did for us on the cross – the grace that God offer us – is far more precious than any diamond ring that ever has, or ever will, exist. It should not be received any less casually than a marriage proposal. To receive this gift is to give your life to Jesus, to commit to Him for forever, to live in a daily relationship with him. It is life-transforming.

WAS JESUS JUDGEMENTAL?

On March 4, 2014March 1, 2014 By Pastor TomIn Bible, Bible Teaching, Christianity, Jesus, Matthew, Podcast, Religion, SermonLeave a comment

While Jesus is not a judgmental figure, the whole world is judged by its response to him. He does “separate the wheat from the chaff,” simply by being who he is.

When we trust Jesus and continue on in that trust, God the Father includes us in all the grace and blessings of Jesus.

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Matthew Part 6

Matthew #6. 3:11-17

Some people have called John the Baptist “The Last Old Testament Prophet.” The Old Testament prophets often pointed out the sins of the Israelites, and of the nations around them, and warned that God would bring judgment upon them if they did not repent. John had a similar message, but there were two key differences. First, while the Old Testament prophets aimed their message at whole nations, John’s message is for individuals. He isn’t calling the nation of Israel to repent – he is calling you to repent. Second, the Old Testament prophets predicted (correctly, it turns out) that judgment would come about through war and destruction. But the judgment that John saw coming was to come about from an individual – the Messiah.

Matthew records a difference between John’s baptism and that of Jesus: John’s was symbolic of repentance; the baptism of Jesus would accomplish something internally – it would bring “the Holy Spirit and fire.” John says some things about Jesus that may seem a little strange to us:

“His winnowing shovel is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn. But the chaff he will burn up with fire that never goes out.”

First, this is strange to us, because we don’t know what a winnowing shovel is, and maybe not even chaff. Back in those days, when people harvested wheat, they would generally take it to a threshing floor. Usually, this was simply a cleared, flat area on a hilltop. They would beat the heads of the grain, either by gathering stalks and bashing the heads on the ground, or maybe by hitting the heads with a stick or wooden hammer. They would throw the empty stalks aside. What was left was a mixture of wheat grains, very short pieces of stalk and pieces of the outer part of the wheat seed structure, called “chaff.” At this point, the famers would take a winnowing shovel. They would scoop up the mixture of wheat grains and chaff, and throw it up into the wind that blew across the hilltop. The chaff is lighter than the wheat grain, so the wind would carry that away, while the grain fell back to the ground on the threshing floor. Obviously, the grain was collected and stored. The chaff was sometimes burned up. This picture is one of getting rid of useless material that you do not want, and refining and saving what you do want.

Now that we understand what John is saying, it is still strange to us, in that we often do not think of Jesus as bringing judgment. There is no question that judgment is what John means. Those who belong to God are going to found and refined and saved, and those who do not are going to blow off in the wind, and, after, be burned in the fire. John’s main point is: “It’s time to get ready! Repent, be among those who are saved!”

I think in our modern times, we view Jesus as just mellow and loving and sort of “all encompassing.” That is reinforced by many bible verses in which Jesus declares God’s love, and many other bible verses which teach that grace and forgiveness come through Jesus Christ.

But the bible also teaches that Jesus is the dividing point between those who will be saved, and those who won’t. Jesus is the meeting point for both grace and judgment, salvation and condemnation. Even Jesus taught this:

Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. (John 14:6, HCSB)

In Jesus, we know the way, the truth and life. But without Jesus, we are lost. This is both grace and judgment. It is important to understand though, that the judgment and condemnation come only when we reject Jesus. John explains in his gospel:

For God did not send His Son into the world that He might condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. Anyone who believes in Him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the One and Only Son of God. “This, then, is the judgment: The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. (John 3:17-19, HCSB)

Thus, everyone in the whole world is judged by how they respond to Jesus. If they respond in faith, the result is grace and salvation. But those who reject Jesus are separating themselves from God’s grace and life:

And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. The one who has the Son has life. The one who doesn’t have the Son of God does not have life. I have written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life. (1John 5:11-13, HCSB)

So, while Jesus is not a judgmental figure, the whole world is judged by its response to him. He does “separate the wheat from the chaff,” simply by being who he is. If you are in Jesus, you are the wheat, you are safe in God’s storehouse. If you are not in Jesus, you are the chaff.

