One For The Road ...

There comes that time, when something appears bound to end, that we begin to crave just one more of it, before it is completely gone.  For some, this happens in a bar at closing time.  For others, this happens near the end of a relationship that for some unexplainable reason is about to end.  For a lucky few, it happens in my daughter’s Bible school class, where the participants wish we just had ten more minutes to keep talking and learning any fine Sabbath morning.  But whatever context you are most familiar with, the sentiment, the feeling is the same.  We look back at something, and begin to relish it, cherish it, perhaps more at the end of it, than when it was just “there” and we took it for granted.  At that moment of realization, we desperately reach out to cling to it, even if just for one moment more.  If your most familiar context for this happens in a bar, there is a place that can offer so much more happiness, and that can last so much longer.  And if you find the context that serves you best is in the form of romantic relationships, there is a way to base them in the cement of faith, rather that the shifting sands of human interests.  And for those unlucky few, who search for this in church, but rather than wanting to stay longer, are burning up the aisles to get out faster – there is a way to “do church” that is so much better than perhaps you do it today.

The short answer to all of this, is Jesus.  The gospel of Matthew concludes by making this point very well in chapter 28 in the last few verses, picking up in verse 16 saying … “Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. [verse 17] And when they saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted.”  Talk about a one-for-the-road situation.  Matthew makes the point that Judas is gone, by subtling stating the number of the remaining disciples.  But what Matthew omits, is the number of women disciples who were likely there at this same mountain as well.  Jesus had summoned all of them there to say His temporary goodbyes.  This was about 40 days after His resurrection.  And if you believe the risen saints who were the first fruits of His Kingdom walked the earth for 40 days and not 3 days, they would have been gathered there as well.  The point is that this was not just an isolated event for only the eleven main disciples to share, but for all those who deeply loved and believed in our Savior to share.  Keep in mind it was the women who FIRST received this very invitational message.

But then, as often happens in matters of religion, particularly before the entrance of the Holy Spirit, the devil tempts us to doubt.  This is another one of those situations, it is hard for those of us, who have never even seen the beautiful face, hands, and feet of Jesus to understand.  Despite all the evidence, the personal and up-close evidence, doubt reared its head in not just one disciple, but in “some”.  How does this happen in those who knew Him best, and knew Him longest?  How are we able to sit at the feet of Jesus (in our day at church, or perhaps at a parent’s knee) and still come to doubt, what we have always known was the truth of our beliefs?  They had Jesus in person.  We have Him enumerated throughout an entire collection of works we call the Bible.  And yet both of us are subject to the weakness of doubt.  We look at them in no small amount of contempt, and ask, how is that possible, given where you were, and what you witnessed first-hand?  These disciples saw the miracles we wish we could see.  They experienced first-hand what it was like to move through time and space across the Sea of Galilee after Jesus calmed the storm.  Those were first-hand accounts.  As were the healings, and casting out of demons, they had first-hand exposure to doing themselves.  They even saw the raising of Lazarus from the dead.

But now, in the final moments they would ever spend in the physical presence of Jesus who was leaving for heaven.  Knowing He was crucified.  And seeing Him risen.  Some doubted.  Is it any different with us?  Do we spend precious moments we have on earth, taking a “for granted” stance about them?  Instead of appreciating the brevity of our lives, and therefore taking the most care to enjoy our moments in the love of Jesus – we doubt where Jesus has brought us.  We let doubt seep in, and start raising the banner of circumstances for our victories, or worse claiming self-made victories in our past.  Our journey with Jesus is not about what “we” have done or not done.  It is about allowing Him to guide us, remake us, and lead us to where we are.  That journey happens outside of the written Word, and inside of the reformation of our particular hearts.  It is a real-life thing for each of us.  And that real-life experience then amplifies what we read of the stories of others who have encountered Jesus in the written Word.  One does not contradict the other, but both amplify the impact of Jesus in our lives.  If the Bible is still just a story book for you, and Jesus is still someone you have never met; there is still time to correct those positions.  Meet the One, then see the other go from story book, to His Word in printed form.

Jesus does not immediately address the doubt of His own disciples.  But He does communicate what He must.  Matthew picks back up in verse 18 saying … “And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.”  There has been a change of ownership of our world.  Adam was its caretaker, until he surrendered it to Satan, when he broke trust with God.  Satan made the argument that it was impossible for man to keep God’s Laws.  But Jesus came, lived, died, and was ressurected in perfect harmony with God’s Law of love.  As such, because Jesus surrendered His own will to the will of His Father – His Father “gave” Jesus “All” power in both heaven and in earth.  There will still be opposition to the will of God in our world.  But that opposition will come from an angry tenant, not from the landlord.  The landlord of our world is now Jesus, whether we like that or not.  This new fact, of which Satan is well aware, makes that angry tenent even more angry.  Satan looks now to shred this planet, and shred as many of us as he can, before the landlord (Jesus) throws him out, and remakes the place all over again.  Satan knows his time is short, he knows he is on a clock.  And each second that ticks by is one more second closer to his demise.  So each passing second only serves to increase his desperation at shredding us all.  Ironic, that Satan sees time more acutely, than we do, when our life expectancy is far more brief.

Jesus continues in verse 19 saying … “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: [verse 20] Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.”  These are the last two verses in the book of Matthew to his contemporaries, to his Jewish counterparts.  That was the focus of the ministry of Matthew, and of the audience of this book.  Jews would understand perfectly the concept of baptism.  Matthew takes this concept and enumerates through the words of Jesus an alteration to its historical context.  Instead of baptizing for repentance only, they would add, doing it as a public sign of accepting not only Jesus, but God the Father, and the Holy Spirit as well.  Our God, better described as three-in-one – three entities in perfect harmony, with unique roles, unique personalities, but perfectly aligned in goal and practice to redeem we who were lost.  That was something new to the Jews who would read this.  Using baptism as a public statement of accepting the role of Jesus in this trio of God was something new.  Even the introduction or better stated re-introduction of the Holy Spirit as part of the baptism statement was something new.

But Jews who understood the need for baptism understood why this might make sense.  And while Matthew was targeting his Jewish contemporaries, he was not ONLY targeting them.  For us Gentiles, the right of baptism would be equally valid and equally meaningful as our next author of study Luke, would begin to chronicle.  Matthew also knew his Jewish contemporaries would easily understand the next words of Jesus as well.  “Teaching them to observe”, was a concept deeply rooted in Jewish tradition.  The Jewish mind at that time and place would easily grasp this idea because it was one they were intimately familiar with.  The “art” of study of all things religious made sense to the Jewish mind.  Switching from naked tradition as taught by the Pharisees, to Jesus who rooted His teachings in the same scriptures, but from a motivation of love for others – was a radical change, but still a familiar idea to the people of God at this time and place.  Most Christians seem to forget that Christianity itself started as a Jewish religion, founded by Jews, whose leader was and is still a Jew, and whose first practioners were ALL Jewish.  It was only later that this new Jewish faith, became inundated with Gentiles from around the then known world.

