Blog Archives - WELCOME TO THE JOY OF TROY

April 20, 2021

4/20/2021

I Am My Own Judge

        The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son. John 5:22, RSV.

    Now there is a thought pregnant with meaning: Jesus as our judge.

    Many of us have seen pictures of the judgment in which a somewhat apathetic (if not fearsome) Father sits upon the judgment throne with Jesus prostrate before Him pleading for the salvation of His followers.

    Wrong on both counts. First, the Father is not indifferent, let alone fearsome. He is not someone who has to be persuaded by Jesus or anyone else. The plain fact of the case is that He "so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved" (John 3:16, 17).

    Banish all thought of God as the stern judge who needs to be convinced by a soft-hearted Christ. No! It was the Father Himself who out of a warm and caring heart initiated the plan of salvation.

    Not only did the Father begin the plan, but, according to Jesus, the Father has even handed the responsibility for judgment over to Him. And that is just the beginning of an interesting part of the story. Because Jesus tells us in John 12 that He is turning over our judgment to us.

    Do you find that one hard to believe? Well, listen to Him: "If any one hears my sayings and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. He who rejects me and does not receive my sayings has a judge; the word that I have spoken will be his judge on the last day" (John 12:47, 48, RSV).

    Now, I know that Jesus said that it will be His words that finally judge. But think about the implications of that statement. It is you and I as individuals who make decisions about accepting or rejecting that judgmental word. We have the final decision-making authority as to where we will spend eternity. The hinge is how we relate to Him through His Word. In that sense we are our own judges.

    The same basic truth shines forth in John 3:36: "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him."

    We need to take more seriously the great opportunities and responsibilities that God has granted to each of us through Jesus.

April 19, 2021

4/19/2021

Jesus: A Person of Courage

        The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. And this was why the Jews persecuted Jesus, because he did this on the sabbath. But Jesus answered them, "My Father is working still, and I am working." This was why the Jews sought all the more to kill him, because he not only broke the sabbath but also called God his own Father, making himself equal with God. John 5:15-18, RSV.

    The conflict between Jesus and the Jewish leaders goes on and on. Not merely because of the Sabbath, but because He was taking on the prerogatives of God in defining lawful activity on the holy day. And here we need to be very clear. Jesus never once in the New Testament ever rejects the seventh-day Sabbath. What He does discard is the Jewish way of observing it--their making a means of joy and grace into a burden and a yoke so heavy that no one could carry it.

    All the way through the Sabbath conflict in John 5 Jesus is claiming to be the Messiah and divine, both implicitly and explicitly. On the implicit level the very miracle of healing a person who had been unable to walk for 38 years was a messianic sign. Isaiah's picture of the new age brought about by the Messiah indicates that "then shall the lame man leap like a hart" (Isa. 35:6, RSV). On the explicit level Jesus was not backward in identifying God as His Father in a special sense (John 5:17). His Jewish listeners had no problem discerning what He meant--that He was "making himself equal with God" (verse 18). That would become even clearer in the following verses, in which Jesus attributes to Himself the prerogatives of raising the dead and judgment--attributes in Jewish thinking of no one but God.

    It was those claims that led Jesus step-by-step toward the cross. The Sabbath was merely an outward aspect of the struggle between Jesus and the religious leaders. The heart of the issue was that by asserting to be divine He was in their eyes committing blasphemy, the very charge they would lay against Him during the various trials that resulted in His crucifixion.

    In all of His actions we find Jesus to be a person of extraordinary and unique courage. He knew that to speak and act as He did was courting death. But He understood His mission and moved forward.

        Lord, today help me to have the same kind of faith in Jesus as He had in Himself. And strengthen me to have more of His courage.

April 18, 2021

4/18/2021

The Lord's Day

        The Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day. Matt. 12:8

        I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day. Rev. 1:10.

    The second important truth that flows out of Jesus' early confrontations with the Jews on Sabbath observance is the fact that He "is Lord even of the sabbath day." That is quite a claim. It is either correct or false. But no matter what, it led directly to the cross. To the Jews it was the height of blasphemy. But from Jesus' perspective it was the very ground for His right to delineate how the Sabbath should be honored. After all, if He was truly Lord of the Sabbath He would have more understanding on why it was instituted than anyone else.

    The claim itself takes us historically back even before God gave the Sabbath in the Ten Commandments through Moses. Genesis 2:1-3 reads: "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all his work which he had done in creation" (RSV).

    And who was that God who rested that first Sabbath and blessed and hallowed the seventh day? It probably included the entire Godhead. But we know for a certainty that Jesus observed that first Sabbath and was at the forefront of establishing the seventh-day Sabbath in human history.

