Tuesday, September 10, 2019

More Than Crumbs; Matthew 15:21-28

I eat a lot of leftovers. I’m a household of one the majority of time, so I fix a main dish and a side dish and my dinners for the week are pretty much set. I don’t mind eating leftovers for awhile, but I confess that the last serving of whatever I’ve made sometimes ends up in the woods because I get tired of it. The woman in the passage today is told by Jesus, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs or puppies.” Jesus implies she isn’t even deserving of leftovers, but she insists that even dogs get crumbs. In the end, her prayer is answered. Her daughter is delivered of demon possession. There is a lot said about this passage because of the way Jesus treats this woman. He seems mean. After all, He calls her a dog, not a nice term. Older scholarship tries to dismiss Jesus’s seeming cruelty by saying that Jesus was testing the woman or that He had a twinkle in His eye as He was challenging her. Trying to gauge Jesus’s facial expression or tone of voice is reading into the text, something we must be very careful to avoid. As for the woman’s faith, it is rock solid from the get go. She needs no testing. Others try to say that Jesus needed to learn something from this woman. We know that Jesus did learn. Hebrews 5:8 tells us that Jesus learned obedience by the things He suffered. Jesus learned total dependence on the Father. He learned what it was to be human. And I think He was genuinely amazed at the depth of faith that this woman has as well as that of the Centurion, whose servant He healed earlier in the same manner that He ends up healing this woman’s daughter—simply by willing it, without ever going to the one who was ill. I do not believe, as some assert, that Jesus had to learn right from wrong—that He needed to learn not to be a racist, sexist bigot. That would make Jesus a sinner, and if Jesus committed even one sin, He could not be our Savior. The Scriptures tell us that Jesus never sinned. II Corinthians 5:21 says, “For He (that is, God the Father) made Him (that is, Jesus) who knew no sin, sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” If Jesus had even sinned once, He could not be the Savior of the world. Furthermore, in the passage we read last week, Jesus told the gathered crowd that sin starts in the heart and we are defiled by what we say and do. Why would Jesus break a command He just said not to break? So then some say that Jesus had to learn the scope of His mission—that He was not just Savior of Israel but of the whole world. Is this something that Jesus had to learn? I do not think so. When Jesus was presented in the temple, Simeon declared Him to be a light of revelation to the Gentiles. When John the Baptist baptized Jesus, he proclaimed, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!” At Jesus’s first sermon in Nazareth, He uses the examples of the widow of Zarepheth in Sidon and Naaman the Syrian as those who received blessings from God in contrast to the people of Israel. These 2 people lived in precisely the area in which Jesus meets this woman. When Jesus sent out the disciples to minister, He pronounces woe on Chorazin and Bethsaida and says if the mighty works that had been done there had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sack cloths and ashes. I think Jesus knew exactly who He was, as Savior of the world, and I think we can see this in the passage. First, Jesus goes intentionally to Tyre and Sidon. Though Jesus went to other majority Gentile areas, this area is outside of the Promised Land. In Jesus’s time, it is considered part of Syria, but in Old Testament times, Tyre and Sidon were part of Phoenicia. This is why Mark calls the woman a SyroPhoenican. The Phoenicians were a small but mighty people as they controlled the trade in the Mediterranean. They were wealthy. Their culture and religion were Canaanite, which is why Matthew calls her a Canaanite woman. But obviously, she is not a practitioner of the Canaanite religion. She is a worshipper of Yahweh and already knows who Jesus is. God pronounces judgment on Tyre through the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 23 for its greed, worldliness and false religion. Jeremiah prophesied that they will be conquered by Cyrus and Ezekiel prophesied that they would be conquered by Nebuchadnezzar because of their pride. But there are also promises that Tyre would be drawn to the God of Israel, the King of Israel such as in Psalms 45 and 87. That prophetic promise is being fulfilled in this woman. Furthermore, Jesus has two Canaanite women in His ancestry—Tamar and Rahab. Even one of Jesus’s own disciples has a Canaanite ancestry. Simon the Zealot is called Simon the Canaanite by Matthew. God cares about the Gentiles and always had. Again, from last week’s Scripture, our secondary reference in Romans 2, we were reminded that the Jews were chosen to be a blessing to the other nations. They were to point others to Yahweh. Jesus criticized the Pharisees for being blind guides to their own people. Paul wants the Jews in the church at Rome to check themselves as to whether or not they were being blind guides among the Gentiles. This woman didn’t need a guide; she had already had one. She already knows Yahweh. She is drawn to Jesus. She has no doubt who He is and what He can do. She addresses Him as Lord and Son of David. She knows He is Messiah. She humbles herself before Him begging for mercy on behalf of her daughter. She worships Jesus. We don’t know how she came to know about Jesus. Mark says she had heard about Him, but by the Holy Spirit, she already believes by the time Jesus arrives. She does not need converting or convincing. So why did Jesus treat this woman unkindly? It’s not unusual for Jesus to first respond to people with silence. He