Author: steveandrulonis

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The Revelation Christmas Story

Heaven answered Hell. This is the real point of the Christmas story.

The true Light came into the world. See John 1:9. It happened in the manger at Bethlehem, a small town set in a region shadowed by religious and political turmoil.

Dawn came when the night most exercised its presence and force. For this reason, the Church leaders in the fourth century made a choice to celebrate the birth of the Son during the winter season.

Moments of sunlight do grow shorter until we reach the winter solstice day, the one when parts of the earth experience their longest periods of darkness. The culture of the times used these days to celebrate Saturnalia, what one historian referred as the “jolliest of Roman festivals” related to an idol dedicated to farming and sunlight.

Was Christ born in December? Nothing definitive has been discovered about the exact birthday of the Son. He did come. This we believe.

And there was a lot going on when He arrived.

The Birth Wonder

We find a vibrant and poetic visual of this reality in the first five verses of Revelation 12. In this chapter, John the Apostle describes two wonders revealed to him about the coming of Jesus.

First, John saw a woman pregnant with the Child. It is a very real birth moment that he witnessed. This woman suffered and travailed with her labor pains as women do at such times. She cried out for the delivery to be finished at last the text tells us.

Jesus entered our world the way all babies were designed to come forth. Human births are attended with suffering, as God said they would be when He addressed Eve after the Fall in the Garden: “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children …” (see Genesis 3:16).

We can take something from this aspect related to the curse of sin. I think the pain of delivery correlates to the anguish of the Father in seeing the Son made the offering for sin upon the Cross.

A mother’s season of celebration at conception and the progress of gestation end somewhat in violence. She feels the contractions as they come steadily and stronger and then she steels herself to push out her baby — the child sometimes tears the fabric of her body in his emergence. It is a painful climax. It is also one I think serves to bring mothers very close to the feelings of the heart of God.

What comes soon after, however, is that she rejoices as the newborn is given to her arms. Tears of joy often fall when the baby finally rests upon her breast.

Think now of how the Father witnessed the wages of sin being heaped upon the humanity of Jesus, the Anointed One. Think of those terrible hours of separation when the Son was forsaken, alone, battered, blinded, and hung in the darkness on the Tree.

Consider the great contractions that shuddered Creation at Calvary. We read in the gospel accounts of the darkened, storm-clouded skies and the quaking earth and of rocks being split. Battle-tested soldiers were left stunned by this awe-filled finish of the Redemption Plan. The Temple itself was rocked and the curtain that veiled away the Holy Place was torn top to bottom.

These torturous scenes came on what we now call Good Friday. And then Easter came.

Alive again did Jesus emerge from the grave. Resurrection life – a new birth into salvation – was made available to all who chose to believe upon His Name.

The Hungry Dragon

The natural expression of the Son’s delivery scene in Revelation 12 has a contrast in the text for us to read.  Unveiled for John was the supernatural element of opposition to that very birth.

The wonder John described was that of the great red dragon. It was a monstrosity with heads and horns and crowns. This refers to the prince and the power of the cosmic world in his operations on earth.

The strange dragon points to how Satan manipulates governments and businesses and kingdoms with his deceptions. He attracted the allegiance of one-third of the “stars of heaven.” Angelic beings followed this rebel in his program to become as the Most High, according to Isaiah 14:14.

The devil had long looked for this coming of Jesus. He was ready to oppose the Son with everything at his disposal. His plot was to find His mother and “devour her child as soon as it was born” (Revelation 12:4).

Herod was among Satan’s instruments and one of the first to target Jesus. This ruler in Judea got wind about the birth of the King of Israel from foreign emissaries. We know them as the Magi, or the Three Kings as a popular Christmas carol calls them. These travelers had followed the Star, a sign that they took as pointing to the coming of the Savior.

The story they told bred tension in Jerusalem. Herod could not abide any threat to his reign. Through questioning Jewish religious leaders, he learned that the King was to be born in Bethlehem. He feigned interest in honoring this Son.

The wise travelers did find and worship Jesus, bestowing marvelous gifts upon Him. They also were warned not to return to Herod. They escaped Judea and returned to their homelands by another route.

Herod responded with viciousness. He ordered the slaughter of every baby boy 2 years of age and under in the vicinity of Bethlehem.

Christmas pageants omit this march of the killing soldiers. We see shepherds and wise men and animals, but not the swordsmen who carried out Herod’s diabolical decree.

Jesus was out of the area by this time. An angel warned Joseph to flee with Mary and the Baby to Egypt.

This begs a question from our tender hearts. How was it that only Joseph got this word from God? Were these other boys born about Bethlehem disposable afterthoughts in the divine story?

These are fair questions to pose to the Lord. How He chooses to answer them for you, I cannot say. The Bible has many answers for us. The Word also stirs questions aplenty.

Do we get the details about everything? We do not. Explanations are unsatisfying to the humanly curious who refuse to recognize the authority of the living God who made all and who is in all. Faith only comes by hearing the Word as the Word of God.

The coming of Jesus didn’t fix the world at once. The devil and his demons were active then and they remain active in our days.

Swallowed But Undefeated

Jesus faced the threat of murderers at other points before the Cross. In Nazareth, His words enraged the crowd in the synagogue. They were poised to toss Him from a cliff.

On a couple of other occasions, mobs fueled by offended religious leaders were ready to bury Him under a pile of stones. The assault of demons in Gethsemane was invisible but so intense for Christ that droplets of blood oozed from Him.

At the fullness of time, Jesus surrendered to the death ordained for Him. He gave Himself to the Cross to endure an execution orchestrated by Jewish opponents and facilitated by Roman imperial forces.

Was this a devouring? On the surface, it seems like it to me.

The reality is that the dragon bit off more than he could chew. He got his worldly powers to do his bidding and swallow the Savior with their machinations. Just as it was written, He was wounded for the transgression and iniquity of all.

And so the plan of God worked most effectively and completely. Christ finished the work and defeated death with His dying.

The Son, in the purpose of God, was born to get underneath everything. The curse of the earth brought forth by the sin of Adam could only be defeated by the One who is meek and lowly in heart.

Mary brought forth the Son of Man, the One destined to rule all nations with “a rod of iron,” a scepter He won through obedience to the will of the Father. Iron is an ore dug out from beneath the soil. Jesus gained His right to reign on earth with a life lived in perfection and offered as the ransom for the sins of men.

The Son came– small as an infant. The Son died as the Man of Sorrows, acquainted with grief. The Son rose in victory as the firstborn from the dead.

The Son also ascended. This Child was caught up to His Throne.

There Jesus now abides waiting, watching, and ever interceding for us who are His brothers and sisters.

And this King shall come again. Let us sing out: Glory to God in the Highest.

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In the Hands of the Lamb

The hands of Jesus – imagine them. What a precious picture this should be for us. See the nail-scarred hands of the Son and see all things as being in those hands.

This is the whole point of what we read about in Revelation 5 and 6.

The Lamb of God took hold of the scroll with its seals. He can do so because He knows the world we live in. He came as the Son of Man to experience what depravity had done to His Creation on earth.

In Genesis 6, the Lord became grief-stricken. That’s the only way to look at how the ways of men on earth affected Him who made them.

Man was made free. Blessed, he was, with a mind and a heart and the ability to reason, to compare, and to choose. The world fashioned for him was full of diversity. The Garden he was to dress and keep was populated with a variety of trees – including the one of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Over the course of time the imaginations of man grew to be more and more given to vanity; they were only evil continually. And so the Lord chose the course of the Flood. A total cleansing with water wiped away all that breathed upon earth. Only those on the Ark, a vessel built in obedience by Noah and his family, survived the waves of judgment.

