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Minister's Musings
Sunday, March 10, 2024
Monday, March 4, 2024
Monday, February 26, 2024
The Toughest Decision; Luke 22:39-46
*Recommended Reading--Hebews 11-12:7
For the remainder of the season of Lent
we will be looking at the passion narrative of Jesus. We will not cover it all in these next few
weeks, and we will not pick it up again until next winter, though we will look
at the Last Supper text on World Communion Sunday. Last week, we saw Jesus tempted in the desert
wilderness. Today He faces His toughest
decision. This is truly the “more
opportune time” for which Satan had been waiting. We know this because we will hear Jesus say
next week to the chief priests and temple officers that came to arrest Him that
this was the “hour and the power of darkness” that belonged to them.
But I don’t think that was the only way
Satan was at work. Though the devil
isn’t visible in today’s text like he was in last week’s text, the power of
temptation is great with Jesus. Most of
us don’t have conversations with the devil.
We don’t have little angels and devils on our shoulders like they used
to show in the old cartoons, but we wrestle with temptation. We wrestle in our minds, with our flesh, with
our wills, and yes, even with our emotions.
Just like last week, Jesus is tempted whether or not He will love God
with all of His heart, soul, strength and mind.
This temptation doesn’t come in three different incidences like His time
in the desert. This is one big
temptation. He is tested in every
way—with His all of His soul/life—Will He sacrifice His life to save
humanity? With all of His strength—all
the pain He is about to endure, the beatings, the crown of thorns, the
scourging, and crucifixion. Even this
time in the Garden left Him physically exhausted so that once again, just like
in the wilderness, angels come to minister to Him. He was tested with all of His heart—Will He
still align His will with the Father’s? We
know from the other gospels that it was 3 times that He asked the Father to
“remove this cup from” Him and said, yet ‘not My will, but Yours be done.”
Matthew’s gospel tells us that Jesus had
been praying an hour before He went to wake the disciples the first time! This is laboring in prayer. Like the disciples, I struggle to pray for an
hour, especially about a single, yet significant subject. I find it easier to spend time praying
through a litany of requests, and if I am part of a prayer group, I can pray
for an hour. The disciples could have
been praying with each other. Jesus had
given them a topic, “that you might not enter into temptation.” This was Jesus’s request for Himself as well.
He was praying that He might not fall to temptation. He needed strength to pass the test! We can say that it was easier for Jesus than
for us, but I don’t think so. We don’t
have a test where literally the fate and weight of the whole world is resting
on us! We might sympathize with the
disciples because, as we will learn in the Christ in the Passover program on
March 19, that the disciples had 2 more cups of wine than Jesus did, but Luke’s
gospel tells us that the disciples didn’t fall asleep the second time from the
very late hour or from being tipsy, but because they “were sleeping from
sorrow.” Despite the joy of celebrating
the Passover feast, it ended with a very heavy tone. Having observed Jesus from a distance, having
heard Him speak of His death multiple times, they are depressed. I think all of us can identify with times
when we have gotten heavy news or have been depressed to the point that you are
exhausted and need a nap. It is natural
for the body to want to do this. We just
need to be sure we aren’t sleeping too much when then happens. Just as Jesus again wakes the disciples and
tells them to pray, prayer can be part of our healing and getting strength in
times of depression and temptation. But
now the time of praying has come to end.
Jesus’s enemies come to the garden to arrest Him. From here on out, it will be a long, hard
night. Don’t wait until it’s too late to
pray. Pray first!
Prayer is work. Prayer is doing something. Jesus strove in prayer for Himself and for
us. Blood was mingled with His
sweat. This is a real medical phenomenon
called hematidrosis that happens under conditions of extreme exertion involving
distress or fear, thought to be related to our “fight or flight response”. When we think of Jesus shedding His blood for
our sins, we think immediately of the cross, of Him getting pierced in the
side. We think about the nail prints in
His hands and feet, we think of the blood from the crown of thorns. Some of us think of the brutal scouring, but
how many of us think about the fact that Jesus shed His blood for us beginning in
the garden? This story is not new to us,
but I hope we pause to think about its significance. Jesus wasn’t just praying for Himself. The world was on His mind. He thought of His
disciples. He wanted there to be another
way, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me.” If there’s any other way…This was the
Father’s will.