“Things whatsoever that I have commanded you”.  This phrase in other gospels might find its closest expression in “Love one another, as I have loved you”.  We will be known as followers of Jesus, as Christians, by how we love one another.  When asked which commandment of the Law was greatest, Jesus summarized saying Love God first with all your heart, then love each other as you would love yourself.  That is to say, love the life of others so much you would lay down your own life for them.  That kind of love, that kind of self-sacrificing love.  It starts with loving God.  We know from practical experience that by allowing God to remake us, He puts His love inside of us for others.  Only then are we able to love them, to the extent that Christ would have us love them.  But in all these references whether by example of Jesus Himself, or by His teachings, we find that love itself is at the center of everything.  Love to God.  Love to others.  In that is the fulfillment of ALL of the Law, and of the prophets.  These were the teachings of Jesus we are commanded to observe. 

What we were NOT commanded to observe, are the unique interpretations of scripture that each denomination currently holds.  Those interpretations are meant to bring you closer to God.  But they are decidedly NOT on the Jesus-said-so list.  Love is.  Love is the only thing that is.  This is why it is so unfortunate when entire groups of Christians, decide that other groups of Christians are both wrong and evil, because they hold different interpretations of the same scriptures we all read.  Who is wrong, and who is not, is not important – if you believe we all seek the same Jesus, who alone is responsible for saving us, and leading us, into His truth, in His way, in His time, and in a manner that each one of us can comprehend and over time assimilate.  If you trust Jesus with your own salvation, then you must trust Jesus with mine.  We do not need to educate each other.  We need to love each other, and let our combined education flow from Jesus and the Holy Spirit as they see fit.  We are to be led by God, not to try to do the leading.  It is the interjection of unique doctrines, and interpretations into these verses than begin to make them of none effect.  If we boiled our teachings down to the same Love that Jesus asked of us, our differences would become meaningless.  For our journeys lead to the same place.

And what we seem most to forget about these words of Jesus written down by Matthew is the last phrases.  “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”  We are NOT alone.  We never have been.  We are not just accompanied by our guardian angels who keep us safe from the unseen war that rages around us.  But we are accompanied by Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit who is everywhere at once, and with each of us, as we have permitted Him to be.  The eye of God Himself is on each of us.  He does not watch with pen in one hand, and tablet in the other, recording each and every wrong doing we embrace, by choice or by accident.  That list only has meaning if we reject His love.  It would serve as evidence to other humans who will one day ask “why is so-and-so not with us here in heaven”.  Then the list will be produced that shows an entire life of rejected love, the rejection of God’s love.  But for those who embrace God, that list has ALREADY been wiped clean by the blood of Christ and tossed into the deepest recesses of black holes the universe has to offer.  So when God Himself looks at us, he does not see the plethora of what is wrong with His child – He sees the infinite potential He could do and will do for that same child.

That kind of parental love is something we should understand.  When my parents looked at me at 2 years old sitting in the kitchen with gold paint everywhere.  They were surely not happy about my artistic skills.  But they did not love me any the less.  They cleaned me up (that was pretty rough).  They cleaned up what I had done (again no easy feat).  And they loved me each and every day after that.  Neither wanted a repeat of my golden paint fiasco, so paint cans were sealed tight, and moved beyond my reach.  They gave me a set of finger paints that were safer for me to use, and caused much less permanent damage.  This is the love of a parent.  Encourage the art, remove the danger, love the effort.  Would God look at us, at you, any different?  Would He not act as much as He could to take you out of the danger of your life.  Remove the desire to injest that which you should not injest.  Remove the desire to engage in what you should not engage.  He cannot prevent you from running away from Him or His wisdom.  But He can and does clean up your mess, clean you up, and love you everyday.  His efforts with you are the efforts of a parent who deeply loves their 2yr old.  And He looks to make the life of that toddler better every day.

This is what Jesus being with us, is like.  A Friend to talk to.  A Savior who cleans the mess.  A Creator who re-creates who we are, so that the future messes seem to just disappear.  And through all of it, love is at the center of it all.  We don’t need to know everything.  But if we are to have just one more for the road, let that one thing, be more of His love …

 

An Atheist's Anthem ...

 “If I only saw a sign, I would believe.”  This is a familiar chorus I have heard from nearly every non-believer I have encountered.  Sadly, it is also a familiar refrain I have heard from many Christians.  We look for the impossible to validate a faith that does not make any sense.  We ask to see the impossible for ourselves, unwilling to take the words or testimony of others on this account.  It needs to be personal.  It needs to be tangible.  Or else, how could I believe?  And in this we destroy our journey-of-faith and wish for certainty in its place.  But be honest, how could you ever be certain, of the impossible?  Even if you witness a single incident of it, will one witness be enough to believe in all the others, and for the rest of your life?  So if you must witness more than one incident, how many will be enough?  All of them?  Would it really take time travel to finally make us believe that what is recorded in scripture was real?  If you are looking here, you are cheating yourself.  There is another venue, and something a lot more personal for each of us.

To begin, certainty is not the goal.  If I asked you to trust me, how would you go about it?  You might evaluate our interactions, our history together.  You might conclude that if my behavior was always in line with your expectations, that you could extend trust to me, and then see what happens.  But therein lies the catch.  No matter how I have behaved with you in the past, no matter how consistent our history may be, each time you extend trust to me, you take a risk.  If past is prologue, then you may believe the risk to be low.  But that “belief” is still a “belief” you hold about my trustworthiness, based on a myriad of factors, but none the less a “belief” that I will not let you down.  This is how trust works. 

You may trust your mom for example, because your mom has demonstrated that she loves you.  Even if she screws up, she still loves you, though her mistake proves her human.  You may even elect to extend trust to her again after a huge mistake, because there has been only one (or few you know about), and generally she does not make them.  But even with mom (mistakes or no), every time you extend trust, you hold a “belief” that it is worth it, to trust her.  Certainty is impossible.  Because you cannot absolutely predict what anyone else (including God) may do, or why they do it.  In the end, you have ideas about it, guesses about it, even educated guesses about it.  But behavior is a tricky thing to absolutely predict, and so people surprise us sometimes (for better or for worse).  To trust anyone, is to embrace “belief”, at the exclusion of absolute certainty.

But where God is concerned, it is more blame that goes around, than trust.  That has directly to do with our picture of “who or what” God is.  The media, our parents, our church, our friends, our professors, may have all played a role in forming an image in your mind about who God is.  Suffice it to say, it boils down to one of 2 main images.  Most folks think God is a version of Santa Clause.  We go to Him to ask for stuff.  We are happy when we get it.  Mad when we don’t.  But are generally quick to ruthlessly blame God for anything bad that happens, under the logic that Santa should have been watching and been able to prevent the bad stuff before it ever happened.  After all, He has done it for others, why not me?  Way too many Christians have this exact image of God, despite all the scriptures.  Most Atheists just don’t believe in any kind of Santa Clause, or any god, but if there were a God, He would be to blame for everything.

