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Tag: Lord

  • Interrupting Jesus 10 – a child of God

    Interrupting Jesus 10 – a child of God

    Even a child is known by his doings, whether his work be pure, and whether it be right. – Proverbs 20:11 KJV

    The father of the righteous shall greatly rejoice: and he that begetteth a wise child shall have joy of him. Proverbs 23:24 KJV

    Before we look at the role of children and a rather well-known interruption of Jesus, I would like for us to briefly consider the role of Jesus as Son of God.

    GOD, the LORD Jehovah, is Creator of all men, Father of all mankind and Ruler of all creation.

    I am the LORD, your Holy One, the creator of Israel, your King. – Isaiah 43:15 KJV

    In a sense we are all sons and daughters of God; yet Jesus IS God Incarnate, a begotten Son of God the Father by a woman born to man.

    It hadn’t been so many years since Jesus as a young man had became known to the rulers of the Temple.

    Luke 2:40-52 English Standard Version (ESV)

    40 And the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom. And the favor of God was upon him.

    Just a couple of quick questions for you as a 21st century parent:

    • Do you spend time in the Bible with your children so that they will become strong in the Lord and filled with wisdom?
    • Do you regularly observe the teaching traditions of the church with your children?

    The Boy Jesus in the Temple

    41 Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover.42 And when he was twelve years old, they went up according to custom. 43 And when the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know it…

    Joseph and Mary trained up Jesus in the way He should go, that when the time came for a young man to seek the favor of God that their young adult would obey the Lord.

    46 After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers…

    52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.

    The leaders would be older men with years of understanding from scripture and from life. Jesus is now just thirty years old, a relatively young teacher at the beginning of His ministry, who though not married is of age most other men have sons of their own. This iterate Rabbi is not the stately grandfather who sits in the Temple or Synagogues only to share their wisdom of age.

    The Apostle John tells a story of how Jesus uses the faith of a young boy to bring many to faith.

    Jesus is teaching the crowds. The Apostles are serving Him and ministering to the crowds. It has been centuries since the Kingdom of Israel. It has been centuries since the miracles of the Prophets.

    Which generation will see the restoration of the Kingdom, the people ask? Which generation after all these will see the coming of the Christ?

    The people followed Jesus to hear the Lord teach and to witness His righteousness and power and healing.

    John 6:

    3 Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples…  5 Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?”

    Imagine that your son comes to you and says, “I want to go with the neighbors who are going to see Jesus of Nazareth teach on the mountainside.”

    “Just a moment young man,” says the good Jewish mother. “Not without some food and water you don’t.” And the mom packs her son a lunch and sends him out with it and skin of cold water from their well for the long day ahead.

    “Now off with you” the mother encourages her son, “and be back by dark.”

    Returning to John’s Gospel:

    8 One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, 9 “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?” 10 

    Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.” Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, about five thousand in number. 11 Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated. So also the fish, as much as they wanted.

    It is no small role this young man who wanted to see Jesus played in the faith of the five thousand.

    Another interruption: a father coming to Jesus for the sake of his young son:

    Luke 9:

    38 And behold, a man from the crowd cried out, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son, for he is my only child…

    How many parents would willingly press through the crowds surrounding this Jesus Christ, a superstar descended from the mountain, just to have an uncontrollable child healed?

    “…  Bring your son here.” 42 While he was coming, the demon threw him to the ground and convulsed him. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit and healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. 43 And all were astonished at the majesty of God.

    How every loving parent would love to have the Lord give your suffering child back to you. Jesus is not here only to feed the five thousand on the mountaintop. Jesus is present for even a child in need. Jesus IS here even for you.

    Jesus’ Disciples often thought of Him as a leader of men, here only to restore Israel and heal the faithful. How often we are wrong about the Messiah.

    Mark 10:

    13 And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. 14 But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God.

    15 Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”

    16 And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them.

    First century families and the religious establishment often thought the teaching of Rabbis was important only to men, especially men of learning; certainly not to women (let her husband instruct her) or to children (who were only to obey without understanding).

    Jesus most often used the relationship of God as Father, a loving Father; therefore our Lord showed children the kindness of a loving Father in Heaven.

    Is it not important for us to lead our children by the example of our compassion?

    Jesus welcomed children to hear scripture, to receive healing, even to receive life. Children have so much value for a time that will last beyond a generation of our own.

    Christ Jesus welcomes woman and men to God’s Kingdom with joy. He teaches us to have a simple faith. Let Jesus be your Lord, as a loving father would be your parent.