does not respond to the Centurion right away. In fact, the Jewish people intercede on his behalf, telling Jesus how this particular Roman soldier has helped them out and supported the synagogue. The lepers ask Jesus for help, and He ignores their initial cries. He ignores the initial cries of Bartimeaus, the blind beggar. And we don’t always get an immediate response to our prayers either, do we? We feel the silence of God, and we keep on asking. This is not so much a test of faith as the opportunity to exercise our faith and to remind us that our Lord is more than just a dispenser of blessings. It is the disciples, not Jesus, who finds her repeated cries annoying. Like the woman, we must persevere in prayer. Then Jesus tells her that His mission is to the lost sheep of Israel. This was Jesus’s first priority. When He sent out the disciples in Matthew 10, He sent them not to the Gentiles, but to the lost sheep of Israel. The Jewish people had forgotten who God really was and why God had set them apart. They needed conversion. This woman is not lost. She knows Yahweh God, she has already placed her faith in the Messiah. She doesn’t need anyone to explain to her who He is, including Jesus Himself. Jesus is answering how the Jewish people, including His disciples, thought of Messiah’s role. Ministering to Gentiles has always been an exception up to this point. She challenges Jesus that His mission is to the lost sheep of Israel alone and continues to beg for help even as she worships Jesus. It seems that now Jesus is trying to drive her away at this point, and He makes a derogatory comment about her. “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.” Jews did not keep dogs as pets. They were considered unclean animals. Some Gentiles would keep dogs for protection or for work. Jewish people often called Gentiles “dogs,” and they even had the equivalent of our “b-word” that they used. Jesus uses the less insulting diminutive—puppies or house pets, but it is still not nice. I think Jesus uses this insult because He has been acting like a typical Jewish man the whole time. The disciples would have been nodding in agreement the whole time, but Jesus allows her to demonstrate the faith, humility, and reverence that even the disciples act. The way she treats Jesus stands in direct contrast to the way the Pharisees treated Jesus. Remember that the disciples had been a little perturbed that Jesus would offend the Pharisees, but they care nothing about offending this woman. As Carla Works says, “She places hope in what others have discarded.” She doesn’t even ask for a seat at the table, but it willing to take crumbs. She knows that crumbs from Jesus would be more than enough, and Jesus declares that her desire is done. She is not there to steal someone else’s blessing. She knows there is more than enough. But she doesn’t get crumbs or even leftovers. She gets the fullness of God’s healing power for her daughter. Somehow Matthew learns that at that very moment, her daughter was delivered from her severe demon possession. The language describing the demons leaving the daughter imply that they will never return. When it comes to the power of Jesus, do we know there is more than enough, or do we have a scarcity mentality? Why is Jesus mean? Jesus is acting like a typical Jewish man to hold up a mirror to the disciples. I believe the lesson here is for the disciples, and for us as well. To the disciples’ credit, when they asked Jesus to send her away, they asked in a way that implied they wanted Jesus to hurry up and give her what she wanted so they could get back to their vacation. But Jesus didn’t hurry because He was not annoyed by the woman, and He wanted this woman to teach them something about His role as Messiah. I believe the primary lesson was the lesson of abundance. The abundance of God’s kingdom blessings was not limited to Israel. The disciples had and will still have a scarcity mentality of what Jesus can do. I think Jesus really is impressed by the depth of the woman’s faith, but I do not think that Jesus is surprised that she is not merely to be granted crumbs from the table, but that she is given a full seat at the table. Jesus is not in the habit of giving partial anything. God’s yes is always a complete less. We are not partially forgiven, partially delivered, partially healed, partially redeemed. We don’t receive just a little bit of the Holy Spirit. And we don’t have to scrounge for crumbs from the table. The woman is invited to the table not because of her ethnicity or religious background or despite either of those. She is given a seat at the table because of her faith in the Messiah. Jesus also wanted them to learn that faith, not position or background, or ethnicity is what God rewards. This woman receives no less than any other person who sought Jesus for help, demonstrating their faith. Jesus responds to faith every time, even if it seems to take a while. Both the woman and Jesus know that God’s power is not limited. Our God is not a respecter of persons, but God looks at the heart. We have seen Jesus reward faith again and again. It was the faith of the four friends that resulted in the man not only being able to “take up his bed and walk,” but to have his sins forgiven. It was the faith of the woman who touched the tassel on the bottom of Jesus’s garment that resulted in her healing. These same lessons are for us. Our God is a God of abundance. Our God rewards faith. This incident does mark a shift in Jesus’s ministry. His confrontations with the Jewish religious leaders get more intense, and Jesus ministers to even more Gentiles. The next thing He is going to do is to heal great multitudes of Gentiles from all kinds of things and then feed them. We will look at this in a couple of weeks on World Communion Sunday.

