R.P. Nettelhorst's Blog, page 45
April 12, 2015
A Prayer of Jesus
Jesus looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son so he can give glory back to you. For you have given him authority over everyone. He gives eternal life to each one you have given him. And this is the way to have eternal life—to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one you sent to earth. I brought glory to you here on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. Now, Father, bring me into the glory we shared before the world began.
“I have revealed you to the ones you gave me from this world. They were always yours. You gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything I have is a gift from you, for I have passed on to them the message you gave me. They accepted it and know that I came from you, and they believe you sent me.
“My prayer is not for the world, but for those you have given me, because they belong to you. All who are mine belong to you, and you have given them to me, so they bring me glory.” (John 17:1–10)
One of the best ways to learn how to pray is to listen to how Jesus prayed. He used no particular formula or special words. Rather, when we overhear Jesus’ prayers to his Father, what we discover is that he simply talked to him about whatever was on his mind. He told his Father the things that mattered most to him. He simply discussed his deepest concerns with his Father, expressing whatever emotions and thoughts that came from deep inside of him. He was not concerned with what anyone might think of his words. He was only concerned that his Father knew what really was weighing on his mind.
When we pray, we needn’t worry about the shape or form of our prayer, whether our words are pretty or whether our hands are folded right. Instead, we should simply tell God whatever is in our heads, without pretense, without pretending, without thinking about what we think we should be talking about to God. God already knows our needs. He already knows what is troubling us, what is important to us, and how we really feel about our situation. He only wants us to share it all with him. Think about how much better we feel after we unburden ourselves to a close friend. He wants us to let him lighten our load just like that.
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April 11, 2015
Remembrance
When the hour had come, Jesus sat down, and the twelve apostles with Him. Then He said to them, “With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I say to you, I will no longer eat of it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.”
Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and said, “Take this and divide it among yourselves; for I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.”
And He took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.”
Likewise He also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you.” (Luke 22:14–20)
Passover was a memorial service, a way for the Israelites to remember what God had done for them when he had rescued them from Egyptian slavery. The sacrificial system with all its rituals and its slaughter of animals served a similar purpose: it was a picture, a parable of what God would do through the final sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. The sacrifice of bulls and goats in the old covenant of ancient Israel never took away sins (Hebrews 10:3-4). It was simply a regular reminder of their sins and the fact that God was forgiving them.
The breaking of bread and the drinking of the wine of the Lord’s Supper now serves a similar purpose: it is a memorial service, a way of remembering what Jesus did on the cross. It is a picture for us. Likewise, the Lord’s Supper does not take away sins: instead, it reminds us that our sins have already been taken away thanks the great price that was paid by Jesus on Calvary. It was and is only Jesus’ death on a Roman cross that takes away our sins. We remember that wonderful reality every time we share the bread and the fruit of the vine. As often as we do it, we proclaim to all those with us the amazing love of Jesus.
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April 10, 2015
Am I the One?
He said, “Go into the city to a certain man, and say to him, ‘The Teacher says, “My time is at hand; I will keep the Passover at your house with My disciples.”’”
So the disciples did as Jesus had directed them; and they prepared the Passover.
When evening had come, He sat down with the twelve. Now as they were eating, He said, “Assuredly, I say to you, one of you will betray Me.”
And they were exceedingly sorrowful, and each of them began to say to Him, “Lord, is it I?”
He answered and said, “He who dipped his hand with Me in the dish will betray Me. The Son of Man indeed goes just as it is written of Him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been good for that man if he had not been born.”
Then Judas, who was betraying Him, answered and said, “Rabbi, is it I?”
He said to him, “You have said it.” (Matthew 26:18–25)
During the last supper, a Passover Seder, Jesus revealed that one of the Twelve was going to betray him. Each of them asked Jesus if he was the one. Only Judas got an affirmative answer.
