R.P. Nettelhorst's Blog, page 27

Resurrection

“The younger said to his father, ‘Father, give me the portion of goods that falls to me.’ So he divided to them his livelihood. And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together, journeyed to a far country, and there wasted his possessions with prodigal living….

“But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.” ’

“And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and am no longer worthy to be called your son.’

“But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. And bring the fatted calf here and kill it, and let us eat and be merry; for this my son was dead and is alive again.” (Luke 15:12-23)

It is easy to believe the lies we tell ourselves. Why would we steer ourselves wrong? And yet all too often, we do precisely that.

In ancient Israel, the younger of two sons received a third of the property upon the father’s demise. And it was possible for a son to ask for the inheritance ahead of time. But to do so was like telling a father “I wish you were dead,” since that’s when an inheritance was normally given.

The younger son believed that his father was holding him back, standing in the way of his happiness. That’s why he wanted the money and left home. He thought he had to get away in order to really enjoy life.

So when his life fell apart, he decided he had to go back home. But he pictured his father as the same man that had made him want to leave in the first place: a harsh taskmaster who didn’t understand him, a man who would justly punish him for his mistake and make him suffer for it.

Jesus’ point, of course, is that our Heavenly Father is different than what we might think, just as the younger son’s father was not the man he imagined him to be, either.

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What Matters

As Jesus was speaking, one of the Pharisees invited him home for a meal. So he went in and took his place at the table. His host was amazed to see that he sat down to eat without first performing the hand-washing ceremony required by Jewish custom. Then the Lord said to him, “You Pharisees are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy—full of greed and wickedness! Fools! Didn’t God make the inside as well as the outside? So clean the inside by giving gifts to the poor, and you will be clean all over.

“What sorrow awaits you Pharisees! For you are careful to tithe even the tiniest income from your herb gardens, but you ignore justice and the love of God. You should tithe, yes, but do not neglect the more important things.

“What sorrow awaits you Pharisees! For you love to sit in the seats of honor in the synagogues and receive respectful greetings as you walk in the marketplaces. Yes, what sorrow awaits you! For you are like hidden graves in a field. People walk over them without knowing the corruption they are stepping on.” (Luke 11:37-44)

Jesus was not against personal hygiene. But he used the issue of ceremonial washing as the opportunity to push a Pharisee outside his comfort zone, in order to help him reassess his relationship with God. If Jesus had simply asked the Pharisee what was most important in the law, he would have received the proper, canned response about loving God and loving people. But those words had little to do with how he conducted his life.

Like so many religious people, this Pharisee mostly concerned himself with boundary issues: the quantifiable things that separated him—the “righteous” person he believed he was—from them, the “unrighteous” people who did what he didn’t. It was easy to quantify and measure boundary issues: making sure that he gave the penny to God from the dime he found on the street. Or—to put it in a modern context—that he said a prayer before he put any food in his mouth. It was good to tithe and to pray. But it was more important to focus on how you cared for the distressed and needy, how you treated your neighbors and coworkers and family—let alone strangers like the clerks in the store or the beggar in the street.

Jesus wanted the Pharisee to look at the hard things of righteousness, not the easy boundary issues.

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Hope and Change

The disciples of John reported to him about all these things. Summoning two of his disciples, John sent them to the Lord, saying, “Are You the Expected One, or do we look for someone else?”

When the men came to Him, they said, “John the Baptist has sent us to You, to ask, ‘Are You the Expected One, or do we look for someone else?’ ”

At that very time He cured many people of diseases and afflictions and evil spirits; and He gave sight to many who were blind.

And He answered and said to them, “Go and report to John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have the gospel preached to them. Blessed is he who does not take offense at Me.” (Luke 7:18-23)

John had spent his last few years like limo driver at an airport waiting for his passenger near the baggage claim, holding up a sign with the name “Messiah” scrawled on it. John’s question about Jesus was not just a consequence of discouragement from being locked away in prison. His question grew out of what people in the day believed about the coming of God’s kingdom.

The “Expected One” was the Messiah. According to Jewish tradition, there were two Messiahs coming, a “Messiah son of David” who would rule and reign as king and a “Messiah son of Joseph” who would suffer and die. The idea of two Messiahs grew out of the two pictures of the Messiah in the Old Testament: one reigning, one suffering and dying. So John’s question was not to wonder so much about the reality of Jesus’ messiahship, as to wonder which of the two he might be.

Jesus responded to John’s question by healing the sick, casting out demons, and restoring sight to the blind. Then he sent John’s messengers back to report what they had seen.

Why did Jesus end by telling John that the one who didn’t take offense at Jesus would be happy? Because the Pharisees and other religious leaders were seeing the same thing that John’s messengers saw, but they only criticized what Jesus was doing. Jesus believed that John’s reaction was likely to be something different than that of the Pharisees.

So will we respond Jesus’ answer like a Pharisee—or like John the Baptist?

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What Matters

One Sabbath when Jesus and his disciples were walking through some wheat fields, the disciples picked some wheat. They rubbed the husks off with their hands and started eating the grain.