Throughout history, Jesus has been this dividing point. Many people are willing to look at Jesus as a good moral teacher. Many more are happy to acknowledge him as a prophet. But when it comes to putting faith in Him as fully God (God the Son, one God along with the Father and the Spirit) and as a personal savior, many people seem to balk. I have had many cordial conversations about religion with my Muslim friends. One time, a friend and I had a long talk, and he said, “Tom, we have so much in common. But there is just one point that is a problem. You worship Jesus as God. According to Islam this is the one thing that will send you to hell.”

I said to him, “That’s interesting, Abdul, because that is the one problem I see, also. You don’t worship Jesus as God, and according to Christianity, this is the one thing that will send you to hell.”

Neither one of us was upset with the other. Most Muslims I have met in America are very open to talk about religion without getting upset. But we had both arrived at the same conclusion: Jesus was the point of division. How we respond to Jesus meant life or death, heaven or hell. Though we differed on which response went which way, we agreed that our attitude toward Jesus was the defining thing. Jesus’ very life and message sorts out who belongs to God and who does not.

If you haven’t put your trust in Jesus, if you haven’t surrendered your life to him, now would be the time. You are either in Christ, or you are not. If you are in Jesus, you are in God’s favor. If you are not in Jesus, you are not in God’s favor, and you are in judgment.

By in Jesus, I mean you are continually trusting him as you go through life. It is a daily (sometimes hourly) habit of continuing to believe who Jesus is, what he has done for us, how he feels about us, and continuing to rest upon it. This is not a one shot deal. This is not a situation where you just say, “Well I got baptized, so I’m good now.” Or “Well, I got saved five years ago, so I’m good now.” This is a process of continually putting our trust in Jesus, day by day. That is what it means to be “in Jesus,” and we are saved and safe, only in Jesus. I’m not saying that you have to work hard and live the Christian life on your own strength in order to be in Jesus. But I am saying that to be in Jesus, you need to continually rest in Him with trust in what his Word says, and in what he has done for us.

After John has been talking about Jesus, Jesus himself showed up and asked to be baptized. I’ve mentioned previously that John and Jesus probably knew each other before this; in fact John responded in faith to Jesus when they were both still babies in the womb! So when Jesus asks to be baptized, John is shocked.

But John tried to stop Him, saying, “I need to be baptized by You, and yet You come to me? ” Jesus answered him, “Allow it for now, because this is the way for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he allowed Him to be baptized. (Matt 3:14-15, HCSB)

I think what Jesus was saying there was all about his mission, his very reason for coming into the world. He came to take on humanity, and the sin of humanity. Jesus entered into repentance for that on our behalf. He identified with us through John’s baptism. It was the first public step in fulfilling his mission to bring righteousness to the world. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says:

God made the One who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. (2Cor 5:21, HCSB)

Jesus was baptized as part of that “becoming sin” for us. I don’t mean he became sinful, but I mean he identified with our sinful humanity, and God eventually (at the cross) placed all of the sin of the world upon him, so that we could be called righteous by placing our faith in him.

Matthew writes:

After Jesus was baptized, He went up immediately from the water. The heavens suddenly opened for Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming down on Him. And there came a voice from heaven: This is My beloved Son. I take delight in Him! (Matt 3:16-17, HCSB)

“This is my Beloved son, I take delight in him!” These words came from heaven not only at Jesus’ baptism, but also again, on a mountainside, as recorded in Matthew 17:5-6.

While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said: This is My beloved Son. I take delight in Him. Listen to Him! When the disciples heard it, they fell facedown and were terrified. (Matt 17:5-6, HCSB)

The apostle Peter wrote about this in his second letter. He says that the repetition of this voice from heaven means that the message is “strongly confirmed.”