    And how do we know that? Because of the testimony of the New Testament, which plainly states that "all things were made through him [Jesus the Word], and without him was not anything made that was made" (John 1:3, RSV); "in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth...all things were created through him and for him" (Col. 1:16, RSV); and through Jesus God "created the world" (Heb. 1:2, RSV).

    There is absolutely no doubt that Christ was the active agent in Creation week and that He instituted history's first Sabbath. Thus He can claim that He is Lord of the Sabbath (Mark 2:28). The seventh-day Sabbath is the only day in the Bible that identifies "the Lord's day" (Rev. 1:10).

    In giving it at Sinai the "I am" Lord of the Exodus (Ex. 3:14; John 5:58) made it plain that He intended to make the seventh-day Sabbath a weekly reminder of two facts: That He created (Ex. 20:8-11) and that He redeems (Deut. 5:12-15).

    How thankful we can be as Christians that we can honor the Lord on His special day.

April 17, 2021

4/17/2021

The Sabbath as a Means of Grace

    And he said unto them, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. Mark 2:27.

    Two great truths flow out of Jesus' early confrontations with the Jews on how the Sabbath should be kept. The first appears in today's verse: "The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath."

    One implication is that God established the Sabbath for all people and not just for the Jews. Jesus did not say "the Sabbath was made for the Jews." And even a cursory look at the Old Testament demonstrates the accuracy of Jesus' conclusion. After all, the first observation of the Sabbath was by God Himself at the end of Creation week thousands of years before the Jews existed. From beginning to end, the Bible supports the fact that God intended the Sabbath for all people--"man" or mankind.

    But the context of Jesus' statement about the Sabbath being "made for man" helps us understand why God had set it apart in the first place. The Jews had made a real mess of the Sabbath. Focusing on what people could not do on the Sabbath, they had developed some 39 categories of forbidden work and more than 1,500 rules on how it should be kept, with an overwhelming emphasis on the negative. They acted as if God first created the Sabbath and then made people to observe it.

    Jesus, the Creator of the Sabbath, turned that thinking on its head. And with good reason. The Jews acted as if the Sabbath were primary and first--that God had a Sabbath and needed someone to keep it and thus created humanity to fill that void. Not so, Jesus pointed out. The very order of creation demonstrates that "the sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath." After all, the Lord created human beings on the sixth day, while He did not institute the Sabbath until the seventh. From the beginning God recognized that people would need the Sabbath. So He created it to meet their spiritual, physical, social, and mental requirements as they worship, fellowship, rest from work, and study His Word. God created the Sabbath as a means of grace for His people--all of them for all time.

    With that in mind, it is of more than passing interest that the Sabbath commandment is the only one in the Ten Commandments that begins with "remember." He knew just how prone people would be to forget and neglect the one means of grace that He established to meet their needs at the very beginning of this earth's journey.

April 16, 2021

4/16/2021

Sick "Churchly" Types

        The Pharisees went out, and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him. Mark 3:6, RSV.

    Some "churchly" types are real sick.

    A case in point is the Pharisees of old. They had just witnessed a merciful act of God's power. But they were so upset that all they could think of was killing Jesus because He didn't keep the Sabbath correctly.

    Religion often aggravates certain negative aspects of human nature. It makes some people eager to find faults when they could and should be alert for the power and mercy of God's law.

    A hallmark of all legalism is that it puts law above human considerations and mercy. But, as in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus in His healing on the Sabbath miracles attempt to help the religious leaders see the spiritual nature of the law, that outward obedience to it must be rooted in agape (love) if it is to be understood correctly.

    Unfortunately, the leaders did not understand the law they claimed to prize so highly. As a result, when Jesus pointed them to its foundation in agape, they plotted "how they might destroy him" (Matt. 12:14).

    That is the paradox of legalism. Legalists, in their purported love for God and His law, become angry with those who disagree with them over their particular theological interpretations--so angry that they are willing to murder their opponents or destroy their reputation. Even such anger itself, according to Jesus, is actually the equivalent of murder (Matt. 5:21-26).

    Anybody who has been a church member very long knows that the spirit of Pharisaism is not dead. It is alive and well in the twenty-first century among those who would attack and criticize others over differences of opinion.

    Indeed, most congregations have their contingent of Pharisees. More frightening yet, a Pharisee lurks within the skin of each of us. It seeks to impose its spirit on an unsuspecting church and an undeserving world. Every Christian needs to remember that mercy is better than sacrifice (Matt. 12:7) and that agape is the heart of God's law.

