It’s Hard to Learn that Mercy Wins Over Judgment

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Dan
on 7/2/2009
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John 10.37-38 ESV “If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”

Jesus can see that it is too much of a stumbling block for these guys to see who He is, so He almost appeals to their supposed faith in God. They are saying He has a demon and Jesus is saying, “If you aren’t going to believe me, at least believe that the things that are happening (blind see, lame walk, lepers healed, good news preached to the poor) are from God. If you won’t believe that I’m from God, at least believe that My works are!
In some amazing way, Jesus all at once is lowering the criteria and making it easier to come to the Father, just by believing in these works. At the same time though, He raises the bar and makes it more difficult to come to Him, because He states that He is equal to the Father. That forces us to change inside. You can’t just do motions and activities on the outside and reconcile those two things.
The people want to shout that Jesus is the King and make Him their ruler, but the acts of mercy and compassion to Gentiles and ROMANS don’t fit with them. The Pharisees really do want to see the Messiah come (as they understand the Messiah) but they don’t want people healed on the Sabbath because that breaks their laws and keeps the Messiah away.
Jesus forces their hand and ours to see double. He IS equal to God, and His works are FROM God, even if they are done on the Sabbath, even if they are done to Romans, even if they are done to unclean women that ‘steal’ the healing.

Three Kinds of People People in John 10

Published
by
Dan
on 6/15/2009
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In John 10 Jesus details 3 sorts that work with the sheep, or the people.

1. The Thief: The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy. He uses up the sheep for his own desires and wants, and does not care about them or for them.

2. The Hireling: Wesley uses the word hireling, and I like it here. This person “Loves the hire, not the sheep” (Wesley) He enjoys making money off of the owner and little else. If a job came along that was better, he would abandon the sheep or if risk or labor increased over his pay, he would leave.

3. The Shepherd: The shepherd owns the sheep. They are  his and he is concerned solely about the care of the sheep. He will not abandon them for something else, because if he did, he would have nothing else.

So, Christian, which of these workers are you in your cubicle, in your grocery store, in your church? When we talk to people, do we just talk to get what we need out of them then move on? Do we just talk to the people we talk to because nothing better has come along? Do we take partnership, even ownership, of the friendship and dive in to care for the people we come in contact with?

I know I’m guilty of being all three of these characters at times.

Jesus/Authority/Life&Death

Published
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Dan
on 6/9/2009
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John 10:17 w For this reason the Father loves me, x because y I lay down my life that I may take it up again. 18 z No one takes it from me, but y I lay it down a of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and b I have authority to take it up again. c This charge I have received from my Father.”

Adam had authority over his own life, but he gave it up and sold himself into the slavery of sin. Here is Jesus, born of the Holy Spirit and Mary, who had authority over his own life, and did not sell himself into slavery to sin but submitted it to the Father. This is the ultimate explanation by his life of what “whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matt 10.39)

Jesus did not seek to find or save His life, but to do whatever charge He received from the Father. Laying down His life wasn’t only done on the cross one day out of 33 years, Jesus layed down His life every single day so that the Father could take over.

We’ve been talking a lot at my house about when someone wrongs someone else, it’s not so much that they have evil thoughts toward the victim, but more that they are only thinking of themselves. I also heard John Piper say recently that we are never bored if we are always looking to see what God wants us to do in a given situation. God desires to be and deserves to be the center of all of our affections. Jesus lived for the Father, and not for Himself. God was in the center of Jesus’ life, and Jesus just rotated around the Father’s will.

Prodigal God, by Timothy Keller

Published
by
Dan
on 5/30/2009
in Bible Study
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I just finished Prodigal God, by Timothy Keller, and it is very very good. I think it messed me up more than ever though concerning Jesus and grace!

Here is the premise: In the so-called ‘parable of the prodigal son’ Jesus actually tells the story of two lost sons. One is lost because of his distance from the father in wanting to live for himself and do whatever he wants, the other is lost because he does everything the father has ever asked and now thinks the father owes him for his obedience, so he was really only always serving himself.
It challenged me to think about why I do what I do? What are my motives for loving Jesus more than life? It’s all because of Him, baby!

The bad news is that I’m wrecked for the sake of grace now more than ever. Good quote from that book, “Marx said that religion was the opiate of the people, in that it sedates and makes them powerless. If religion is an opiate, Christianity should be the smelling salts, calling people to wake up!”

I love it. it was a good quick read, and I recommend it...