Monday, April 22, 2019

Solemnity & Celebration; Matthew 26:17-31, Exodus 12:1-33, Psalm 116

Tonight we celebrate the Last Supper that our Lord shared with His disciples. The Last Supper was part of a Passover celebration. This feast was normally celebrated by family groupings, but Jesus did something radical. He celebrates the feast with His disciples, although it is very possible His mother was there as well. Jesus also celebrates this meal in the home of someone who may or may not have been a relative. Most scholars think Jesus was using the upper room of the home of the parents of John Mark, the gospel writer and cousin of Barnabas. In celebrating the Passover in this way, Jesus teaches us that family is more than biology. Jesus expands the meaning of family. I don’t know if any of you have ever been to a seder service. If you have, you know that they can be a lot of fun. The Passover feast is a celebration, but it is also a solemn occasion. The occasion for the first Passover, as we read in Exodus 12 was the night that God pronounced severe judgment on Egypt, requiring the death of all firstborn males who were not covered under the blood. The original command for the Israelites was that they were to eat the meal in haste with their shoes on and staff in hand to be ready to leave at any moment. And yet, joy and freedom are the dominant themes of the celebration. Because of this, Passover today is often celebrated in two parts: the seder itself, which is solemn and serious, and a festival meal, which is fun and celebratory, while at the same time, intentionality is taken to bring out the meaning of the celebration through question and answers and the recitation or reading of the story. Everything from beginning to end is symbolic. “The Passover was a major sacrifice, yet one distinct from all others. It was not of the Law, for it was instituted before the Law had been given or before the Covenant had been ratified by blood (although it was about to be). In a sense, it was the cause and foundation of all the Levitical sacrifices and of the Covenant itself.” During the Passover celebration, many Scriptures are read and sung, including Psalms 113-118. These are Psalms of Ascent and are sung at different times throughout the celebration from beginning to end. These are also poems of thanksgiving. You see, Passover was the original thanksgiving celebration. We don’t know exactly how Passover was celebrated at Jesus’s time, but it would have involved the instructions given in our Exodus passage regarding the cooking of the lamb, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs. It would have involved the recitation of the story and the singing of the Psalms. This evening, we read Psalm 116, one that Jesus and His disciples would have sung. Let’s examine this psalm more closely. There are 5 main elements to a thanksgiving psalm, and they were all there in our Psalm for Palm Sunday as well as this one. Those elements are: an introduction, an expression of misery, an appeal for deliverance, a recount of how God rescued the person or people, and a testimonial of response. My OT professor said you can easily remember these elements by the acronym “IMART”. Verses 1-2 comprise the introduction. “I love the Lord because God really does answer prayers, and I will continue to call upon God for help as long as I live.” God is trustworthy. Verse 3 is the expression of misery. The writer was close to death or at least felt like he was going to die. Verse 4 is the appeal for deliverance: “Then I called upon the name of Yahweh, ‘O Yahweh, I implore You, deliver my soul!’” Verses 5-6 recall the rescue. The author is so grateful, he emphasizes God’s characteristics, graciousness, righteousness, mercy, and Preserver of the Simple, as he describes the actions of God. The remainder of the psalm is the testimonial. This is how the author will respond in light of being delivered. Frist, he tells his own soul to be at rest. Since God has been merciful, since the person has been delivered, there is no reason to worry or be anxious. God has been good and will be good again. In response to God’s deliverance, the author wills to live a godly life. God’s mercy toward us ought to result in our transformation. Verses 10-11 allude back to the rescue. Because the author had faith, he prayed. He trusted God in the midst of a bad situation, which seems to have occurred because someone deceived him. He also confesses his anger with people. It is okay for us to tell God when it hurts and to express our anger to God. In fact, this is one of the healthiest ways to deal with