For we did not follow cleverly contrived myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ; instead, we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For when He received honor and glory from God the Father, a voice came to Him from the Majestic Glory: This is My beloved Son. I take delight in Him! And we heard this voice when it came from heaven while we were with Him on the holy mountain. So we have the prophetic word strongly confirmed. You will do well to pay attention to it, as to a lamp shining in a dismal place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. (2Pet 1:16-19, HCSB)

Peter says we would do well to pay attention to this. So let’s pay attention to it.

First, I think this reminds us that it’s all about Jesus. Sometimes we get confused, and we think faith is all about what Jesus did for us. That’s important, but when we look at things that way, it puts the focus on ourselves. Quite apart from us, Jesus is focal point of history. This word from heaven reminds us that.

Second in Jesus (see above) this is God’s attitude toward us. When we trust Jesus and continue on in that trust, God the Father includes us in all the grace and blessings of Jesus.

Praise the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens. For He chose us in Him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love He predestined us to be adopted through Jesus Christ for Himself, according to His favor and will, to the praise of His glorious grace that He favored us with in the Beloved. We have redemption in Him through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace that He lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding… We have also received an inheritance in Him (Eph 1:3-8,11 HCSB)

The New Testament is full of verses explaining that in Christ, we have what God gives Christ. In other words, if we are in Christ, God looks at us, and has the same attitude toward us that he has toward Jesus himself. So, in Jesus, God is looking at us, and saying “You are my son, my daughter. I am so pleased with you.” Really. I know we are inclined to think that can’t be right, but listen to the Holy Spirit through Isaiah:

Let the wicked one abandon his way and the sinful one his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, so He may have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will freely forgive. “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not My ways.” This is the LORD’s declaration. (Isa 55:7-8, HCSB)

God viewing us “through the lens of Jesus,” so to speak, doesn’t make sense to us. But it makes sense to him. So, if you trust Jesus today, I want you to hear these words spoken to Jesus, applied also to you: You are his beloved son or daughter. He looks at you, in Jesus Christ, and say, “I am so pleased with you.”

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Thank for your prayers, and your support!

WELCOMING JESUS

On February 25, 2014February 22, 2014 By Pastor TomIn Bible Teaching, Christianity, Churches in Lebanon, Jesus, Matthew, Podcast, Religion, SermonLeave a comment

The kingdom of Heaven is still at hand. The Lord still wants to work more fully in your life. We can still help prepare the way and welcome him in by repentance. The Holy Spirit does the work, all he needs is our willingness.

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Matthew Part 5

Matthew #5 . Chapter 3:1-10

I want to remind you that when I preach, I am really trying to do two things. First, I want to make sure we understand the basic background of passage, and the basic meaning of it. Second, I am always “listening” to see what the Holy Spirit might want to say to us through it. Sometimes I focus more on the first thing, and sometimes more on the latter. I guess my point is, I doubt that any single thirty-minute-teaching can capture everything there is to capture about a bible passage. So, I assume that in some ways I am leaving some things out that might be said about any bible passage. Just keep it mind – there’s always more to learn, even from bible passages you know pretty well.

At this point, Matthew skips from the early childhood of Jesus directly to his adulthood. Luke tells us that John the Baptist was the son of Zechariah the priest and his wife Elizabeth. Elizabeth was related to Jesus’ mother, Mary, and in fact, Mary spent some months with her while they were both pregnant. According to Luke, John responded to Jesus, even when they were both unborn babies.

In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. (Luke 1:39-44, ESV2011)

Because their mothers obviously had a close relationship, it is almost certain that John and Jesus knew each other as children. Certainly, by the time they were adults, before John began to preach, John knew Jesus personally (Matt 3:14), and believed he was the Messiah.

John’s father was a priest, descended from Aaron. This meant that John would have been technically eligible to serve as the high priest. Instead, however, he went into the wilderness of Judea and began to preach. It’s hard to pin down exactly where he was. In the Old Testament, “the wilderness of Judea” referred to an area south and east of Jerusalem, in the vicinity of the Dead Sea. However, it records that John baptized people in the Jordan river, which is north of the Dead sea. Most likely, John wandered around for a little bit.