Jesus came and faced a world that still lived under the power of wicked one and hell’s activities. He submitted to the reign of men in the Temple, representing religion, and before the chair of Roman justice, representing human government. Their imaginations and actions were only evil continually – these combined forces sent the innocent Christ to the Cross.

At Calvary, a flood of different kind spilled forth. The pouring out of the Son’s precious Blood answered the dominion of sin. This efficacious flow cleanses those who choose to come under it making them whiter than snow.

Triumphing over the evil machinations of mankind in His incarnation, the Lamb who was slain now stood ready to reveal the last words on evil. He was about to unwrap the progression of history.

The Progression of Conflict

Each seal opened introduces an element of how conflict operates in our spheres of life. This was set in motion when the fruit of the Tree was taken, that original moment when men believed the mouth that spoke accusation. The charge leveled against the Lord was that He was keeping people from real happiness.

They bought it; they received the accusation and ate from the forbidden tree. The serpent won this battle, but the man and the woman did not join forces with him. Instead, they became like the eater of the dust, destined for a ground-level existence of independent detachment from their Maker. They brought themselves low and began to live for themselves and not for God.

The serpent had nothing left to say to them. He was silent as the man and woman wrestled with feelings of shame. They were tortured at the sight of their nakedness. The coldness of sin was evident to them at once. They hid. They covered up.

The Voice of Heaven still walked onto humanity’s first crime scene. He came not to conduct an investigation. He knew what had happened. He knew and yet He would not keep Himself away.

God came after Adam and Eve. His cry, “Where are you?” was a cry of anguish. He understood what their choice meant regarding their capability for fellowship in His Presence. He knew He would be ushering them out of the Garden and setting cherubim with swords to guard its gates.

Does it bother you to think that the Lord feels the sting of death as much as we do? This, I think, could be the main reason why people have such a distorted opinion of God.

There is a gross misunderstanding of how the Lord made us for relationship with Him. The pleasure of this relationship He would have to redeem. His prized creatures had made themselves slaves to their desires. The lust of the flesh, first stimulated through an offer to the intellect, flamed forth and left them burned.

The celebration we read about in Revelation 5 marks the moment when Heaven realizes the Day of the Lord is closer than ever. The elders, the angels, and all creatures, aware and in tune with God, cannot help themselves. They are so excited for what comes next.

Jesus begins to unseal the stories that lead to the big finish. The pages we turn will bring us to the marriage supper of the Lamb, to the coming of the New Jerusalem.

What of wickedness? The Lord lets us in on its destiny.

Horses and Riders

The first seals – four of them – introduce us to four horses. This animal represents warfare. Since the Fall in the Garden, a battle has raged. Constant conflict has plagued the face of the earth and the faces of men.

Seal 1 shows the white horse carrying the ultimate Conqueror. This horse and He who sits upon it is Christ. First things must be communicated first. The Son is crowned. With His bow, He fires the arrows of the Almighty, as David wrote of in Psalm 45:5 — “Your arrows are sharp in the heart of the king’s enemies; the peoples fall under you.”

Some see this white horse picture of one depicting the antichrist with his fiery darts. I cannot buy that interpretation given the contexts shown in the previous chapters with Christ in His sovereignty.

The next three seals show us more horses – one red, one black, and one pale green. These beasts stand for the things that bring the most death and destruction to earth.

Red is for the war horse. Note the text: the rider possessed a great sword representing power to “take peace from the earth” and usher in a season of mass killing.

The black horse and its rider indicate the ravages of famine to come. The fruitfulness of the earth withered and wasted, the sounds of starving voices pleading for meager rations of wheat and barley. Luxuries will still exist in the form of oil and wine, but basic necessities to make bread for sustenance are absent.

The pale green horse points to the sicknesses unto death. We’ve witnessed this on a small scale. COVID-19 was the most recent example of a worldwide pandemic. We saw how this panicked people on every level of society. Life was shut down. Strange and unreasonable laws were instituted. Science was proclaimed as the rule for life.

Hell and Death, when set loose, are voracious in their appetites for destruction. A fourth of the earth perishes during the marching of these horses.

Judgment in Motion

Heaven knows what’s going on. The fifth seal brings us back to the throne room and to a vision of the martyrs and their prayers. Their testimony for Christ and His Word made them enemies of the world system. These were slain for their faith and are joined together with the elders I believe. They are robed and they are heard: “They cried out with a loud voice, ‘O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?’  (Revelation 6:10).

Rest for a little season, the Lord tells them. More are coming – fellow servants, brothers and sisters yet to lose their lives for the testimony of faith in the Son.

Seal No. 6 unveils for John the way of the wrath of the Lamb. That statement is difficult to fathom. Lambs have no claws, no sharp teeth. How does the Lamb express wrath?

See these words: “And the Heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled up” (Revelation 6:14). Truth has been proclaimed and rejected. The consequences of the curse of death must proceed.

There is only one Name under Heaven by which men might be saved – the Name of Christ (see Acts 4:12). To refuse that Name is to remain subject to the wrath decreed in the Word that never fails.

Heaven draws down the shade and releases the hold of mercy. Earthquakes and darkness prevail. The sky appears to fall as demonic forces are driven down. Those in charge, the rulers among men, scramble for places of safety. And yet these ones will still refuse to honor the One who made them.

The great judgment day of the Holy and True One shall come. “And who shall be able to stand?”

We stand because we have put our faith in Him. We anticipate the hope of His glory. A free, clean, holy eternal age will be ours to enjoy. Like Job, we declare this: “…I know that my redeemer lives, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth” (Job 19:25).

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The Scroll, its Seals, the Songs

Behold the Lamb. The Baptist proclaimed this message to his followers. When Jesus arrived, the forerunner cleared the air and made plain the character of the Messiah and His Mission. The Lamb came to take away the sin of the world.

The Apostle John heard this declaration and believed. He began to follow Jesus.

At the time of the writing of Revelation, John again encountered the Lamb. Here, we read of how this man beheld the Lamb in His glory. He had been transported to the place where he could witness the full scope of Christ’s reign over Creation.

We come to Revelation 5 and begin to see a series of passages that describe life on earth. The vision starts with words on pages that are sealed followed by trumpets, thunders, and bowls.  Each one of these things come in sets of seven.

First, John saw a book. It was a something of a scroll. It rested in the right hand of the One who sat on the Throne.

The unusual thing about this scroll was the way that it was written. The Apostle noticed that this scroll had writing on both sides of it.

Scrolls inscribed by pen and ink had to be crafted on one side only. The reason was that having ink on both sides of the parchment would have created a sticky mess. The pages would have been rendered unreadable.

The significance of having words on both sides of the scroll is that Heaven reads the way of our world from a different perspective. The Throne of the Lord possesses the vantage point of omnipotence, omniscience, and everywhere presence.

Imagine a fine tapestry, an elaborate oriental rug perhaps. One side is ordered and ornate. Go to the other side and what is seen is how the threads are woven together and tied off.

Think of the fabric of our earth this way. We see what we see, but there is a whole series of unseen strands, seams, and knots fashioned according to the mind of God.

The King of History

Seven seals held the scroll together. These would have appeared to John as official-looking fasteners, each carrying an imprint of governmental authority.

