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 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.