(following on from last Thursday…)

Jesus’ prayers were “heard” because, 1 Peter 2:23, “He did not retaliate when he was insulted, nor threaten revenge when he suffered. He left his case in the hands of God.” And the effect of his respect for his Father’s will was the power to save others (Hebrews 5:9).

Well, “To this you (too) were called,” verse 21, “because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.” But if that’s our goal, to be as perfect in our obedience as he was, does that give us saving power too?

I hope so, because it gives us reason for obeying the impossible commands in verses 13-14. These are tough, agonizing verses to obey: “For the Lord’s sake, submit to all human authority – whether the king as head of state, or the officials he has appointed. For the king has sent them to punish those who do wrong and to honour those who do right.” And verses 18-19, “You who are slaves must submit to your masters with all respect. Do what they tell you – not only if they are kind and reasonable, but even if they are cruel. For God is pleased when, conscious of his will, you patiently endure unjust treatment,” just as Jesus did.

Humanly I’m not very good at enduring unjust treatment, or not retaliating when insulted, or not seeking vindication if wronged, or being asked to respect loathsome leaders. To continue in that vein, though, where being conscious of God’s will is superseded by my will, I’ve forfeited the God-designed effect of respect. 

Which is a pity, because when Jesus respected his Father’s will, and accepted no excuses for disobeying it, he became a source of salvation for others (Hebrews 5:9). That was the effect of his respect. Not only did the Father answer Jesus’ prayers to save himself, he also gave Jesus the power to save others. So can that now be the effect of my respect for God’s will too?                                                                                                        

Well, James did say “the prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results,” James 5:16 (NLT). And a righteous person, according to Peter, is one who is “conscious of God’s will,” so if that’s our attitude can our prayers produce wonderful results in others too? 

Including the best one of all, that in us people are seeing God’s will being lived, because isn’t that the most important thing they need to see to get them started on the road to salvation too?  

(More on this tomorrow…)

Knowing that Jesus read Psalms made me wonder just how much the Psalms were expressions of his own thoughts, written down in advance of him becoming human. 

Like Psalm 22:1, for instance, which quotes Jesus’ words on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” So here’s an exact example of Psalms detailing Jesus’ words in advance, that one day he would recall to express what is probably the most heart rending thought we have too, when it seems God isn’t listening, or that he doesn’t care about us when people are scoffing at us for obeying and trusting him. 

Jesus was mocked for that too, verse 8: “He trusts in the Lord, so let’s see the Lord rescue him,” the very words thrown at him as he hung on the cross. And it hurt. Just as it hurt when family and friends mocked those who trusted in their God-given immune system to see them through the pandemic. 

Many people said they felt isolated and alone during the pandemic, because nobody in their circle was even willing to reason or listen to any other point of view, including their doctors. And Jesus lived through the same dystopian nightmare, where even his disciples deserted him, as did most of his fellow Jews. Only a few understood him and stayed with him. 

So Jesus knew what feeling forsaken was like, by both God and people. But he also knew he’d be forsaken, because he had it written here in Psalm 22. Did it ease the hurt? No, he still felt it, because he was human, and being forsaken hurts when you’re human. Like a teenager rejected by his peers.

Is there any solution in Psalm 22, then? Yes, and Jesus had that written down too. We will learn, as he did, that in times of desperate loneliness and abandonment, God “never let us down, never looked the other way when we were being kicked around. He never wandered off to do his own thing, he was right there, listening,” verse 24 (The Message). 

Expect to go through the same experience he did, then. Because, like Jesus, we have this Psalm written for us in advance for our lives too.

And it includes the part in verse 27, that those who made life miserable for us will one day “come to their senses.” They’ll come round and when they do, they will “proclaim God’s righteousness,” verse 31, as they too realize – that for all their bluster, pride and nastiness, God didn’t forsake them either.

The end goal seemed like a good place to start in delving into Jesus’ teachings – which Jesus spelled out in Matthew 5:48, that “you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.” To Jesus, nothing less than perfection for his disciples will do. 

It seems like a tall order for either me to fulfill, or Jesus, because what he inherited in me is a far cry from his Father’s perfection. But he takes us on as his disciples to help us become perfect by his Father’s standards.

He’s like a highly skilled diamond cutter, who can tell by looking at a rough diamond what cuts need to be made for that particular diamond to shine to perfection. 

And Jesus isn’t scrimping on the cutting either. Now that we belong to him, he’s settling for nothing less than the cuts necessary to make us shine to perfection too. And where we might feel satisfied with our progress, he isn’t. He won’t be satisfied until he’s got us to the perfection he’s after.  