All the disciples were going to run away from Jesus. Peter would wind up denying that he even knew Jesus. But only Judas worked to destroy Jesus. What motivated Judas in his actions is unknown. The New Testament authors only tell us that “Satan” had entered him. His action was unexpected and startling to the other disciples. None of them suspected him.
Of the twelve disciples who asked, “is it I?” only Judas knew the answer. If we wonder if we will betray Jesus, if we wonder if we might go astray in some way and like the other eleven, we really don’t know the answer to it, then our answer is what it was for all the disciples except for Judas. Those who are abandoning Jesus don’t really wonder whether they are doing it. They already know.
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April 9, 2015
April 8, 2015
Destroying the Temple
It was nearly time for the Jewish Passover celebration, so Jesus went to Jerusalem. In the Temple area he saw merchants selling cattle, sheep, and doves for sacrifices; he also saw dealers at tables exchanging foreign money. Jesus made a whip from some ropes and chased them all out of the Temple. He drove out the sheep and cattle, scattered the money changers’ coins over the floor, and turned over their tables. Then, going over to the people who sold doves, he told them, “Get these things out of here. Stop turning my Father’s house into a marketplace!”
Then his disciples remembered this prophecy from the Scriptures: “Passion for God’s house will consume me.”
But the Jewish leaders demanded, “What are you doing? If God gave you authority to do this, show us a miraculous sign to prove it.”
“All right,” Jesus replied. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
“What!” they exclaimed. “It has taken forty-six years to build this Temple, and you can rebuild it in three days?” But when Jesus said “this temple,” he meant his own body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered he had said this, and they believed both the Scriptures and what Jesus had said.
Because of the miraculous signs Jesus did in Jerusalem at the Passover celebration, many began to trust in him. But Jesus didn’t trust them, because he knew human nature. No one needed to tell him what mankind is really like. (John 2:13–23)
All the gospel writers describe how Jesus threw the money changers out of the temple. Only John puts the incident at the beginning of his Gospel, rather than just before Jesus’ crucifixion. John chose to arrange the story of Jesus’ life in a thematic rather than a chronological order, a common choice among ancient Jewish authors.
Jesus told his critics that the only sign they would get would be his death, burial and resurrection. Whether his critics purposely misunderstood his words about the “temple” of his body or simply chose to misinterpret them is difficult to say. But after his crucifixion, the religious leaders were concerned about getting guards for his tomb to prevent mischief. Oddly enough, his disciples didn’t understand that’s what Jesus meant until after his resurrection.
Jesus’ words serve as a warning about how easy it can be to misunderstand Jesus. Such misunderstanding can come from being distracted by other issues in our lives that we miss the blessing that he has for us. Jesus may have already given us the answer to what is so troubling us now, if only we chose to hear him.
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April 7, 2015
Silencing Critics
They watched Him, and sent spies who pretended to be righteous, that they might seize on His words, in order to deliver Him to the power and the authority of the governor.
Then they asked Him, saying, “Teacher, we know that You say and teach rightly, and You do not show personal favoritism, but teach the way of God in truth: Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”
But He perceived their craftiness, and said to them, “Why do you test Me? Show Me a denarius. Whose image and inscription does it have?”
They answered and said, “Caesar’s.”
And He said to them, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
But they could not catch Him in His words in the presence of the people. And they marveled at His answer and kept silent. (Luke 20:20–26)
Like Matthew and Mark, Luke tells how the Pharisees once asked Jesus whether it was right to pay taxes to Caesar. They believed they at last had a question that would be impossible for Jesus to answer right. They hoped Jesus’ response would prove to the masses once and for all that Jesus was not really the Messiah.
The question that the Pharisees asked was one they had already pondered. They believed they knew all the possible answers and they were convinced that none of them were satisfactory. No matter how Jesus answered, they would be able to criticize him. They were, therefore, not prepared for Jesus to actually solve what they thought was an unsolvable dilemma. Jesus’ answer was something new, something unexpected, something that they didn’t know what to do with. So all they could do was gape at Jesus in silence.