    Men now relegate religion to the attention of the woman of the house ‘for the instruction of the children.’ Christianity is for children and moms, not working dads who know better than to bow down before anyone (let alone God). How sad for our broken homes that we would send children to Jesus and not hear the very Word of God for ourselves.

    We are a hard-hearted and sinful generation in a way more lost than those to whom Jesus first came on the mountainsides of Galilee and in the hills of Jerusalem.

    • When was the last time you interrupted GOD with a childlike praise?
    • When will your week finally conclude with your reverent worship of our loving Father?
    • When will we humbly bow down to GOD our Father and have the pure joy of Jesus as our Lord?

    How long, O man, will you count your days as if they are your own?

    Mark 10:24

    And the disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God!

     

  • Interrupting Jesus 5 – persistent faith

    Interrupting Jesus 5 – persistent faith

    And the dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, saying,

    “A great prophet has arisen among us!” and

    “God has visited his people!”

    17 And this report about him spread through the whole of Judea and all the surrounding country. – Luke 7:15-17

    Can you imagine hearing about this? Can you imagine what you would think as you heard other stories about this Jesus of Nazareth (who now lived in Capernaum) healing many in the crowds who now followed this expected Messiah of Israel?

    And dare we wonder how the Good News (Gospel) must have affected those with continued needs of healing. The Good News about Jesus is abuzz in the ears of all Galilee, Judea and even Samaria.

    mark-1-21-28-jesus_rebukes_the_unclean_spirit_in_a_possessed_man_in_the_synagogue_001Mark 1

    21 And they went into Capernaum, and immediately on the Sabbath he entered the synagogue and was teaching. 22 And they were astonished at his teaching,for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes. 23 And immediately there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit. And he cried out, 24 “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God.”

    Jesus routinely goes to worship, but is interrupted by a demon who knows He is the Son of God.

    Jesus frees the man from his demon! He goes to the house of Simon Peter and heals his wife’s mother of a fever. He heals many sick as the crowds come to hear the Messiah in Galilee.

    … Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in desolate places, and people were coming to him from every quarter. – Mark 1:45b

    Jesus’ personal and daily life (normalcy, we might call it) was interrupted in every way. God, in the Person of Christ, in your neighborhood is Headline News… Good News.


    Mark 2

    man lowered through roofAnd when he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. 2 And many were gathered together, so that there was no more room, not even at the door. And he was preaching the word to them.3 And they came, bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. 4 And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him, and when they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay.

    5 And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

    I love friends persistent in their love; don’t you? These men had heard all about God With Us, the Christ who heals. They had little chance of getting to Him through the crowds, but by persistence of faith and constancy of love pressed on to reach the unreachable God, interrupting the teaching of this Superstar in their midst.

    It reminds me of the love of the friends of Job.

    Job 2:7-8; 11-13 excerpt

    Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that had come upon him, they came each from his own place…  They made an appointment together to come to show him sympathy and comfort him… And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.

    These are the quality of friends who would bring a man to the Messiah, boldly interrupting Him, asking the Lord for the mercy of healing.

    And what was the usual reaction of the congregation? What are they thinking as Jesus is teaching to them in this most worshipful setting; that is, until the commotion of men breaking through the roof above them? And how does a compassionate God With Us react to this interruption of His preaching?

    “Son, your sins are forgiven.” (The paralyzed man is healed!) That should be the end of it: another miracle.

    (Now moving on: what was I telling you about God?)

    Yet these witnesses of God’s mercy now receive the rebuke of an even more authoritative teaching:

    “Why do you question these things in your hearts? 9 Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’?

    (You, church goer! Are you paying attention here? My sermon about God’s judgement, mercy, love and power is for ALL; not just you.)

    [Well, that’s probably the unkind way I might have said it.] Jesus turns to those of his original faithful audience with the best seats in church:

    10 But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”

    —he said to the paralytic— 11 “I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.”

    12 And he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We never saw anything like this!”

    Other eye-witness accounts of the miracles of the Messiah, the Good News of the Gospels might say something like:

    ‘Because of their faith, many believed.’

    Does anyone believe because of your faith in Jesus Christ?

     

    All were amazed. Some believed.