In the Santa Clause picture of God, no trust is required.  Neither is certainty.  If you get the stuff you asked for, hallelujah.  If not, it must not be in God’s time yet.  So Santa has a slot machine sort of response to what you ask for, the odds are low, but you never know.  How could faith ever grow in you, if this is the image of God you believe in, or have the most experience with?  And believe me, Satan is WAY too happy to keep this image of God in your mind.  Perhaps enough to grant you some of those wishes himself, in order for you to never shed this image of the God you pray to.  But our real God, needs us to trust Him.  That trust is a critical component of His ability to save us – from us.  Denying yourself to let some random God you don’t really know remake who you are, is just not likely.  Better to keep the Santa image, and just hope for the best.

So God’s problem is getting you to stop thinking of Him in terms of doling out rewards and punishments, and start thinking of Him for the Being He truly is.  The other image of God (a saving God).  God wants to save you, from you.  He loves you (being the primary and singular motive of His).  God sees sin as the punishment and the addictive disease.  And He has only one way to rid you of it.  But for that to work, you have to trust Him enough to let Him do it, in spite of how it looks.  Trust, in spite of common sense.  Trust, in spite of what everyone else tells you.  Trust, that He is able to do the impossible in you, where history demonstrates, you are clearly unable to do it.  So if that is His mission, and trust is what He needs from you.  Offering you certainty does nothing to accomplish it.  If you witness a 1,000 different acts of the impossible, all you will have learned is that it is possible for God to do the impossible.  You might have already imagined that.  But you will still have no reason to let Him reconstruct who you are.  A thousand elements of certainty do not build trust, they build resentment.  Back to the Santa Clause image – now that I have seen 1,000 impossible things – I intend to open complaints about why I did not benefit from any of them.  A thousand acts of love and impossibility for others, does me not one bit of good.  So now I am mad at Santa, because there was only coal in my stocking, while my neighbor got Barbie’s playhouse.

The first problem with asking for signs, is that it does not bring trust.  The second, is that it will only make you mad they were not for you, or selfish if they were (who does not want more miracles in their own lives).  And lastly they are usually requested as a condition of belief (instead of a result of it) doing nothing to foster trust, so there will never be enough of them, to really make a believer out of you.  You will either find a way to let your skepticism reduce the impossible, to a scientifically explainable trick (or perhaps a random set of circumstances that worked out just right despite the incredible odds, like say the hypothesis of evolution) - or you will find you have an insatiable appetite for more signs, at the cost of what you profess is a belief.  In any case, the mission God has to save you, from you, by remaking you fails because He grants your wishes for signs as a condition of belief.  A change in thinking, on the other hand, will pull back the veil that has blinded your eyes to the impossible.  What you witness after a change in how you perceive life, is going to be mind blowing.  Sounds crazy right now, but that’s the point.  It is crazy.  But it is also real.  And it will be a lot more personal to you than you could possibly imagine now.

Take as a case in point the story of two types of people in the gospel of Matthew the 27^th chapter.  Picking up in verse 38 it reads … “Then were there two thieves crucified with him, one on the right hand, and another on the left.”  You could argue these men might have been believers in the Jewish faith (though obviously not perfect observers of the Law).  It is not known exactly what they believed at least from Matthew’s account.  However we know from other versions of the good news, that one repented before he died, the other did not.  Dieing in the company of known criminals tends to make one look like a criminal even if this is not true.  This death will do nothing to uplift the reputation of Christ.  But Jesus does not care about His reputation.  In His trial all manner of lies were told about Him, and His response was perfect silence.  No condemnation, no calling people out on their sins, only silence.  But Jesus was eager to speak to anyone who seeks salvation.  When the dying theif seeks Jesus, Jesus responds, no matter what kind of physical pain He was in.  When that same theif was hurling insults at Him, Jesus remained silent.

Matthew continues in verse 39 saying … “And they that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads, [verse 40] And saying, Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.”  Dying in the company of thieves, and up on a Roman cross, was decidedly NOT the sign the Jewish people were looking for where it comes to proving Jesus was God.  These were believers.  These were those who studied scriptures.  And yet their ideas about what God was supposed to do – that is, to throw off Roman oppression and setup a Kingdom that would last forever – overpowered all the other texts and prophecies that predicted exactly this part of the mission of God to save us.  “Believers” who desired something else of God, and refused to accept what God was actually doing to truly answer their prayers.  When Santa does not behave how we want Him to, what good is Santa right?  And so in this case, the very fact Jesus was actually fulfilling prophecy, was the very fact that disqualified Him as being the Messiah in their minds.  Sound familiar?

How often do we ask God for a thing, and threaten Him that if He does not do it, we will believe no longer?  Save me.  Save my child.  Save my spouse.  From the disease and death that stalk them.  If the results are not what we expect – we become angry and decide there cannot be a God – or else why did He not answer my prayer.  But perhaps He did, just not in the way you expected.  Perhaps from Gods point of view, saving you, your child, your spouse, for eternity is most important to all of you.  Should earthly life end today, and infinite life begin tomorrow, reunited, with infinite love in all of your hearts – is this not the preferred outcome all of you would want, even if it comes at the price of shortening how long you live in this world today?  Let’s say instead of focusing on the eternal, that God allowed you the answer to your prayers, and saved that life in the here and now.  As time passes, you, or your child, or your spouse, begin to change (not for the better).  Perhaps over time, one of you decides there is no God at all, and if there is, He is not worth following.  Sin is more “fun”, instead of the disease it truly is.  If that is how you meet your end in this world, and the eternal world is sacrificed in the process.  Did God really do what was in your best interest all those years ago when He saved you only to meet this new end?  And God knows what you will choose long before it happens.  Santa might let this play out.  But God would rather it didn’t.  God would prefer to cherish you while your free will choice reciprocates that love, rather than let you exist long enough to discard it under the weight of sin’s embrace.

So because God does not do what we want or expect, does not make Him any less trustworthy.  Keep in mind Jesus was doing what ALL of us need for salvation.  Not trying to prove Himself to nay-sayers at the time and place of His death.  Matthew continues in verse 41 saying … “Likewise also the chief priests mocking him, with the scribes and elders, said, [verse 42] He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him.”  And there we have it, the Athiest’s Anthem coming right out of the mouths of the very top leadership of the church at that time.  What image of God do you suppose they had, the one of a saving God who would die in our place, and fulfill prophecy – or the one of Santa who doles out punishment and reward emphasis on punishment.  And had Jesus descended off that cross in front of their eyes, gliding right down in front of them fully healed, what do you suppose their response would have been?  They would have hated Him all the more, because now Roman oppression still abounded, and Jesus would be impossible to kill after all.  Think about it, they already had ALL the previous miracles Jesus did to consider in weighing whether or not He was the Messiah, and NONE of them changed their course of action or belief.  They chose to dismiss every previous sign and still pursue killing Him.