In Roman days, the Empire affixed wax seals impressed with an imperial symbol. The seal could only be opened, or broken, by a designated authority recognized by the government. The tomb of Jesus was sealed in such a manner. To break a seal unlawfully was counted as a high offense and was punishable by death.

John sat in wonder at the scene before him. A strong angel posed the big question: “Who is worthy to open the book and loose its seals?” (Revelation 5:2).

All was still. None moved to take the scroll.

John was crestfallen. He wept much. He sensed the importance of the words contained in that book.

Who was worthy? One of the elders among the 24 seated in that throne room came forward to comfort the Apostle.

“Weep no more! The Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof” (Revelation 5:6). The Son of Man had triumphed in His work on earth. He could lay claim to dominion in every corner of it.

It was not by power, nor by might, that this victory came. The Son won by the Spirit moving through His weakness in humility.

And so here John beheld the Lamb standing as the One slain. Memories of the Cross flashed into his consciousness. By that offering of His broken body, the Son gained the authority to set in motion the progression of human history that would be unveiled in the coming pages.

Seals unsealed. Trumpets sounded out. Thunders roared. Bowls poured forth. These things are coming soon.

Worship Breaks Forth

First, however, John sees a season of absolute worship. The Lion prevailed as the Lamb. He gave His life as the ransom for all. He took the scroll. The Story’s final chapters are in His hands. The grandest of grand finales are about to be shown to all present. The joy of the moment long anticipated could not be contained. Father, Son, and Spirit altogether in union with saints and angels shall celebrate as John looked on.

The rounds of rejoicing begin with the elders, the representatives of mankind there in the presence of the Throne. A new song burst forth from them as they bowed to the Lamb. They took up their harps; they grabbed their guitars and began to play and sing.

Fragrances rose from the bowls that they held. The whole place was made to smell of prayer. The supplications of the saints of the all ages scented the scene.

The song was full of the lyrics of redemption. The work of the Lamb had drawn men to Him and to His salvation. Redeemed to God by the Blood – a new and living institution had formed. This is the Church of Christ in her glory, members in particular called out from “every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation” (Revelation 5:9).

Paul wrote of this mystery of oneness begun by work of the Son in his letter to the Ephesians. “Now there are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God” (Ephesians 2:19).

Yes, the oracles of God were sent to the world through the people of Israel, out of them came the Son and Savior. Now, all are one in Him who is the Chief Cornerstone of the Temple, a holy habitation filled with Spirit.

This moment in time is what all believers — all those who have chosen to hear and become friends of God — have been waiting for. No wonder their joy breaks through. Soon they will form a kingdom of priests to rule and reign with Him.

All Creation Joins in Song

The sound of this song ripples in all directions and to all creatures. The voices of untold angels enter into the chorus of faith. “And the number of them was 10,000 times 10,000, and thousands of thousands” (Revelation 5:11).

Again from Ephesians, we read Paul’s words about this angelic interest in the program of redemption: “His intent was that now, through the Church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 3:10).

The Story told on earth speaks beyond the clans, tribes, and nations formed from the dust. The record of Righteousness goes forth to the eternal audience, to the greater congregation mentioned in Psalm 40, to the cloud of witnesses (Hebrews 12:1).

God’s purpose was to demonstrate His ultimate power to the realm invisible to our eyes. He revealed that the nature of the Lamb was the way for Him to roar as the Lion throughout the universe. It was this joy that Christ incarnated, living as one of us, set before Him in His mission.

Revelation 5 climaxes with a declaration of total communion found at last in all the Lord has made. “And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea and all that are in them, I heard saying, ‘Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be unto Him who sits upon the Throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever.’”

May we think upon this reality, for it is reality for the Lord who is the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End. Let us look unto Jesus. Let us behold the Lamb, “… the Author and Finisher of our Faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the Cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

Alleluia and Amen.

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The Scene of Sovereignty

“Come up and see, and I will show you things to come.”

Jesus extended this invitation to John the Apostle in Revelation 4. At once, he went in the Spirit through the open door and into the place of majesty.

The scene before John reflected the sovereignty of the Almighty. All was honor and glory and fullness.

Revelation began with the Lord confirming the triumph of the Finished Work of the Lamb of God. John celebrated the cleansing power of the Blood to release us from the stain of sin. He fell before the Son when he saw Him. Awed by the Presence, John could only put his face to the ground. And then Jesus touched him and lifted him.

The encounter represented the personal relationship Jesus establishes with each of His sheep. He proceeded to give John words and a mission to communicate those words to the particular churches and their leaders.

Judgment indeed begins at the house of God. These congregations were family to the Lord, and as the good, good Father, He took note of areas worthy of commendation as well as those things in need of correction in each assembly. He gave directions and charged them to turn to the way of Truth.

Now, in Revelation 4, John gets taken higher. Up and up he went to bask in glimpses of the Lord in authority over Creation. In Revelation 5, the Apostle will begin to witness the scope of the Son’s position over human history and its ultimate outcome. John’s experience fulfilled what was written in Psalm 119:96: “I have seen the end of all perfection.”

Emerald Expression

Consider the Throne of Heaven as John expressed it in Revelation 4. One sat upon the seat over Creation. Only One — God the Son — and His appearance was full of sparkling and radiant spectacle. A rainbow enveloped the place with its emerald hue, the bright green, emphasized. The saying goes that someone can be green with envy. But in the economy of God, green symbolizes renewal, restoration, and resurrection.

Autumn brings falling leaves and their hues of brown and yellow and red as the decay takes its toll. Winter sends cold. Snows fall. The world gets iced over.

With Spring comes the thaw. Warmth softens the soil. The Easter lily blossoms and trees and fields come alive again. Green with freshness, our landscapes and vistas shout the arrival of a new beginning.

That’s what John is being shown – a New Creation is coming. The world has been entrapped in death. The wages of sin have exacted their tolls over and over and over.  The ruler of darkness, the liar and the prince of the power of the air has had his way. His time is short, however.

The Son’s Day approaches. Ultimate reality is communicated in the vividness of these visions brought before John. The Lord reigns.

The Community

Portrayed for John is the community of Heaven and its unity with the earth. Unlike the individualistic, self-oriented, destructive nature of this world’s cosmic system, the Lord shares His government. Note that 24 “elders” are situated around the Throne. They are robed in white, crowned with gold.

Who are these attendants? The testimony concerning their garments and the crowns indicate that they are representative believers who worship the Lamb. No Scripture identifies them. They discern the sense of attitude proceeding from the One on the Throne. They sit in counsel, ruling and reigning with the Son, their presence is a precursor of how His saints shall rule with Christ in a glorious era to come to earth.

Thunders and lightnings and voices are heard. Lamps — seven of them — are seen. These torches are like the tongues of fire seen in Acts 2. These fires represent the manifold nature of the Holy Spirit whom Christ sent to live in those who come to Him. Isaiah 11:2 gives some definition of His sevenfold nature: “The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD.”

Seven is the number of wholeness and completion in the Bible, and the Spirit evidenced the Finished Work of redemption in coming to fill the disciples of Jesus. Revelation 5:4 refers to the seven “eyes” of God in another reference to the Spirit. This reflects the omniscience and omnipresence of this Person of the Godhead.

For John, these visions indicate the authority of Heaven in the spirit realm. Satan may have a grip on power in the atmosphere he stimulates with worldliness, but above it all sits the Lamb of God on His Throne.

