R.P. Nettelhorst's Blog, page 38

Weakness

After singing a hymn, [Jesus and His disciples] went out to the Mount of Olives.

Then Jesus said to them, “You will all fall away because of Me this night, for it is written, ‘I will strike down the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered.’

“But after I have been raised, I will go ahead of you to Galilee.”

But Peter said to Him, “Even though all may fall away because of You, I will never fall away.”

Jesus said to him, “Truly I say to you that this very night, before a rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.”

Peter said to Him, “Even if I have to die with You, I will not deny You.” All the disciples said the same thing too.

Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to His disciples, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” (Matthew 26:30-36)

“You will fail me.” That’s what Jesus told his disciples. But Jesus never gave up on them. After the Last Supper, Jesus and his disciples went to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray. Or rather, Jesus went to pray. The disciples went to sleep. Jesus warned his disciples that they would all desert him. Likewise, he reassured them that he’d meet up with them again in Galilee after his resurrection.

Peter insisted that he would never deny Jesus. He affirmed a willingness to die for him. All the disciples insisted on the same and all of them missed the words of comfort Jesus offered. The disciples expected to fight for Jesus against the Romans. They did not expect Jesus to surrender and die meekly. Unable to die for him gloriously in battle as they had imagined, they fled. Though all the disciples ran, Peter was singled out with a prophesy. He stands out as the representative for all their bad behavior.

The disciples missed the promise of Jesus’ resurrection. So they spent three days in unnecessary misery, before the reality of his resurrection forced them to joy. Jesus was not surprised by their reaction. He planned for it. He fixed it. God knows us. He knows how we’ll react to our lives. He isn’t at a loss, and he won’t give up on us, no matter how often we give up on him, or worse, ourselves. Jesus will always go ahead of us to meet up with us again.

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Slay Them

“Another came, saying, ‘Master, here is your mina, which I have kept put away in a handkerchief. For I feared you, because you are an austere man. You collect what you did not deposit, and reap what you did not sow.’ And he said to him, ‘Out of your own mouth I will judge you, you wicked servant. You knew that I was an austere man, collecting what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow. Why then did you not put my money in the bank, that at my coming I might have collected it with interest?’

“And he said to those who stood by, ‘Take the mina from him, and give it to him who has ten minas.’ (But they said to him, ‘Master, he has ten minas.’) ‘For I say to you, that to everyone who has will be given; and from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. But bring here those enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, and slay them before me.’ ” (Luke 19:20-27)

Sometimes, you have to wonder what a person was thinking. Jesus and his disciples were on their way to Jerusalem. His disciples thought Jesus was about to become the new king over Israel. The purpose of Jesus’ parable was to correct their erroneous thought.

Jesus told a parable about a king who went to a distant country to have himself appointed king and then to return. Though most of the king’s servants were wise, one made poor choices and lost everything as a consequence, joining the fate of those who had rejected the king. Jesus’ story might have reminded his disciples about Herod and his descendents, who ruled the people of Israel because Rome had given the throne to them. For instance, after Herod the Great died in 4 BC, his son Archelaus went to Rome to have his father’s will confirmed, so he could become king in his place. A group of Jewish leaders followed him to Rome to protest his appointment.

Jesus knew he would be betrayed by Judas, rejected by the religious leadership of Israel and die at the hands of the Romans. Judas would lose his place, while the religious leaders would lose their place when Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed within a generation. Meanwhile, Jesus’ disciples would be left behind to work without him. He wanted them—and us—to work in confidence, knowing that Jesus would come back again. And when he finally returned, he’d bring us our reward.

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Are We There Yet?

Jesus told them a story showing that it was necessary for them to pray consistently and never quit. He said, “There was once a judge in some city who never gave God a thought and cared nothing for people. A widow in that city kept after him: ‘My rights are being violated. Protect me!’

“He never gave her the time of day. But after this went on and on he said to himself, ‘I care nothing what God thinks, even less what people think. But because this widow won’t quit badgering me, I’d better do something and see that she gets justice—otherwise I’m going to end up beaten black-and-blue by her pounding.’”