Not much is said here, but John’s ministry was very remarkable in many ways. The journey from Jerusalem to the Jordan river where John preached was extremely rough. To go from Jerusalem to listen to John would have involved a round trip of several days, and it included very hard travel and the danger of bandits along the way. And yet, his preaching was so compelling that many people made the trip to hear him. Jewish historian Josephus records that John began a significant movement that lasted even into the 100’s AD. Obviously, many of his followers missed his message about Jesus as the Messiah, and started their own sect of Judaism. John the Baptist was a very big deal. Matthew’s concern, however, is not with John himself, but his role in preparing people for the Messiah, Jesus.

Matthew says:

3 For he is the one spoken of through the prophet Isaiah, who said:

A voice of one crying out in the wilderness:

Prepare the way for the Lord;

make His paths straight!

This is the eighth fulfilled prophecy that Matthew refers to. Besides reinforcing his theme of fulfilled prophecy, Matthew shares this to explain that John’s remarkable ministry was all aimed at preparing people to receive the Messiah when he arrived.

How, exactly, did John prepare people to receive Jesus? Matthew says the basic message was: “Repent, because the Kingdom of Heaven has come near” (3:1). That’s a very brief summary, of course. I think the idea was that John preached that God wanted to do something for people personally, that he was drawing near to His people. The appropriate response to the presence of God is realize how we’ve strayed away from him, and turn back to him, away from our sins and wanderings.

The people responded by confessing their sins, and being baptized to show that they were repenting. By the way, the New Testament makes a distinction between the baptism of John, which was for repentance, and baptism into Jesus (see Matthew 3:11; Matthew 28:19; Acts 2:38; Acts 19:4; Romans 6:3).

When the religious leaders came to see John, and to be baptized by him, he had some harsh words for them. As I mentioned earlier, John was enormously influential and popular with ordinary Jewish people. Most likely, the religious leaders came to be baptized by him in order to gain popularity with the “regular folks.” But John saw through that, and castigated them for it.

His response to them made two basic points. First, he told them to “produce fruit consistent with repentance. (verse 8).” In other words, “if you are truly repentant, act like it.” Second, he warned them not rely on their ancestry as Jews to do them any good with God (verse 9).

Let’s stop here for this time, and try and unpack what the Lord might say to us through this text.

First, is the Kingdom of Heaven near? I believe since the coming of the Holy Spirit in about 30 AD, the Kingdom of Heaven has always been near to anyone willing to receive it. If you are reading this and you have never turned your life over to Jesus, he is coming to you right now. He wants to shower you with his own real presence, with grace, joy and a new start on life. The way to receive that is the same way shown in this text: to repent. To repent means to turn back, to go a completely different way. If you can read these words, it is not too late for you to repent. Jesus can handle whatever horrible thing you’ve done, whatever you’ve left undone, and even whatever terrible thing was done to you. But you need to drop it, to turn away from it, and turn to Him.

Many of you reading this blog have already repented and turned to Jesus, and received him as your Lord and your salvation. That’s wonderful. But for us who have done that, Jesus is still at hand. He still wants to show up in our lives in greater and more profound ways. He wants to give us even more grace, more joy, more peace, a more abundant life in Him. To receive these things from him, our path is the same: repent!

Let me give you an example. Suppose there is a Christian man who wants more of Jesus in his marriage. He is not happy with his marriage. He is unhappy with his wife. Jesus wants to come into this part of his life – the kingdom of heaven is near. Now, the Holy Spirit, working in this man, shows him that he often makes cutting remarks to and about his wife. The Holy Spirit is calling him to repent. Repentance is not saying “Yeah, I know that’s wrong. It’s just hard because she never does what I want. Sorry.” It is isn’t even saying “I admit that I do that, and I admit that it’s wrong.” To repent is to fully own the fact that you have been wrong, with no excuses, and then to turn away from it, for all intents, forever.