Abundant Life, Rule Free, from Jesus the Shepherd

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Dan
on 5/12/2009
in Bible Study
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[I am sick as a dog today. stopped up, cold, runny nose, some stomach pains and nausea earlier. I’ve just been still in the chair surfing the internet for a while. It’s hard to think.]

v.8 Jesus isn’t talking about the prophets, but about false prophets and false teachers. The wild thing is, the converse of His statement is “if you listened to them, you are not my sheep”

Jesus contrasts Himself to the previous anti-shepherds by saying that He came for the sheep to have life abundantly. It seems like it would be easy to see from the previous chapter that the Pharisees are not on the side of having abundant life, but on the side of having abundant requirements, regulations, and judgments. I talked to a guy recently that is struggling to do the things “Jesus expects” and to do the things his pastor tells him to do. He is weighed down with burdens like the Pharisees would assign. ‘Do this activity this way. Don’t do this. This is wrong. This is good.’

Jesus was alive, and lived a lot talking about what the Kingdom of God was and what the Father is like. If I teach my son how to ride a bike by telling him all of the places he shouldn’t ride his bike and all of the ways he should not sit on his bike and all of the improper ways of holding the handle bars, he will never learn how to ride a bike. He will certainly be an expert on how to not ride a bike incorrectly! But he won’t be able to ride it 4 feet! When I taught my oldest son how to ride a bike, I assured him of this: “You will fall and it will hurt, but you can’t give up. I will take care of you and your booboos will get better, and you will become a better bike rider.” It was all true, and now he rides like the wind (and sometimes I wish I could get a little fear back into him!)

That’s how I think of Jesus giving us abundant life. He doesn’t train the sheep in how to avoid the wolf, or carry on telling the sheep how evil and hungry the wolf is. He just takes care of them and has them follow Him. How much of life is taken care of in that one little lesson?!

Follow the voice of the shepherd.

Here is to living life free in the Son, and trusting that the sheep of Christ will hear is voice and not be distracted by the sound of the [zealboy phrase edited out]

New News on ‘Missing the Mark’

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Dan
on 5/9/2009
in Bookstore and Short Quotes
. 1 Comment

“In Hebrew, that is kha-ta’ – what we call “sin,” our world-wide, pervasive proclivity to mess up. We often hear it defined as “missing the mark” as though our trouble is just a matter of not being perfect enough (nowhere in Scripture does it say that!). An arrow that goes shy of the bull’s eye. Bt such trivializes God. It hints at His being overly fussy, and petty in His expectations for humans. Whereas, kha-ta is not just a matter of missing perfection. More aptly, it’s a matter of missing GOD’s aim in a given situation. Or then, even worse - missing His full purposes for our lives.”

—from “The Trouble With Grace” by Keith Hueftle

The Trouble with Grace

Costly Grace for the Guest

Published
by
Dan
on 5/6/2009
in Bible Study and Bookstore
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I don’t usually write at night but I just read across something and want to ink some of this out before I go to bed…

khesed/grace/mercy throughout the Old Testament is, by definition, costly.

that’s the statement I read tonight

It also involves hospitality, honor, and covenant. It is something that, when it happens, allows, or maybe even INVITES, the recipient to abuse the favor shown.

For instance. Abram shows hospitality to the three men walking by, and they share with him some secret: they are going to destroy Sodom. Abram, who has now been their host to eat and rest but also their guest to some very important secret information, abuses his right to this information and asks them if they would spare the city if such and such number of people could be found righteous in it. The three men do not object, but engage in the haggling for the spare-price of Sodom.

Lot does it with these same men when they come to his home. He hosts them, and protects them with what would be a very costly price (he offers the townsmen his own virgin daughters for sex acts so that they will spare the visitors he is hosting). Part of his hosting them is khesed simply because of that moment right there. If it isn’t costly, it isn’t khesed.

I don’t have time tonight (in 9 minutes it will be tomorrow and I’ll regret staying up so late) but I’d be interested in other places in the scriptures where hosting a guest involves 2 things:
1. the guest boldly asking for more than the host originally offered
2. the host having to pay an extraordinarily high price (or at least trying to) for the sake of the guest.

Go!

Vegetable Broth at the Men’s Retreat this Weekend

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Dan
on 5/4/2009
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I think the best thing I heard this weekend had to do with Vegetable soup.
As we grow up, we are handed a bowl of vegetable soup. That bowl is everything we’ve learned from our family, our culture, our life experiences. It’s everything we believe and think and know about life. Most people just chow down and eat their soup, memorize the recipe, and teach that same thing to their kids, if they can find the same ingredients.

