Tag: life

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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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Communion and the Bread of Life

The feast of communion is to be a meal scented by fragrances of memory. Jesus took the bread at the Last Supper and presented it as His Body. True to His teaching method, the Savior fashioned a metaphor to drive home the message of His life.

He came to earth. His life was altogether a preparation for the offering of Himself, His death as the Lamb of God. In Leviticus and Numbers, in the Law given to Moses, we read of meal offerings or fine flour offerings that were incorporated into the patterns of worship for the people of God.

Jesus, though totally God in essence, was born as an infant to Mary. He matured in body, mind, and emotion as a human being. Luke 2 describes Jesus at 12 years of age finding His way to the Temple during Passover. Of this excursion, He said nothing to His “parents.” When He was discovered, a frantic Mary spoke as only an agitated mother could – “Son, why have you treated us so?”

His answer — “I must be about my Father’s business” — seems like a typical adolescent response. We could read it as Jesus saying, “What’s the big deal?” However, the next part of the story tells us that Jesus did go home and subjected Himself to Mary and Joseph in their home at Nazareth.

This subjection, this exercise of humility, was part of the Father’s business in the work of redemption.  As God the Son, Jesus participated in the Creation – Hebrews 1 defines this well for us. In taking on flesh and bone, Jesus occupied a jar of clay.  Now deity inhabited dust, but in the process, His life had to play out according to the rules of this planet and its cosmos. We could say that Jesus allowed Himself to be governed by the very people He had made.

I see the days of Jesus as a toddler, a youth, a teenager, and a young adult, as times of sifting, of readying His humanity for His ministry. Flour left un-sifted can grow lumpy and sometimes wormy. Looking again to the letter to the Hebrews, we read that Jesus learned obedience by the things that he suffered (see Hebrews 5:7-9).

Fulfillment of All Righteousness

When it was time, Jesus brought the fine flour of His life to the River Jordan. There, His cousin and forerunner, John the Baptist preached repentance and bid the people to confess and be made clean in the act of baptism, by getting washed in the river.

John and has family were of the line of Temple servants, as we read in the first chapter of Luke’s gospel. John’s father, Zacharias, was at the incense altar when the angel Gabriel appeared to tell him that the Baptist would be born to him and Elizabeth, two aged believers who had always prayed for a son.

Jesus’ approach and submission to John was necessary to fulfill all righteousness. John recognized his place under the authority of the Son and asked that he be baptized by Jesus. This authority the Son confirmed as a truth, but the Law had to be fulfilled in every detail. Jesus had to wash in order to enter into His priesthood, a priesthood of a heavenly order (see Leviticus 8:6).

And so John did as he was instructed. He put Jesus under the water and when Jesus came up, the Holy Spirit descended in bodily form and rested upon Him. This marked a transition in the ministry of the Christ in His way as the Bread of Life.

Anointed for Service

In our Bibles, oil is often used to represent the touch and effect of the Holy Spirit in our lives (see 2 Corinthians 1:21 and 1 John 2:27). The Spirit revealed Himself as He rested upon the Son; in other words, fresh oil was added to the fine flour of Jesus’ life.

After this anointing, Jesus would enter the oven of His public ministry. He had quietly lived out His days in the house of the Nazarene carpenter. From this point on, Christ would be out in the open. He would teach and heal and deliver and feed. His life demonstrated the power of Heaven over disease, demons, and death. He would also face trial and test.

At once, Jesus was led by the Spirit to the wilderness with all of its heat and arid conditions. This is where He would endure a ferocious, 40-day encounter with the devil. And what was one of the things Satan tempted Jesus to do? Turn a stone into bread.

Fast food — that’s what the devil wanted Jesus to produce. Hell is all about haste. The other temptations, as reported in Matthew 4 and Luke 4, were designed to entice the Son of Man to accelerate His work on earth. He wanted to push Jesus beyond the speed limit related to His ministry.

“Throw Yourself from the pinnacle of the Temple; the angels will catch you,” Satan challenged Him. Such a publicity stunt would astound the people and give Jesus an instant platform. The devil also paraded before Him the glitter and worldly splendor of the cities of this world – places under his control as the prince of the power of the air. “Bow to me,” Satan told the Son, “and all of these cities shall be Yours at once.”

Jesus remained true to the Word of God and refused these offers. The work He came to do, He finished. All was done according the pace dictated by the Father and the Spirit. The Son did all that the Father willed in God’s perfect timing.

He proclaimed Himself as the Bread of Life, the true food from Heaven. The Word made flesh was tried in the furnace of human existence (see Psalm 12:6). He avoided none of the fires that were sent to bake Him into the perfect loaf to be broken that Good Friday.

Resurrected and Whole

See the Apostles at the table. Imagine them as they took the fragments of bread and swallowed them. The next day they would watch as Jesus was swallowed by the hatred of the mob and sent to the Cross. Once dead, His body went into the belly of the earth, into a tomb sealed shut with a huge stone.

But on the third morning, Jesus came out alive. The glorified risen Lord stood before His followers, the whole Bread of Life never to be broken again.

“Do this in remembrance,” Jesus said. Consider His life. Contemplate His death. Celebrate the reality of Him risen. And look ahead to the feast to come, to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, to the moment we shall all sit at the eternal table of grace.

Oh, what Bread we shall see and taste on that day!