Now, our turning away forever almost never happens perfectly. In the case of the man with the unhappy marriage, he commits to turning away from cutting down his wife. Suppose normally he makes an average of six cutting remarks each day. When he first repents, he is so sincere that for a week, he makes none. But after a while, he loses some of his focus, and he goes back to making some cutting remarks, but maybe now only three each day. The Holy Spirit reminds him again, and he renews his repentance and consciously relies on the Holy Spirit to help him, and he gets it down to two cutting remarks each day. He realizes he needs help, and so he asks a Christian friend to pray for him about this, and to hold him accountable by asking him about it regularly. Now, the man usually does not make any cutting remarks to or about his wife at all. As time goes on, prompted by the life of Jesus inside him, he begins to actually compliment and encourage his wife. From time to time, he still slips and makes a nasty comment, but it is no longer a habit, and for the most part, he has become kind and encouraging to his wife. Within a year or two, his attitude is transformed, and he and his wife are closer than they have been for years.

I think that is a realistic picture of what the fruit of repentance looks like. Sometimes Jesus transforms us dramatically in a single moment. But a lot of the time, what is actually happening is that we are “working out our salvation” (Philippians 2:12). What I mean is, the Lord uses gradual transformation like this to strengthen our hearts and minds and to make us more like him. When you repent you are on a new path. You may not walk the path perfectly, but you are no longer going the old direction. Your your progress, however slow, however often you might fall down, is in the new direction, toward Jesus.

I want to make something clear however. A lot of people admit their sins, but do not really repent of them. A lot of people feel, in the heat of a moment, that they want to do better next time, and even resolve to do so, but they do not fundamentally commit to going a different way forever. If you are a Christian, and have struggled with the same thing over and over again, and you don’t seem to make any progress, ask the Lord to show you if you have truly repented in that area of your life. If the bible says you need to repent, or if the Holy Spirit shows that you need to repent, then make a decision to turn back from that (action, habit, attitude) forever. Don’t worry about whether you will fail again at times: make the commitment to turn away from it forever, and invite the Holy Spirit to give you the strength to keep that commitment.

John the Baptist had some very harsh words for religious people who did not really want to repent, but only wanted to pretend to do so to look good to other people. Unfortunately, there are still a number of people who take this approach. Let me say with John the Baptist: Give it up. Pretending to repent without really doing it is pointless, and it will not save you or help you in any way.

I will add that people who pretend are the ones that typically give Christians a bad reputation. So you are hurting not only yourself, but others too.

The good news, it is never too late to truly repent, not as long as you are still alive. Jesus wants to come to us; some of you for the first time, others in new and deeper ways. How do you need to prepare for him? Where can you make the way more straight for him through repentance?

I want to briefly make you aware of our situation. This ministry (Clear Bible) until recently was supported by our local church. However, we have had some changes there, and we are now a house church. Today, we have about 8 families. Our church cannot fully support me financially any longer.

In contrast, about 430 people subscribe to this blog, and an additional 300 or so each week come and visit the site. In other words, by far, most of the people who benefit from this ministry are not part of our little church.

I’m asking you internet readers/listeners to pray for us. Seriously, before you give any financial support, please give us some prayer support. I value that more than anything else. Pray for this ministry to touch lives. Pray also for financial provision for my family and me.

You could also send a check to:

New Joy Fellowship

625 Spring Creek Road

Lebanon, TN 37087

Your check will be tax-deductible. Unfortunately, we cannot do the tax deductible option with the paypal donate button, however the money does go directly to support my family and me.

Thank for your prayers, and your support!

WHAT BARACK OBAMA HAS IN COMMON WITH JESUS

On February 18, 2014February 15, 2014 By Pastor TomIn House Church, Jesus, Matthew, Podcast, Religion, Sermon1 Comment

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer:

Download Matthew Part 4

Matthew #4 . 2:12-23

Sometimes, at my house, we have leftovers for supper. We often do this on Sunday nights, so no one has to cook, and we can all have a day off. I actually really enjoy this, particularly when we have high-quality leftovers. So, we might get it all out, and then call the family together and say something like:

“OK, everyone, we have some leftover lasagna from when we went out to eat, some spinach pie, and some curry. Take your pick, and dig in.”

Sometimes, I think of bible passages like leftover-night. We’ve got several good things to choose from, and maybe everyone will get something a little bit different from it. That’s how I feel about our text this time. So, I’ll set out the food and let you dig in. Start out by reading the passage, if you haven’t already (Matthew 2:12-23). For those of you who got sucked in by the title, let me offer full disclosure: I’ll get to Jesus and Barack Obama in the second half of this post. That’s part of the “second serving.”