Toward the end of the book of Job, after Job has complained long and hard about his situation, when God finally shows up to confront him, all Job can do is respond with silence:
“I am unworthy—how can I reply to you?
I put my hand over my mouth.
I spoke once, but I have no answer—
twice, but I will say no more.” (Job 40:4-5)
Like the Pharisees, our only reasonable response to God’s answers is silence. There is nothing more to add once God has spoken. God’s answer will always silence us because it will resolve all our issues.
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April 6, 2015
Rest
He sent the executioner off to the prison with orders to bring back John’s head. He went, cut off John’s head, brought it back on a platter, and presented it to the girl, who gave it to her mother. When John’s disciples heard about this, they came and got the body and gave it a decent burial.
The apostles then rendezvoused with Jesus and reported on all that they had done and taught. Jesus said, “Come off by yourselves; let’s take a break and get a little rest.” For there was constant coming and going. They didn’t even have time to eat.
So they got in the boat and went off to a remote place by themselves. Someone saw them going and the word got around. From the surrounding towns people went out on foot, running, and got there ahead of them. When Jesus arrived, he saw this huge crowd. At the sight of them, his heart broke—like sheep with no shepherd they were. He went right to work teaching them. (Mark 6:27–34)
Jesus told his disciples that they needed to get away. But when they got away to where they were going to rest, they weren’t alone. Did Jesus’ plans therefore get thwarted? Were Jesus and his disciples cheated out of their time of rest?
Not at all. Just as Jesus told Satan “man does not live on bread alone” (Matthew 4:4 NIV) so now, at this juncture, the disciples would learn that rest did not necessarily mean getting away from it all and doing nothing. Jesus would teach all day and then feed the five thousand. But this was still a “time of rest” for both him and his disciples.
The purpose of rest is not the goofing off. Its purpose is the recharging, the getting energized, the recovering from the hard work that we’ve been doing. In finding a crowd, in proclaiming the Good News, in feeding the multitudes, Jesus and his disciples were re-energized to continue their ministry.
Jesus and the disciples went on from the feeding of the five thousand in power. God will take care of our needs. He’ll give us the desires of our hearts. We may be surprised and startled by how he goes about giving us what we need. And we may not always realize that it really is what we need. But in the end, it will be what we need.
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April 5, 2015
Empty Words
I will tell you a story about a man who had two sons. Then you can tell me what you think. The father went to the older son and said, “Go work in the vineyard today!” His son told him that he would not do it, but later he changed his mind and went. The man then told his younger son to go work in the vineyard. The boy said he would, but he didn’t go. Which one of the sons obeyed his father?
“The older one,” the chief priests and leaders answered.
Then Jesus told them:
You can be sure that tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the kingdom of God before you ever will! When John the Baptist showed you how to do right, you would not believe him. But these evil people did believe. And even when you saw what they did, you still would not change your minds and believe. (Matthew 21:28–32)
Words are cheap. Saying and doing are entirely different sorts of things. When we get married, we make promises to one another. It is easy for our mouths to say the words. It will be a lifetime’s effort, sometimes an enormous struggle, to live up to the promises we made.
Jesus told a story—a parable—about two sons. One who told his father “yes” and one who told his father “no.” What mattered in the end was not the words spoken, but the deeds done. It is always possible to go against what we have uttered, either good or ill. The disobedient son, the one who told his father no, later thought better of his answer and went ahead and did what he’d been asked. Faith is not just words; faith is action. In the end, we will do what we believe. Our faith—what we really believe about God and his word—has real world consequences that everyone can see.
Jesus point was that the “sinners” that the Pharisees believed were lost causes, had in fact repented of their deeds and turned to God. They had heard what John the Baptist had said and in droves came out to be baptized. But the religious establishment—those who thought of themselves as the “good son”—had refused to believe. Belief is not about what we say, it is about what it leads us to do. Belief is not just words on our lips, but the works of our hands.