Some Pharisees said, “Why are you picking grain on the Sabbath? You’re not supposed to do that!”

Jesus answered, “You surely have read what David did when he and his followers were hungry. He went into the house of God and took the sacred loaves of bread that only priests were supposed to eat. He not only ate some himself, but even gave some to his followers.”

Jesus finished by saying, “The Son of Man is Lord over the Sabbath.”

On another Sabbath Jesus was teaching in a Jewish meeting place, and a man with a crippled right hand was there. Some Pharisees and teachers of the Law of Moses kept watching Jesus to see if he would heal the man. They did this because they wanted to accuse Jesus of doing something wrong.

Jesus knew what they were thinking. So he told the man to stand up where everyone could see him. And the man stood up. Then Jesus asked, “On the Sabbath should we do good deeds or evil deeds? Should we save someone’s life or destroy it?”

After he had looked around at everyone, he told the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He did, and his bad hand became completely well.

The teachers and the Pharisees were furious and started saying to each other, “What can we do about Jesus?” (Luke 6:1-11)

What’s the meaning of “is?” That’s the sort of question that the religious leaders in Israel enjoyed puzzling over. The Pharisees, the Sadducees, the scribes—they concerned themselves with riddles regarding the Law. The commandment to “keep the Sabbath” was not as simple as it appeared. When God said that one must not work on Saturday, what did he mean by “work?” Was harvesting grain work? Obviously. How about threshing grain? Also obviously. But then what was “harvesting?” What was “threshing?” By simply plucking a few ears of wheat from a field, the disciples had “harvested” the wheat. By rubbing the husks off in their hands, they had “threshed” it.

You can almost hear Jesus rolling his eyes in response to this line of reasoning. He responded by pointing out that their line of reasoning took them to an absurdity when they tried to use it on the people in the Bible. Jesus wanted them to understand that in interpreting the Bible, it was important to pay attention to the whole thing. If you get lost in the details, you may simply get lost.

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The Good Old Days

They said to him, “John’s disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking.”

Jesus answered, “Can you make the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast.”

He told them this parable: “No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, ‘The old is better.’ ” (Luke 5:33-39)

H. L. Menken wrote of Puritans that they were the sort of people that had “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, might be happy.” The Pharisees were the Puritans of Jesus’ day, wondering why the disciples were so happy.

The Pharisees usually set aside a day each week for fasting. And they made certain that everyone could tell. They didn’t comb their hair, they didn’t bathe, and they kept a pained expression on their faces so that everyone could see just how devoted they were to God.

Since the Pharisees never saw the disciples acting so miserable, they believed that they—and Jesus—must not be properly devoted to God. There was a lot behind the Pharisees’ simple question about fasting. They were attacking Jesus credibility and his commitment to religion.

The Pharisees failed to recognize the reality of their situation. Fasting and praying, of the sort that the Pharisees had in mind, was what people did when things were going badly, when someone was seriously ill, or when a war was on the horizon. It was proper to fast during Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. It wasn’t proper to fast during Purim or First Fruits, times for rejoicing. Jesus’ disciples had no reason to feel glum: the Messiah was here and they were with him. When you’re at a wedding and you’re part of the wedding party, is that the time to fast? Don’t be ridiculous.

There are, indeed, times to mourn, but there are also times to rejoice!

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Rumors

As he walked away from the Temple, one of his disciples said, “Teacher, look at that stonework! Those buildings!”

Jesus said, “You’re impressed by this grandiose architecture? There’s not a stone in the whole works that is not going to end up in a heap of rubble.”

Later, as he was sitting on Mount Olives in full view of the Temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew got him off by himself and asked, “Tell us, when is this going to happen? What sign will we get that things are coming to a head?”

Jesus began, “Watch out for doomsday deceivers. Many leaders are going to show up with forged identities claiming, ‘I’m the One.’ They will deceive a lot of people. When you hear of wars and rumored wars, keep your head and don’t panic. This is routine history, and no sign of the end. Nation will fight nation and ruler fight ruler, over and over. Earthquakes will occur in various places. There will be famines. But these things are nothing compared to what’s coming. (Mark 13:1-8)

An old Egyptian proverb says that “All things fear time. But time fears the Pyramids.” However, nothing lasts forever. Not even the more than five thousand year old Pyramids. Jesus’ disciples were impressed by the glory of the Jerusalem Temple and its seeming imperviousness. Human are easily impressed by massive architecture.

Jesus wasn’t. The beautiful buildings that they thought were so great, the Temple that was the focal point of all of Judaism, were soon going to become piles of rubble, thanks to the Roman army within in a generation. It wasn’t the temple that was important, it was the God behind it that mattered.

But rather than wondering about the nature of God and how they would be able to worship him without a temple, the only question the disciples had was about the timing the temple’s demolition.