And should Jesus have chosen to assuage His own ego, by proving to these priests He truly did have this power, what kind of God does that truly make Him?  A God of ego?  Who would gladly sacrifice our eternal considerations for those of the moment?  How could we be saved then?  It is often our expectations of what God should do, that could never be met anyway.  Because we come from a place of ego and selfishness, where God comes from a totally opposite perspective.  Jesus believes it is better to die to save all of us, than to do anything shortsighted, and gain nothing.  Jesus never used any of His power to benefit Himself.  Instead He used it unceasingly on us, the objects of His love, restoring us, removing the pain of sin and death from us.  Our restoration tops the mind of a saving God.  Not just getting rid our physical diseases, but getting rid of the way more deadly sinful disease of bad motives driving bad choices we continue to embrace.  Curing us of our desire to sin, is way more important.  Saving us from an eternal perspective way more important than saving us in the moment.

The ridicule continues as Matthew writes picking up in verse 43 saying … “He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God. [verse 44] The thieves also, which were crucified with him, cast the same in his teeth.”  Matthew hears the mockery of the thieves, but misses the repentance of the one.  Here we have an example of Jesus suffering the same fate as we do from time to time.  Jesus trusted in His Father.  And yet, He was dying, very painfully in this world.  The Father had NO interest in seeing His Son be tortured and die.  But the Father had a GREAT interest in seeing all of humanity be saved and reconciled unto Himself.  The death of His Son was that price.  In order that the need for Justice be satisfied.  So Jesus dies, in extreme pain we inflicted.  And the Father must sit there in silence and watch.  The eternal salvation outweighing the salvation of the moment.  This is how great our God desires to save us in the eternal realm, not just the here and now.  It is a different way of thinking.

So the repentant thief represents one kind of person, the mocking priests another.  For those mocking priests, no sign would ever be enough.  And frankly the next section of texts are going to have some doozies.  For the repentant thief however, for those of us who seek salvation from Jesus, what will happen in us is a change.  You will note that repentant theif was NOT saved from the cross.  He died in this world, but with certainty about his own place in the next one.  And change began to occur even in the worst dying circumstances any of us can imagine.  We too will become different than we are today.  Not because we work for it.  But because we begin to choose to trust Him, and allow Him to remake us however He sees fit.  Then change is surely on its way in us.  We read scripture differently.  We begin to see love as the primary motivation, instead of some wild afterthought.  We begin to reason differently.  And over time, the blinders of bad choices, the blinders of doubt, fall away – and what is revealed is a regular diatribe of the impossible happening all the time.  For example, the changing of hearts.  Not just of others, but of my own.  Learning how to love differently, and more deeply, than you had ever imagined.  No seminar could ever get this done.  But allowing Jesus full access sure does.  Without Jesus, things tend to degenerate.  But with Jesus, things tend to improve, especially in areas where it matters the most.

That sign, that impossibility, is very personal, very tangible, and you will live with its benefit every day of your life.  Does it cure your cancer?  No.  It could.  But it does not have to.  It fixes something more important.  The quality of your days expands exponentially, whether you are beset by physical pain and disease, or whether you are healed from them.  Keep in mind, disease does not exist in heaven.  So whether here or there, you are destined to see disease, pain and death no more.  And what happens to the desire to see a sign now?  You lose the selfishness part of that.  Instead of asking for goodies for yourself, you have no thought of yourself.  But you are swamped with thoughts of others.  You want to BE a sign for someone else, help them, meet their need if you can, no matter how you are feeling at the time.  And where you are powerless to meet their need, you do ask God for the impossible.  Not as a condition of belief, but because you are SURE He can, and will do what is right for that person’s eternal interest.  Where it comes to the removal of sin, 100% guarantee He wants that.  Where it comes to all the other worldly stuff, His gifts must fall in line with our salvation.  Knowing He longs to give them, and knowing He must hold them back, if they would add to our downfall.

Life, instead of existence, is a very tangible, and personal thing.  No one else can define it for you.  No one else can deny the impossible you are witness to in your heart and life.  For you know what is true for you.  You see what God does in your life.  What you suffer from in the eyes of others matters not.  Whether you are burdened with wealth, sickness, persecution – those do not represent the favor or curse of God.  They represent the danger of evil in this world, and are used by Satan to try to get people to believe in a Santa Clause image of God doling out rewards and punishments.  But for the one who truly believes, and chooses to truly trust, the curtain is pulled back – and the impossible is revealed every day no matter what our circumstances or positions may be.  Certainty has never been the goal.  Trust in spite of not knowing has always been it.  That kind of trust prevents the next Satan in the world to come.  And creates a new creature of you in the world we live in today.

 

Doubt or Affirmation ...

Sometimes an obvious question is not as much about seeking the answer, as about hearing the answer said out loud, again and again.  A wife asks her husband, do you love me?  It is possible she has occasion to wonder, but just as likely she simply enjoys hearing him say it out loud, again and again.  Sometimes we know the answer, but conditions or circumstances give us pause, they cause to seek affirmation, to chase our doubt away.  A wife asks her husband, did you do it?  When faced with the accusation of a crime, when compounded with evidence even if only circumstantial, her faith in her husband begins to tremble.  What she looks for now is re-assurance of that faith she already holds.  She looks for his affirmation to chase away her emerging doubt.  But when conditions are overwhelming, when doubt has not only entered the building, it has taken over the building, we throw our question to the wind, desperately hoping for an answer strong enough to quell doubt, strong enough to overcome common sense, strong enough to be centered in a still small voice through which only God talks.

Imagine yourself, a minister of Christ, devout in your duties, and with great success.  You preach every day.  The power of the Holy Spirit is evident in both your words, and the response of hearts that melt in those who hear them.  With your success, the “organized” church begins to take notice, and resentment begins to build.  These are powerful men, with powerful friends.  You are a nobody; just a humble minister of Jesus.  As your ministry grows, the church in whom you should belong, begins to take steps to curtail your ministry, by having you thrown into prison on false charges.  And it works.  Now consider, you have gone from humble minister with great success, with a great number of people who listen and respond, to complete isolation in a cell with limited visitors on limited occasions.  You own nothing.  You have no family left living.  You have only a few friends left who have not yet deserted you.  Could you have been wrong?  Could your own words have been what “you” thought, perhaps not what God wanted you to speak?  Could you have been so wrong, God allowed you to come to this end, in order to stop what you were saying?

If you can imagine yourself here, you may begin to imagine the mind of John the Baptist in prison at the time of Christ.  He spent his life preaching the coming of the Messiah.  Then he announced Jesus as he came to him.  But not long after, he is cast into prison, with a grateful priesthood, and conniving powerful women bent on his quick murder.  In a religious philosophy where God rewards the faithful and punishes the wicked, which side of that equation would you imagine yourself to be on.  Your circumstances would clearly outline, you are the punished of God, not the rewarded.  It is this underlying misguided philosophy that even today forms the basis of “wealthy gospels” and “eternal hells”.  It blames God for all the evil that occurs to one of His servants.  We get cancer, it must be God’s fault, for allowing it.  We lose our homes to disaster in hurricanes, earthquakes, fires and floods; again God’s fault, we even term these events “acts of God”.  We are robbed, raped and killed; or worse our children suffer this fate.  We blame God again for allowing it to occur.  Atheists determine a loving God must not exist, because evil does.  Doubt begins to creep into our own thinking, when our circumstances do not reflect the rewards God offers, but only the punishments we hold Him responsible for.