Last time, we looked at the Magi (wise men). Our text this time picks up at the end of their appearance in the bible. On the way to see Jesus, they had stopped first in Jerusalem and asked King Herod about the birth of the Messiah. Herod had pretended to be interested for the sake of worshipping the Messiah himself, but in truth, he asked the Magi to come back and tell him about it so that he could learn the identity of the child, and have him killed.

Herod had become king of Judea through scheming with Rome, and he held the position because he was supported by the Roman army. He wasn’t a Jew, and the Jews resented him. Just a little more than a generation before Herod, the Jews had still been ruled by a Jewish king. As a king, Herod was smart, insecure and ruthless, which was a bad combination for the people he ruled. Most likely, he thought that the child was some kind of descendant of the Hasmonean (Jewish) kings who had ruled the region in his father’s time. He saw the messiah as a real and political threat to his throne and to his life.

God warned the Magi in a dream not to go back to Herod, and they obeyed. After they left, God spoke to Joseph in a dream also, and warned him to take Mary and Jesus to Egypt to escape from Herod. Joseph also obeyed. The fact that Jesus spent time in Egypt fulfilled another Old Testament prophecy, the fifth fulfilled prophecy that Matthew refers to:

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called My son. (Hos 11:1, HCSB).

After time passed, and Herod never heard from the wise men again, he realized he was not going to learn the identity of the Messiah. He flew into an evil rage, but it was also a cold and ruthless rage. By simple mathematics, he figured out how old the Messiah would be, and had every male child that age and younger in Bethlehem killed. This fulfilled yet another prophecy, from Jeremiah 31:15.

This is what the LORD says: A voice was heard in Ramah, a lament with bitter weeping — Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted for her children because they are no more. (Jer 31:15, HCSB)

After Herod died, Joseph had yet another visit from the Lord in a dream. This time he was told it was safe to return to the territory of Israel. One more dream warned him not to go back to Bethlehem or Jerusalem, however, which were controlled by Herod’s son Archelaus. So Joseph settled the family back in Nazareth, Mary’s hometown. Matthew makes reference to one more prophecy, the seventh so far, that the Messiah would be called a Nazarene. This probably comes from one or two sources. Isaiah 11:1 says:

Then a shoot will grow from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots will bear fruit. (Isa 11:1, HCSB)

In Hebrew the word “branch” sounds a lot like the word Nazarene. There is another prophecy that does not name Nazareth, but it does name the region (Galilee):

Nevertheless, the gloom of the distressed land will not be like that of the former times when He humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali. But in the future He will bring honor to the Way of the Sea, to the land east of the Jordan, and to Galilee of the nations. The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; a light has dawned on those living in the land of darkness. (Isa 9:1-2, HCSB)

Matthew may have been thinking of either or both of these passages, which were widely regarded to apply to the Messiah.

These fulfilled prophecies are important, not only to the Jews who first read Matthew’s book, but also to us. Let me review them for you, with a reference to where Matthew shows them as fulfilled. The Messiah was supposed to be a descendant of David (1:1-17), but born of virgin (1:18-25). He was supposed to be born in Bethlehem (2:1) and associated with a star (from Numbers 24:17, fulfilled in Matt 2:1). Though born in Bethlehem, he was to come from Egypt (2:14), and there would be lamenting in Bethlehem near the time of his birth (2:16-18). Though born in Bethlehem and called from Egypt, the Messiah was supposed to come from Galilee/Nazareth (2:23).

Even if you took out the virgin birth, the probability of a single individual meeting all these criteria is extremely low. You see, this is one reason that prevented every woman who had a baby boy out-of-wedlock from claiming that she was really a virgin and her baby was actually the Messiah. There were simply too many strange requirements to meet. Only Jesus met them. And Matthew is not even close to finished pointing out all the ways Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament. If you were with us on our study called “Understanding the Bible” you know that there is no doubt that all those prophecies were written long before Jesus was born.

