May 20 – Thoughts on 1 Chronicles 10-12 & John 6:45-71

In one of my former churches I worked as a Youth Pastor and then an Associate Pastor to Youth.  Our Senior Pastor had a plaque on his desk that quoted a verse from today’s reading:  “Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.”  While I appreciated the plaque, I always felt a little uncomfortable with it.

Whenever I read it, I felt like it was saying, “Jesus, nothing better has come along so you’ll do for now.”  I know that’s not the point, but it’s how I felt about it.  And maybe that’s because I see that sentiment so often in our world today.  We follow Jesus, but as soon as something better comes along, it gains our allegiance.  When we can comfort ourselves with a rival belief, we do.  When we can find relief from the pains of life in a bottle, a pill, or another addiction, we do.   Jesus is great as long as He gives us what we want and there isn’t anything better.

Maybe it would have been better had the plaque included the next verse as well:  “We have come to believe and to know that You are the Holy One of God.”  We cannot turn away from Jesus once we have been convinced that He is the Messiah, the “Holy One of God”, for that belief demands a commitment.  I’ve spoken with people who don’t believe, or who question their beliefs, but never with someone convinced that Jesus is who He said He was yet not following Him.  If Jesus truly is the Messiah in all that the Messiah is supposed to be, then we have no choice but to follow.  If we don’t, it’s not Him who has failed, it’s our faith in Him.

/0 Comments/by

May 20 – Thoughts on 1 Chronicles 10-12 & John 6:45-71

In one of my former churches I worked as a Youth Pastor and then an Associate Pastor to Youth.  Our Senior Pastor had a plaque on his desk that quoted a verse from today’s reading:  “Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.”  While I appreciated the plaque, I always felt a little uncomfortable with it.

Whenever I read it, I felt like it was saying, “Jesus, nothing better has come along so you’ll do for now.”  I know that’s not the point, but it’s how I felt about it.  And maybe that’s because I see that sentiment so often in our world today.  We follow Jesus, but as soon as something better comes along, it gains our allegiance.  When we can comfort ourselves with a rival belief, we do.  When we can find relief from the pains of life in a bottle, a pill, or another addiction, we do.   Jesus is great as long as He gives us what we want and there isn’t anything better.

Maybe it would have been better had the plaque included the next verse as well:  “We have come to believe and to know that You are the Holy One of God.”  We cannot turn away from Jesus once we have been convinced that He is the Messiah, the “Holy One of God”, for that belief demands a commitment.  I’ve spoken with people who don’t believe, or who question their beliefs, but never with someone convinced that Jesus is who He said He was yet not following Him.  If Jesus truly is the Messiah in all that the Messiah is supposed to be, then we have no choice but to follow.  If we don’t, it’s not Him who has failed, it’s our faith in Him.

/0 Comments/by

May 19 – Thoughts on 1 Chronicles 7-9 & John 6:22-44

There is only one food that is common to every culture on the planet, and that is bread.  Each culture has their own version, from Native American fry breads to Swedish limpa, but every culture in the world has some sort of bread.  This makes it a perfect metaphor for Jesus to us, one that is translatable to every context to which we might wish to minister.

Jesus is in the midst of identifying Himself using the primary Jewish festivals.  He has spoken of Sabbath, the weekly day of rest, to speak to the fact that He is doing the Father’s business.  And now He is speaking of Passover to say that He is the only “bread” that an sustain us for eternity; not the unleavened bread of the Passover and not the manna that came to them in the desert.

In fact, as Jesus identifies Himself as “the Bread of Life” far better than the manna of the wilderness, we get Jesus’ first “I am…” statement, the first of 7.  Through them, He is not just making a metaphorical lesson, but He is saying something far more.  When Jesus says, “I am…”, the word He is using is Yahweh, the name God gave to Moses when asked.  By making such blatant statements beginning with “I am…”, Jesus is proclaiming Himself to be God, the teaching that most infuriated the Pharisees, and the charge that ultimately got Him crucified.