So Jesus didn’t give them the answer they wanted: a date. Instead, he warned them against focusing on gloom and doom prophesies and worrying about the timing of such destruction. He told them that a lot of people would come along claiming to be the Messiah. And a lot of people would overemphasize the sort of problems that always exist in the world. Jesus’ disciples expected a revolution. But they were only concerned about physical change, rather than the more substantial—and important—spiritual change. They kept mistaking the Kingdom of Men for the Kingdom of God.

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Telling Stars Apart

Source SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration.

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Not Everyone

Again He began to teach by the sea. And a great multitude was gathered to Him, so that He got into a boat and sat in it on the sea; and the whole multitude was on the land facing the sea. Then He taught them many things by parables, and said to them in His teaching:

“Listen! Behold, a sower went out to sow. And it happened, as he sowed, that some seed fell by the wayside; and the birds of the air came and devoured it. Some fell on stony ground, where it did not have much earth; and immediately it sprang up because it had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up it was scorched, and because it had no root it withered away. And some seed fell among thorns; and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no crop. But other seed fell on good ground and yielded a crop that sprang up, increased and produced: some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred.”

And He said to them, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”

But when He was alone, those around Him with the twelve asked Him about the parable. And He said to them, “To you it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God; but to those who are outside, all things come in parables, so that

‘Seeing they may see and not perceive,

And hearing they may hear and not understand;

Lest they should turn,

And their sins be forgiven them.’” (Mark 4:1-12)

Is it true that Jesus wanted to keep the truth away from some of the people he talked to? Jesus explained that his parables fulfilled the words of the prophet Isaiah, that the people would hear and still not understand, because if they understood, then their sins would be forgiven.

When Jesus said that people would “hear but not understand,” he was not explaining the purpose of his parables. Rather, he described how parables actually worked out in practice. Despite the fact that many people seemed to be listening, the reality was that they weren’t listening to be changed, or to find the truth. They were listening for justification. If people could actually hear with understanding, then they would be changed. But as it was, that rarely happened.

The sad truth is that many people will never believe the gospel message, no matter how clearly it is explained. Not because it’s hard to understand, but simply because they choose not to. Our job as Christians is merely to tell people about Jesus. What they do with our words is up to them.

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Honor

Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted. (Matthew 23:1-12)

“Salute the uniform, not the man.” It’s an old saying in the military that grows from the sad reality that an individual in a position of authority may not be deserving of it. Jesus told his disciples to listen to what the Pharisees taught, since their positions of authority meant that they had the right to be heard. But Jesus warned them not to imitate their lifestyles.

Then Jesus gave some illustrations to explain his point. In the Old Testament, God had told his people to bind the word of God to their hands and to hang it between their eyes. What God had meant metaphorically—that the Bible should be a guide in everything they did—the Jewish people took literally. Phylacteries were boxes containing Bible verses that they strapped to their wrists and foreheads. The Pharisees made their phylacteries especially large, so that everyone could see just how religious they were.

The word “rabbi” in Hebrew means “my master” or “my teacher.” Jesus told his disciples that the Pharisees were wrong to exalt themselves that way. He also told them that looking up to people as if they could take the place of God was also a serious mistake. Instead, people should be concerned only about the needs of others, not about their status in the world.

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Ever After

The Sadducees did not believe that people would rise to life after death. So that same day some of the Sadducees came to Jesus and said:

Teacher, Moses wrote that if a married man dies and has no children, his brother should marry the widow. Their first son would then be thought of as the son of the dead brother.

Once there were seven brothers who lived here. The first one married, but died without having any children. So his wife was left to his brother. The same thing happened to the second and third brothers and finally to all seven of them. At last the woman died. When God raises people from death, whose wife will this woman be? She had been married to all seven brothers.

Jesus answered:

You are completely wrong! You don’t know what the Scriptures teach. And you don’t know anything about the power of God. When God raises people to life, they won’t marry. They will be like the angels in heaven. And as for people being raised to life, God was speaking to you when he said, “I am the God worshiped by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” He isn’t the God of the dead, but of the living.

The crowds were surprised to hear what Jesus was teaching. (Matthew 22:23-33)

The Sadducees were the fundamentalists of their day. They were a sect of Judaism—think denomination—that was extremely strict and very conservative. They believed only the first five books of the Bible, Genesis through Deuteronomy, were scripture. Since they didn’t accept the authority of any of the prophets or other Old Testament writings, they rejected the resurrection, demons and angels. They thought Pharisees were trying to add dangerous innovations and silly speculation to God’s true word.

Jesus worked with people just as he found them. When Jesus solved the theological riddle that the Sadducees brought him, he did not challenge them from philosophy or from the books of the Bible that they did not believe in. Instead, he took them to the parts of scripture that they acknowledged were authoritative. He demonstrated that the concept of resurrection could be seen even in Genesis. They had missed what should have been obvious. After establishing that their truncated Bible taught the reality of an afterlife, he then challenged the presupposition underlying their riddle. Their assumption that life post-resurrection would be just like life was before the resurrection was also mistaken. Their vision, their imagination, their assumptions, Jesus pointed out, were too small. That’s why he told them they were not just wrong, but completely wrong.

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