Talk of JESUS . com

Tag: witness

  • Relationship with a Roman

    Relationship with a Roman

     

    capernaum map

    Luke 7:1 After he had finished all his sayings in the hearing of the people, he entered Capernaum.

    Jesus has just taught the crowds who were amazed at His teaching (probably under the watchful Roman eyes of their area squad of the Legion).

    Jesus taught His own people with such sayings as:

    • Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.
    • Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.
    • The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good.
    • “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?

    The multitudes followed Jesus from place to place (under watchful Roman eyes, along with ears to hear the true motives of this Jewish teacher who taught in the synagogues of the towns and on the distant hillsides) … waiting to see what their promised Messiah would do. (The Roman authorities and Jewish authorities wanted to know that as well.)

    Jesus has told the crowds, “For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, 44 for each tree is known by its own fruit.”

    What is the fruit of Jesus’ ministry? For most of the crowds just watch. Many bear no good fruit.

    balage_capernaumJesus returns to his new home, followed by the crowds of onlookers.

    2 Now a centurion had a servant who was sick and at the point of death, who was highly valued by him. 3 When the centurion heard about Jesus, he sent to him elders of the Jews, asking him to come and heal his servant.

    This Roman soldier had a servant, possibly a captured slave from their many battles of the Roman campaign and rule of the region (perhaps even a zealous Jew). We know that the culture of the City of Rome required many slaves (25% of the population). This person (slave or servant) was valuable to the Roman Centurion (a General in charge of many men, in addition to his own servants).

    Propriety and protocol require communication at the proper levels of leadership to approach a common Jew like Jesus; therefore the centurion sends another servant to communicate with the servant of a Jewish elder about dealing with this common Rabbi of the hillsides about possibly helping him in a personal matter of his gentile (Roman) household.

    The Elders themselves (highly esteemed and with the authority of Jewish leadership of their fellow Jews like Jesus) come to the Rabbi Jesus and ask Him a favor. No faithful Jew would refuse such a request directly from an Elder.

    land-bridge-600_24 And when they came to Jesus, they pleaded with him earnestly, saying, “He (this gentile, Roman centurion) is worthy to have you do this for him, 5 for he loves our nation, and he is the one who built us our synagogue.”

    So the Jews then begin a short journey toward the Roman encampment nearby, but not in Capernaum.

    6 And Jesus went with them. When he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends, saying to him, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. 7 Therefore I did not presume to come to you. But say the word, and let my servant be healed.

     Fruit of His teaching! AND from a Roman gentile.

    8 For I too am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me: and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”

    And Jesus had just asked on the hillsides:

    “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?”

    Beloved believer, you who this day claim Christ by calling yourself a christian; do you hear now Jesus’ teaching to faithful followers of God?

    It is a further lesson for the ears of skeptical Jews and their local Elders:

     9 When Jesus heard these things, he marveled at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, said, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” 

    And later report would come back to Capernaum from the gentile Roman camp of this miracle that did not even require the touch or near presence of Jesus:

    10 And when those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the servant well.

     Adoption and mercy for gentiles like most of us. Jesus IS Lord of all.

    We cry out to Christ, “Lord, Lord.”

    Do you have the faith of this centurion?

    Is He your Lord?

     

  • Redeeming the Time

    Redeeming the Time

    See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. –Ephesians 5:15-16 NKJV

    Are your sunday-christian sensibilities shocked by the everyday images of the world in these last days?

    Oh, the subtleties of Satan engineering constant bombardment of entertainment vulgarities as desirable mentoring of women and children and young men. Oh, the subtleties of Satan to suggest special rights for perversions abhorrent to God. Oh, the subtleties of Satan renaming life given to the growing seed of a man in the womb of a woman to the purpose of calling a child a choice. Oh, the subtleties of Satan for the greed of intrusion of corporate performance-improving pharmaceuticals within the hearing of our children with a medical disclaimer for physiology once not mentioned to toddlers or young teens.