Four Creatures and the Crystal Sea

Also, we read of beasts bearing different faces. The imagery is similar to what we read in Ezekiel chapter 1. One beast has the face of a lion, another, the face of an ox, the third, the face of a man, and the fourth,  a face of an eagle.

In keeping with what the Lord is revealing to His Apostle, these beings represent the Lord’s sovereignty and His power among all things that have the breath of life in them. The lion points to animals in the wild as the ox speaks of domesticated beasts. The eagle represents the fowl of the air. And then there is man, the one made in God’s image to exercise dominion.

These beings possess six wings to designate their representative status, similar to how military rank is demonstrated. This picture would have been commonly understood given the attire worn by the Roman soldiers throughout the region where John and the churches lived. Also, the four creatures were said to be “full of eyes” — they perceived the things going on in their realms of representation.

God’s Throne is in command of Creation, every part of it. He is in charge and His purposes continue.

What else did John observe before the Throne? A sea of glass with the appearance of crystal.

To the ancient mindset, the image of the sea stirred fear. Dark and stormy, with waves and forceful currents, the waters were most often spoken of as signifying chaos and impending doom.

In Heaven, the sea is clear and still, firm in its form. John once witnessed Jesus awakened from sleep during a turbulent and raging storm on Galilee’s waters. The disciples were sure their boat was about sink to the bottom. Terrified, they cried out to Jesus. With calm, the Son stood and spoke to the air: “Be muzzled” (see Mark 4:39). At His word, the wind and the waves fell silent and calm.

Before the Throne, no chaos exists. All is in order and under full control.

Harmony and Worship

Taken together this scene is punctuated for John with music. The sounds of worship are heard from the elders and from the beasts. Their songs are ones the Lord wanted John to teach the believers to sing as they faced seasons of trial. The rest of the letter that is the Revelation to John will graphically inform the Jesus followers of the troubles destined to come.

The message we must take from Revelation is this one: the Lord reigns in majesty. Hold fast to this Truth in spite of human circumstances. The Lamb who was slain is alive forevermore and we are His people. Seated above, He ever intercedes for us.

Heaven knows. Heaven sees. Heaven sings.

And so should we lift our voices in praise to Him:

“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.”

“You are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power: for You have created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.”

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Jesus at the Door

Revelation is the Bible book that piques our curiosity in a major way. Its words turn lots of heads. Strong reactions are provoked. Some take it literally. Others read it as figurative – moral stories with hidden messages. Others dismiss it as fantasy, a collection of allegorical expressions from the wacky minds of persecuted people suffering from martyr complexes.

To take a look at this part of our Scriptures means that we first have to consider who received these words and to whom they were directed.  Like the majority of the New Testament books, Revelation was crafted as a letter. It had a sender and an intended audience. This is a reality presented right up front.

The angel came to earth to visit John the Apostle and reveal “things that must shortly take place” (Revelation 1:1). Before the discourses about the things above and events afar off in the future, the words provide details about the situations on the ground in the congregations as they existed in Asia Minor as Year 100 approached.

There’s a promise right up front for us: “Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy, and heed the things which are written in it, for the time is near” (Revelation 1:3). He who ignores Revelation misses out on something awesome.

At this point of his hearing, seeing, and writing, John was the only one of the original 12 Apostles yet alive. He had survived waves of attacks on the Christian movement. He still witnessed the Gospel spread throughout the Empire and beyond it – Thomas, the doubter of John 20, had reached and perished in India by this time.

John watched over Mary, the mother of Jesus, as he was instructed to by Jesus as He, the Savior, hung upon the Cross. Eventually, the Apostle wound up in Ephesus, serving the congregation that had been founded and nurtured by Paul and his companions, Priscilla and Aquila.

John saw the Lord in his time of trouble. The message came to him as he was in exile on Patmos, an island used by the Roman Empire for banished political prisoners. He was sent there “because of the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus” (Revelation 1:9).

Circumstances aside, John worshipped in Spirit and Truth. Jesus met him and commanded him to write a letter to the churches of the region. The Son delivered seven particular messages addressed to the leaders of these congregations.

Kingdom of Priests

For starters, believers who take up and read Revelation are reinforced in their identity as members of Christ, the first born of the dead, the One who loved us and “released us from our sins by His Blood” (Revelation 1:5).  As ruler of all of kings on earth, the Alpha and Omega who possesses all dominion, has called his followers to serve as Kingdom Priests.

This phrasing hearkens back to Exodus 19. There, the Israelites, freshly delivered from their long season of slavery in Egypt were told of their purpose in the plan of the Lord: “… you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6).

What does it mean to be a priest in the economy of God? The book of Leviticus outlined the duties delegated to the tribe chosen to serve at the Tabernacle, the worship center for Israel. Among other things, their primary jobs were to teach the commandments, to receive the sin offerings and sacrifice them, to inspect those stricken with leprosy and pronounce cleanness and uncleanness. They served the people as they were to get to know God and helped them to learn how to walk in His Presence.

Did they fulfill this purpose faithfully? They did not, as the Old Testament stories show us. That does not mean that they are done away with.

These priestly duties now fall to us who belong to Jesus. We are preeminently priests, servants of His Temple, the Temple of His Body (see John 2). We talk of God. We point to the one true Finished Work offering of the Son. We encourage people to draw near to Him. We reveal Heaven’s thoughts on sin and repentance, on forgiveness and reconciliation.

Touched by the Son

There, in the setting when Revelation was communicated, Jesus sought to draw His disciples back into order with their great calling. For this reason, I see it as important for me to put myself into each of the churches addressed in the early chapters of this book.

I am called by the Good Shepherd. He knows me by name. He first loved me and now I can love with His love.

John, being the disciple who most talked of the love of God, wrote Revelation with an emphasis on the love that comes from the Lover of all souls. The close of the first chapter describes how John fell faint at the feet of His Master. Jesus was gloriously attired and He possessed flaming eyes of fire. His face shone like the sun.

We need to take note of how Jesus responded to John: “And He laid His right hand upon me, saying, Do not be afraid, I am the First and the Last, and the living One, and I was dead, and behold I am alive forevermore. …” (Revelation 1:17-18).

Ponder these introductory passages before you read further. These words give us a true sense of how Christ yet seeks to relate to those on earth. Even resurrected and positioned in glory, Jesus comes as One who serves. As He washed the feet of His followers in the Upper Room, He now lifts up the faces of those cast down.

Knowledge of His perfect love should drive away our fears about Him. He came not to bring us to sorrowing that leaves us paralyzed. He seeks to encourage us in the Mission He communicated. There’s a big world that He’s in love with, so in love that He came and died to make the Way for any who would turn to Him to become royal family members.

Can you see Him like this? Sure, those eyes of fire might burn us as they burned John. Imagine the touch of that hand of grace, that right hand of full authority reaches to us. Arise and be comforted for the Lord is God and He has saved you.

Later on in Revelation we will read of His coming as the Conqueror. Evil shall be once and for all defeated, the wicked ones cast away and assigned their places among the dead, separated from the Holy Presence.

Hear and Open to Him

What Jesus told the churches listed here in Revelation 2 and 3 was particular. However, He emphasized that every one of His followers must tune his ear to hear what the Spirit has to say.

To the Ephesus congregation, He instructed them to get back to the simple love that once characterized their fellowship. To Smyrna, a group under persecution, the Word was to fear not and hold fast. Pergamum was warned to turn back to Truth and away from false teaching.