    Today is one for self-examination. I mean you and I, my friend. Is my religion sick or healthy? How do I know?

April 15, 2021

4/15/2021

Sabbath Confrontation

        Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand. And they watched Jesus, to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man with the withered hand, "Come here." And he said to them, "Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?" But they were silent. And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. Mark 3:1-5, ESV.

    Fast on the heels of the grainfield confrontation of Matthew 12:1-8 comes a second conflict over the Sabbath in verses 9-13 (also in Mark 3:1-5). The interesting thing about this one is that Jesus could easily have avoided it but chose not to.

    The scene itself has three main characters: Jesus, a man who had a crippled hand for a long time, and those "watching Jesus" to see if He would do something they considered wrong.

    Obviously seeing His would-be accusers, Jesus didn't skirt the issue. After all, synagogues reserved the front seats for such dignitaries. Now, Jesus knew that the Pharisees were not against medical care on the Sabbath, so long as it involved a matter of life and death for the sick person. But the man with the crippled hand obviously didn't fit into that category. He had had the disability for some time, and his healing could have easily waited a day or two.

    But for Jesus it was a test case. He called the man up front where everybody could see and asked the watching Pharisees whether it was lawful to do good or evil on the Sabbath.

    That put them in a dilemma. No one could answer that it was permissible to do evil. Thus they had no choice but to answer that it was lawful to do good. And wasn't healing a person doing good?

    That first question put the Pharisees on the spot, but why Jesus asked it was obvious. The second question, however, at first leaves us baffled: "Is it lawful...to save life or to kill?" After all, who was killing anybody? All that was in question was the healing of a man's hand. But Jesus once again indicates that He understands the human heart (John 2:25). At that very time the Pharisees were beginning to concoct a plan to kill Jesus because He didn't agree with their understanding of the law (Matt. 12:14).

    Out of these conflict stories flow not only hatred in those who fail to understand the principle of the law and who are watching for faults, but important principles relating to the Sabbath for Jesus' followers.

    Help us, Father, as we ponder these stories to gain a fuller understanding of the relation of law and mercy.

April 14, 2021

4/14/2021

Yoke Conflict

        At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath; his disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, "Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath." Matt. 12:1, 2, RSV.

    It didn't take long for yoke conflict to arise between Jesus and the Pharisees. In fact, it jumps in in the next verse after Jesus invited His followers to take His yoke, "for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light" (Matt. 11:30, RSV). The occasion for conflict finds Him and the disciples walking through a grainfield, with the disciples not only picking some of the grain but rubbing it between their palms so as to separate the kernels from the chaff. At that point the ever-present Pharisees cry out, "Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the sabbath."

    In our day we might think they were upset because the disciples had taken grain that did not belong to them. But that was not the problem. In fact, in gathering and eating the grain as they passed through a field they were doing what the law of Moses explicitly allowed. Deuteronomy 23:25 tells us that it was permissible to pick a neighbor's grain with the hand but not with a sickle.

    The problem was that the disciples did it on the Sabbath. Such was an act of harvesting, and harvesting was defined as work, and work on the Sabbath was sin. But they were not only harvesting; as they rubbed the grains in their hands they were also threshing. And threshing also represented a forbidden Sabbath activity. Then, of course, the Pharisees could also accuse them of traveling. Their tradition considered walking more than 1,999 paces to be taking a journey and thus a breach of the Sabbath.

    The Pharisees may have expected Jesus immediately to put a stop to such unlawful activity, although they undoubtedly had a sneaking suspicion that He would not do so. Rather, to their surprise, He met them on their own ground by retelling a story from 1 Samuel 21:1-6, in which David in his hunger broke the letter of the law but God blessed him anyway.

    Several truths flow out of that episode. One is that human need always takes precedence over the letter of the law. The second is that "the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath" (Matt. 12:8, NIV) and certainly knew what He meant when He gave the law in the first place.

    In the end the story leaves us with a question. What is my approach to God's law? Do I see it as a blessing or an unbearable yoke?

April 13, 2021

4/13/2021

The Great Invitation

        Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden of light. Matt. 11:28-30.

    How to find God is the question of the human heart down through the ages. It was certainly the quest of Jesus' hearers. In Matthew 11:27 He had told His audience that the way to discover God was through Himself. He follows that announcement with an invitation: "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

    The word "rest" is the key to understanding this passage. The Septuagint (Greek) translation of Exodus 33:14 uses the same word to signify the rest that God was to give Israel through Moses' leadership. Throughout the first Gospel, Matthew has been comparing Jesus to Moses, and its development parallels the Exodus experience. Jesus, in Matthew's eyes, is the prophet like Moses whom God said He would raise up (Deut. 18:15, 18).