    The Apostle Matthew in his Gospel reports: And he rose and went home.  When the crowds saw it, they were afraid, and they glorified God, who had given such authority to men. Matthew 9:7-8

    Imagine that you are one in the crowd who pressed against this house in Capernaum where Jesus was surrounded by Scribes and many others – a house where men with a make-shift stretcher had pushed through until visibly climbing onto the roof and relaying the paralyzed man up to each other then lowering him down inside. Out the door walks a group of faithful friends which included the joyous man healed by Christ Jesus! What is your reaction?

    • Does Jesus Christ have authority in your life?
    • Do you believe in the Messiah of Almighty God now?
    • Do you have just a bit more hope and joy like the man walking on legs which were lifeless?
    • Is your soul lifeless without the hope of the forgiveness of sins spoken by Christ Jesus?

    “God has visited his people!”

     

    “Son [or daughter], your sins are forgiven.”

     

  • Interrupting Jesus 4 – Samaritans & family black sheep

    Interrupting Jesus 4 – Samaritans & family black sheep

    Israel.

    Let’s get something straight: There was NO Israel in the Roman Empire. (Just take a look at the map).New Testament Palestine

    Call it Israel or call it Palestine; you will see that to the Romans, Judeans and Samaritans, Israel does not exist except as part of a long-gone past.

    A certain hatred existed in the days of Christ Jesus as it does today. Mention the name ‘Israel’ and it means different things to different people. Observant Jews look back to a Kingdom united by David and Solomon, a Kingdom and alliance of the twelve tribes of Jacob (whose name was changed to Israel). After the United Kingdom was divided, ten tribes lived in Israel to the north. Judah was just two of the tribes. Samaria had been purchased in 925 B.C. and became the capital of Israel (after the division of the United Kingdom of Israel).

    You might say that most people of Hebrew heritage in Galilee, Samaria and Judea were ancestral cousins.

    Residents of these northern Roman provinces of Samaria and Galilee were perceived as black sheep of the family of Abraham, not quite so pure as the Judeans of Jerusalem. Samaritans refused to worship the LORD in Jerusalem. Look to post-Davidic history and stories of the Gospels and you will discover that Samaritans are treated no better than contemptible foreigners by faithful Jews, even though Samaria lies only about 30 miles from Jerusalem.

    Christians and non-Christians alike probably know the story of ‘the good Samaritan‘ told by Jesus. In it he tells of a man who encounters robbers in his travels on a journey such as those Jesus and His Disciples made frequently through the mountain trade routes. The point of the parable is that it is not the religious men who showed a man mercy, but a resented Samaritan.

    What does a merciful God require of us? Show mercy to others, as God has shown us.

    Jesus’ mission to Israel (the remnant of faithful Jews of Judah, Galilee and beyond) would seem to include redemption of even the lost sheep in the hills of Samaria.

    On their way back to Galilee from Jerusalem, Jesus sends the Disciples ahead for some lunch ‘to go.’ When they return to Jesus with the food they discover how our Lord has dealt with an interruption of the lowest of those Samaritans, a woman living with a man not her husband.

    It all started out with Jesus asking for a drink of water. Christ Jesus was thirsty, as any man would be after walking to this well. Jesus interrupts this Samaritan woman as He waits for His Disciples to return with lunch.

    John 4

    7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”

    9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

    11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.”

    13 Jesus said to her,“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

    15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

    [What’s going on here? Why doesn’t this Samaritan woman just give the man, Jesus, a drink?]

    16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”

    17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.”

    Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”

    [Jesus had never met her. How could He possibly know that? How this woman must have been astonished at His unveiling of hidden truth of her sinful situation.]

    19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.”

    21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

    25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.”

    26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”

    27 Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “Why are you talking with her?”

    28 So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” 30 They went out of the town and were coming to him.

    … 39 Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42 They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”

    43 After the two days he departed for Galilee. 44 (For Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in his own hometown.) 45 So when he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, having seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the feast. For they too had gone to the feast.

    When did you ever set out on a journey or send out for lunch and instead pause to minister to a needy soul? When have you ever interrupted your daily life for two days to tell the Good News of Christ Jesus to some soul in a place off your route?

    A lowly Samaritan woman may have been the first Jew to hear from His own mortal lips, ‘I AM the Christ, the Messiah, the Promised One.’ Jesus had time for her and for the misled people of her town who had continued in the sins of their ancestors.

    Do you have a minute to ask someone for a drink of water? Is your compassion for saving souls of the lost sufficient to minister to their friends and family for a couple of days?

    Do interruptions of your day demonstrate a Christ-like love of a Good Samaritan?

    Does your journey treasure time for the people you encounter?