Thyatira was commended for deeds of love and faith and service, but chastised for the practices of immorality promoted by some in the church. “Wake up and strengthen what little you have left” was the charge given to those in Sardis, a fellowship on life support with a remnant of true believers.

Philadelphia was a faithful band of followers and the promise was that they would be kept in their hours of testing. Last was Laodicea, the lukewarm, self-satisfied congregation, a lost sheep church that was on the mind of Jesus. He was there for those in Laodicea, knocking at the door, waiting for an opening to sit and dine with them on a meal of truth and life.

As believers today, we can find ourselves in any of these seven spiritual environments. The great news for us is that the Son cannot leave nor forsake us. He comes. He knocks. He patiently waits, hoping for us to open up to Him.

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My Voice and opens the door, I will come in to him, and with dine with him, and he with Me” (Revelation 3:20).

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Noah and the Voice of God

The Voice of the Lord is the important element in Bible stories. We discover this very early in our reading of the Word. See Genesis 1:3 “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”

After falling into sin, Adam and Eve heard the Voice walking in the Garden to find them. Voices generally don’t have feet. This phrasing points to the first chapter of John’s gospel. There, Jesus is referenced as the Word made alive. “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

The Bible teaches us about the God who is Here, with us, as Immanuel. The primary problem for us as people is one of hearing Him.

The Lord came to Adam and Eve. They were fearful, but the sound of the Voice drew them out of hiding.

The Scriptures show us just how devoted God is to those He created in His image. Note that God met Cain after he slain his brother Abel. The sad part of that story is that Cain departed from the presence of the Lord, rather than seeking to find forgiveness and rest in His Maker.

Once Cain got east of Eden, we see that he and his family members became busy people. They made tools and instruments. They formed communities and developed cities.

I think this over-activity was stimulated by the fact that they needed to do something to fill in the empty spaces in their lives. Those gaps in their existence were put there by the Lord – eternity set in them according to Ecclesiastes 3:11. And the spaces within were to be filled with time and communication in a relationship to the Lord.

In other words, we were made to listen for God, for the Voice that seeks us and saves us. Without this connection to Him, things go wrong – tremendously wrong as we see when we reach Genesis 6.

Evil Imaginations, Violent Atmosphere

The world God had made “good” and “very good” degenerated into chaos.  What was the source of this turbulence? The imaginations of men’s hearts became only evil continually (see Genesis 6:5-6).

Fallen angels furthered the corruption at work through their relations involving the daughters of men. Many have debated over how these diabolic interactions were executed, but the activity did seemingly result in a category of giant humans (see Genesis 6:4).

Violence dominated the society. One of the first lyrical expressions in Genesis came from Lamech, a man who sang a boast to his wives about how he killed men who insulted him (see Genesis 4:23-24).

The corruptions upon earth were not limited to the human population either. All flesh had grown tainted and poisoned through the practices of the people. “And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth” (Genesis 6:12).

All of this served to bring grief to the heart of the Lord. He lamented at what had brought this atmosphere to earth. He pondered over how to deal with this situation. We get a real taste of how much we are really made in His image from this account. God was heartbroken over how men used their freedom of choice to foster wreck and ruin.

The weight of sorrow over the devastation God oversaw prompted Him to consider a total obliteration. However, there was one man who found favor; one upon whom the Lord chose set His heart upon – Noah.

This man was graced by the Lord. He was there living with integrity amid the confusion and the catastrophe.

Noah’s ears were open. He listened to the Voice. He got a project, a world-saving mission. It came to him in great detail. And it took him 100 years to complete. Through building the Ark at the command of God, Noah served as an heir and preacher of righteousness (see Hebrews 11:7; 2 Peter 2:5).

The ‘Foolishness’ of God

The report of Noah and the great Flood is one of those Bible stories that stimulate reactions of scorn from the educated and sophisticated, those supposedly in the know. How could any Supreme Being unleash such waves of judgment upon His created ones? They say.

The real issue is a lack of comprehension about the nature of sin. There is a profound failure to see the decay and death that sin brings to us in our physique, our psyche, and our psychology. Our bodies, our souls, and our minds have been afflicted to various degrees because of the ways of transgression. All of this gets transmitted into the corporate elements through culture and atmosphere.

Paul wrote that the wisdom of the world sees the things of God as foolishness. Those who gather to themselves facts and data in a natural pursuit of understanding find the concept of divine wrath as abhorrent. You have, I am sure, heard people say that they cannot believe in the God of the Bible because they want a God of love, and no God of love would judge the world so harshly. They want a deity who lets us live and let live.

Love that has no anger at the wrong that can come about is not love at all. Love produces in us something that the psalmist celebrates as “perfect hatred” (see Psalm 139:22).

In His holiness and righteousness, God washed away the generation that had befouled the earth. It was an operation of healing to keep in motion the process of redemption and salvation.

Men refuse to listen to His Voice regarding the matter, it’s just that simple. They also turn to demanding explanations that they could never understand if they were told them.  “Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Corinthians 1:25).

Jesus confirmed the reality of the Flood and Noah. The reason I believe the Noah account is because Jesus said it was true.

The story also figured large in Jesus’ teaching about the Last Days and indicators of His return to earth. “For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the Ark” (Matthew 24:37-38).

This begs a question for us: How bad could things really get here on earth? As bad as they got in the time of Noah.

Dwell on those words and it is easy to become discouraged.

Think on this instead: God found a man and His family and that’s all He needed to keep mankind alive and ready to flourish.

The Lord remains the God who so loves, the God who gave His very life. He took upon Himself the judgment of righteousness as the Son.

One Lamb — one spotless Lamb — offered upon one Cross won the victory. In spilling His innocent Blood, Christ accomplished what was accounted as the ransom paid for the sins of the whole world.

Yes, men’s hearts and imaginations are desperately wicked to this day. But the heart of God for our salvation remains ever true. Reconciliation, restoration, recreation – these define the purpose of the Almighty.

It is a purpose that shall not fail.

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For Starters, Substance Matters

The Beginning. It matters. It matters a lot.

Our origins are important. We have to talk about how things started. Where did we come from? How did we get here?

Genesis was a message to the people of Israel communicated through Moses. It was book of stories that showed us how the Lord got things going.

Consider this reality: the sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had spent 400 plus years in Egypt. The latter portion of those years were years of slavery — hard labor afflicted upon them by the rule of Pharaoh. He feared this people because their numbers just kept growing. Their population was out of control.

The hard work they were made to do only served to increase their numbers. This terrified Pharaoh even more so he instituted an infanticide policy, every baby boy was to be tossed into the Nile River. Moses escaped this because of his clever-thinking mother and the compassion of one of Pharaoh’s daughters.

Most of us know the story of Moses. He met God and he was raised up by the Lord to speak for the release of the Israelites.

When Pharaoh refused and became stubborn in that refusal, the Lord sent a series of plagues, the last one being the death blow to all of the first born in Egypt.

That knockout plague forced the ruler’s hand. He sent Israel away.

Once through the Red Sea and into the wilderness, I am convinced that the people had questions. And Moses was the one with the answers.

The Lord spoke to him, first at the burning bush in the desert of Midian and later in a variety of ways as the deliverer and leader of the people.

What we have in Genesis is a series of reports that offer explanations for those with curious hearts. It traces the activity of God in Creation as a whole and then His purpose in setting in motion His plan of Redemption.

Definition of the Source

The words at the start of Genesis must be considered in the light of the plagues God leveled upon Egypt. Every plague was directed toward an idol embraced and worshipped amid the culture of that empire.