Then the Master said, “Do you hear what that judge, corrupt as he is, is saying? So what makes you think God won’t step in and work justice for his chosen people, who continue to cry out for help? Won’t he stick up for them? I assure you, he will. He will not drag his feet. But how much of that kind of persistent faith will the Son of Man find on the earth when he returns?” (Luke 18:1-8)

Are we there yet? Children on a trip are impatient. So are people in general. Jesus used the parable of the unjust judge to make the point that praying to God is never a waste of time. Even a horrible judge who doesn’t properly do his job, will do it if he gets nagged enough. So God, who is not a negligent jurist, will certainly bring justice for his chosen people. Jesus was making a point about God. God is not lazy, he isn’t too busy, he isn’t distracted. He isn’t dragging his feet. He actually is doing what needs to be done as quickly as it needs to be done.

Some have looked at the Holocaust and wondered, “where was God?” The question would be a reasonable one had the Germans won the war. But they didn’t. They lost. So where was God? He was using the allied forces to bomb Germany to bits. Then Germany was divided and occupied. Half of it was enslaved by the Soviets for a generation. Israel was restored as a nation. And it all came to pass considerably faster than the four hundred years of slavery endured by the Israelites in Egypt.

God does take care of his people. He does bring justice to them. And he’ll do it as quickly as possible. Count on it.

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Wisdom

“Who are faithful and wise servants? Who are the ones the master will put in charge of giving the other servants their food supplies at the proper time? Servants are fortunate if their master comes and finds them doing their job. A servant who is always faithful will surely be put in charge of everything the master owns.

“But suppose one of the servants thinks that the master won’t return until late. Suppose that servant starts beating all the other servants and eats and drinks and gets drunk. If that happens, the master will come on a day and at a time when the servant least expects him. That servant will then be punished and thrown out with the servants who cannot be trusted.

“If servants are not ready or willing to do what their master wants them to do, they will be beaten hard. But servants who don’t know what their master wants them to do will not be beaten so hard for doing wrong. If God has been generous with you, he will expect you to serve him well. But if he has been more than generous, he will expect you to serve him even better.” (Luke 12:42-48)

The Pharisees and religious leaders fancied themselves in the service of God. But in fact, they were mostly just serving themselves. Jesus warned his disciples about them repeatedly, in many different ways and at many different times. This parable about a bad servant was one such warning.

The purpose of servants was to do the jobs that their master needed to have done that he would prefer not to have to do himself. Ideally, the master shouldn’t even have to think about it. The servants should just do their jobs. In our modern world, our servants are things like our cars, the electricity in our homes, or the plumbing. We don’t think about our cars unless they break. We flick a switch and we expect the light to come on. We turn a knob and we expect the water to be hot in our shower. We become angry when any of our modern servants fail us.

What was Jesus’ point about the parable of the servants that he gave his disciples? He did not want his disciples to turn out as the Pharisees had. He wanted them to be different. He wanted them to serve God and each other. And that’s what Jesus wants of us, too.

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Little Flock

Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

“Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves.

“But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” (Luke 12:32-40)

Don’t you wish we’d all been ready? Jesus promised his disciples that he would come unexpectedly. To illustrate what he meant, he compared his future arrival to that of Jewish wedding customs of the time. The groom did not tell his bride when he would show up to get her. It was a surprise and part of the fun of getting married. So the bride, her family, the guests—everyone involved, had to simply wait in anticipation, and make certain that they were always ready. Jesus’ story then takes an odd turn. In a real banquet, it was the servants who would serve their master. But Jesus has the master serving the servants: a hint about the nature of Jesus’ kingdom.

To drive the point home in a way that perhaps is clearer for modern readers of the Bible, Jesus said his arrival would also be like the coming of a thief. No one knows about a burglary before it happens. That his disciples should await his coming prepared, no matter how long the delay, was so important that Jesus explained it to them in more than one way.

We should live our lives each day in anticipation of Jesus’ coming. We never know when he may come for us, whether in the clouds, or in our dying breath. Each day should be lived as if it might be our last.

