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Tag: Gospel

The Gospel is Good News to all who will humbly accept Jesus and listen to His teaching.

We refer to the four books of the Bible which tell the story of Jesus Christ as the Gospels. These books are named for their authors: Matthew, a Jewish Apostle; Mark, a disciple of the first generation who recorded accounts of Peter and the Twelve; Luke, a gentile Physician and disciple of the first century; and John, one of the Twelve Jewish Apostles chosen by Jesus.

Are You the One? – 2

Jesus to the multitudes

Speaking of John the Baptist…

Luke 7

English Standard Version (ESV)

26 What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. 27 This is he of whom it is written,

“‘Behold, I send my messenger before your face,
who will prepare your way before you.’

28 I tell you, among those born of women none is greater than John. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.” 29 (When all the people heard this, and the tax collectors too, they declared God just, having been baptized with the baptism of John, 30 but the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected the purpose of God for themselves, not having been baptized by him.)

31 “To what then shall I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like? 32 They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another,

“‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we sang a dirge, and you did not weep.’

See the contrast of walking into two very different churches and hearing the complaints of the ‘worshipers.’

33 For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon.’

We will have only grape juice (and only on occasion).

34 The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’

We will have wine (and every time).

35 Yet wisdom is justified by all her children.”

One preacher is loud; one is soft. One place of worship is grand; another quaint. One has an organ and a choir; another only one with a guitar. One place they kneel; in another they jump up and down and fall to the floor.

And what do the multitudes say?

Jesus is not John… and John was not Jesus.

Perhaps they were pious before John, while they were joyful around Jesus. Yet they complained of John’s piety and Jesus’ lack of it. Two brothers of the faith; two sons of God — yet both were more than that.

God has a family of his own children. The speech and ways of one child of God will win the heart of another, while a very different way of witness will not win this soul. Our brother or sister of the family of God may win a soul that we cannot.

John and Jesus (even cousins) were so different in so many ways. And you are so different from me.

Wisdom is justified by all of her children (and God has many children). The words and ways and witness of the children are important, each for different times, different purposes and different souls for the family of God; but it is the Father and the wisdom of the Father to which all must yield.

Worship is not for the multitudes; worship is of the Father.

Wisdom is justified by all of her children.

John was one child of God (none greater, according to Jesus). Jesus was One child of God. They taught different. They had different purposes for our Father God.

Some children were chosen for the family of God long before their birth. (Jews.) Some children were chosen by adoption into the family of God before we were conceived in the womb. (Gentiles.)

I thank the Lord for my inclusion in the family of our Heavenly Father by His redemption for my sin. I thank God for all of my brothers and sisters in the Lord – the multifaceted family of believers who have eternal life in Christ Jesus.

And the merciful and Almighty God is justified by ALL His children.

God is NOT justified by those who refuse to worship Him and honor the Lord our God humbly as a child of God. Jesus, John, Peter, Paul, the Prophets have always pointed out that these are children of their father the devil.

Consider for just a moment the individual living souls of two witnesses:

Jesus was NOT John and John was NOT Jesus, yet both are children of the Father.

I am NOT my brother Ed nor my brother Ken nor my sister Jenny. I am NOT my wife Lissette. I am NOT my father Bill nor my mother Marie. I am NOT my daughter Rachel nor my step-daughter Ashley nor my step-son David. I am not even the same as any Christian brother or sister in the Lord.

Jesus asks John’s messengers (and the multitudes) to stop comparing one child of God to another and to take no offense.

Luke 7:23 KJV And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me.

It is good advice for ANY brother or sister, whether in the Lord at this time or not.

Do not be skandalizō by the teachings and miracles of your ‘brother’ Jesus or the right teachings of any child of God our Father.

The religious ones and outwardly righteous ones in the crowds (as recorded in Luke 7:30) were scandalized by the teachings of Jesus. The common sinners, tax collectors, drunkards and others (v. 29) repented when they heard John and changed their ways to continue to follow Jesus as their brother and our Lord.

My dear brother; my dear sister; my beloved wife and beloved children:

What is my message for you?

Do NOT be offended by the teachings of Christ Jesus.

What is the fruit of your witness?

February 28, 2014
Who Welcomes His Ministry?

Luke 4:

Jesus Begins His Ministry

14 And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and a report about him went out through all the surrounding country. 15 And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all.

Jesus Rejected at Nazareth

16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up.

Generally, Doctor Luke provides us with great detail of proof from eye witness accounts of Jesus and the Acts of the Apostles; however in this chronological glance at the beginning of Jesus’ three-year ministry on earth after being led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit a look through the eyes of the Apostle Matthew is more helpful.

Matthew 4

English Standard Version (ESV)

Jesus Begins His Ministry

12 Now when he heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew into Galilee. 13 And leaving Nazareth he went and lived in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali…

Jesus of Nazareth, as He was known, then moved to and lived in Capernaum by the sea of Galilee.

17 From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

Let us speak to the vocation and mission of the Prophet for a moment.