God calls us out of that bowl of soup. We’re supposed to open up His Word (that is, Jesus) and seek and find out what really isn’t supposed to be in there. If your family recipe has beef in the soup, but God’s recipe doesn’t, take it out and sit it on a plate. You family comments to one another about women’s bodies, but God says to tread women with the purity of a sister? Take that out of your soup! Keep going and you may find that all you are left with is broth.

The amazing thing is, plain broth with God is better than the most stuffed with stuff soup of the world any day of the week. And as you eat that broth of God’s holiness, He’ll toss some stuff back in there from His recipe that is a lot better for you than that big pig shank of worldliness that the world may have dropped in your soup.

John 4 and Jesus’ Conversation with Oholah

Published
by
Dan
on 4/14/2009
in Bible Study
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In John 4, Jesus talks to a Samaritan woman that has had 5 husbands. People have always talked about what a sinful woman she was, and how controversial it would be for Jesus to talk to her.

Now I know why.

In Ezekiel 23, God talks about having two wives that left Him and cheated. One of those wives is Samaria; her name is Oholah. The stuff she does is pretty gross, inciting the ancient rabbis to only allow a man to read Ezekiel after he turned 30.

That woman at the well in John 4: she is Oholah.

In Ezekiel 23, Oholah lusted after the Assyrians(1) and the Egyptians(2). As time went on, Samaria would be ruled by Persia (3), then in 332 B.C. be filled with Macedonians(4), then in 63 B.C. it would become a Roman Province (5).

Jesus arrives on the scene with a nation that has long forgotten who her Husband is in all of her whoring. She’s had 5 identities, and is having trouble identifying herself with the man who is currently NOT her husband.

And still Jesus reaches out, tells her everything, and tells re-introduces her to her first love, The Father that seeks worshipers that worship in Spirit and in Truth. Awesome.

A Great Good Friday Passover Night

Published
by
Dan
on 4/11/2009
in Bible Study and Family Life
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Last night we had our little Friday night get together and it was a really good time. We set up the sitting room with no furniture in it and covered the floor with korpatchas, sort of like sleeping bags that don’t open from Central Asia, to sit on. Five families all sat around in our cramped little room (we closed the pocket doors for an extra wall to lean on) and talked about the Passover meal. Everyone had a little something to share, which was cool.

Some of us had been to a sedar before, other people had read books, and everyone knew their Bible and was looking to learn a lot and have a lot of meaning in it all.

The biggest part for me was hiding the Afikomen. The afikomen is the center piece of the bread in the 3 pieces that are called “the Unity” it is taken out, broken, and half of it is hidden somewhere in the house. I hid it behind the couch while all of the kids were in the sitting room. We enjoyed our snacks of cheese, grapes, almond windmill cookies, and talked about all kinds of things, spiritual and unspiritual.

We ate some horseradish to taste the bitterness of sin, and drank down some wine to wash it away. Cindy said she thought her nose was going to fall off. Eric Youngblood took a huge chunk down in two bites. Isaac cried and cried to me that he wanted to taste the wine, but I told him he could only do it if he at the horseradish. I could tell that was an impasse, and he was just getting sad so I let him have a little taste. It blew him away. He hated it and seemed a little disappointed that he cried for it so, but was happy to get some grape juice after that.

At the end of the party, I told the kids that it couldn’t be over until they found the Afikomen. They took off in a mad race, running up and down the stairs, all over the place looking for it. I was so moved that I went in to the parents and we prayed that our kids would grow up to hunger and run after Jesus with such zeal passion hunger joy as they had seeking after the symbol of Jesus at Passover.

While we were praying, David came in and asked me if he could have a hint. I was so moved then that I told him it was downstairs and then prayed that they would ask the Father for help as they seek out the Son. David told everyone it was downstairs and they all came down to look for it.

As they were getting closer, I went back to the parents and said, “Watch and see what joy there is then they find it.” and just then I could hear shouts from the next room. “I found it! I found it! I got it! It’s here behind the couch!” and sure enough David came in jumping and stomping with the cloth napkin and bread held as high as he could over his head.

We haggled for the redemption of the afikomen, He asked $8 at first, I got him down to 50¢ and then told him I’d give him $5 because Jesus more than paid for us, and then all the kids got PEZ. it was a really good time.

May we all seek after Jesus with such chaotic, driven fervor. May we not fear tripping down stairs while we run or banging our heads together, but run after the hidden and waiting to be found Savior of the world, and when we find Him, hold Him up as high as we can with a cheer of victory, knowing deep down that the Father designed this gift to be found from the beginning.