In Hebrews 12, the writer encourages the Hebrew church facing
persecution to remember the saints that have gone before them who are cheering
them on to persevere and to keep their eyes on Jesus, their example and
Savior. The author tells the readers in
verse 4, “You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your
striving against sin.” The author is
warning them that persecution is going to get a whole lot worse and that some
of them are likely to face the things as did the saints of old, but the author
also talks about the discipline that comes from the hand of the Lord, as
consequences for sin. I hear the writer
saying in Hebrews 12, “Look, I know it is hard, but what you are going through,
others have gone through, even Jesus, and He did it for you. You can keep the faith. The saints are cheering you on. Besides, you haven’t even shed blood in
trying to resist temptation. You aren’t even working that hard to stay out of
sin.” Persecution is hard, but have you
even prayed about it? Have you prayed
for endurance? Have you prayed so that
you will not enter into temptation when it comes? The writer of Hebrews is not saying, “Bad
things won’t happen to you if you just pray enough and have enough faith.” He’s saying, “Prayer will help increase your
faith so that you will be able to endure when harder things come.” You don’t even pray enough about the
temptations you face now! Jesus sweat
blood to resist temptation! One of my
former missionary colleagues still serving with A3, the agency I served with in
Japan, recently participated in leading a training called, “Resilience in
Persecution” in a Southeast Asian country where it is difficult to be a
Christian. She writes, “This week I got
some feedback from a participant and leader at the recent module we did for the
Persecuted church. Some of the feedback that they gave was the surprise that,
in our approach to resilience and endurance in persecution, one big piece of
that was their love relationship with God and their spiritual habits and how
they are continually restoring themselves in that spiritual vibrancy and
life... and how that habit and that formational kind of experience, it
strengthens them to endure in persecution—prepares them. Just as Jesus was preparing for the great
persecution that was facing Him, these believers are prepared because they know
the Father. They spend time with Him. If we are to be prepared for persecution and
trials, we need to know the Father. We
need to spend time in prayer and in the Word.
My favorite scene in the Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson is the 3rd scene. There’s so much I love about how Mel Gibson has done this scene. This scene depicts that third time that Jesus went away today. He has already gone to wake up and rebuke the disciples. In fact, that’s how this movie opens. It shows Jesus praying and then going to the disciples. In Scene 4, all of Jesus's prayers come straight from Scripture, specifically from the psalms. Other than, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from Me, yet not My will, but Yours be done,” we don’t know what all Jesus prayed. However, it is extremely likely that His prayers did indeed come from the Psalms. The psalms were the Book of Common Prayer of the time. We know that He had them memorized. More than one scholar has described the psalms as the prayers of Christ. At least one has said they are the prayers of Christ for Christ in you. Many of the psalms were prophecies of Jesus’s life, particularly about His passion. We know from His time of temptation in the wilderness that He would use Scripture to resist temptation. The psalms cover every human emotion and situation. Because they are the prayers of Christ for Christ in us, we can pray them too. Even if you don’t have whole psalms memorized, familiarize yourself enough with them, so you know where to go when you face temptations. You can make notes in your Bible. Note whether the psalm is a prayer of praise, of thanksgiving, of confession, a plea for help, a warning, etc. Pick some that speak to you and keep them at hand for reference. Make praying the psalms a practice. Pray through them regularly. You can make it part of your Lenten discipline to pray at least one Psalm a day.
Just like in the desert, Jesus is prayed
up before the hard things happen. The
ending of the scene 4 in The Passion is my favorite part. Jesus stomps the head of the serpent, hearkening
back to the promise of Genesis 3:15 that the serpent will bruise the heel of
the seed of the woman, and indeed, Jesus will be more than just a little
bruised, by the serpent, but the serpent is crushed, defeated!