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Lots to Do

After Jesus left the synagogue with James and John, they went to Simon and Andrew’s home. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was sick in bed with a high fever. They told Jesus about her right away. So he went to her bedside, took her by the hand, and helped her sit up. Then the fever left her, and she prepared a meal for them.

That evening after sunset, many sick and demon-possessed people were brought to Jesus. The whole town gathered at the door to watch. So Jesus healed many people who were sick with various diseases, and he cast out many demons. But because the demons knew who he was, he did not allow them to speak.

Before daybreak the next morning, Jesus got up and went out to an isolated place to pray. Later Simon and the others went out to find him. When they found him, they said, “Everyone is looking for you.”

But Jesus replied, “We must go on to other towns as well, and I will preach to them, too. That is why I came.” So he traveled throughout the region of Galilee, preaching in the synagogues and casting out demons. (Mark 1:29-39)

Jesus made people feel wonderful. Look at Peter’s mother-in-law in Capernaum. Jesus simply went to where she was, took her by the hand, and helped her sit up. At which point, she wasn’t sick any more. No one had asked for her healing. Not even she had made the request. But healed she was, nevertheless. God does not wait to take care of us only when we ask. Good thing, since we may not always know what we need.

After Peter’s mother-in-law was healed she prepared a meal for Jesus and the disciples. That may seem an odd response to being healed, but the point that the author was wishing to make was to demonstrate just how thoroughly healed she was: she went back to living her life as she normally did. It is akin to the lame man not only walking, but picking up his mat and carrying it. It demonstrated the completeness of the healing.

Capernaum was a small town. Soon, every sick person, everyone who knew a sick person, and everyone who just wanted to watch, had descended upon the house where Jesus was. He was kept busy for hours. When Jesus changes our life, it’s not just our life that is transformed. His work in us soon spreads to everyone we know. Jesus’ work in a life can never stay a secret.

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Second Coming

“Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

“Now learn this parable from the fig tree: When its branch has already become tender and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near. So you also, when you see all these things, know that it is near—at the doors! Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away. (Matthew 24:30-35)

Jesus didn’t tell his disciples everything they wanted to know, because sometimes, what they wanted to know was utter nonsense. For the disciples who were looking for Jesus to establish his rule in Jerusalem as Israel’s rightful king, what Jesus described about his coming would have seemed to them exactly what they were expecting. When Jesus spoke about “the tribes of the earth,” they thought he meant that he at last was going to raise an army and defeat the Romans. When Jesus said that the angels would gather the elect, his disciples thought all the Jewish people were going to be brought back to Israel from wherever they had been scattered across the world. And the time frame they heard from Jesus was just what they had hoped: it would all happen within their lifetimes.

Of course, their interpretation of what Jesus was saying wasn’t quite right. Their misunderstanding illustrates the problem we sometimes face in interpreting anything that someone says. Sometimes we miss the context, and sometimes we impose our own expectations upon their words, much as a person with a crush can misinterpret the actions and statements of the one with whom they’re obsessed.

So what did Jesus mean? Within Christianity, there are nearly as many interpretations as there are churches. When it comes to figuring out the future, we should consider the difficulty that the disciples had understanding what Jesus was doing during his first appearance on earth. That should serve as a warning that we probably haven’t entirely figured out what Jesus’ second coming is all about.

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Vultures

“Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There!’ do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand.

“Therefore if they say to you, ‘Look, He is in the desert!’ do not go out; or ‘Look, He is in the inner rooms!’ do not believe it.

For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For wherever the carcass is, there the eagles will be gathered together.

“Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. (Matthew 24:23-29)

When Jesus comes into his kingdom, it will be obvious, as obvious as a lightning flash. And no one will have to call us or whisper in our ears. Like vultures circling a carcass in a field are visible for miles, so it will be just as apparent when Jesus comes.

Jesus’ phrases about the sun and moon being darkened were taken from the words of the prophets in the Old Testament who had used them to describe the destruction of God’s enemies. When a city was attacked and burned, the rising smoke of its destruction obscured the sky, blackening sun and moon. Certainly those who saw Jerusalem burned by the Romans witnessed such changes in the sky.