anger. Certainly God can handle our anger, and other people, not necessarily so. In verses 12-14, the author returns to thinking about what it would actually look like for him to live a godly life. What he names are acts of worship. Our gratitude for God’s deliverance should result in worship. The lifting of the cup is like a toast. It is a public act, so he is sharing before others the truth that God saves. Verse 15 may seem somewhat out of place: “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His godly ones.” After all, the psalmist did not die, nor did he want to die. Yet here he talks about death. D. A. Carson says, “There is no such thing as an untimely death. For the Lord, death is too valuable a thing to be squandered. The death of His saints, his beloved, is like a precious jewel which He bestows—precious to Him because at death He receives them home. In this sense, death is the final and greatest earthly blessing of God on His people.” I’m not sure I fully agree with Carson. I do believe God is 100% in control of our life span, but I also know from the rest of the Scriptures that death is not God’s desire for people. Death is an enemy to be defeated, and we celebrate Christ’s victory over death on Sunday. We know that He was raised so that we can be raised. It is because God values the lives of God’s people that God will destroy death once and for all. In verse 16, the author confesses to having been freed but stays with the Master as servant. It is personal. Christ has freed us to be servants. We see this in John’s account of the Passover, when Jesus washes the disciples’ feet. God wants us to serve the Lord because we love God, not because we are forced or obligated. Do you serve God because you are compelled by love, or do you feel obligated to “act like a Christian”? The final verses again speak of the publicity in which the author promises to live out his commitments to God. Making vows in the presence of others establishes as well as being a witness to one’s relationship with God. Gratitude ought to result in transformation. Whenever we encounter God’s grace, we can never be the same. The witnesses can then testify to the goodness and glory of the Lord. The psalm ends with a command—Hallelujah—Praise the Lord! How publicly do you live out your relationship to God? Those gathered together for that last Passover feast with Jesus would have reflected on their own experience with God as they sung these familiar words. They would have reflected on times when they had been delivered and how they were being transformed by God. And I’m sure as they celebrated Passover 1 year later that these words had taken on even more meaning; for now they would be able to see Christ in all of the symbols and songs. They would see, as the apostle Paul would later write, that Christ is our Passover sacrifice, therefore we can celebrate. They would recount the impact that He had had and still had on their lives. Are there songs that help you recall your own experience with God’s salvation and transformation in your life? I always encourage people to try writing their own psalm of thanksgiving using these 5 elements—an Introduction, an expression of misery (a time that you had a problem/difficulty in your life and how that incident or situation affected you), an appeal to deliverance (how you expressed your situation to God or others in an appeal for help), and a recount of the rescue (what did God actually do to remedy your situation? How was your prayer answered? Who were the people involved?) And a testimonial of response (what difference has God’s intervention made in your life or how might it shape your life from this point forward?) Maundy Thursday is generally regarded as a solemn occasion, we know what is coming. We know Jesus has been betrayed, that He will be arrested in the garden, that He will be denied by Peter and abandoned by His followers. Yet, at this point, Jesus is celebrating a festive meal with His disciples. As we come to the table this evening, we come with solemnity, but let us also come with joy and thanksgiving. We remember the sacrifice that was about to be made on our behalf, but we rejoice that because of this sacrifice, God has made a family out of us. We are God’s family and we are brothers and sisters with one another and with all who believe, those saints who have gone before us and those who will come after us, those in lands far away and those in the churches nearby. We celebrate that we have been forgiven, that our sins are gone and we have been set free—free to live and free to serve. Let us continue in worship.