The group that left Egypt was a “mixed multitude.” Among the throng of the delivered people, were those who still carried an affinity for the gods of the land they just left, a land now in ruins because of the things that God brought against it.

Genesis gives definition. The text tells us that God is the Source of all things. His commandment is to worship Him and Him alone and not the things. By His good pleasure He determined to create all that we know through the expression of His Wisdom.

We find this element to the sequence of Creation in Proverbs 8. There we read that Wisdom was with God and in God before the whole process was set in motion.

And how did He set Creation in motion? With the sound of His Voice. He spoke and there was Light. He proceeded to establish realms of existence —the heavens, the sky, the seas, and the land. He formed the frames of reference and then filled those frames.

Stars and planets and suns filled the heavens. The fowl were sent into the skies. Fish and whales and eels and even something known as Leviathan were introduced to the seas.

Last came the land, which brought forth vegetation in the form of plants and trees and fruit. Also set upon the land were animals and creeping things — insects.

All of these things possessed substance and so we must take substance to be sacred. The material elements of Creation were declared by God to be good and very good, especially when it came to Man.

Like the rest of Creation, Man was made to be filled. Genesis explains that Man was formed from the dust of earth. His existence began materially before it was animated; that is, quickened and made alive.

Once fashioned in the design of the Lord as we read in Psalm 139, God breathed into Man and Man became a living soul. To quote another line from Proverbs, He chose to create and enjoy what He formed to be His dwelling places – “Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men” (Proverbs 8:31). He made Man to contain something of Himself.

This is a truth about every human being if we are to believe the Bible record. Imagine what life in this world would be like if every one of us really accepted and related to each other on the basis of this reality. God is in me and He is also in every one of my neighbors, even the ones who choose to operate as enemies toward me and Him.

Substance and Spirit

We must recognize the importance of the created pattern and order. Man first had substance; he was material before he was spiritual.

This distinction is no small thing. What we are on the outside mattered very much to the Lord.

It mattered so much that God the Son incarnated Himself in the material of humanity. He entered into a life of dust. God took our substance. He lived His life along all of its lines. He did so in every respect. Whenever challenged to operate as more than a man, He rebuked that challenge with Word, with Wisdom, with an understanding of how His sacrifice of Himself had to be one defined by perfect, innocent humanity.

He never ceased being God, but He allowed His deity to face this world and its cosmically charged atmosphere in every detail. He did it without exercising supernatural prerogatives in ways that would aid His humanity. He spoke to the forces that opposed Him. The Word carried the force of nature that was behind it the nature of the Creator. He did touch those in need and brought healing. Again, things of substance often figured in the equations — mud, spit, thread, water.

There’s a reason why substance and materiality are questioned and attacked. It is because Satan possesses neither of these things. There’s nothing solid to him or to the air of which he coordinates and agitates. He is all soul — mind, will, emotions. He fosters idols and figures in deceived imaginations to gain himself a representation. He can stimulate, but he cannot create. He may only use what’s left open to him.

We meet the devil in Genesis 3 as the wily one employing the shape of a subtle snake. He works craftily to create a fog in the mind of the woman. He doesn’t argue, rather he fashions an atmosphere of doubt and distrust.

Other-ness and One-ness

Let us get back to the first words: In the beginning, God. He is, He was, He always will be. From everlasting to everlasting, He is the Lord. Read through these opening chapters of the Bible and see that He saw all that He created as good and very good.

What was not good? The missing complement to Adam. The man needed an Other to relate to. Without this Other, he was deficient in regard the image of God.

“Let us, make man in our image.” This was the Lord’s declaration. The pronouns “us” and “our” reveal the nature of God in His Persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Lord is One and His One-ness is expressed in the midst of His Other-ness. Who the Lord is is a mystery far beyond our understanding. In Genesis, we read of the sense of relationship. The Hebrew verbs indicate that the Persons of the Lord have been involved in something of an eternal dance.

Once Man was made, he needed a dance partner. And so the Lord took something from the Man and fashioned Woman. She was his Other. She complemented him – body, soul, and spirit. The two were designed to become one flesh and to be fruitful and multiply.

Man now had a neighbor he could love as he loved himself. More than a neighbor, he had a sister and a spouse.

All was glorious. All was right. All was finished. All was very good.

And so the Lord rested.

This last point is important because the first hearers of these words had never known rest. As slaves, they were worked and worked and worked to death.

These freed people had to learn faith and truth in the work and power of God. They had to choose to believe and rest in the Lord’s loving character.

Herein is the application for us. We were made by God and for God, according to His pleasure. He freely gave us all things and He freely gave us responsibility. We may choose and He expresses His love and care in the hope that we choose Him and His ways and not our own ways.

The Lord put His breath in us and as we breathe we say His Name – YAHWEH. This brings Him glory.

This is what we were made for.

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Remember and Pay Attention to You

In Luke 17, Jesus provides some indicators about how things will be as His time to return draws near. With this in mind, the Savior starts with a significant instruction to His disciples: “Pay attention to yourselves!” (Luke 17:3).

The chapter begins with Christ saying that you can expect offenses and temptations. There are little ones about; these are new and immature believers, those trying to get on their feet. These ones are vulnerable. Those who cause them to stumble will not get away with what they do.

The Lord has His ways of dealing with those who do harm. He will be far more severe and complete than anything we might cobble together along the lines of human rationale in regard to retribution. His ways are much different than ours, so much higher is He, above all powers and kingdoms. 

“It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31). Aren’t we all in His hands? 

It is so interesting to me that we attempt to fashion our own brands of vengeance. It reveals how little we know about God and the depth and breadth of His power, knowledge, and mercy. 

Yes, mercy. God weighs things according to His ultimate aim to draw all men unto Him. Anyone who falls into the hands of the Lord will feel the weight of His judgment, a weight that will take him to the bottom and even beneath it. 

Penetrating Work

We can see the nature of God and His penetrating work upon hearts in the story of Joseph that we can read in Genesis, chapters 37-50. In envy, the brothers plotted to do away with Joseph. At first, murder was on their minds, but they stopped short of killing him and instead chose to sell their brother into slavery. 

Years later, these very brothers, seeking to find food during a severe famine, bowed low before Joseph who had been raised up as a ruler in Egypt, a great and powerful empire at the time. The exchange between the distraught brothers shows just how the memory of their actions against Joseph had affected them.

Their hearts were tormented and had been for some time. What they had done to Joseph they did mean for evil. God, however, redeemed it for good to save them alive and to make way for their future as the fathers of the chosen nation anointed to witness to the world of the true Lord of all Creation. 

Woe to those by whom offenses come — not because of what human justice can manufacture, but because of what the Lord can and does do. This is not to diminish the effects that wrongdoing has on people. Still, we have to reckon on His Word as it declares: “Do not be deceived; God is not mocked; whatsoever a man sows that he shall also reap” (Galatians 6:7).

“Pay attention to yourselves!” That’s our business, Jesus taught. 

Reasonable Service

I am really more than I can handle on my own. I need to lose my life in order to really gain it. I must give it to God and then, by His Spirit, all things are worked together. 

Psalm 119:109 says that our souls are continually in our hands. Who I am and what I am to become is all related to how I walk with Him. 

Later in Luke 17, Jesus spoke of servants simply doing what is required of them as employees. The boss doesn’t serve them, they serve the boss and then they are permitted to do their own things. 

What it is that God requires is to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God, according to Micah 6:8. Do what you’re supposed to do. This is reasonable service, Jesus illustrated with His sentences. 