Jesus wins; Satan does not. That
look that Jim Caviezel gives Satan right as he stomps the serpent is a look of
triumphal contempt. His face is a
flint. He shows Jesus has fully given in
to the Father’s will, and whatever comes, this look of fierce determination
remains, even as his face is twisted with pain and agony, there is a
resoluteness to follow through to the end without wavering, without giving
up. It’s such a great depiction of what
we see in Scripture. Jesus is strong
through all these trials even as His body grows weaker. This time of prayer in the garden with angels
ministering to Him has given Him the strength and the resolve to carry on. If we are truly committed to doing the
Father’s will, we too should not hesitate to follow through on what God has
clearly shown us. The time of
questioning is over. If we don’t know
the next step, we go back to God in prayer, but once we know, we are called to
follow through no matter the cost, no matter how crazy it seems to us. Like Jesus, like Mary His mother, may we be
committed to doing the will of God, even when faced with the toughest decision.
Tuesday, February 20, 2024
Passing the Test with Flying Colors; Deuteronomy 6:4-5, Matthew 4:1-11, Hebrews 4:14-5:10
There are many different kinds of tests. We test in school. We test to get a license or a job. Tests are used to evaluate different skills or
knowledge. Some tests to a good job with
it. Some just demonstrate that you do or
don’t know how to take a test. Tests
these days are ones where we want the answers to benign, negative,
insignificant, or normal. But we also
get tested by God to see if we will be obedient. The first test was in the Garden of
Eden. Adam and Eve failed that
test. In today’s gospel, Jesus is tested
as well. Like Adam and Eve, His love for
God the Father is tested. We read that
the Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness to be tested. Marks’s gospel says the Spirit drove Him into
the wilderness to be tested. Like Adam and Eve, the devil is the agent of
testing. The Bible study group is studying
Jesus’s temptation. I am thankful to our
study author, Ray Vanderlaan, for pointing out that the temptation order in
Matthew’s gospel shows Jesus’s demonstration of fulfilling the Shema, our
Deuteronomy passage. Jesus’s love of the Father was tested—to love God with all
of his heart, soul, and strength (might).
Jesus passed this test with flying colors.
When asked, “What is the greatest
commandment,” Jesus went right to the shema—to love the Lord your God with all
of your heart, soul, strength (and Jesus also adds mind), and to love your
neighbor as yourself as the second greatest commandment. In the Old Testament, the heart was the seat
of the will, not the seat of the emotions.
The seat of emotions was the bowels.
Notice this commandment does not mention loving God with all of our
bowels. We often think of love as a
feeling, but the love God desires of us is more than feelings. In fact, feeling love isn’t even
necessary. Love is demonstrated by
actions and ones life. Love takes will—commitment. Loving God means doing what God wants, not
necessarily what you want.
Next
is to love the Lord your God with all of your soul. Soul is often translated as life. For sure this includes our physical
life. But it is far more than that. Physical life is described as “spirit”--wind
or breath. Without spirit, one is not
alive. When you stop breathing, you are dead, unless you start breathing again
in a very short period of time. So soul
is more than physical life. It includes
identity, and all that makes you, you. To
love the Lord our God with all of our soul is to love God with our whole
being. It means that the way God sees us
and defines us not only supersedes any way we would choose to identify
ourselves, but replaces those ways. We
have an identity crisis in our society today.
Everyone wants the ability to self-identify, and in a free society, they
should be able to. However, it is also
demanded that others accept that identity, no questions asked, even if that
person chooses to change his or her identity from day to day week to week. “Who am I” is one of the most important
questions we ask as human beings. Most
humans start exploring that question on a deep level as teens or
pre-teens. We ask it when we face major
life changes. God wants to answer that
question for us. After all, God made
us. God wants us to find our identity in
Christ as children of God. It is the
kind of identity that is permanent. It
doesn’t change with our life circumstances.
To love God with all of our strength or might is to love God with our
actions. We are called to do everything,
even down to eating and drinking for the glory of God. What we do with our bodies shows our love or
lack of love for God. Jesus adds
“mind.” In Greek and Roman times, the
mind took on more significance.
Intellect was emphasized. Jesus
separates out mind to adjust to the culture of His day and to emphasize that we
are also to love God with our thinking. We
are to love God with our thought by aligning our thinking with His thinking, to
meditate on God, God’s ways, and God’s commands, to remember God and God’s
word. To love the Lord our God with all
our heart, soul, strength, and mind is to love God with all that we are and
with all that we’ve got.
