Tag: jesus

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More Than Thou Shall Nots

Too often we reduce the moral imperatives of our faith into “thou shall NOT” statements. We shall not steal, kill, nor covet. And that list could go on and on. It is easy to think about what we are not supposed to do, but if we stop there we are left with a very shallow understanding. If we’re only called to not do certain things, then we are left with little idea of what we’re actually supposed to do. But the Christian life is not summed up by sitting on our hands. We are called to act.

We could look throughout Luke to see what Jesus calls us to in obedience to him. This obedience is a response of love, it is how we show love to him. But instead of quoting from Luke, read this example from Leviticus:

“‘If anyone sins because they do not speak up when they hear a public charge to testify regarding something they have seen or learned about, they will be held responsible.” (Leviticus 5:1 NIV)

The law was not concerned only with not bearing false witness, but in the people standing up to testify. It may seem mundane to you, and maybe it is because I watch too many crime shows, but this sounds bold to me. We don’t always want to speak up and stand out. Sometimes it is for our personal benefit to keep our mouths closed. But we have a responsibility to speak truth. Again, we can’t be content to understand the expectation of us to cease just at not bearing false witness. It goes beyond. Just as the golden rule isn’t: Do not do to others what you don’t want them to do to you. Rather we have the difficult, challenging call to do for others as we want done to us.

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Humility and the Wedding Feast

Luke 14 includes a parable about a wedding feast where Jesus teaches us to not seek out a place of honor for ourself, instead seek a humble position. The judgment on the proud is that they will be brought down, and the humble will be raised up. Jesus says, “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Christians are called to be humble, just like Christ who humbled himself. We hear that lesson often, but how do we do it? Have you faced a time at work when you felt like you had to exalt yourself to gain the attention of superiors? Do you worry that if you don’t seek credit and put yourself out there to be noticed someone else will? How do we manage that cultural influence along with Jesus’ words?

Do we have the radical trust in God that he will lift us up and that his exaltation is far more important than any promotion? Is our goal in life to climb the ladder or to be a witness for Jesus and to serve others humbly at the station we are at currently?

Humility is not self-deprecation, but it is certainly not boasting. But it does have to do with moving the self out of the center and making that a place for Christ, and boasting in him. When we do so humility doesn’t become timidity, rather it gives great confidence because we find ourselves firmly fixed on Christ, caring more for his name receiving glory than our own.

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Story So Far, Week 6

I’ve read Luke 9:62 many times before. There Jesus says, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” I had often thought of Lot’s wife who turns back to her home and is turned into a pillar of salt. She was being delivered from judgment and all she could do was look back to her home.

But as we’ve finished the book of Exodus this week, I couldn’t help but read this verse in Luke and think of the Israelites as a whole. They were delivered from slavery and almost immediately they turn their hearts back to Egypt and to other gods. God is angered by these actions. We read this week in Exodus 34 that our God is a jealous God. He wants us for himself alone. God wants us to only worship him. Yet we look back again and again. We look back to false gods and idols. We look back imagining that an old life was better than it truly was. We rewrite history like the Israelites who wished they could return to Egypt where they felt life was better.

In Luke, Jesus pushes his disciples to not turn back from following him. There is a radical break in the way the disciples and Jesus relate to possessions and treasure–don’t look back to those. Do not return to seeing the world the way the culture does and they way you used to. To follow Jesus in many ways is to leave behind the things of the world.

As always, Jesus never pushes us and challenges us to do what he will not do himself. Earlier in chapter nine it says of Jesus, “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” Jesus knew what waited for him there. Jesus set his face to the city where he would be crucified, and he didn’t look back. Repeatedly Jesus says to his disciples that he came for that very purpose. Jesus did not look back even though his purpose was to die for those who hated him.

This Jesus is the one who tells us, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.” He calls us to come and follow him. We are to firmly fix our eyes on Jesus, and let the things of earth fade away, never looking back.

This is a hard task, greater than our efforts could accomplish, but thanks be to God that he gives us the strength and works in us, both to will and to work for his good pleasure (Phil 2:13).

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Story So Far, Week 5

In Exodus we see the way God has instructed the Israelites in how to be a people of his own, including how they should order their lives with law and how they should order worship. In Luke, Jesus called his disciples, continued teaching, and showed the people his great power, even power over death.

In Luke 7, a pharisee questions Jesus’ interactions with a sinful woman. Jesus responds with a story of forgiven debt, making the point that the one who has been forgiven much, loves much, and the one who has been forgiven little, loves little.

What we must remember is that we have all been forgiven much. We are all sinful and our debt is far more than we could ever repay. Left to our own ability and effort, we would be lost. But God has forgiven this debt–in fact he paid this debt for us himself in the work of Jesus Christ. If we daily remind ourselves of this, of how abundant God’s grace is, it will spur us on to love much. As forgiven sinners we cannot treat with disdain other sinners in this world. We all suffered under the weight of great debts. Therefore we should share love with others as recipients of grace.

Having this constant remember of grace is part of why I think God describes himself to his people in the beginning of the Ten Commandments with the words, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” Whenever God describes himself in this way, he is reminding his people that they have been redeemed from slavery, they have been given abundant grace, and they have much to be thankful for.

When we recognize how much God loves us and how abundant is his grace, the more we will be propelled to love and forgive those who God places in our paths.

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Keep Building on a Solid Foundation

I’m sure that you’ve already learned a great deal from God’s word in these last few weeks, and that may be encouragement enough to make you want to continue along in reading all of the Bible. But even so, it is great to have passages that make it explicitly clear that what we are doing is of great importance. If we read these words, take them to heart, let God speak to us through them to challenge, comfort, and shape us, then we are building our lives on a solid ground.