Matthew begins to recount the question of John, and the thoughts of Christ about the ministry, message, and person of John.  Perhaps in this story, is undone the misguided philosophy we continue to cling to even in our own day.  Matthew picks up in chapter eleven beginning in verse 1 saying … “And it came to pass, when Jesus had made an end of commanding his twelve disciples, he departed thence to teach and to preach in their cities.  [verse 2] Now when John had heard in the prison the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples,”  The gospel commission has just completed in chapter ten.  Jesus has sent His own disciples into the region of Judea to preach the gospel of the Messiah.  To perform miracles in His name.  They were to spread the gospel of salvation to the house of Israel, that the Messiah is come, to bear witness that it is Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the Messiah, God incarnate.  And while His disciples do this, Jesus Himself remains active in the ministry.  And with predictable success.  Not many can resist the pure love of our God.

By contrast, John sits in a cell largely in isolation.  He has periodic visits from Herod, perhaps the last listener of his gospel the world will ever offer him.  John is smart enough to know that the message he speaks of repentance will not take root in the ears of Herod’s adulterous wife and daughter before they work out a way to kill him.  The priesthood will not come to the aid of John, they are not happy with him either.  And while John sits here.  The disciples of Jesus wander the countryside, performing miracles, teaching and preaching largely unimpeded, empowered by Jesus through the Holy Spirit.  Jesus Himself wanders the nation, with no agent of the Sanhedrin bold enough to kill Him in public.  Even the Romans keep their distance from Jesus, excepting the ones who seek His help, which He grants.  While the largely Nazarite John, of meek clothing and diet, sits in jail; Jesus has taken up a tax collector for Rome into His company.  A man of at least formerly lavish lifestyle, built upon the backs of his own people.  Hardly seems fair.  Hardly fits the model of a just God, one who punishes and rewards based on those who deserve it.

Matthew continues in verse 3 saying … “And said unto him, Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?”  The question John asks two of the last disciples he will ever have, to ask our Savior is, are you the one?  Is this doubt or affirmation?  Is the answer obvious to John, or has his own circumstances particularly when contrast with other disciples of Christ grown so far apart, doubt has begun to creep in?  John is on death row, and he knows it.  Jesus is doing nothing to break him out.  Wouldn’t the leader of the Jewish nation, with the full support of the people, have the power to simply demand his release, or overrun the jail if needs be?  What kind of leader, leaves a righteous man in prison to die, while sending far from righteous men into the field to proclaim His name?  How is any of this fair?  The leadership of the organized church hate Jesus already, do they have a point?  Jesus is undoing the concept of rewards for those who deserve it.  Jesus is undoing the concept of punishing those who deserve it, instead He offers forgiveness and redemption.  This goes against long held beliefs about the nature of God, both then and now.

Jesus answers John’s disciples beginning in verse 4 saying … “Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see: [verse 5] The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. [verse 6] And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me.”  Note how Jesus responds, those in need are getting the miracles they need.  And the gospel is being preached.  But finally a blessing is offered for those who are not “offended” by who Jesus is, and what Jesus does.  To have a sinner come to repentance is a thing to be praised, not to be criticized because of how it occurred, or that I was not present when it did.  The goal is the redemption of mankind, not the pre-perfection of the messengers of that calling.  Increasing the membership of the Kingdom of Heaven, did not come with a prequalification test, it came with a simple answer, do you want this, or not.

John could have easily taken offense at what Jesus did for him, or rather, did not do for him.  John could have demanded that by his lifestyle he had earned special treatment by Jesus, and a special place at His side.  But Jesus points out, the ministry is its own reward.  What is special, is that lives are converted, souls are saved, and relationships are established with Him.  When the Holy Spirit blesses that effort, none need doubt about the results, and none need criticize the messenger who aided in it.  John had the benefit of having his doubt removed by the miracles which alone were probably up to the task.  You and I should have a similar lens in examining our own lives, where we are today, and where we were so many years ago.  There should be measurable progress there we do not understand.  There should be testimony there of victories we had no hand in, but benefited from.  Our testimony is about our own salvation, wrought by the hand of Jesus Christ Himself, our only Savior.  It is not boast, because our progress has nothing to do with us, and everything to do with Him.  That evidence should be the miracle we need, to overcome our own doubt.  None else can take it away.

John understood much of this.  Though he remained on death row, and he died a cruel death alone with an executioner.  Jesus never came to save him from jail or the axe.  Jesus never broke him out of prison, or demanded his release.  Jesus allowed the earthly life of John to end, the first martyr for the gospel, faithful to the end.  Later followers of Christ would look back to the example set by John, and echo his response.  When faced with roaring lions, and seeing their children killed; these future martyrs would continue to take up the cross of Christ instead of the swords of resistance.  They laid down their lives, and the lives of the spouses and children for the cause of Christ at the hands of wicked men.  This was not the punishment of God.  It was the ultimate destination of sin.  What seems innocuous in sin, ends in the coliseums of ancient Rome, and the axe of the executioner of John.  All roads of sin lead here.  The innocent are punished by sin itself.  This is not a condition God allows in apathy, it is a condition God permits in order to have time to save the precious life of the perpetrator.  That is not fair.  That is not justice.  It is mercy.  The same mercy that saves you and I.  The goal is the redemption of mankind, not to punish it for what it has coming.  Punishment will be finally an eternal separation from the love of God, for those who chose no other course.

The questions and life of John, disprove a misguided philosophy about the character of God, in his own day, and in ours.  But what Jesus would then say about the life of John is an even more interesting consideration …

 

The End of Fear and Uncertainty ...

How much of your life is curtailed because of fear?  How many things do you avoid, or risks you refuse to take, because the fear of the loss that might come to pass, is just too great for you?  The thing we call life, the way we define our existence, is so often ravaged by our fears.  We construct a box for ourselves to live within, hoping that if we stay confined to our box, we will be safe.  But inevitably life has a way of knocking down the walls of any box, and when the reality of those challenges present, its most devastating side effect, is to deepen the fear that governs how we live at all.  Imagine for a moment if you had taken every risk you were ever presented with, but imagine that they all worked out positively.  It is as if your brain won’t let you imagine that outcome.  Surely the nature of a risk, is that not all of them work out the way we want, so imagining they do is nearly impossible.  It presents a “too good to be true” scenario.  And yet, your mind is much more comfortable imagining every risk would have worked out badly.  And that kind of imagination, governs what you have done, and what you will do.