That should encourage our faith. This is one of our “meals” this time. Do you need to hear again how unique Jesus was? Do you need the faith-boost of understanding how he fulfilled things that were written about him hundreds of years before he was born? Do you need to be reminded of how amazing and how reliable the bible is? Sink your teeth into these fulfilled prophecies.

There is another one here that is very personal for me. Some of you know that I grew up in Papua New Guinea. When you grow up in a country that is not the home-country of your parents, you experience some very unique things. People who grew up this way are called Third-Culture-Kids (TCKs), because we are not really from the first culture (the home country of our parents), but we aren’t really from the second culture either (the place in which we grew up). By the way, President Barack Obama is one of us.

When I was younger I had to come to terms with the fact that I am a person without a real home culture or home country. Sometimes, I felt like I was from outer space. Even after more than twenty years in the same country, I still feel like this at times. For all my life, I’ve had to deal with being absent from either one home, or the other. I’m not trying to say “poor me,” but the fact is, I’ve found that only other TCKs really understand. When I was coming to terms with all this, I remember complaining a little to the Lord. I said, “You say that you can understand and empathize with our weaknesses, because you’ve been tested in every way just as we have (Hebrews 2:17-18). What about this? What about the strange struggles of being a TCK?”

I thought I had him, until the Lord pointed me to this passage in Matthew, and it hit me like a cement truck: Jesus was a Third Culture Kid. Like me, and like Barack Obama, Jesus was a TCK. He was born in Judea, but raised for some of his childhood in Egypt, a place where his parents were not from. He wasn’t really from there either, but by the time he came back to Nazareth, he would not have really thought of himself as from that place, either. If you had asked him, “Where are you from?” he would have given a typical TCK type answer:

“Well, I was born in Bethlehem, Judea, but I grew up in Egypt. I come from Nazareth, but right now I’m living in Capernaum.”

To make this more applicable to people other than TCKs, let me clarify the main point: Jesus can really, truly identify with you. There are probably only a few hundred thousand TCKs in the entire world (maybe far fewer), but Jesus made sure he could relate to us, and us to him. Whether you are a TCK or not, realize this – Jesus has made it so that he can truly understand you and your struggles. Don’t doubt that he knows and understands what you are going through, and cares about you in the midst of it.

A third “dish,” that I notice in this passage is the way the Lord spoke to people in dreams. In this passage, he did it four times – three to Joseph. Joseph also heard from the Lord in a dream in Matthew 1:20. Dreams are a tricky thing. First, and most importantly, I want to caution that you should never listen to your dreams if they are “guiding” you to do something that the bible clearly says you should not; or if they guide you to refrain from doing what the bible says you should. The bible is our final and authoritative guide. Even so, I do think that sometimes Christians put God in a box – that is they won’t even consider the possibility that he may speak to them in dreams. Joseph’s experience shows us that the Lord can and does lead us directly in choices and directions where the bible is not specific, or in things that the bible does not address. It may be through dreams, or some other method, but the point is, God remains active in our lives.

Yes, it is true, Joseph was the step-father of the Messiah, so his choices were pretty important. But there is nothing in the text that suggests other Christians should be different, or treated differently by God. In fact, the Holy Spirit gave dreams to lead Peter (Acts 10:10-19) and Paul (Acts 16:9-10) and even Cornelius (Acts 10:3-5). Joel, the prophet, inspired by the Holy Spirit, predicted that the Lord would use all sorts of ways to speak to his people after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit

After this I will pour out My Spirit on all humanity; then your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your old men will have dreams, and your young men will see visions. I will even pour out My Spirit on the male and female slaves in those days. (Joel 2:28-29, HCSB)

So, what I get from Joseph’s dreams is that God wants to speak to us, even about our specific lives and the choices that we face. As you face choices, I encourage you to ask the Holy Spirit to speak to you and guide you; and then trust that He will. In fact, I trust that he is speaking to you right now. Why don’t you pause and listen, and absorb what he wants to do right now?

You could also send a check to:

New Joy Fellowship

625 Spring Creek Road

Lebanon, TN 37087

Your check will be tax-deductible. Unfortunately, we cannot do the tax deductible option with the paypal donate button, however the money does go directly to support my family and me.

Thank for your prayers, and your support!

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