Ever since the time of Christ, many false messiahs and false prophets have arisen to offer people earthly solutions to their earthly problems. For instance, between 132 and 136 AD, more than sixty years after the destruction of Jerusalem, a man named Bar Kokhba was proclaimed the Messiah and led a second Jewish revolt against the Roman Empire. Like the one that had caused the Temple’s destruction, this revolt too, was crushed. Sooner or later, every false prophet, every false messiah dies and comes to ruin.

We should never look to men for our salvation. We must never imagine that some individual has a closer relationship to God than us. We must not give in to the lie that some human being has solutions to all the problems in our personal lives, or all the problems in the world at large.

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Attitudes

Reverence

Fear and respect can be aspects of reverence. It means taking God seriously. It means, primarily, loving Him. We respect those whom we love. We take them seriously. They are important to us. The author of Malachi writes:

And you will know that I have sent you this admonition so that my covenant with Levi may continue,” says the LORD Almighty. “My covenant was with him, a covenant of life and peace, and I gave them to him; this called for reverence and he revered me and stood in awe of my name. True instruction was in his mouth and nothing false was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and turned many from sin.

“For the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, and from his mouth men should seek instruction– because he is the messenger of the LORD Almighty. (Mal 2:4-7)

Gratitude

Gratitude grows out of a lack of expectations, a lack of entitlement, so that there is joy in anything that someone else does for you. Dissapointment comes as a consequence of having expectations. Anger comes from the failure of expectations being met. You expected your loved one to remember your birthday. He didn’t. So now you’re angry; how rude, how thoughtless. Or he didn’t get you what you were hoping to get. Lack of gratitude grows from having expectations, making demands on someone else. Gratitude grows when you don’t have those expectations.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Col 3:16-17)

Servitude

Servitude means focusing on the other, without thought of self. Paul writes, “You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Gal 5:13-14)

In speaking of leadership, Jesus describes it as servitude:

Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mat 20:25-28)

This understanding of leadership has an impact on how leadership works in the church and in the family.

Suffering

Recognizing that God knows what he is doing, and so whatever happens, it must be because it will in some way benefit God and others and self in the long run. Suffering is part of life; it is inevitable. The question is how we will respond to it. Peter wrote, “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.” (1 Peter 4:12)

How are these attitudes accomplished?

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other. (Gal 5:22-26)

But notice that those verses are preceded and contextualized with this:

The entire law is summed up in a single command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Gal: 5:14)

Love remains the foundation for all of this.

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42

If God is good, if he loves us, and if he’s all powerful, then why do bad things happen to good people? Or, more to the point, why do bad things happen to me? This is not an ancient question. It’s actually a modern one.

Some argue that there is no real answer to the question. Others say that the question proves there is no God. Others say that the answer has something to do with free will. Some will try to argue that there are no good people and that everyone is justly suffering for their sins. That infants die of SIDS, that they starve or suffer illnesses—well, it is the parents suffering for their sins, or the infants suffer because of Adam’s sin—and so on; which does not explain why some infants, then, grow up rich and comfortable. Are they somehow less sinners? It is the inconsistency of it all that troubles many.

In 1979 Douglas Adams published his bestselling book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. In it, he told the story of a group of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings who demand to learn the Ultimate Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything from the supercomputer, Deep Thought, specially built for this purpose. It takes Deep Thought 7½ million years to compute and check the answer, which turns out to be 42. Unfortunately, the problem is that what The Ultimate Question itself might in fact be, is unknown.

When asked to produce The Ultimate Question, the computer says that it cannot; however, it can help to design an even more powerful computer, the Earth, which can. The programmers then embark on a further ten-million-year program to discover The Ultimate Question.

The answer to the question that so bothers so many—how could a good God let me suffer like this—is 42. That’s why no one is ever satisfied by the answer anyone gives. How so? Because the reality of the whole debate is like that of Douglas’ Adam’s story: no one is asking the right question. It is the question itself that is nonsense. Thus, all the answers that people make up are as meaningful as the one that Douglas Adams proposed in his humorous novel.