How did Jesus’s tests show His
complete love of God? We see it in
Jesus’s answers to the devil. When
tempted to turn stones into bread, Jesus replies by quoting Deuteronomy
8:3. In the verse prior, Moses tells the
people that all that testing of 40 years in the wilderness was from God, “that
He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you
would keep His commandments or not.” The
first part of verse 3 that Jesus didn’t quote specifically mentions the test of
hunger and God giving manna to the people.
In the second test, to throw Himself off
the pinnacle of the temple, Jesus shows He loves God with all of His soul by
not putting God to the test. Jesus isn’t
going to test God with preserving His physical life. There is a difference between asking God to
do things contrary to God’s nature versus asking God to confirm His word. Though the devil also uses Scripture to tempt
Jesus, he leaves out the part where God promises to preserve the lives of those
who love God and call upon His name, not those who foolishly take their lives
into their own hands just to make a point.
The rest of the verse that Jesus quotes back to the devil refers to the
people tempting God at Massah, when they were complaining about a lack of
water. After God provides water from the
rock, Moses names the place Massah and Meribah, because the people “tested the
Lord saying, ‘Is the Lord among us or not.”
God is not obligated to prove Himself, though God reveals Himself to us
all the time. I think about Jesus
Himself after the resurrection. He
didn’t go around showing Himself to those who had criticized Him, proving to
them that He was who He said He was and that they were wrong. He went to those who were already following
Him, confirming their faith and strengthening them in their discipleship. This
was an identity challenge for Jesus. Is
He going to test who God says He is, the beloved Son, or not. Jesus did not need God to prove His identity. He knows He is the Son of God.
The last test of getting all the
kingdoms of the world tested Jesus as to whether He loved God with all of His
strength. The devil offered Jesus the
easy way to get what was rightfully His, a way that required little effort from
Jesus and none of the pain of His passion and crucifixion. Jesus quotes Deuteronomy again, “You shall
worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve.” This verse comes from Moses warning the
people that when they get into the Promised Land and start building homes and
living the good life from the all that the land easily produces, not to forget
the Yahweh their God. Moses knew the
temptation would be both to claim their success as self-made and to worship the
gods of the nations that surrounded them, traps into which they did eventually
fall. Loving the Lord our God with all of our strength means it takes some
effort. Worship is service, that is
doing things. Jesus knew that loving the
Lord with all of His might took effort.
It would take all he could humanly handle and reliance on God to uphold
Him. Philippians 2 says that because
Jesus humbled Himself and was obedient even to death on the cross that He has
been given the name above all names at which every knee will bow and every
tongue will confess that He is Lord, and this will also bring glory to God the
Father. As Jesus is worshipped the
Father too is worshipped.
Notice the tools that Jesus used to
overcome temptation. He was prayed up
and studied up. These temptations come
at the END of Jesus 40 days of praying and fasting in the wilderness. So He was hungry, but He was spiritually
mighty. He has spent 40 days in
communion with the Father. He was
studied up. The fact these passages
could roll so quickly and easily off Jesus’s tongue showed that He had spent
time studying and memorizing God’s Word.
It was customary especially for Jewish young men to memorize the
Torah. I’m sure Jesus had the writings
and prophets memorized as well. Jesus’s
own practice of spiritual disciplines serves as a model for us.
Jesus loved God fully and
perfectly. This was just the first
testing we hear about prior to His public ministry, but all through His life,
He lived in perfect love. Next week we
will look at Jesus’s biggest time of testing—His time in the Garden of
Gethsemane. This was the moment when
Jesus most struggled with His will versus the Father’s will. He knew what was coming, and He knew that
this is why He had been born, and yet, He didn’t want to do it, but He remained
fully committed to loving God with all of His heart, soul, strength, and mind,
and what He went through, certainly took everything out of Him. Yet He did it! Ray Vanderlaan writes in regard to the Shema
that through Israel had not been able to keep the Shema fully, “they believed
that when Messiah came, He would show everyone, Israel and the nations, how to
live by that creed. And they were
right!” He couldn’t command it of us if
He hadn’t done it Himself. In loving God
perfectly, Jesus also loved us perfectly.