To begin, God appoints Prophets, generally separate of the Priestly office and official leadership of God’s own people. Prior to John the Baptist, the Prophet spoke and wrote to and of the fallen Nations: Israel, Judah and the gentile nations who God used to humble and punish His own people into repentance.

Isaiah was probably an aristocrat with influence of kings. He lived about 700 years before Christ.

Jeremiah and Daniel ( both about 600 B.C.) were both young when God used them as prophets to their own people and both older as God used them to show His glory to the rulers of conquering gentile nations. Ezekiel is also an exile around the same time.

These men are not in charge; yet all, through the voice and power of God, call men to repentance.

Amos is just a farmer and a shepherd in Judah (about 800 B.C.) who God uses to announce the fall of the northern Kingdom Israel. Micah was just a countryman in Israel who lived near the Philistine border about this same time.

Hosea gets his marriage advice from God who instructs him to marry a whore, as His people have become. Jonah did not even want to be God’s Prophet and ran away (though God pursued and saved him.) We know almost nothing about the Prophet Joel.

Although Zechariah and Haggai were connected to the office of Priest, it was at a time after repentance during the rebuilding of the Temple by Ezra and Nehemiah (about 500 B.C.). Malachi warns of too casual of an attitude toward worship of God (about 460-430 B.C.).

The Second Temple is destroyed. God keeps silent for over 400 years – 20 generations!

Herod the Great, by alliance with gentile Rome, builds yet another Temple in captured Jerusalem.

Along comes John the Baptist telling another Herod, Pharisees, Sadducees, Scribes, Temple authorities and the people everywhere: REPENT!

He dresses and acts like a madman and lives in the wilderness; but the people believe and follow John. He baptizes and witnesses that Jesus of Nazareth is the one on whom the Spirit of God descends. He IS the Promised One.

Now Jesus, who they all knew since boyhood, a man raised as a carpenter moves away from His hometown. He travels a few miles, moving His belongings to a little inland fishing village, Capernaum. And what was Jesus’ first message to his new hometown?

Matthew 4:17 From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

Jesus left His mother and brothers and family, their carpenter business and comes to a fishing village. Jesus doesn’t look like the wild Prophet John. He is gentle. He looks like his new neighbors. He dresses like them. He eats with them. And Jesus worships with them.

Why would Jesus have that same crazy message for these new neighbors and new friends as He had for his family back home in Nazareth? Repent, you of Capernaum (also known as Chorazin). Repent Bethsaida (a neighboring fishing town on Chinnereth (the Sea of Galilee.)

Jesus calls His Disciples to leave their fishing businesses to follow Him. They do. And among them another local resident, resented by almost every working man: Mathew Levi, a tax collector, who continues his narrative Gospel:

Jesus Ministers to Great Crowds

23 And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people. 24 So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, epileptics, and paralytics, and he healed them. 25 And great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis, and from Jerusalem and Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.

We, too, focus on these wonderful miracles witnessed by many and refuted by none. We look to follow this Jesus;He IS the same Jesus who comes to us, as did John the Baptist, saying: Repent!

To be continued…

February 14, 2014
Redemption

I want to tell you a story of an old woman and one of a young woman; a story of relationship and temptation.

2 Samuel 5:7 Nevertheless David took the strong hold of Zion: the same is the city of David.

Scene I is in Jerusalem, about a thousand years or ten centuries after this record of Samuel from scripture.

Luke 2: 36 And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years, having lived with her husband seven years from when she was a virgin, 37 and then as a widow until she was eighty-four. She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day. 38 And coming up at that very hour she began to give thanks to God and to speak of him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem.

The woman was married as a young virgin to a man named Phanuel (which means: the face of God). After seven years her husband dies and she has lived several decades as a widow. She was known to be a prophetess. She would not have been allowed at the Temple in the City of David as a Jewish widow had her prophecies not been shown to have been from God. As a Priest might speak at the bidding of God and as a male Prophet might obediently convey God’s words to God’s people, Anna spoke prophesy.

The Lord had spoken through the Prophets of old during the time of the 1000 years (these 10 centuries before Christ), but God had kept silent while a captured people (conquered this time by the Romans) awaited God’s long-sought redemption once more.

Jesus is brought to the Temple and Anna also confirms the identity of the Redeemer of God.

Scene II is in Jerusalem at the same Temple not centuries later, but just three decades, only 30 years.

Luke 4: And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness 2 for forty days, being tempted by the devil…

9 And he took him to Jerusalem and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, 10 for it is written,

“‘He will command his angels concerning you,
to guard you,’

11 and

“‘On their hands they will bear you up,
lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”

Again, this is thirty years after the Prophetess Anna had thanked God for this same Son of Man, Jesus.

Satan took Jesus, a man, human like you or me; born to Mary, descendant of David, to the pinnacle of the Temple and said (in effect), “Jump. God will protect you.”