The answer, the reality of God and the reality of suffering and reconciling those two things is actually not difficult. It took the modern world to come up with the wrong question and thus to muck things up so badly that everyone is now so thoroughly confused that they can’t see the obvious. The ancients were not so disturbed by this issue that so plagues the modern, thoughtful person (from about the seventeenth century, on), because it is a non-issue. Once we ask the right question, it becomes obvious.

What is the real question? The traditional question of the modern world is,” if God is good, loving and all powerful, then why is there sin and suffering?”

I. This is essentially the opposite question to the one we should be asking. If humanity is in a fallen state, having made a poor choice, and if God has granted us freedom and hides himself so that he may always be explained away, why is there anything good in the world? That’s right. We’re asking the question backwards. The real question we need to ask is simply, “Why do good things ever happen?” And there are some corollaries to this: why do we expect good things to happen? Why do we get upset when things go wrong? Why does suffering bother me? When something goes right for us, we never ask “why me?” We only ask it if something bad happens. That may be natural for us in our current condition, but it is the opposite of what we should be asking. Because we believed God was holding out on us—Eve was convinced that God, in forbidding the one tree, was withholding something beneficial—in our hearts we really don’t believe God is good or loving. We do not trust him. We do not believe he wants what is best for us. We believe that God wants us to do the last thing we’d ever want to do and to somehow be grateful for it. We expect to suffer because “it’s good for us” like getting a shot or swallowing cod liver oil.

We expect things to go wrong because we believe that God wants to teach us a lesson and that what he thinks is best for us is in fact something that will make us miserable.

II. We believe that if we ask for bread, God will give us a scorpion. We don’t trust him. So the other part of the real question is also, why don’t we trust God?

My own children tend to be this way, too. They are quick to assume malevolence on my part: that we deny giving them what they ask for simply because we’re mean or don’t want them to have fun, or simply don’t want to be bothered. So people tend to assume malevolence on God’s part: he’s mad at me, he wants me to learn a hard lesson, suffering builds character, he just doesn’t like me, his plans are different than mine and I just need to suck it up and be thankful for dirt, even though I wanted ice cream.

The skeptic, on the other hand, looks at this and sees madness: we’re playing mind games and refusing to face reality—and thus concludes that suffering, being a bad thing, proves that either God is sadistic—and hence a lot of angry atheists come from this—or, that obviously there is no God at all, we’re playing make believe—and thus relieving us of having to suffer the delusion of an angry, sadistic, or uncaring deity and so freeing us to live without fear that we are about to be walloped by God’s hickory stick.

III. If the Kingdom of Heaven is better than this world, then how can this be the best of all possible worlds? As I asked before, what if the Kingdom of Heaven can come about only because of this world: that is, the Kingdom of Heaven requires this world and this world creates the Kingdom of Heaven: the Kingdom of Heaven is a consequence of this world.

Some may object to this for various reasons, but consider: without the inhabitants of this world, there can be no next world, no kingdom of heaven. We—the church, the people of this world are what make up the Kingdom. So yes, this world creates the next world in that it creates the people who make it up: after all, the bride of Christ, the celestial city of Jerusalem coming to Earth from heaven is what? The people of God (see Rev. 21:9 where the author explicitly identifies the celestial city of Jerusalem as “the bride, the wife of the Lamb”; see also Rev. 21:2). The question here is: what is the kingdom of Heaven. The short answer: it is God’s people. Therefore, this world is necessary for the Kingdom of Heaven to exist—and so this then is the best of all possible worlds—it is the only way the better world of the kingdom comes about—which is paradoxical unless you realize that the kingdom is co-existent with this world; this is explicit: the kingdom in a very real sense is now:

Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:20-21)

When we ask, is this the best of all possible worlds, we must recognize that this world includes the Kingdom. Ask yourself this: is this baby the best of all possible human beings when you peer at Jesus in the manger. The baby is no less Jesus than the resurrected Lord. This world is the baby to the adult that is the Kingdom of God.

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