Wednesday, March 20, 2019

Looking for a Sign; II Chronicles 9:1-12, Matthew 12:38-45, Hebrews 6:4-9

We all know the importance of good signage, and we recognize how difficult it is when the signs aren't clear. For example: Signs when roads too close together. Jim and my experience in New Bern with rerouted traffic. When your favorite store gets a makeover and they haven’t changed the hanging signs yet. Not being able to find the bathrooms or nursery in a big church. Antioch’s bathroom problem. There are good signs like the signs of spring around us. But sometimes we keep asking for signs missing the signs all around us, especially when it comes to the signs God gives us. Last Sunday devil tried to get Jesus to test God by jumping off the pinnacle of the temple. Gideon tested God by asking for signs. This is what the Pharisees were doing in today’s gospel. They asked for another sign. They were putting Jesus to the test and thereby putting God to the test. Remember that Jesus had been doing lots of signs. Go back and count all the miracles Jesus did beginning in Matthew 8. And in those chapters, not only are there individual healings and deliverances and miracles, there are times when many different individuals were healed, one after the other. Jesus’s teaching and connecting the Old Testament prophets to what He was doing both implicitly and explicitly testified to who He was. They had tons of signs. So Jesus calls them an evil and adulterous generation. They had turned away from idolatry for a brief time, but now they were unfaithful to God despite their religiousness. The scribes and Pharisees asked for another sign because they were trying to justify their unbelief. So Jesus chastises them and tells them the only sign they will get is the sign of Jonah. Jesus is referring to His death. Now Jesus did not spend three days and three nights in the tomb. He was raised on the third day, but analogies are not perfect. He goes on to say that it will be Gentiles who will end up judging these religious Jews. The Ninevites did not need a sign. They repented in response to Jonah’s preaching, and Jesus is greater than Jonah, and the kingdom of God is greater than Jonah. Then Jesus gives the example of the Queen of Sheba. She had heard of Solomon’s wisdom but wanted to check it out for herself. She doesn’t worship Solomon, she worships Yahweh, Solomon’s God. She doesn’t need any further sign to know that Yaweh is real. Jesus is greater than Solomon. The Kingdom of God is greater than Solomon’s kingdom. Both the Queen of Sheba and the Ninevites responded to what they heard. They didn’t need more and more signs to trust that God was speaking to them. Then Jesus seems to change the subject. He talks about a demon oppresses person whose unclean spirit leaves and searches for rest. In the meantime, the person has gotten his/her life back. Finding nothing better, the spirit decides to return with some friends, so that the person is completely oppressed and worse off than before. Jesus uses this illustration to show the people what they are like. Jesus had come with a message of deliverance. Good things were happening. The kingdom of God was being inaugurated, but those looking for a sign did not embrace the good news. They did not invite the Holy Spirit in. A power vacuum was created. We see this happen in our world all the time. A wicked government leader is overthrown. Procedures and regulations are not put in place to stabilize a society. Someone much worse takes over. This is true in the spiritual realm as well. For lasting transformation to take place, we must be filled with the Holy Spirit. The doubting scribes and Pharisees were looking for something more. This is why Jesus called them an “adulterous generation.” Having tasted of the good things of God, they wanted to see if there was something better, something that would meet their expectations, expectations set way too low. I don’t know what you would consider one of the scariest passages of the Bible, but for me, Hebrews 6:4-8 is one of the scariest Bible passages. READ. This passage speaks of those who have been immersed in the word of God and have witnessed the power of the Holy Spirit and yet somehow walk away from it. The writer of Hebrews says it is impossible for them to repent because it is as if they are crucifying Jesus all over again. It sounds a lot like the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit that Jesus refers to earlier in Matthew 12 at which we looked last month. I call this “playing Christian.” It’s impossible for those who belong to Christ to lose their salvation because our salvation is something God accomplishes in us and not something we do. We will actually look at this a little bit next week when we hear from Romans 8. But there are those who spend time with the faithful, who can talk the talk, who do lots of good things, but who have never truly surrendered their lives to Jesus, and they walk away. God gives them over to the hardness of their hearts. This is not everyone who walks away from the Lord. We hear stories of redemption all the time of people who walk away from the Lord for years whom Jesus brings back to Himself. But these words ought to stand as a warning to those who are playing Christian and not really serious about deepening a relationship with Jesus. Have you truly surrendered your life to Jesus, or are you trying to get God’s favor or the favor of other people through playing Christian? The writer of Hebrews ends these scary words with this in verse 9, “But beloved, we are confident of better things concerning you, yes, things that accompany salvation, though we speak in this manner.” There was a deeper evidence of salvation in the lives of the recipients of this letter, not only in action, but in character, character that reflected the saving work of God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—in their lives. May it be so with each of us. Have you seen the signs God has already given you? Romans 1 tells us that there are things we can know about God simply from the witness of creation. We can know that God exists and that God is powerful. Scripture also tells us that our consciences give us a sense of right and wrong. None of this is saving knowledge, but those two witnesses, creation and conscience, are a starting point for our spiritual journeys. But God has given us more. God has given us God’s Word. Most of all, God has given us Jesus Christ. And then there are signs that God gives to us as individuals, times we have been rescued when we should have perished, blessings we have not earned or deserved, “coincidences” of meeting the right person at the right time or being in the right place at the right time, or circumstances coming together. All that is God’s self-revelation to us. Some of us have seen things that can only be described as supernatural. More of us have experienced those things and failed to recognize them. What more does God need to do to prove God’s love for you? What do you need from God before you can place your trust in Jesus Christ? If you are still struggling, pray that the Holy Spirit would open your eyes and ears to hear and see the signs. They are everywhere. It’s okay to ask God for confirmation if you feel moved in your heart to respond to what you perceive as God’s will, but be careful not to put God to the test. Are you trying to justify your unbelief like the scribes and Pharisees, or are you truly seeking Jesus? If you are seeking Jesus, rest in assurance. The Lord says, “You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart.” This can only happen because the Holy Spirit is already at work in your life, because on our own, “there is not one of us who seeks after God.” Trust the Holy Spirit to interpret the signs that God is giving you to assure you of God’s love and presence and direction.