In Luke 6 Jesus shares an illustration about not only listening, but being doers of God’s word. He compares two builders. One digs deep and lays a foundation on rock. The other builds a house on the ground with no foundation. When a stream breaks against these two houses, the one with a foundation is not shaken, but the other falls and is left in ruin.

The one who listen to the words of Jesus and does them is building upon a foundation of rock. It is a strong, well built life, firmly fixed upon Christ’s every word. Those who hear and disregard, those who learn yet fail to heed the call of Christ, they are left in ruin when a storm hits.

It is a striking comparison especially since it is not the comparison of a strong foundation to a lesser one. Building on Christ’s words is the foundation, and neglect of him is no foundation at all. These are words of warning, but also of great encouragement.

Continue in God’s word. They are the words of life, they are trustworthy, they reveal God to us and point us to Jesus Christ. But do not stop there. Hear this word as a word for you, a word of instruction and of call. These pages we read every day speak to us now, just in the place where we are, and we are to build our lives upon them. If we fail to do so, Jesus tells us plainly what to expect.

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The Rock Was Christ

Follow the cross references in your Bibles and see just how Jesus fulfills the story.

Exodus 17:5-6

And the Lord said to Moses, “Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.” And Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel.

1 Corinthians 10:1-4

For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.

John 4:7-15

A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” ( For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.”Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

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Jesus Quotes Scripture

In Luke 4 we see Jesus, led by the Holy Spirit, going into the wilderness. After forty days he is tempted by the devil and in each of Jesus’ replies, he uses Scripture to rebuke him.

It is written…
Man shall not live by bread alone.

You shall worship the Lord your God,
and him only shall you serve.

You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.

(Luke 4:4, 8, 12)

We see in Jesus one who treasured the words of God and knows well how to use them in times of trials. Truly an example for us.

But what I want to draw our attention to is from which books Jesus quotes. Each time he is pressed by the devil Jesus find words fitting to the temptations from the book of Deuteronomy. He quotes from Deuteronomy 8:13, 6:13, and 6:16.

There are parts of the Bible that, for whatever reason, attract our attention and we find ourselves reading them more often. We think they are full of great insight and wisdom and aren’t the “boring ones.” Deuteronomy doesn’t always top that list.

Seeing Jesus faced with temptations greater than what I have faced and speaking the words of Deuteronomy reminds me that I shouldn’t assume I know where God is going to speak to me. God can and does speak to us throughout the whole of Scripture and we must keep ourselves humble before him and remain open to hearing his words on every page.

It is good to remember that sometimes it is in the unexpected places that God speaks, and that is where it may be the hardest to hear.

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The Story So Far, Week 3

Dressed for success

In reading about Joseph, a story I’ve read before, heard a lot about, and have even watched a movie on, it was fun to see what jumped out this time. We all know Joseph for his coat of many colors. It was given to him by his father Jacob, because Jacob loved Joseph dearly. It was an outward sign of his father’s favor.

But that robe would later be a sign of his brother’s treachery, as they take his robe and give it to Jacob indicating Joseph had been killed by an animal. Joseph goes from being loved in his father’s house, to being stripped of his fine clothes, sold into slavery, and he ends up working in Potiphar’s house.

But God was still with him as he prospered in all he did and found favor in Potiphar’s eyes. Unfortunately again Joseph’s dress was used in a plot for his harm. After rejecting advances from Potiphar’s wife and in the process leaving his cloak behind as he fled, Potiphar’s wife takes out her anger against Joseph by presenting the cloak as though it were proof of his misdeeds.

Joseph is again upended and goes to prison, where again he prospers and finds favor with those around him. Joseph ends up, through the work of God in giving him interpretations of dreams, leaving prison to be the highest ranking man in Egypt, except for Pharaoh himself. He had been robbed of his life by his brothers when they stripped him of his robe, but now he is restored by Pharaoh who, in chapter 41, “took his signet ring from his finger and put it on Joseph’s finger. He dressed him in robes of fine linen and put a gold chain around his neck.” Again we have an outward sign of Joseph’s status. He is dressed in such a way by Pharaoh for he is valued and given great responsibility in the land.

We see clothing play a part in another story that will be read in the coming weeks from Luke. The prodigal son leaves his father’s house and upon his long-awaited return is dressed in a ring and given shoes and the household is told to make preparation for a great celebration. The clothing signifies the father’s joy and acceptance of his son.

We might not give such thought to how we are dressed or how we see others dressed, but how we are clothed matters greatly in another sense. In 1 Peter 5 we are told to clothe ourselves not in literal attire, but in humility, for God opposes the proud. The dress of a Christian is to have certain characteristics like humility, but none as important as what we see in Romans 13:14. In the NIV is says:

Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ…

Whatever status is afforded to us by the way that we dress in this life cannot compare to the status that comes by our being clothed with Christ. Our clothes represent much of who we are when we are clothed in him. For when that is the case, we who are sinners gain instead the appearance of Christ’s righteousness. When our God sees us, he does not see our sin, instead he sees the perfection of his Son.

As we close out Genesis and John, the contrast is clear. So many figures of old are just ordinary like you and me. The only extraordinary one is seen in the gospels, and that is Jesus Christ. We do not boast in Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob, nor can we boast in ourselves. We only boast in Christ. If not for our being clothed in him, boasting in his appearance, we would be nothing.