Or as John phrased it in 1 John 1:7, he “purifies us from every sin.” The Greek word for “sin” in that verse is hamartias (ha-mar-tee-us), meaning a structural defect or fatal flaw, which ties in rather nicely with the rough diamond analogy, because a defect or flaw in the diamond could lead to it splintering when being cut, and never being the beauty it could have been. Well, Jesus isn’t going to allow that to happen. He sees every defect and flaw in us, and he’s not about to let them destroy what he sees in us, and the final perfection he has in mind.   

And he’s chipping away at us as far as he can go before we die, never for a second letting our weaknesses and flaws distract or discourage him. His goal remains fixed, to make us into something beautiful that his Father can say of us too one day: “This is my beloved child in whom I am well pleased.” 

In other words, it’s a perfection in us that his Father will love forever, want to live with forever, and live in forever too, as his eternal home. And a home fit for the Father isn’t a nicely renovated house with a few cosmetic improvements; it’s a brand new palace, a thing of beauty, without a flaw. And to Jesus nothing less than that for his Father will suffice.  

Part 7, King Ahaz (Part 6, Feb 10)

So what was the point of God offering amazing signs and promises to Ahaz to boost his faith, if none of them meant anything to Ahaz himself, and they did nothing for his faith either? Instead, Ahaz went in the opposite direction and put all his trust in pagan gods and pagan practices. 

But God didn’t remove this dismal story of Ahaz from Scripture. So there must be some good purpose to it, and relevance too, that would carry through to anyone reading it in the future, including us trying to cope with the pressures of our world in 2023. God drops these clues on us, but leaves it up to us to figure them out.    

There’s that intriguing clue, for instance, in the name of the second boy sent to Ahaz, the boy named Immanuel, because that name would appear again in Scripture. It’s mentioned in Matthew 1:22-23, that “All this (the story of Mary giving birth to Jesus in verses 20-21) took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet, ‘The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, which means God with us.’” 

That’s a direct quote out of this story of Ahaz in Isaiah 7:14, so whatever is happening to Ahaz has major significance for the whole human race as well. But why on earth would God drop this clue about Jesus in the middle of a story about Ahaz?  

Well, for those like me who like to take a hammer to rocks to split them open to find out what they contain inside, God offers us a hammer to split this story open for what else it contains too – with another intriguing clue: this time in the location where God had Isaiah meet Ahaz.

And it’s so specific in its detail that it has to be another clue. Because in Isaiah 7:3,God told Isaiah to meet Ahaz “at the end of the aqueduct of the Upper Pool, on the road to the Fuller’s Field.” So why meet at that spot in particular?

Again, are there messages in the names of the places, just like there were messages in the names of the three little boys? Because “Upper Pool” in Hebrew also means The blessing of the Most High – ‘Upper’ meaning ‘most high’, and ‘Pool’ meaning ‘blessing’. 

So what we’ve got now is Ahaz meeting Isaiah at the end of an aqueduct, or channel, down which ‘The blessing of the Most High’ is flowing. Which has to mean something, surely, but what? And is it significant for us now too?…. (part 8, Feb 24) 

(following on from yesterday…)

So far, then, we have Jesus yelling out to his Father for help to obey a command that was humanly impossible for him to obey. And the Father heard and responded because of Jesus’ deep respect for his will. 

Through that process Jesus learnt obedience – it became second nature to him, that when faced with an impossible situation he cried out to his Father for help and he was able to obey. And his obedience was crucial, because it “saved him from death,” Hebrews 5:7 – the death that any and all disobedience to God results in. With his Father’s help he was able to obey the impossible, every time, which personally saved him from death. 

But was Jesus’ perfect obedience only for his own sake, to save him personally from the death of disobedience? No, because, verse 9, “once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.” Ah, so now we get to the reason why he needed to be perfect in obedience to his Father’s will: because it gave him the power to save others. 

So, is that why the Father puts us through the same process? He gives us the impossible task of obeying all the commands of his Son, impossible commands like: “As I have loved you, so must you love one another” (John 13:34), and “bless those cursing you, do good to those hating you, and pray for those accusing you falsely” (Matthew 5:44). And out of deep respect for Jesus and his will we want to obey his commands, perfectly. 

In which case Jesus hears our cries to him when there’s someone in our lives, or in the government, who are simply too awful for us to want to bless, do good to, and pray for. And if, amazingly, he turns our loathing and disgust into proper respect, we’ve learnt the same thing Jesus learnt as a human being, that obedience to the impossible is possible. But it’s the reason why impossible obedience is made possible – because in Jesus’ case it gave him the power to save others. 

So, does that apply to us too? We’re faced with a command that’s humanly impossible for us to obey, but in deep respect for Jesus we cry out for his help to obey it. To which he responds, “You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it,” John 14:14. 