As we continue to learn of Jesus, “I am…” statements, we have to ask ourselves what Jesus is to us?  If we take an honest look at ourselves and our faith, what is Jesus to us?  And what metaphor might we use?  “I am Aladdin’s lamp, giving you anything you want.”  “I am the Sheriff, ready to shoot you down if you slip up at all.”  “I am the Parlimentarian, making sure everyone knows and keeps the rules.”  What “I am…” metaphor would best describe your view of God?

/0 Comments/by

May 18 – Thoughts on 1 Chronicles 4-6 & John 6:1-21

Continuing with the theme of the Jewish feasts, Jesus today takes on the Festival of Unleavened Bread, which begins with Passover (6:4).  Passover is the first day of the Unleavened Bread Festival, and itself begins with the Seder feast.  It is the celebration and remembrance of the Exodus, God’s act of freeing His people from slavery in Egypt through Moses.  When God was finished demolishing Egypt through 10 plagues, He prepared His people for their exodus by commanding that they bake bread without yeast so it would keep on the march to freedom.  Thus, bread becomes a powerful symbol of this feast.

When Jesus fed the 5000 (actually far more: there were 5000 men but an uncounted amount of women and children as well), he used bread not just to feed a hungry crowd, and not just to prove His miraculous power, but to speak through symbol to the Passover.  Just as the people were given their freedom from Egypt, so Jesus was about to give them an even greater freedom from their sinfulness, from the Law that bound them, and from the uncleanness that was their state because of sin.

This miracle pointed to the bread of the Passover feast, but also to the manna given them during their 40 years of wandering in the wilderness.  As God provided for their need through the bread from heaven, so Jesus is providing for their immediate hunger and eternal salvation through Himself.  In fact, tomorrow we will talk about one of Jesus’ seven “I Am…” statements when He says, “I Am the bread of life…”

How has Jesus provided for you?  Beyond the obvious death and resurrection, what other ways has Jesus met your needs and, like the 12 baskets of leftovers, done so bountifully?  And what is your reaction?  Do you follow Him as He asks, or do you follow your own plan like those fed who tried to make Him king by force?

/0 Comments/by

May 17 – Thoughts on 1 Chronicles 1-3 & John 5:25-47

The question of whether we get in to heaven based on what we do (works) or what we think (belief) is as old as the bible itself, and passages like today’s only help to muddy those waters.

in John 5:28ff, Jesus talks about the resurrection, and He says, “…a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out – those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned.”  This small sentence is filled with assumptions that rock the typical evangelical worldview.  First, the entire view of resurrection throws our “getting in to heaven” idea for a loop.  Notice the dead are not raised to heaven or hell, but to life or condemnation.  Unless “life” is a code word for heaven, which it is not anywhere else in scripture (though “eternal life” is assumed to be), our resurrection doesn’t take us to heaven but to a renewed, perfected, sanctified life here on earth.

Second, the idea that our entrance into heaven is based solely on our belief in Jesus Christ gets rocked here as well.  Jesus doesn’t define Good and Bad people based on what they believe but on what they have done.  “Those who have done what is good” is hard to misinterpret, and even harder to interpret as just a relationship.  So, do we get in to heaven because of what we’ve done or because of Who we know?

I believe the problem with this thought is not about how we get into heaven, but about our preoccupation with our own eternity.  If we are only doing good, only avoiding doing evil, or building a relationship with Jesus solely because we want to get in to heaven, then we are doing these things for the wrong reason.  I’ve asked before whether you would follow Jesus is you could be convinced that He taught that life ends at death.  In other words, would you still follow Jesus if you weren’t promised a great reward (heaven) if you did?  Here is where bearing your cross becomes difficult.  Here is where self-sacrifice for Jesus’ sake becomes costly.  Here is where the rubber hits the road.

Yes, we have been promised eternal life with Jesus if we follow Him.  Yes, our following of Jesus is what determines if we live with Him forever or not.  But is our faith ultimately self-serving (“I’ll do whatever it takes to get in to heaven”) or God-serving?

/0 Comments/by