Seek first the Kingdom. Love God and your neighbor. Forgive, as He has forgiven you. Jesus said if someone wrongs you the same way seven times in a day and seeks forgiveness, you are to forgive. Proceed with humility in the understanding of just how prone to failure you are in your own right. 

The Seed of Faith

The disciples were stunned. They said that this would require something of a major faith boost. 

Jesus replied that they were all wrong about the nature of faith. Faith, He said, is something of quality rather than quantity. Just a tiny seed of true faith can root out any obstacle that gets between us and God.

Real faith is about the object it is set upon. We look to Jesus and He authors and completes our faith (see Hebrews 12:2). He is the source of our faith and by Him we are enabled to be just and merciful and forgiving. 

The next passages in Luke 17 point out just how casual and familiar we can be with the Lord. 

A group of 10 lepers called to the Savior: “Mercy, Lord, have mercy.” They wanted to be made clean and disease-free. He shouted back a simple instruction: “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” As they went, they were cleansed (Luke 17:17-18). 

Only one, however, among the healed rendered the Healer any honor. This one, a Samaritan at that, glorified God as he came and fell on his face before Jesus.

The Lord wondered aloud “Where are the nine?” Concern must have come over Him for the days to come. Who will reveal thanksgiving and honor unto God? 

The Flood and the Fire

Jesus next explained the character of the end days. The world will be wasted and wasting away. The atmosphere will be as it was in the days of Noah and Lot. 

Noah found grace and got an assignment from God. For more than 100 years, he fashioned an ark, a large vessel of wood to carry one family and a host of creatures through the Flood of judgment. His work and his witness of righteousness went ignored. People did as they did, practicing and imagining all manner of evil as they ate and drank and married. 

And then the rain began to fall. 

In Sodom, Lot lived a vexed and twisted existence. His faith was small, though real. He possessed enough discernment to recognize angels who came to the city. The people around Lot went about their business as usual. The arrival of the newcomers stirred the evil passions in them. A crowd rushed to Lot, seeking to abuse the messengers sheltered in his home. 

And then fire and brimstone fell from the sky. 

Lot and his daughters escaped to safety. His wife? She turned back toward Sodom and became a pillar of salt. She was so attached to the life she had in Sodom that she couldn’t bear to leave it behind. 

“Remember Lot’s wife.” This was Jesus’ word of warning. Perhaps He was addressing Judas in a way. By appearances, some can seem close to God. But when judgment arrives all hearts are revealed. 

The Son of God was right there. He represented the Kingdom of God come among them. Few chose Him. They failed to see the reality of His redemption. He suffered and was rejected by that generation. 

He offered His Body on the Cross. The religious and political leaders of the time – the vultures – circled around Jesus and put Him to death. He gave His life to that dark moment. (See Luke 17:37.)

Now He asks us to seek Him and surrender our lives to the purposes of the Kingdom. It’s not something everyone will choose to do, and the return of Christ will reveal this clearly. 

This one and that one and that one will be taken into the Lord’s reign, others will be left out. Why? Because they held fast to the life in the world that will face its judgment. 

What about us? What choices will we make? 

In Jesus, we have a forever life, an eternal life, a fulfilled life. Let us choose to see that life every morning and every evening. Put trust in Christ and His Truth and He shall bless and keep you.

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Love God. Love Others. Love You

“What shall I do to inherit eternal life?”

“Who is my neighbor?”

These questions came from an expert in the Law of Moses.  He had been having a conversation with Jesus. In the account that we read in Luke 10, this man put forth these questions in order to tempt or test the Savior.

To the first question about gaining eternal life, Jesus responded with a question of His own: “What do you read in the Law?”

The response of the lawyer, taken from Leviticus 19:18 and Deuteronomy 6:5, was this:  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus was in agreement with his answer. He told the man to do these things and get the kingdom life. All the ordinances, some 613 of them in the writings attributed to Moses, were concentrated in these two commands.

In the gospels of Mark and Matthew, the Lord categorized these two instructions as the greatest of all the commandments. The apostle Paul affirmed this opinion in his letter to the Romans, telling his readers that all of the Law rests on love:  “…  You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, you shall not covet, and if there is any other commandment, all are  summed up in this saying, namely, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law” (Romans 13:9-10).

Ah, but this most religious man sought an out, a work-around. That is the point of his follow-up question:  “Who is my neighbor?”

Isn’t that so like us?  We demand clarification in order to escape a matter of simple obedience.

The answer of Jesus was direct. Love. Love. Love.

Love your Lord and in so loving Him — heart, soul, strength, and mind — you discover true love for yourself.

Dive into this commitment to Him, purpose to seek first His Kingdom, and you see who you are and what you were made for – to glorify God and enjoy Him. The Westminster Catechism, a Puritan-influenced teaching guide for Christian living, begins this way:  “Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God and fully to enjoy Him forever.”

You love God. You love you. You love others.

Once you’ve learned to love yourself as God loves you, only then will you understand the way to loving your neighbor.

A Story of Love

This lawyer made an attempt to stir up a theological debate. He wanted to drag Jesus into the weeds of analysis.

The nature of the religion expressed among the Jewish people at that time was lost in the debates of details, especially in the area of the Sabbath. Simply, the scholars and teachers of the Law, spent a whole lot of work trying to define what it really means not to work, to rest.

The most respected rabbis of the ages taught and wrote thousands of opinions on the matter. Leviticus states in a number of places that Sabbath means just this:  no labor was to be done either by man or beast.

These knowledgeable ones directed their hearts, souls, strengths, and minds into empty pursuits. A product of the educational dynamic of his day, it should not surprise us that this lawyer wanted to enter into a learned discussion on neighborliness.

The Savior refused to enter the realm of abstraction. Jesus had thanked the Father for the ones who followed Him with simple faith:  “… I thank You Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and have revealed them unto babes; even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Your sight” (Luke 10:21).

“Who is my neighbor?”

There would be no doctrinal dissertation coming from the Son regarding the question. Instead, He addressed the matter as the Lord always seems to address most high things.

He told a story.

And this story is one the whole world has come to know very well as the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Reference is made to these words practically every time someone makes news by doing an honorable thing in helping someone in need.

You know how Jesus told it. A man was on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho when he got ambushed by thieves. He was left naked and half-dead by the side of the road. Two religiously minded men – a priest and a Levite, men with whom the lawyer would have been well acquainted – passed by, saw the man in need, but chose to cross the street and leave him lying there.

“A certain Samaritan” saw the man and had compassion. He dressed his wounds with oil and wine; he transported the man to an inn, cared for him, and also made arrangements for his further treatment. The finishing touch was this question posed to the lawyer and to all who heard:  “Which now of these three do you think was a neighbor unto the one who fell among the thieves?”

The lawyer was caught. Jesus had flipped the script on him. He had to admit that the Samaritan who showed mercy was the real hero in the story.

“Go and do likewise,” Jesus said to him. In essence, the lawyer was told this:

Be like the Samaritan.

Sounds like a great slogan to slap on a T-shirt or bumper sticker doesn’t it?

The Right Question

The lawyer had been asking the wrong question all along.  The real question is this one, and we must ask it of ourselves, “Am I a neighbor?”

The words spoken during this encounter exposed how wrong our hearts can be. And when the heart is disordered the effects are felt all over us.