That kind of risk avoidance, that is so easy to imagine going badly, and so difficult to imagine working out the way we want, leaves a footprint in how we live.  It confines our actions, and stunts our imaginations.  It pushes us to want a life we can define, and predict, with relative certainty will go the way we want.  You call that common sense.  An outside observer would call it moved-by-fear.  So to get you to look beyond.  To get you to examine what life may have to offer beyond the limits and history of your fear, you must ignore your fears.  This is especially true in matters of religion.  Nearly every time an Angel is commissioned to communicate with mankind, the first few words are generally, “fear not”.  There is a reason for this.  Confronted with the supernatural, with the out-of-bounds, something beyond the limits you set for yourself and your ideas about life … the first human response is one of fear.  Not joy, not rejoicing (imagine it, most of the news they have to say is usually always good, sometimes really good), not even curiosity.  The first human response is fear.

Having an Angel appear in your real world, knocks the wall down of the nice little box you construct for yourself.  Thus, the message of the good news they bring must wait, while first they re-assure our fears.  And these messages are most often reserved for believers, for people who have chosen to believe in our God, in His Word, and the history of communication between God and man it has presented.  Even behind the lives steeped in belief, remain human fear, human uncertainty.  And this condition is not meant to be permanent.  It is not even meant to be how we live today.  Consider as an example, the slightly misplaced argument that toddlers have on the playground about “my dad is bigger than your dad”.  The real notion behind it, is that the toddler is asserting his/her own security based on the idea that their dad is big enough to ward off any threat.  The toddler is comfortable looking to daddy to protect them, care for them, and generally be a fence between themselves and evil.  While slightly misplaced, the basis of this argument is sound, if we were to apply it to God instead.  Even daddies need that analogy.

Security enables us to feel better.  Certainty, a hedge against the downside of risk, allows us to live life in a completely different way.  When you are not scared about eating, about making a living, about God taking care of the things, the burdens, you usually take upon yourself; something wonderful happens.  You begin to let go of the fear, and start to really live, outside of the box, outside of the boundaries you used to place upon yourself.  Your existence begins to change because the way you think about your existence begins to change.  It is in a sense self-fulfilling, but it cannot begin or be effective, without an outside assurance that will cover the fears we face, and hedge the risks we no longer fear to take.  What our “Daddy” can do for us in this regard, is something He longs to do.  It is how we live in the eternity of heaven.  And it can begin right here and right now, if we will only let Him do it for us.

Jesus Himself gives us the roadmap for this.  Matthew continues recording His Sermon on the Mount in chapter six of his gospel.  Jesus has just concluded a snippet about true currency valuation, and what relevance money has in the light of eternal things.  But before humans can let go the fear of using our money differently, we need assurances too many of us ignore.  Yet here they are.  Picking up in verse 25 Jesus continues saying … “Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?”  This is radical reprioritization.  We spend our lives working to feed our families, put a roof over their heads, and clothes on their back.  From the extreme rich, to the very poor, the mechanics remain the same.  Yet here is Jesus putting an abrupt halt on everything we value, on our entire economic structure, and furthermore saying “take no thought” for it. 

This is beyond a general admonition not to have fear regarding it.  This is nothing even remotely related to having balance between responsibility and spirituality.  This is a one-sided, completely weighted statement, that passes up any boundary we are comfortable with.  “Take no thought” means past not worrying or stressing, don’t even think about it.  We can be that certain in how we live, that God Himself is looking after our lives, that we need not even think about what we eat, or wear.  The question is not whether I shop at Saks Fifth Avenue, or Walmart, for my clothing.  The proposition Jesus makes, is that my body is the important thing to God, and God will take care of clothing it.

Jesus continues in verse 26 saying … “Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?”  Jesus has a point.  Birds wake up every day, and go eat.  The bird never has to worry that they will not find food.  They simply look, and there it is.  God does the worrying.  God provides for the feeding.  The bird is just living his life, he is not obsessing about whether he has a full pantry of food at home, or whether his canned goods supply are adequate to withstand the next hurricane disaster.  The bird just wakes up and eats.  Mom’s bring home food for their little birds.  There is never a worry about this kind of thing.  If you took the evil of predatory creatures out of the equation, birds would thrive.  You don’t see them going extinct because of lack of food.  Even though they still have to contend with what man does to their natural habitats, with pollution, with weather events just like we do.  Yet after a hurricane, when the storms roll away, there are the birds.  They just wake up and eat and live without a thought about it.

Jesus drives home the point in verse 27 saying … “Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?”  This is not just a frustration the shorter population faces.  It equally applies to health issues you have almost no control over.  Think about it, as you read this, your local hospital is filled with people in varying degrees of need.  This is true all over the city, country, and world in general.  Wealth is no barrier against being there.  Youth isn’t either.  Fitness despite all its other benefits does not shield you against cancer.  And our thoughts about what we want, and our fears about what we want to avoid, do nothing from keeping any one of us from becoming the patient in the bed right next door.  If we cannot control our bodies by sheer force of will, why do we take on the fear and stress over them as if we could.  The stress does not fix the problems, it only makes them worse.  There is a better solution.

Jesus continues in verse 28 saying … “And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: [verse 29] And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. [verse 30] Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?”  Ok Macy’s, your entire value proposition has just been cut to the ground.  And so has yours Walmart.  Jesus asks us to simply look at the beauty He has created around us in nature.  Beauty that occurs whether we encourage it or not.  If God offers us the beauty of Roses, and Lillies, and Tulips and Trees; He takes care of things that have a short span of time here in the world, and things that last.  Flowers cannot just transplant themselves to find better foods.  Nor has a tree ever been given this kind of option.  The Sequoias have been there for quite some time, and yet still they grow, their beauty a remarkable thing.  If God so takes care of the transient things, why would He not take care of you?

Jesus summarizes His thoughts picking up in verse 31 saying … “Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? [verse 32] (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. [verse 33] But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”  Your thoughts, your worries, your pursuits are either wasted in the temporary things of this world, or founded in the eternal things of God that matter.  Jesus tells us here that what we eat is not worth thinking about, food will be there.  He tells us what we wear is not our concern, God will make sure we have something, and that it lasts.  Following this advice may not offer us a wealth of new clothing every season, but it will meet our needs.  Following this advice may not have us eating at Morton’s every night, but it will have us eating to meet our needs.  And trusting God, to provide these things, is to just test what He provides.  His gifts are amazing.

What should be our focus is seeking His kingdom, the thing that lasts and matters.  The rest of the temporary needs will be met.  Jesus concludes this line of thinking with a more realistic and somber thought continuing in verse 34 saying … “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”  The problem is not our food, or clothes.  It is our priorities.  It is our faith or trust in God.  It is our inclination to focus upon ourselves and begin to indulge the evil that lays in wait all around us.  THAT is the real problem.  That is something we can have a little stress about.  Because the problem there is not half so much about what surrounds us as what lies inside of us.  Our refusal to trust.  Our refusal to change how we live, and who we rely upon to support us.  We take on burdens that do not belong to us, and in so doing continue to entertain fear, and uncertainty, that otherwise could die a permanent death.