    The imagery of combat and sex in video and print and talk invades the minds and conquers the heart and soul by every intrusion into the lives of our growing children and the workplaces and shopping places of every adult. Philandering weak sunday-christians wander six-days and twenty-three hours in the filth of the world without the purity of Christ. Oh, the subtlety of Satan to have christians accept evil as normal and reject Christ’s righteousness as abhorrent witness to a fallen world.

    Satan’s advances through cellphones , i-pods, cartoons; by television and radio into every place of work and business; and the filtering of Christ and God from every tolerance of the world goes well beyond what was considered proper and acceptable to any man or woman or child, let alone a Christian struggling to mute the evil messages and cover the obscene sights of our everyday life in the world of these last days.

    The temple prostitutes of Ephesus had nothing on those of this day who live for the moment of their next hook-up and share in the desires of the flesh against which the letter cautions Christians so vehemently. Some of these now do even claim Christ on an occasional Sunday, while the world knows they covet the buzz of the moment and relationship of the night.

    Walk in Love

    Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. 2 And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.

    3 But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints; 4 neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. 5 For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. 6 Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.7 Therefore do not be partakers with them.

    Walk in Light

    8 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light 9 (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth), 10 finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. 11 And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them.12 For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret. 13 But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light, for whatever makes manifest is light. 14 Therefore He says:

    “Awake, you who sleep,
    Arise from the dead,
    And Christ will give you light.”

    Walk in Wisdom

    15 See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, 16 redeeming the time, because the days are evil.

    17 Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18 And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit, 19 speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, 20 giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21 submitting to one another in the fear of God.

    Marriage—Christ and the Church

    22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. 24 Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.

    25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, 26 that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, 27 that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. 28 So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. 30 For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. 31 “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.33 Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

    Is marriage not under attack?

    By women divorcing their Christian husbands? By adultery of husbands who claim Christ? By re-definition of twenties and teens “in a relationship,” before never being in a commitment by their words and their true acts of true love?

    Why not re-define marriage in the courts to conform to the sinful desires of sinful man?

    Oh, ‘single mom’ and lustful man: it is not the husband or wife of your vows you witness against. Your sin and witness is against Christ Jesus by claiming His Name, while living the subtle lies of the life of your flesh!

    When David sinned and was finally convicted after a year, he repented and did all he could to get right before God once more.

     Psalm 51:

    4 Against You, You only, have I sinned,
    And done this evil in Your sight—

    Therefore, forgive the sinner

    And repent you fellow sinner

    For the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ

    And for the redemption of your sinking soul. 

    Godlessness in the Last Days

    3 But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty.

    2 For people will be:

    • lovers of self, 
    • lovers of money, 
    • proud, 
    • arrogant,
    • abusive,
    • disobedient to their parents,
    • ungrateful, unholy,
    • heartless,
    • unappeasable (impossible to satisfy),
    • slanderous,
    • without self-control,
    • brutal, 
    • not loving good,
    • treacherous,
    • reckless, 
    • swollen with conceit, 

    (And occasional sunday-christians unrepentant, take note of these:)

    • lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 
    • having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. 

    AND the advice of the letter to the Church?

    Avoid such people.

    Redeem your time spent so foolishly with non-Christians and unbelievers; but AVOID those who CLAIM Christ Jesus, while living a pagan and unbelieving life of witness against Christ and His bride, the Church.

    6 For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, 7 always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth…

    12 Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, 13 while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.

    Remove your shades of the blind man,

    O you christian distracted by the world.

    Remove Satan’s loud ear buds

    From pounding the evil in your ears.

    Hear once more the Gospel.

    Receive the love of our Redeemer.

    Turn again and follow once more

    Christ Jesus, our Lord;

    Redeeming your time,

    For the days are evil.

  • Redemption

    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.’”

    pinnacle of TempleAgain, 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.