In our epistle reading, we hear that Jesus is the superior High
Priest. He is because He can identity
with us. His temptations were part of
Him learning what it is to be fully human.
He knows what it is to be weak. Yet
Jesus passed all His tests with flying colors.
Because of this, not only is He the perfect High Priest, He is the
perfect sacrifice. He doesn’t have to
offer sacrifices for Himself before offering them for the people, because He
was sinless. He doesn’t have to offer repeated sacrifices, because He is the
perfect once for all sacrifice. He intercedes
for us still. We can come boldly to Him
expecting grace and mercy in our times of trial. He is, as Hebrews 5:9 says, “the source of
eternal salvation” for those who obey Him.
Jesus not only perfectly loved the Father, He perfectly loved us and
loves us too.
Tuesday, January 30, 2024
Tuesday, January 16, 2024
Tuesday, January 9, 2024
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; Luke 3:15-22, Acts 8:4-17
Jesus commanded
part of the disciple making process is to baptize in the Name of the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit as recorded by Matthew in what we know as the Great
Commission. Today we have two stories of
baptisms that don’t use this formula—one in Acts, and Jesus’ own baptism. Is the Trinitarian formula all that
important? We consider baptisms that don’t
use the Trinitarian formula invalid, so why wasn’t it used in these two
cases?
We see in our Acts
passage that in fleeing persecution, Philip went to Samaria, taking the gospel
with him. Just as Jesus said, the gospel
was proclaimed in Jerusalem first, then Judea, and then in Samaria. Philip’s evangelistic work wasn’t wrong. Many people were coming to Christ and were
being baptized. When Peter and John are
sent to check out what was going on, what they saw in the believers was a
testimony to the work of Philip. The
gospel was preached and received. But
Philip’s work wasn’t complete,; he only baptized in the name of Jesus, and baptism
into the name of Jesus wasn’t enough.
Did Philip not know about the Trinitarian formula? Perhaps, if this is Philip the deacon and evangelist
and not Philip the apostle, which is most likely. And yet even Philip the evangelist was well
acquainted with the baptism of the Holy Spirit for he had received it
himself. Did he think that it was only
the apostles who could baptize in the Holy Spirit? Perhaps.
But I think Philip baptized in the name of Jesus to show the people that
Jesus was God, and most likely it is because the apostles needed to know that
in Christ, there was no difference between Samaritan believers and Jewish
background believers. The apostles
complete the work of Philip and recognize the Samaritan believers as equal brothers
and sisters in Christ, breaking down hundreds of years of hostility.
In our Luke
passage, Jesus wasn’t baptized in the Trinitarian formula, and yet Jesus was
baptized with Holy Spirit. We know from
historical Jewish records that John would have said something very close to the
following. He would have prayed, “Blessed are
You, O Lord our God, King of the universe who sanctified us with His
commandments and commanded us in tevilah (immersion or dipping for ritual
purification).” And as Jesus was
baptized, John might have said, ”May God, whom we call Mikveh
Yisrael (the Purifier of Israel), be a source of hope and sustenance to
you, now and always.” John might have
added, “As you enter the waters in peace, may you emerge as a source of peace
to your family and to the Jewish people.”
And truly Jesus is the source of peace, not only to the Jewish people,
but for all people.
What John
wouldn’t have said is “I baptize you in the Name of the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Spirit.” This is the way Jesus
commanded us to baptize, and yet we still see that all members of the Trinity
were present in Jesus’s baptism. Jesus
is obviously present. The Holy Spirit
appeared as a dove, and the Father’s voice was heard from heaven. Note that the Holy Spirit rested on
Jesus. Jesus was empowered with the Holy
Spirit to begin His public ministry. Jesus
received the power of the Holy Spirit at Baptism. Jesus wasn’t baptized using the words of the
Trinitarian formula, but this was a Trinitarian baptism. Jesus lived continuously in the power of the
Holy Spirit. He could say, “I do nothing of My own. I only do what I see the Father doing.” He could say, “I and My Father are One.”