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April 4, 2015
The Establishment
He then called the crowd together and said, “Listen, and take this to heart. It’s not what you swallow that pollutes your life, but what you vomit up.”
Later his disciples came and told him, “Did you know how upset the Pharisees were when they heard what you said?”
Jesus shrugged it off. “Every tree that wasn’t planted by my Father in heaven will be pulled up by its roots. Forget them. They are blind men leading blind men. When a blind man leads a blind man, they both end up in the ditch.”
Peter said, “I don’t get it. Put it in plain language.”
Jesus replied, “You, too? Are you being willfully stupid? Don’t you know that anything that is swallowed works its way through the intestines and is finally defecated? But what comes out of the mouth gets its start in the heart. It’s from the heart that we vomit up evil arguments, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, lies, and cussing. That’s what pollutes. Eating or not eating certain foods, washing or not washing your hands—that’s neither here nor there.” (Matthew 15:10–20)
Jesus was not concerned with what most of the Pharisees thought of him because they were not from God. Most of the Pharisees were largely concerned with what was on the outside of people. Jesus’ concern was with what was inside of people.
While it is certainly the case that external circumstances—what we’re taught, what we read, what we watch, can affect our lives for good or ill, Jesus makes clear that it really isn’t our environment, our circumstances, the things we’ve been exposed to that make us who and what we are. Rather, what we are is something that comes from inside of us: our human nature. The choices we might make to murder, to steal, to be evil in whatever way we might be evil, are our choices alone that grow from what’s in our hearts and minds. We cannot blame our circumstances or argue that we couldn’t help it, or that we were made that way by what happened to us. We have no one to blame but ourselves.
We may have had it rough in our lives. We may have had to struggle more than our peers. We may have lacked the advantages that our friends or neighbors had. But we can’t blame what we did with our lives on anyone else. If we want to, we can change our lives for the better thanks to Jesus. He can do great things with us, no matter what our circumstances.
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April 3, 2015
Rules of Engagement
Pharisees and religion scholars came to Jesus all the way from Jerusalem, criticizing, “Why do your disciples play fast and loose with the rules?”
But Jesus put it right back on them. “Why do you use your rules to play fast and loose with God’s commands? God clearly says, ‘Respect your father and mother,’ and, ‘Anyone denouncing father or mother should be killed.’ But you weasel around that by saying, ‘Whoever wants to, can say to father and mother, What I owed to you I’ve given to God.’ That can hardly be called respecting a parent. You cancel God’s command by your rules. Frauds! Isaiah’s prophecy of you hit the bull’s-eye:
These people make a big show of saying the right thing,
but their heart isn’t in it.
They act like they’re worshiping me,
but they don’t mean it.
They just use me as a cover
for teaching whatever suits their fancy.” (Matthew 15:1–9)
For the Pharisees, it was critical that all of the Jewish people obey every one of God’s 613 commandments. So they spent their time discussing those laws and how to put them into practice. They were concerned with figuring out how they should then conduct their lives in every and any conceivable circumstance.
Their problem, however, came from the fact that they all too often ended up looking at the laws in isolation from one another and in isolation from the people for whom they were created. As they decided how they must act in one circumstance, they failed to recognize how their interpretation and choices led them to disobey and miss God’s commands in other areas. In their concern for each tree, they lost sight of the forest. They had focused their attention on the rules instead of the people that God had made them for.
Jesus wants us to understand that to really honor God, there has to be an understanding of what the rules are really all about and what really matters in the larger scheme of things. All too often what we think of as God’s rules wind up being merely “human rules”—and for those “human rules” to get between us and God’s will. Instead of worrying about the rules, God wants us to think about him and to concentrate on one another. If we love God and if we love the people around us, then we will automatically conduct our lives properly, because love does no harm to others.
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