    But, the second Moses will succeed where the first failed. The second will give that "rest" promised through Moses but was never achieved (Matt. 11:28, 29). That argument dominates Hebrews 3 and 4, which argues that Christ is greater than Moses because He brings His people into true "rest."

    Another key word in our passage today is "yoke." The rabbis spoke of "the yoke of the law" as a great blessing, but under their interpretation it had actually become a burden. Jesus later accused the scribes and Pharisees of making the people carry "heavy...loads" by their legalistic demands (Matt. 23:4, NIV). With their thousands of regulations and rules they had perverted God's intention in the law through Moses.

    But Jesus seeks to bring His followers back to God's original plan: that the law be a blessing as people focus on its spirit and not merely the letter. With the multitude of extra baggage that the Jews had added to it, it had become massively heavy and impossible to bear.

    Unfortunately, people are still in the business of making the yoke of the law heavier and heavier with this rule and that, with this restriction and that, until the law becomes something to escape rather than to delight in, as it was for the psalmist (Ps. 119:47, 70, 77).

    Keep your eyes on Jesus as He continues to expound on the spirit of the law, but even more so as He indicates how His death will lead to ultimate "rest."

April 12, 2021

4/12/2021

True Learning

        At that time Jesus declared, "I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes; yea, Father, for such was thy gracious will. All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him." Matt. 11:25-27, RSV.

    At that time."

    Times were changing. The powerful of this world had imprisoned John the Baptist, and those wise in the philosophies and the theologies of the day all too often rejected both the Lord Jesus and His teachings. In response, He highlighted the fact that it was the weak, the simple people, who often understood Him most clearly. All through the gospel story we discover that it is the poor, the sinners, the tax collectors, prostitutes, and ordinary folk who most readily responded to Him. On the other hand, the learned specialists, as they analyzed His work, claimed that what He was doing did not fit with their complicated theories.

    While it is true that the intellectuals in general had no use for Jesus, while the humble welcomed Him, we need to be careful in what conclusions we draw from those facts. As William Barclay put it, "He is very far from condemning intellectual power; what He is condemning is intellectual pride...'The heart, not the head, is the throne of the gospel.' It is not cleverness which shuts out; it is pride. It is not stupidity which admits; it is humility. Jesus is not connecting ignorance and faith. A man may be as wise as Solomon, but if he has not the simplicity, the trust, the innocence of the childlike heart, he has shut himself out."

    If you desire to truly know the Father you need to watch Jesus and listen to Him carefully, because "no one knows the Father except the Son." The book of Hebrews puts it a bit differently when it notes that "in many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son....He reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature" (Heb. 1:1-3, RSV).

    "Turn your eyes upon Jesus" is His own message, as well as that of the entire New Testament. Other knowledges are useful in life and some of them may help us see the glories of Jesus even more fully. But the essential knowledge becomes the context in which all other learning has meaning.

April 11, 2021

4/11/2021

Not Everybody Likes Faithful Preachers

        "There were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed--only Naaman the Syrian." All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way. Luke 4:27-30, NIV.

    I have preached sermons that some people didn't like. But I have never faced the intensity of reaction that Jesus did as He spoke to His hometown people.

    Interestingly enough, their initial response had been positive and supporting. "Great sermon!" And to think, He is Joseph's boy. And "all spoke well of him, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth" (Luke 4:22, RSV).

    Jesus would have been the hero of the day if He had just stopped right there and let the crowds go on and on about how proud they were of their home-grown product.

    But Jesus just had to be Jesus. They wanted healings like those that had taken place in Capernaum. But He had something they needed to hear, knowing all the while that it would lead to His rejection: "Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his own country. But in truth, I tell you there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when there came a great famine over all the land; and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha; and none of them were cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian" (verses 24-27, RSV).

    And for those words they decided to kill Him (verses 28, 29). Why, because He preached something they didn't want to hear. Both of His illustrations uplifted God's saving grace to Gentiles. He had been scripturally correct, but that made no difference to them. They were mad enough to murder.

    The church still has such people 2,000 years later. Preach something they don't like, even if it is faithful to the Bible, and they are out to get the preacher. Of course, they may not attempt to kill preachers and others they disagree with, but they do roast them, boil them, and fry them in their conversations with others who share the same spiritual illness.

    We do well to consider the full scope of Scripture and the lessons taught by the congregation at Nazareth.