Wednesday, March 13, 2019

The Purpose of Temptation; Matthew 4:1-11

On this First Sunday of Lent, we read a very familiar passage of Scripture—the temptations of Jesus. This occurred immediately after the baptism. Mark’s gospel says that Jesus was driven into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit. It was necessary for Jesus to be tested. The word “tempted” means tested for the purposes of approval. The word “tempt” is used of both the actions of God as well as the actions of the devil. The difference is in the motivations for the temptations. God tests to confirm our identity in Him as well as to strengthen our reliance on Him and to crucify the desires of the flesh in us. God uses testing to bring us closer to Him and to make us more like Jesus. The devil, on the other hand, tests to pull us away from God, to condemn us and to destroy us. God always provides an escape route. God cannot and does not tempt us to do evil. Notice that in Jesus’ temptation, God used the devil—the accuser—as His instrument. God desires spiritual growth in us. This leads to times of testing, which hopefully result in more spiritual growth. The devil has evil motives, to cause spiritual failure, but is still under God’s control. The devil has a certain freedom in the world has no ultimate authority. The word devil, “diabolis”, means “accuser” or “slanderer”. It is used to describe people. Paul uses to describe people. In I Timothy for example, the word “devil” is translated “slanderers” or “malicious gossips.” When you say something to cause hurt to another person or intentionally falsely accuse another, you are literally acting diabolical. You are devilish. When this word has the definite article in front of it, it refers to the Evil One. It had just been made known publicly at Jesus’s baptism that He is the beloved Son of God. Jesus was tempted not to doubt His position, it was something of which He was sure, but whether or not He would use or misuse His divine authority. Was He going to work in conjunction with the Father or would He establish His own will? When we come to realize that we are God’s beloved children, we face the same testing. Are we going to submit to the will of our heavenly Father, or will we assert our own selfish will? Will we try to control the Holy Spirit and try use the Spirit’s power to our advantage, or will we allow the Holy Spirit to control us? We don’t know every temptation that Jesus went through, but these three are given to signify the areas in which we are tempted—the lust of the flesh (bread), which is testing in regard to our physical needs, the lust of the eyes (kingdoms of the world), which is testing in regard to things we want, and the pride of life (jumping off the temple) which is the testing of who we are. The order in Luke has the last two temptations reversed to reflect the order in which Adam and Eve were tempted. Luke is emphasizing Jesus’ role as Son of Man—the Perfect Man who restores our fallen nature. Eve was tempted by the fruit when she saw it was good for food—lust of flesh, a delight to the eyes—the lust of the eyes, and to prove one wise—the pride of life. Matthew emphasizes Jesus’ role as King, so he has the temptation of kingship, ruling the world, as the last temptation. The first temptation was in regard to Jesus’ physical needs. He was hungry! Would He misuse His divine power to provide food for Himself? He did not. He remembers the Scripture, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” You may know, all the Scriptures Jesus quotes come from the book of Deuteronomy. Jesus considers the Law inspired and authoritative as we talked about last week. This quotation comes from chapter 8 where Moses tells the people not to forget God in times of prosperity. He reminds them of the time that they were fed in the wilderness with the manna, which God did to show them that there is more to living life than food. Jesus doesn’t deny His ability to perform the miracle, but He will let God be the one direct His power. Jesus never uses His divine power for His own self-preservation or selfish ambition. Later on, He will multiply food to provide for thousands, although He does not use His power to end world hunger. Jesus suffered hunger to identify with us. On Wednesday night, we were reminded that Lent is a time for us to renew our commitment to obedience in gratitude for Jesus’ obedience to the Father on our behalf. With Jesus’ quote in this first temptation, I couldn’t help but think of the petition in the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us this day the bread that is necessary.” Obedience to what God speaks is necessary for our well-being. Do we believe that God will provide what is necessary for us day by day? In the temptation for Jesus to display His divinity by hurling Himself off the temple, the Evil One quotes Scripture too, using a passage from Psalm 91. While no less authoritative, the verse is ripped from its context. This promise, like many of God’s promises, comes with stipulations—if this, then this. Jesus’ response to this temptation is, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test,” from Deuteronomy 6:16, in reference the time the Israelites tested the Lord at Massah when they were thirsty and needed water. Moses tells the people that they are to