In
looking at the Greek text, the Acts passage doesn’t say, “The two went down and
prayed for them that they might receive THE Holy Spirit” but just “that they
might receive Holy Spirit,” implying not the person of the Holy Spirit, but the
work of the Holy Spirit. The evidence of
the supernatural gifts of the Spirit were missing even though the presence of
the Spirit is obvious by the faith of the believers. What the apostle’s did in the laying on of
hands was for their benefit and the benefit of the Samaritan believers to
recognize who had the gifts of the Spirit needed for leadership in the church
and to do the work of ministry. It is
God who gifts and equips. It is God who
ordains. The laying on of hands makes
manifest those things, just as it does today.
The presence of the apostles also demonstrated that there was no
distinction in the Spirit between Samaritan and Jewish background
believers. It represented the unity in
Christ.
The Trinitarian
formula is important for us today.
Baptism is directly linked to the coming of the Holy Spirit, but the
order is not always the same. In the
case of Cornelius and his friends, they received the power of the HS first and
were baptized with water afterwards.
True baptism is an invitation for the Holy Spirit to work in your life
to the good of the church. The Holy
Spirit can work without baptism. You do
receive the Holy Spirit at the moment of conversion. Conversion and baptism were closely linked in
the NT and still are often today.
Baptism invites the work of the spirit, not the person of the Spirit who
works independently, and indeed the Holy Spirit is active in our lives well
before we are aware. For it is the
Spirit Himself who enlightens our hearts to recognize Jesus Christ. This is why we can baptize infants.
Baptism is a seal
of the Holy Spirit. Think of a
passport. It has a seal that shows that
one is a citizen of a particular country.
Baptism shows that we belong to God and God’s kingdom. We are citizens of the kingdom of God. We have a new nationality, if you will. The role of the Father in baptism is to say
as He did to Jesus, “This is My beloved child.
This one is mine!”
Jesus was baptized
for us. John’s baptism was the baptism
to show repentance, but Jesus has nothing from which to repent. This is why John said to Jesus, “You should
be baptizing me!” Reverend Edward
Markquart points out that “Jesus was baptized not to get rid of his sins, but in order
to carry our sins on the cross. So it is
with our baptism: when we are baptized, it is guaranteed that Christ carries
all of our sins on the cross.” He
reminds that when the Father spoke from heaven saying, “This is my beloved Son
in whom I am well-pleased,” that God is specifically identifying Jesus for the
people that Jesus is the Servant spoken of in the book of Isaiah. For example, Isaiah 42:1—“Behold, My Servant,
whom I uphold, My Chosen One in whom My soul delights.” And from the great Servant Song of Isaiah 53:10-12:
Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him
and cause him to suffer,
and though the Lord makes[a] his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
and the will of the Lord will prosper in
his hand.
11 After he has suffered,
he will see the light of life[b] and be satisfied[c];
by his knowledge[d] my righteous servant will
justify many,
and he will bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,[e]
and he will divide the spoils with the strong,[f]
because he poured out his life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.
The Servant is
the Sin-bearer.
John the
Baptist said Jesus was the One who would baptize us with the Holy Spirit and
with fire. Jesus is the One who
baptizes. The Holy Spirit is with
every believer and desires to work through every believer. Because the Holy Spirit is with us, we have
immediate access to the power of the Spirit, to the comfort of the Spirit, to
the wisdom of the Spirit. But the Spirit
must be invited to work in and through our lives. As long as we want to be the ones in control,
the Holy Spirit takes a back seat. That’s
why we are commanded to be filled with the Holy Spirit. It is why these believers in Acts were taught
about and filled with the Spirit.
You’ve heard how
we have a God-shaped vacuum in our hearts.
Blaise Pascal originated this phrase except his original word was
abyss. We have an abyss, an infinite
void in our finite bodies that cannot be filled with finite things. It can only be filled by an infinite
God. The Holy Spirit fills our void.
We can ask the
Holy Spirit, “Do what you want to do with me just as you did with Jesus and
with these believers in Acts. Empower
me. Guide me as You did Jesus.” We can live in the same Spirit power as Jesus
did and as these believers in Acts did.