Samaritans were ostracized by those who counted themselves true Israelites. These groups were literally neighbors — people living side-by-side under the auspices of the Roman Empire. There was racial and social animus throughout the region. Such prejudice in the heart leads to infected souls, hindered strength, and dark, cloudy thinking.

This lawyer likely possessed an amazing mind. He surely exercised much strength in studying the pages of the Scriptures. He took pride in his knowledge, and it shaped his identity.

What of his heart? What was inside of it? Was it really given to the worship of the Lord and toward bringing glory to Him?

These are questions all of us have to wrestle with. There’s a whole atmosphere in our world that assaults our attempts to live for God.

Am I a neighbor? A holy neighbor like the Samaritan? I want to be like the man in Jesus’ story. I can’t make myself like the Samaritan, however, with good thoughts and deeds.

What I need is love from the Lord. I have to let God love me and recognize the simple fact of the matter. That is, He loves me today and every day.

If His love captivates my heart, then I will see as He sees. Anyone around me then becomes my neighbor.

And I may not like some of the neighbors I know and see. Still, there is a love from above that can flow through me and out of me. I can help the wounded and show God’s compassion, because I have been loved and cared for by Him.

Love God. Love you. Love others.

Go and do this.

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Great Harvest, Few Laborers

Jesus refused to allow His followers to sit idle, even after they’d stumbled. There was work to do, and He commissioned them to do it. He sent out more than 70 disciples as we read at the opening portion of Luke 10.

This was done even after what we read in Luke 9. The Savior chided His chosen band for their faithlessness and their perversity as it related to the boy under demonic siege. He rebuked them for misguided attempts to demonstrate their privileges and authority regarding an outsider proclaiming Jesus’ Name and for their agitated call for a discourteous town to burn.

And yet these people were the Son’s main messengers. They delivered His invitation to life eternal and worked wonders as He empowered them.

This is what He had to work with. Did He need these guys? As the Lord Almighty, Maker of the heavens and the earth, He needed nothing. Right? This seems like a logical conclusion at which to arrive.

Yet I am convinced it’s the wrong conclusion.

There’s something deeper and wider at work, a mystery that brings us to both wonder and bewilderment. People had to be included in the work.

The Lord positioned Himself to be in need, in need of us, as strange as that sounds.

He did so because of the essence and necessity of love and loving. Minus the freedom of choice and the ability to respond, relationships exist under the forces of command and control. These things form all other rules of engagement related to religion.

Yahweh had something else in mind. He desired lives devoted to fellowship and exchange. Give and take was to characterize the expression of His life set loose in people.

The Lord instilled this reality in His realm through the nature of reproduction. Species were made diverse — two dimensions, the male and the female, were crafted to come together so that there would be more, more, more. In the lower forms of life, this procreation is made to happen via instinct. This was by design, and because such operations continue according to that design, there exists an ever-present testimony to the hand of God at work in our world.

Free to Agree or Disagree

The Lord gifted those beings situated higher in His created order with something more. That is, the ability to think, to reason, and to respond. The response mechanism rooted in real liberty included the capacity for refusal.

Yes, I have to say that God made space for agreement and also for disagreement.

These higher ones possess a liberty given according to the Creator’s good pleasure. Simply put, God wanted angels and humans to choose Him. Rather than pressurize them into conformity, He designed these created ones with a sense of self, and a spirit as part of their essence.

Among the angelic host, there was freedom. Lucifer occupied an amazing and most powerful position as an anointed cherub welcomed at the mountain of the Most High. He chose to seek an enhancement of his position. He become “I” centered as iniquity brewed within him. He stirred a rebellion that garnered a third of the host to his side. He could and he did enter into an attitude of anti-love. And he led others in it. He refused to live in contentment and fell like lightning from heaven as the father of lies and became a most murderous power.

Liberty is what love is all about. God is love, and love cannot flow if it is not exercised in freedom. Without freedom, there’s no exchange going on at all. Without freedom, all initiation is unidirectional and all reaction is preexistent and programmatic. It is domination, not relationship.

Can there be true joy in this manner of arrangement? Not really.

And so when it comes to the communication pattern for the spread of the Gospel, Jesus uses those who choose to draw near to Him.

Could He have had it any other way? I think not. Love is the issue and love involves the Lover and His beloved. Split that latter word into two — be loved. The Lord made it a point to use those who allowed themselves to “be loved.”

Still in the Work

As we have seen reading through Luke, this reality made for some messy moments. Yes, there were high points for sure, but the beauty of the Bible is that it tells the straight, unvarnished stories of a number of people.

We get words about David on how by faith and in the Name of the Lord, he slung a stone that put the giant on his face. We also get words about how this very same hero took a rooftop walk and wound up stealing a man’s wife for himself with a disastrous fall into sin.

“The harvest truly is great.” Jesus declared this. Nothing can change that. There are always going to be those in need of the Gospel.

“The laborers are few.” This is the other reality. God works with what He’s got.

These weak and often selfish followers were His workforce. They agreed with the Truth of His Person. He knew this and understood perfectly. Their faith lacked luster for sure, the evidence of this is there for us to read. The maturity process was going to be a bumpy one — both for the truly human Son and for His followers.

These disciples experienced defeat, but the Lord would not bench them. The harvest remained. The reapers were needed. Despite their still developing capacities, Jesus got them back on the field.

Go and tell the cities and towns that the Son has come, they were instructed. Announce the Peace with God that is now available. Some will receive this Peace, others will not.

Those sent out were to make themselves at home with those who received the Message. Eat and drink, share the table with such as these. Believers become family at once, do they not? Heal the sick. Announce the arrival of the Kingdom of God.

The Lord’s Day Shall Come

Not all doors will open, Jesus warned. Rejection was nothing new to Him. They were not to take this personally. Rather, the disciples were told to move along from those who refused to listen. Wipe away the dust of such places. Their day of judgment will come just as it came to Sodom.

Sodom did get a witness, albeit a rather weak one in Lot, the nephew of Abraham. Let’s not forget that Lot and his family were related to the one called the father of faith and the friend of the Most High.

Lot may have struggled to project his faith to the townspeople, and to his family. Still,  the fires from heaven fell upon the immoral scoffers of Sodom as Lot and his daughters and wife were pulled clear of the devastation.

Sure, the Genesis account does reveal Lot’s spirituality as something less than fervent. However, Peter writes of this man as a righteous one who was “vexed” over the wickedness that he saw around him (see 2 Peter 2:7-8). Lot’s flickering faith was alive enough so that he recognized heaven’s messengers when they came to visit the city and rescue him.

Peter understood better than most the trials of our faith. He faltered more than a few times. He denied the Lord, and even punctuated the last denial with a curse. This disciple was the perfect writer to speak of Lot under the terms of the finished work of Christ. He understood the faithfulness of the love of God and according to this love he spoke of Lot.

Jesus told His laborers just enough about the judgment to come. He told them things to embolden them and to comfort them.

Those who turn their backs on the Message shall face God. The Day of the Lord will come — it will arrive suddenly as an amazing interruption to a world that snoozes passively under the blanket of the wicked one.

The harvest is here and now. We are the laborers Jesus seeks to use in the fields. Maybe we don’t have much going for us on the surface. But we have Him. He loves us and we love Him. We choose with purpose to hear Him and let others see Him at work through us.

Psalm 37:4 gives us the secret: “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

Seek contentment. And the best way to find contentment is to fill our minds with the thoughts from God’s Word and our hearts with the love that the Holy Spirit gives.

Rejoice in the Lord, and again we say rejoice.