obey God’s commandments, decrees, and statutes. This verse fits this temptation because the context of the promise of deliverance is for the one who relies on God for shelter and safety, not the one who challenges God’s ability. The psalm also says that God guards one in all one’s ways. In other words, God guards a person as one goes about life serving God, not one who takes foolish risks to prove a point. This particular temptation is an attempt to test Jesus’ divine identity—the pride of life. Jesus doesn’t have to prove His position as God’s Son. He knows it. He will be revealed to those whom God wills. We must be careful not to twist Scripture to justify our selfish desires or to misuse our position as God’s children. Sometimes we are guilty of wanting blessings without the stipulations. Or we forget that blessings are exactly that—blessings—and demand them as rights. The televangelists used to say that we ought to be rich because we are King’s kids. Yes, we are King’s kids, and yes, we have the full inheritance of the Son, but it is in the Son that we receive, not because of who we are, but because of who Jesus is. We receive our riches in Christ. We don’t simply receive riches. The word “test” in the verse that Jesus quotes is different for the kind of testing that Jesus is going through. The testing of God that is forbidden is trying God out to see if God is really who God claims to be, or does what God claims to do. It is what Gideon did as recorded in the Book of Judges. On 3 different occasions, Gideon tested God. On a fourth occasion, God knowing that Gideon would ask for another sign, told Gideon to go listen to what Gideon’s enemies were saying so that Gideon would have enough courage to do what God said. This shows the greatness of God’s mercy. God knows that we will put God to the test, even though God commands otherwise. God is never obligated to submit to our tests or prove Godself to us, but God forgives and heals our lack of faith. This doesn’t mean we should disregard this commandment or think lightly of it. God forgives us every time we break commandments, but they are all to be taken seriously. And just because God forgives us every time, doesn’t mean that there are no consequences. Instead of using God’s mercy and grace as an excuse to sin, we are called to confess our sin and repent. In our doubts, instead of testing God, ew can pray like the disciples, “Lord, increase our faith!” Jesus sees all the kingdoms of the world throughout time in His mind’s eye in the 3rd temptation. This temptation reflects the “lust of the eyes”. For Jesus, world Kingship was more than a want. It was His rightful position and something He knew that He was supposed to be. But the timing was wrong. Jesus knew that the quick way isn’t necessarily the right way and that the end doesn’t justify the means. The Evil One does have some claim to the world, but is not divine and is not to be worshipped. World kingship actually would have been less than Jesus was meant to be. He is to be glorified as ruler of all creation—the heavens and the earth, the spiritual as well as the physical. Jesus desire to be King over all was not a bad want. In fact, it was who He was meant to be. Our wants aren’t always wrong either. We can want the same things that God wants for us and wants to give us. But we also must remember to wait on God’s timing. Jesus didn’t go beyond the Father’s known will at any given moment. He knew the ultimate ending, but He did not necessarily the steps it would take to get there. We too know the ultimate ending, but not the in between steps. We too ought to live in the known revealed will of God, not pushing ahead until it is time. We are facing some unknowns as a church. We have wants, legitimate wants. The temptation is to try to come up with something to “fix it”. Ultimately we know that God is good and whatever happens is right, but will we trust God’s timing? We know that God has given us work to do in the meantime. Will we be faithful in the work that He has already revealed for us? Or will we worry and fret over those things that have not been revealed? Like Jesus, we go through periods of temptation, times of testing. We pray in the Lord’s Prayer that God will not lead us inward to temptation, but that God will deliver us from the Evil One. In other words that God will not let us succumb to ourselves, which is the desire of the Evil One, to separate us from God, but that like Jesus, we will come to a deeper understanding of who we are in relation to our heavenly Father, learning to submit more and more to His will. God allows us to be tempted so that we will depend on God, like a dog being trained by his master. First the master places a piece of meat on the floor near the dog and the master says No! Now the dog knows that No means he is not supposed to touch the meat. What happens is, the dog will eventually take his eyes off the meat because the temptation to disobey is far greater when he looks at it. Instead he fixes his eyes on his master’s face. So the lesson of the dog is: Always look at the master’s face.* If we keep our eyes fixed on our Master’s face, we will be able to resist temptation. If we focus on what the Master has showed us, we will experience the victory and closeness to our heavenly Father that Jesus experienced.