That’s a promise. Jesus promises to help us obey. So having been made perfect in the obedience we were asking him for, does that now give us the power to save others as well?…

(More on this on Monday…) 

 (following on from yesterday) 

When faced with the impossible task of obeying God’s will, it was Jesus’ reverence for his Father that made him pray “with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death,” Hebrews 5:7. That’s because “I have obeyed my Father’s commands” (John 15:10) was the foundation of Jesus’ life. 

That was the starting point in everything in Jesus’ life: “Not my will, but your will be done.” But his Father didn’t make it easy for him. He made Jesus sweat, and cry out in agony when his will pressed down on Jesus and obedience was beyond him.   

Which seems odd, though, because Jesus “was a son,” verse 8, and yet this was the set up his Father put in place for him too, of an impossible command causing Jesus intense mental suffering, but deep respect and reverence driving Jesus to his Father for the ability to obey. 

And the reason for that set up? “Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered.”   

Can I put that in the context of myself being a son of God – faced with an impossible and agonizing command for me too, like showing proper respect for a loathsome leader? I realize my rights in a democratic constitution, that allow me to challenge our leaders if they aren’t fulfilling their God-given mandate to serve their people properly, but is it also within my rights to despise them? 

No, it isn’t, according to Peter. We’re not supposed to despise anyone, which for us humans is impossible. So now we’re faced with obeying our Father’s will, but finding it impossible. Now what? 

Hebrews gives us the solution: do as Jesus did. Stick to reverent submission and cry out to the Father for help to obey, because he will answer. That’s the process the Father set up for all his children, including Jesus, because we learn through experience and practice that this is how we are able to obey the impossible. And isn’t that what we’re after when, like Jesus, “I have obeyed my Father’s commands” is the foundation of our lives too? 

So now that we know the process and use it to become a “holy and blameless” beloved child of God just like our elder brother, how does that explain why our Father wants us to respect loathsome leaders?…

(More on this tomorrow…)    

(Following on from yesterday…)

It was Peter who wrote “Honour the emperor” in 1 Peter 2:17, but how could Peter write such a thing when his emperor was Nero?  

Nero had Christians covered in tar, fastened to crosses and burned as torches to light up his garden parties; he dragged them behind his chariot through Rome until they were dead, had them killed by wild beasts in arenas, and dressed them in animal skins to be torn to death by dogs. 

But Peter included this perverted madman with the rest of verse 17, which began with, “Show proper respect for everyone.” You mean, show proper respect for a loathsome man like Nero? How on earth could God ask that of Christians? The man was evil, depraved, and he was murdering Christians in horrible ways. 

So what was God’s purpose in requiring Christians to respect their government leaders, and even horrible ones too? 

It would be nice to know the answer to that, because the idea of showing respect to some of the loathsome people in leadership positions today puts my entire mental make-up in resistance mode. But 1 Peter 2:17 brought me up short. God wants me to show proper respect for such people. But how? And why?

I admit to being out of my depth on this one. But what came to mind was Hebrews 5:7, because when Jesus was up against a situation that was humanly impossible for him to handle, and it was causing excruciating mental pain for him too, he expressed his agony “With loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death,” and “he was heard because of his reverent submission.” 

So the Father heard and helped him out because of Jesus’ deep respect for his will. That’s the starting point: God’s will, impossible and agonizing though it is to obey. So that had to be the starting point for me too. But what exactly did God have in mind for us respecting even loathsome leaders? What possible good thing could be accomplished by showing respect for Nero?  

But then I have to ask what possible good thing was accomplished by Jesus obeying his Father’s will, when it too caused him considerable mental pain? And again I was stuck for an answer. Unless there was something back there in Hebrews 5 again…. 

(More on this tomorrow…)

In many parts of the world of late, especially in our western nations, government has run roughshod over people’s wishes. And for some odd reason we, the public, allow it, even if legislation enacted is not what we want, it’s not in our best interests, and it severely limits our freedoms.

So how do we Christians react to this? Are we stuck with Romans 13:1 which mandates that “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established”? So, whatever government says we’d better go along with it, or be “rebelling against what God has instituted,” right?

But Romans 13 also mandates what governments do too. In verse 4, for instance, the government “is God’s servant to do you good.” To qualify as “government” in biblical terms, then, its central goal and reason for existence is being a servant of God, which it fulfills by being a servant of the people “to do them good.” If a government is not meeting that double mandate from God, is a Christian still required to do whatever the government says? Should Christians have obeyed Stalin, for instance, who starved millions of his people to death, or submitted to the Nazi euthanasia program? 

Well, many Christians didn’t submit, and widespread Christian protest during World War 2 got the euthanasia program halted. But were the people right in holding the government’s feet to the flames, or were they disobeying God by not conforming to the government edicts? In other words, where do we Christians stand when our government is either blatantly breaking its God-given mandate, or it isn’t consulting us, the citizens, before enacting legislation? 