Jesus is hungry and has already refused to turn stones into bread as Satan tempted him to do as the Son of God, not just a righteous son of man. Satan had already asked this Son of Man to bow down to him and promised Jesus power over the Kingdoms of the world IF only he, Jesus, the Son of Man would worship the fallen angel of God. Again, Jesus did not seek the power of this world, as many of us do.

We will return to Jesus’ answer to Satan (which you may know); but first we fast forward beyond the Cross of the Hill of Calvary and the grave and the Resurrection and the Ascension back to the glory of God the Father and the early days of the church and His several appearances to many sons of men to the present.

Scene III takes place in Mount Zion National Park, USA, twenty centuries later, 8 February, in the year of our Lord 2014.

The young woman tempted at the pinnacle is just two years younger that the Son of Man of our earlier scene. Her relationship to her new husband is not one of a virgin to a man of God’s leading, but rather a relationship of sharing in his sport of tempting God for the temporal experiences of living life to its fullest.

She jumped from the pinnacle of Mount Zion. Her parachute did not open. Angels did not catch her. Her body and life were broken on the cold stone below. Her husband witnessed her choice to tempt God, as he so dearly loved to do; and now he is a widower.

On this very day (10 Feb. 1999) fifteen years ago, I, too, became a widower; yet not by my choice or by intentional choice of my godly wife. As God tears many a wife from her husband and many a husband from his wife, I became a widower when the Lord took my wife after a many month struggle against cancer to hold onto this precious life.

Though God has joined many a man to his beloved help-mate, his wife; in almost every instance one will die before the other. A wife will become a widow, as had Anna; or a husband will become a widower, as has the poor husband who just witnessed the death of his wife.

What does it mean that this man who did not jump would later willingly allow Himself to be lifted up on the Cross to die for you and for me?

Jesus Christ, in fulfillment of the scripture (by which He would answer Satan, Pharisees and those who would manipulate God’s word to their own ends) became our redemption. What does that mean to you personally? What does it mean when Satan has lead you to the pinnacle of the choice of your action of life or your action of death?

It is a question of slavery.

God chose Abraham. God chose Isaac (and not Ishmael). God chose Jacob, who He named Israel.

Jacob had twelve sons, sons (tribes or families) of inheritance of the land of the promise to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob. However they betrayed their own brother, Joseph, and sold him into slavery for a price.

Joseph was bought and sold into Egypt, where the Lord saved him and lifted him into the office of Prime Minister only under Pharaoh. Yet Joseph remained faithful to God. He asked his father Jacob’s blessing on his two Egyptian-born sons for his share of the promise of Abraham in a land now ruled by Pharaoh.

Joseph’s land, given to the Israelites in Egypt, was not paid for or an inheritance. In fact, the price of redemption for Joseph had never been paid and by the generation of Moses, sons of Abraham; and the sons of Joseph (descendants of God’s promise) were once again slaves in the land of Egypt with no man to pay the price of their freedom.

God saved them and forced Pharaoh to let His people go. Moses did not save them, but spoke for God, obeyed God, and gave God’s own people God’s own Law to obey; as they had once had to obey every law of Pharaoh. Still, even in the time of David and Solomon centuries later, God’s Chosen People had not had the price of their slavery paid. God’s Chosen were not yet redeemed in any way.

Psalm 49 speaks of the sons of Korah (of the rebellion against God and Moses) stating:

5 Why should I fear in the days of evil,
When the iniquity at my heels surrounds me?
6 Those who trust in their wealth
And boast in the multitude of their riches,
7 None of them can by any means redeem his brother,
Nor give to God a ransom for him—
8 For the redemption of their souls is costly,
And it shall cease forever—
9 That he should continue to live eternally,
And not see the Pit.

To rescue a sinner

You must pay the price.

Who can redeem the sinner? (And we are all sinners, you and me and all sons of men of every time and place.)

If you stand at the pinnacle of choice between life and death, what is the answer?

Scene IV Returning to the Pinnacle of the Temple and the answer of the Son of Man two hundred centuries before this year of our Lord, 2014.

Luke 4:12 And Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

And Christ Jesus began His three-year mission on earth as the Son of Man, calling men and women to repentance and grace, living and breathing the love of God our Father for His chosen family of the promise and of His chosen Bride, the church.

Luke 4:

17 And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

20 And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

“Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

And of His fulfillment of scripture, this is what Jesus said: I AM the price paid for your sin and for the sins of all who are joined to Jesus as our Lord, our Savior, and our Redeemer.

Satan will tempt you before God until the day your flesh will die.

Who will you bow down and worship? What is your answer:

I will gladly follow your worldly temptation, lord satan…

OR Jesus IS LORD?

Do NOT put the Lord your God to the test. Trust ONLY JESUS CHRIST, who paid the price of redemption for your sin and for mine. He IS the one who taught us to pray (Luke 11:2-4):

Our Father

Who IS in Heaven,

HOLY IS your Name.

Your Kingdom will come.

May Your will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven.

Give us day by day our daily bread

And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us.

And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.

February 10, 2014