How great could be our Christian lives and experience if we could think differently about who takes care of us, and who is there to meet the risks, and solve the challenges.  A sense of self-reliance is our biggest handicap.  Atheists must rely upon this as it is all they have.  But Christians should be able to rely upon something more, to a point where we literally … take no thought.

And the Sermon was far from over …

 

Revelations Begin ...

Mary Magdalene had fulfilled her gospel commission to take the message of hope to the new Christian church (the eleven remaining disciples).  Her message given to her directly by the Savior “should” have engendered hope, given courage, and inspired faith.  This was the first revelation Christ made to us of the completion of His work to save us from ourselves and our sins.  The first revelation of His love to us after rising from His grave; was to pause His own work and take time to comfort the grieving Mary with His words of profound love.  We were to see His Father as our Father.  We were to see His God as our God.  Jesus was alive, not dead in a tomb.  His work to pay our penalty for the sins we embrace was completed and He was on His way to His Father to see our salvation confirmed.  Mary had done as Christ had asked.  But her message bore no fruit.  She had done what Jesus Himself had told her, her new life had begun, because of the gift of Christ, but even though she had done what she was commissioned to do, her words were not heeded.  Such is the arrogance of those who are determined to pre-judge the messenger as unworthy or unreliable, rather than to hear the word of God thru whom it was given.  Mary should not have been judged by her former life, for now through the light of Christ’s gifts, her former life was passed away, and her new life had begun.  The words Mary brought from the mouth of Christ Himself should have been judged on their own merit.  For His words were a fulfillment of the mission of the Messiah, and everything He had taught them could have been brought to mind, if they had simply been willing to hear it.  But they were not.

The closest men to Christ, His most ardent followers; were not immune to chauvinism, prejudice, and despair from what they saw with their eyes, and believed to be the only “facts” that could exist.  They had seen Christ crucified.  They had seen Christ, nailed and pierced.  They had seen Christ, laid dead in a tomb.  These things they had witnessed or been told, and these things they believed.  They knew them to be certain.  Their hopes in the rabbinical view of an anti-Roman kingdom had been shattered.  Their faith had been shaken.  Their despair in their own actions taken during the killing of the One they claimed to love more than life, were now only a source of tremendous guilt.  They had accepted the idea that His body was gone from the grave, for they had witnessed that themselves.  But they only believed this was simply yet another act of Roman or Priestly cruelty, not anything more.  Despite the personal testimony of Mary Magdalene, they remained unconvinced.  They had a scriptural understanding, and personal witness, that formed a set of “facts” that could not be undone by the faith that lay within them.  Like us, they needed, their preconceptions wiped away.   Like us, they needed a revelation of Christ, that would change “how” they think, and “how” they “see” the world and the reality of the Truth of Christ.  And Christ would offer them exactly that.

It was the same day as the report of Mary.  It was the evening.  They had gathered again on this Sunday night in the upper room, for fear of the Jewish leadership.  They believed the Jews would persecute and kill them for their former association with Jesus.  But in truth, the Priests who had already heard the testimony of the 100 Roman soldiers; were not looking to silence them for what they “used” to know, but for what they might now discover.  Now that the Sabbath had ended and soon the people who had gathered at Jerusalem would be returning home from the worship of atonement, the Priests would have more time to focus on these last remaining loose ends.  But the disciples feared from their entanglement with the past.  They assumed it was because of their association with the slain Lord that they would be sought out next.  They had no idea, it was because He was arisen, that they had now become even more dangerous to the legacy of control the priests wished to maintain over the people.  Had the priests known that His own disciples did not believe He was alive; they would not have killed them.  They would instead have put them all on public display and made them testify as to their certainty that He was dead and gone.  This would have boosted the credibility of the Priests, and destroyed any hope of an early Christian church.  Their certainty despite the word of Mary, and the witness of 100 other Roman soldiers, would have been welcomed by those who oppose the gospel.  The irony was thick.

But Christ had a revelation in mind, to wipe away the misplaced fears of His disciples.  He would change their thinking in an instant.  He would alter their future in a moment.  And He would restore in them the hope for an early Christian Church meant to shake the very foundations of power in the world around them.  John records in His gospel in chapter 20 beginning in verse 19 … “Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.”  Notice first, John specifically points out that the doors were shut, likely locked, possibly barricaded.  The idea there was to keep the angry folks out, and keep the folks inside safe.  They had gathered there for fear after all.  Jesus does not knock on the door from the outside of this situation.  Christ is no longer to be confined or limited by the structures of men.  Christ is now freely able to show to us His divinity.  As such He appears in the midst of the secured room.  And His first words are the same ones they know, and have heard Him say on similar occasions when miraculous events had occurred – “Peace be unto you”.  The very first personal revelation of Christ to those men there is to relieve their fears.  Once again Christ addresses our most pressing needs.  Once again Christ demonstrates what it means to love another and not Himself.

Christ does not enter this room with the righteous judgment He is equipped to condemn them with.  They have all failed miserably during His trial and murder.  None of them stood with Him.  None of them offered Him comfort.  All of them did nothing, though all of them had claimed devotion to the point of sacrificing their own lives for Him.  He does not begin His conversation with them, by demanding that they acknowledge their failures, and seek forgiveness before He “allows” them to join in His ministry of saving the lost.  As with Mary, He does not hold them accountable for their very acts of failure committed only a short while ago.  Instead He does not even address these failures.  For their sins, like Mary’s, and like ours, have ALREADY been forgiven.  He does not seek perfection in His servants before they are allowed to serve.  Instead He offers perfection as a gift that will come to them over time as they learn to submit their will to His own.  In this regard, John continues in verse 20 … “And when he had so said, he shewed unto them his hands and his side. Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord.”  He is the Life.  He changes fear into joy.  He reveals that death is no boundary with which He will be contained, and that instead He is master over the grave and beyond it.  He shows them Himself, His wounds that prove He is no ghost or aberration, but the physical Man they know and love.  He reveals again to men the Truth of Himself.  Truth is found in Christ alone, not in the failed interpretations of scriptures the disciples had clung to only moments before.  The Truth had made them free.  Scripture could now be interpreted in the Light and the Truth of Jesus Christ, never again outside of Him.

John continues in verse 21 … “Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.”  Jesus was calling them to be sent into the world.  Notice the goal of the follower of Christ is NOT to seek isolation from those in corruption who need to be saved.  Instead He sends His own into the world, like His Father had sent Him.  These men were not to be evangelists by profession, but by example.  They were to be living ambassadors of Love.  They were to demonstrate what it means to Love others to a world who was in such desperate need of Love.  Christ did the will of His Father, as we are to do His will.  These men were to heal the sick because it is the will of Christ, as Christ healed because it was the will of His Father.  Christ held back love from no man or woman or child or senior citizen.  He gave Love to all who He encountered.  He sought out those in the MOST need of Him, He did not make them come to Him first.  Christ took the initiative and went to them.  Christ was sent to the world.  He came to bring Life.  He did not sit still and make those who might have an interest in Life, come figure out where He was and find Him.  Instead He brought Life openly into the world and imparted it everywhere He went.  He did not allow prejudice to keep Him away from Samaritans, Romans, or the most grievous sinners.  Instead He welcomed them all like the precious children of His that they are.

