“And let us consider one another in order to provoke love and good works, not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day approaching.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
Why go to church? That’s a question not a few folks have wrestled with over the years. Young people think it’s boring. Working folks think it’s irrelevant. Smart folks think it’s beneath them. Cultured folks think it’s uncouth. Others think it’s just a waste of time. So, why bother? The world was recently given a very good reason and by a Harvard researcher of all people. Let’s check this out.
“One of the scribes approached. When he heard them debating and saw that Jesus answered them well, he asked him, ‘Which command is the most important of all?’ Jesus answered, ‘The most important is “Listen, Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The second is, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” There is no other command greater than these.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
Have you ever been around someone who is just different from all the people around them? That’s always an interesting experience. These folks…well…they’re just different. They think differently. They behave differently. They speak differently. It’s like they are just operating on a different wavelength. The whole world around them could be focused on one thing and when the time comes for them to speak up they’re talking about something completely different. The character Luna Lovegood from the Harry Potter series was like this. Whenever she spoke it was about something that seemed completely off the wall relative to the conversation she was in, but if you thought about it very long, she could see the truth better than the rest of them could. As Jesus and the Jewish religious leaders were in the midst of a fierce debate, a scribe came up who was just different from everyone else and asked his own question. This question turned out to be the most important one of all.
It is great to finally be back. My family had a fantastic and much needed several days away. I’m ready, though, to hit the ground running this morning. I’ve got the next few weeks through Mark sketched out and can’t wait to dig into Jesus’ final days with you. We’ll also look at some things going on in the culture around us that resonate with the Christian worldview in powerful ways. You won’t want to miss a single part of the journey that lies ahead of us. Thanks for reading and sharing.
“Then they sent some of the Pharisees and the Herodians to Jesus to trap him in his words. When they came, they said to him, ‘Teacher, we know you are truthful and don’t care what anyone thinks, nor do you show partiality but teach the way of God truthfully. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Should we pay or shouldn’t we?'” (CSB – Read the chapter)
Have you ever had someone try and use your words against you? If you’re a parent, you’ve probably had that experience. You draw a line in the sand with one kid, and later, when another kid comes up against the same sort of experience and you’re considering letting them cross it for some reason, the other will loudly remind you of your words to make sure nothing unfair takes place. Or, at least, that’s what I’ve heard. In a larger sense, U.S. citizens have the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution to protect us from our words being unfairly used against us in a legal setting. The experience of having someone take words you’ve said and twist them around for their own ends ranges from frustrating to horrible. As the religious leaders kept trying to find some way to take Jesus down, they sent a group of Pharisees and Herodians to do this very thing.
“They came again to Jerusalem. As he was walking in the temple, the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders came and asked him, ‘By what authority are you doing these things? Who gave you this authority to do these things?’ Jesus said to them, ‘I will ask you one question; then answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. Was John’s baptism from heaven or of human origin? Answer me.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)
Hypocrisy is something we see all too often today. Especially in our politics. It’s enough to make people cynical. Supporters of one candidate or another are willing to excuse even the most egregious behavior when their side does it, but rail long and loud about the character flaws of the other side when the fault is discovered on the other side of the line. A prominent Democrat politician recently referred to people with a mental handicap as “retarded.” A major media outlet merely tweeted a gentle chiding that he had used an “outmoded” word and that was the end of the issue. Let there be no doubt that if a prominent Republican politician had done the same thing there would have been immediate calls for his resignation from the same media outlet because of his obvious inability to care about the people he serves. At the same time, the position of evangelical Christians on whether or not sexual misdeeds should disqualify someone from public office did a complete 180 degree shift when they needed to justify their support for Trump’s presidency from where it had been during Clinton’s tenure. As disgusting as this rank duplicity is, there is nothing new under the sun. It met Jesus as soon as he walked into the temple. Let’s talk about how He dealt with it.
“And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven will also forgive you your wrongdoing.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
Yesterday we looked at a few verses in which Jesus seems to give us a blank check to essentially demand whatever we want from God and if we believe we’ll receive it strongly enough, we can expect to get it. We talked about the challenges of those verses and how they are all too often used improperly. The other thing I mentioned then was that in those verses there didn’t seem to be any clear “buts” that would lead us away from a straight line Prosperity Gospel. Well, this verse which follows immediately on the heels of what Jesus said about prayer gives us a bit of a “but.” This exception, though, is pretty important to note because it’s something Jesus said several different times. Let’s talk this morning about the relationship between forgiveness and prayer.
The Nexus 