Take Canada, for instance. Canada is a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary democracy, founded on the rule of law and respect for rights and freedoms. The government acts in the name of the Crown but derives its authority from the Canadian people. It is the people who have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation, and the people who choose whom they wish to enact it. Our role as citizens in our government, then, is huge. We have power vested in us legally to decide what legislation we feel is in our best interests. 

Unfortunately, we’ve handed over our constitutional birthright to government for so long that the government now feels free to enact legislation without consulting its citizens, even when a majority of citizens heartily disagree with it. 

So where do we as Christians stand if a constitution gives its citizens rights? Does that clash with Romans 13, or can we Christians claim the rights allowed by our constitution? And can we stand by our rights – and even protest too – if our government is not doing what either God or the constitution mandated it to do?…

(More on this tomorrow…)

I’m so glad someone put me onto Psalm 2, because it tells us God’s reaction to those who get snooty at the mention of Scripture being a good place to go for advice. Or that Jesus is the one who decides what’s right and wrong. 

Any hint of God, Jesus or Scripture can get people very angry. It can cause irreparable rifts in families, and in several countries around the world it can get you killed, jailed, and tortured. And several people – in what used to be “democratic” countries – have been fired from their jobs for simply being Christians.

There’s something in the air, then, that like a virus is getting into people’s systems and causing an inflammatory reaction. And it soon became apparent in the book of Acts where this virus originated. It came from those in positions of power who didn’t like anyone challenging their authority, or their view of themselves as the only “go to” place for correct information. To propose any alternative was branded with what we would call today, “misinformation,” or worse still, “disinformation,” meaning deliberately intended to deceive.  

Such was the situation in Acts 4:1-3, when the priests and their goons, “the temple guard,” along with the moralist Sadducee elite, got “greatly disturbed” about the apostles saying Jesus had come back to life again. Without hesitation they rounded the apostles up and herded them off to jail. They wanted the apostles silenced and punished (verses 17, 21). 

But public support for the apostles got them released, so they shot back to their own people, reported the anger and threats of the officials, which brought Psalm 2:1-2 to mind: “Why are the nations so angry?  Why do they waste their time with futile plans? The kings of the earth prepare for battle; the rulers plot together against the Lord and against his anointed one” (NLT). They could have added verse 3 too, “Let’s free ourselves from slavery to God.” 

So this was what Jesus’ followers were up against: officials out to eradicate all mention of Jesus. Worrying? Not on your life, God says in verse 4, because “the one who rules in heaven laughs, the Lord scoffs at them.” He snorts in derision at those who believe they can suppress truth. To God they are cartoon characters. If only they knew. 

It seems to me that society is in desperate need of Christians preserving what Jesus taught. And what makes me think that is what’s happening as society rejects Christian values and tries to come up with a better alternative. 

The “better alternative” so far is setting oneself up, or one’s group up, as “progressive,” meaning moving away from God being the one who dictates how we behave, to doing and thinking whatever one pleases on a personal level, or doing whatever the government tells us to do on a State level. On the one hand, then, we’ve got individuals (and their tribes) trying to force their lifestyles on us, and on the other hand, the State angling to get control over everything in our lives. 

In the middle of all this pressure on us to comply are Christians whose doing and thinking – and existence as groups – is to preserve and live by the teachings of Jesus. It’s why we’re called Christians – followers and disciples of Christ – because our love of life is learning, living by and teaching what he taught, believing that since it was he who created us, then he must know a thing or two about what’s best for us too.  

Unfortunately, cultural pressure can suck in Christians to either rejecting or twisting what Jesus taught. And this is when things get touchy, because as Christians wilt under cultural pressure there’s a notable correlation between that and the disintegration of decency, honesty, kindness, humility, morality, hope and peace in society. Which is sad, because when Christians seek to obey Jesus – because of his love for us and our love for him – we are given superb promises, like “wisdom and revelation” (Ephesians 1:17), “power, love and a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7), and the ability to “escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires” (2 Peter 1:4). We can see through, and live above, the nonsense. 

Which is why society is in desperate need of such people, and why Christians stand by Jesus’ teachings, even if we’re hated and hounded for it, because we can see how weird, clownish and morally bankrupt society can become. And who suffers the most? Those least able to do anything about the things affecting them. It’s horrible, especially when it’s children who are being targeted.  

But Christians living by Jesus’ teachings have power on their side, to be witnesses to what he taught being so obviously right and good, and especially in a world like ours where the contrast becomes more obvious by the day. 

But that’s our goal, “that his life may be revealed in our mortal body,” 2 Corinthians 4:11, believing it to be the best thing there is for a world floundering around without a guide or anchor.