Jesus does not ask them to become preachers and teachers by trade.  He does not tell them to collect money so that their ministries have the finances to be successful.  He does not tell them to worry about money at all.  For Christ did not rely on finances to do the will of His Father.  Money was not a concern at all where Christ was involved.  But people were, and people are.  To bring Love to those in need was the commission He was enrolling His erring disciples into.  It would be the sharing of love that would bring perfection into the world, and into His own followers.  It would be Love that alone which would offer the motivation to change, and the power of Christ to effect it.  John continues in verse 22 … “And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: [verse 23] Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.”  Notice that the power of Christ, in His Spirit, was not something they inherently had within them, but was instead a gift to them and to us, like everything else that has to do with our salvation.  It does not come from within us, but as a gift.  The receiving of the Holy Spirit was done here, not at Pentecost.  That later day was a manifestation of a gift that had ALREADY been given.  This is an important realization and revelation – salvation had already been accomplished – these gifts and revelations were a publication of an event that has ALREADY transpired.

Verse 23 is an echo of this sequence of events.  For those who accept the message and love of the good news of Christ; they have ALREADY been forgiven.  It is time to tell them this incredibly good news.  The disciples themselves had not asked for forgiveness for their own failures as yet, but Christ had already forgiven them, and was now inviting them to join Him in ministry to the world.  He was not giving them bags of gold to finance their ministry or end poverty, but instead was breathing into them His Spirit to perfect the Love of others within them.  Love would be enough to make their living examples a ministry that could not be contained.  Those who accepted what they said about salvation being the gift Christ had ALREADY given; their sins were ALREADY forgiven.  Those however, who like them, only moments before had rejected the good news of Christ, retained the lack of hope that comes with refusing the forgiveness Christ ALREADY offers, would retain that hopelessness.  We choose to retain our own sins, not because we are forced to by our own weakness, but because we choose to by pushing away the freedom He so longs for us to accept.  Those who will not hear, or accept the gift and revelation of the Truth of Christ, are dooming themselves to the slavery of their own beliefs.  Their sins are retained by their refusal to let go, and accept the gift of His salvation and freedom.  Christ had changed the minds and perceptions of His disciples in that room that evening because they did not continue to reject the idea of His divinity after they had seen His revelation to them.  They let go their fears of the past, and were made free from the Truth of His presence.

Only God could forgive sins.  Christ could forgive us, because He is God.  He was not telling His disciples they had the power of forgiveness, He was telling them they had the honor of revealing the forgiveness of Christ to the world.  Those who would hear the gospel would find forgiveness of Christ already active in their minds and hearts.  Those who would reject the gospel of Christ would leave themselves with no hope of forgiveness, for none was left who could grant it.  This was His most powerful revelation to those men in the upper room – that He was the sole source of our salvation – it would be His gift to us, and nothing we could do for ourselves.  For self is always the enemy of our own salvation.  For the ten men, and Mary, who were there, faith was once again renewed and affirmed and put into action.  Thomas however, was missing at this event.  Perhaps he had been out to find food.  Perhaps he had an errand to run.  But Thomas was not present to personally witness this revelation of Christ to the others.  And Thomas was not able to accept this testimony based on the word of others alone.  He needed a personal revelation as well.  John chronicles the response of Thomas beginning in verse 24 … “But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. [verse 25] The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

Thomas had heard the message of Jesus being alive now twice; first from Mary, now from the other ten.  But Thomas could not take the good news of the gospel just on the testimony of others, he needed more.  He too needed a personal revelation in order to be sure.  He wanted to believe.  He wanted like the others to be so sure.  But he was not.  So even though the ninety and nine had been assured, the needs of the one still searching sheep aroused the attention of the One who meets every need, and loves every soul.  John continues in verse 26 … “And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you.”  Notice first, there was nothing significant about the day of the week in which Christ appeared.  The first time was on Sunday to affirm the testimony of Mary to his followers.  This time it was on Monday a little more than week later to meet the needs of Thomas.  This time, just like the first, the doors were secured again, and Christ enters the room anyway appearing the midst of them.  Once again, He offers His greeting of peace to them all.  This time Thomas was there to hear it for himself.

Now it was time to give Thomas the faith he would need, now it was time to give Thomas the revelation he had required.  John continues in verse 27 … “Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.”  Christ wanted to insure that Thomas too, would be certain.  Christ wanted to blow away every doubt, and every remaining shred about “how” Thomas thought.  Thomas needed to “know” and Christ was there to insure that he did.  Thomas responds in verse 28 … “And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.”  No more doubts lingered in Thomas.  He now addresses Christ not as his friend, but as his Lord, and his God.  The divinity of Christ is no longer even a question in the mind of Thomas.  He is convinced with a faith no one will ever be able to take from him in the future.  But there is a greater Truth that must be revealed to them all.  John continues in verse 29 … “Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”  The revelations of Christ are not all to be seen.  The most important revelations of Christ will be experienced in the lives of those who believe.  It will be the freedom from the slavery to self and sin, that is the experience of revelation we will still be able to witness for ourselves.  This gift of salvation is not theoretical, but experiential.  It is personal to each of us.  It does not come in a corporate block, but in a one-on-one method.

The men in that room all needed to hear from Christ that His revelations were not limited to those who could “see” Him, but to those who would choose to believe in Him.  That message was recorded not only for the Greeks of his day, but for us who would read these words, never having seen the person of Jesus Christ, but would be able to discern His revelation to us in the form of the salvation He brings us as His gift.  Now to see Christ, we need only look at the acts of love and benevolence offered unselfishly to those in need.  It is there that we see Christ reflected to the world.  It is in the Love we show to others that we find Him today.  When it is we who show this kind of unconditional love to others, it is we who reflect Him.  When we Love without judgment or condemnation, instead loving alone to the point of redemption, it is we who join with Him, we are sent, as He was sent. 

It is not our former lives that dictate our worthiness to share in His ministry.  It is not our financial acumen or wealth that enables us to minister for Christ.  It is our willingness to submit our own will to His, and our willingness to reflect His so great love to others through us.  John seems to recognize that there are too many miracles to contain in His gospel, or perhaps any gospel.  He pens this epilogue in verse 30 … “And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: [verse 31] But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.”  John offers us His insights into the proof of the divinity of Christ.  But more, he offers us the revelations of God who walked our earth, and lived a life of perfect love.  God is love.  His kingdom is comprised of those who love.  It was for love that He saved us.  It was for love that He wishes to take us home with Him.  It was for love that He was given to the world.  It will be only love that sees the world redeemed, and us with it.  Love is the only answer that can finally and fully defeat evil.