Rend Your Hearts; Joel 2:1-17, Revelation 9:1-11

From Ash Wednesday, 2019. To listen, click here.

Monday, March 4, 2019

The Glorious Presence of Jesus; Psalm 97, Matthew 17:1-13

Someone said that the Transfiguration of Jesus is the opposite of the Wizard of Oz. In the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy peels back the curtain to reveal not a great and powerful wizard, but an ordinary, even someone weak person. He is a sham without power. The reaction is not only disappointment, but disgust. At Jesus’s transfiguration, Jesus is shown to be more powerful, more glorious than Peter, James, and John could have ever imagined. A cloud comes over Jesus, not to obscure Him, but to further reveal His identity as the Beloved Son of God who is to be obeyed. The reaction to seeing Jesus as truly great and powerful is bewilderment, fear and trembling, and worship. The glorious presence of Jesus is no disappointment! The Transfiguration is unique in the life of Jesus, which is why we remember it every year. In this story, we get to see Jesus in all His glory and divinity, which the Son had before He was born as a baby. In Psalm 97, we see that this is the same glory Yahweh holds, further showing us that Jesus is indeed God. The Transfiguration gives us a glimpse of what our risen and ascended Lord is like as well. It’s interesting that Jesus tells the disciples not to speak of what happened on the mountain until “after the Son of Man is risen from the dead.” They didn’t even have clue then what Jesus was talking about—rising from the dead? What’s that? Only after the fact did they understand. Psalm 97 begins with the emphatic “Yahweh reigns!” We know that Jesus now reigns over all the earth from heaven and rejoice that Jesus is King. Verse 2 mentions clouds and great darkness surrounding the Lord. We have a cloud in our gospel reading as well. This is not a dark cloud, but a bright cloud. The psalm doesn’t say the clouds are dark either. The glory of God is so bright that everything else is dark in comparison. The bright cloud at the Transfiguration obscured the presence of God the Father, but it is the place from which the Father speaks. The disciples were frightened by the cloud and fell on their faces until Jesus touches them and tells them not to be afraid. The glorious presence of Jesus exposes all darkness. The light of the Lord exposes the sinful darkness within us. As we approach Him, we become more and more aware of our darkness, but He also comes to us and tells us not to fear. Darkness exposed by the light can be healed. Jesus removes our darkness from us and calls us to live in the light. We do that by staying close to Jesus, who is the light. This leads us to the end of Psalm 97—verses 10 and following. Here we read that the Lord preserves the souls of His saints and delivers us out of the hands of the wicked. Light and gladness are sown for us, so we always have a reason to rejoice and give thanks. Did you notice in the gospel reading that Jesus talks about His resurrection before He talks about His impending suffering? Here again, the light outshines the darkness, and the Lord cannot be defeated. The darkness exposed and overcome is the darkness of suffering. In our own dark suffering, we must remember that resurrection—life and light—lies beyond the darkness, and that Jesus is with us even in our darkness for He never leaves us nor forsakes us. His glorious presence is with us always. In fact, the word “sown” used in Psalm 97 implies this very thing according to Dr. William Barrick, who says, “God causes joy-filled blessings to sprout in the midst of the darkest times to show He cares for us.” Seeds are planted in the darkness of the soil, but burst forth in the light. The light of Jesus’s presence causes good things to grow out of the darkness of our lives. The Transfiguration also gives us a glimpse of how the glorious presence of Jesus will be when He returns. In our gospel reading, the disciples somehow know that what they have seen of Jesus has something to do with Messiah’s return and the coming Kingdom of God. We know this because they ask Him, “Why then do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?” They have just seen Elijah and wonder if this appearance is the one foretold by the prophets. Jesus does not connect this appearance of Elijah with that event, but tells them in effect that what the prophets spoke of had already happened through the ministry of John the Baptist. Much in Psalm 97 also describes how we will see Jesus at His second coming, referred to by the apostle Paul in Titus as “the glorious appearing.” For example, Ps. 97:3 says, “A fire goes before Him and burns up all His enemies.” We have several examples in Scripture of God using fire to destroy enemies, such as the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Ultimately, the devil and his angels along with death and the grave will be destroyed in the lake of fire as will all those who reject the Lord. In the book of Revelation, when Jesus returns, He is described as having eyes that are like coals of fire. Also in Revelation, the throne of God is described as having flashes of lightning going forth from it, just as we have described in Psalm 97:4. And like the psalm, Revelation says earthquakes follow the flashes of lightning—the earth literally trembling before the presence of the Lord. You may notice in your Bible that the first part of Psalm 97:5 uses the name Yahweh—the capital LORD but the second part when Lord is used, it is lower case letters. This Lord is a title—King or Master, which is the title given to Jesus, and yet we know that the whole verse is one description of God, so we see that Jesus is God, equal to Yahweh. The following verses continue describing the return of the Lord. Isaiah tells us that every valley will be exalted and every hill made low when the Lord returns. This is like the hills melting like wax in the presence of the Lord. Revelation also tells us there will be a new heavens and a new earth when the Lord returns and that there will be no need for a sun or moon because the Lamb, Jesus, will be the light. We know that all people will behold His glory and all will bow before Him. All powers, spiritual beings, will worship Him as well. Knowing that Jesus will return in all His glory call for action. Most of us don’t worship literal carved idols, but that doesn’t mean our lives are free from idolatry. Some we make ourselves. Some we buy. We don’t call them gods, but often they serve in that capacity, for they are where we spend our time and resources. They influence our choices and life direction. Someone said, “Today’s idols are more in the self than on the shelf.” Regardless of what type our idols are, we are called to cast them away. Lent is a great time for self-examination to discover and discard our idols. What idols might you get rid of this Lent? Where do you need to readjust your priorities? Because the foundation of God’s throne is righteousness and justice, we ought to be working on these things. We are called to hate evil. However, it is not merely the sum of our works that determine whether we will rejoice or tremble at the Lord’s glorious appearing, but how we respond to the light of His glorious presence now. Have you already embraced the presence of Jesus, or are you running from the Light, afraid of what Jesus might expose in you or about you? John 1 tells us that when Jesus came the first time many people, including Jesus’s own rejected the Light. In His conversation with Nicodemus as recorded in John 3:19, Jesus Himself said, “And this is the condemnation, that the Light has come into the world and people loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil.” No matter what kinds of deeds you do, unless they are brought into the light, they are no good. The Light of Jesus is the Light of truth. For those that love Jesus, His glorious presence is a source of comfort. Even when we are convicted by the Light, His love overcomes our fear. Don’t fear the light, but come to the Light to find healing, redemption, forgiveness, and love.