The depth of God’s love (Matthew 27:46)

Today’s Readings: Matthew 27:46

About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli,[a] lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).

How can I know God listens to my prayers? How can I know God meets me where I am? How can I have the assurance God can reach the depths of my sins when I know the things I’ve committed against Him and others? How can He ever forgive the things I’ve done?

We can look back at this verse in Matthew and understand the depths of God’s love for us. Jesus hung on the cross for about six hours on that day before the Sabbath. Usually it took longer for men to die under the cruel execution methods of crucifixion, but Jesus didn’t die at men’s hands. He gave up His life voluntarily. Remember He was God. He was eternal. Yes, Jesus was fully man, but He is also fully God.

This verse tells us, though, that the God-Man, Jesus, separated Himself from the triune Godhead long enough to become sin for us. He felt the full weight of the world’s sins upon His shoulders and felt the complete and utter aloneness that comes from the sin that separates us from a holy God. Jesus, by taking all the sin of all the world descended to the very deepest, darkest, depths of hell to pay the price for our sins. He knows the penalty, because He paid it. He went there for us.

How deep is His love? He plunged Himself deeper than anyone can go into the pit of hell so we don’t have to. He did that to liberate us. Three days later, He burst forth from the tomb that held Him proving that sin and hell and the grave had no hold on Him. He tasted death and overcame it. He overcame death for all of us. He overcame sin for all of us. He overcame hell for all of us.

God loved us enough to become man and separate Himself not only from His triune relationship, but to take on the sin of the world and enter the depths of hell for us. He cried from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, as He assumed the sins of the world for us. He took them with Him to the place of eternal separation from God and endured that place of eternal punishment for three of our earthly days, thousands of years for an eternal timeless God. For the psalmist tells us a thousand years is as a day and a day as a thousand years to God, to whom time has no meaning in eternity.

So when we pray, we have the assurance God knows the depths of our depravity. He went there during those three days after the cross. He descended into the very depths of hell and knows how dark and deep sin can go. But it wasn’t too deep for Him to get Himself or us out of it. He overcame. We have the assurance nothing we do is so bad He can’t help us recover from it. He can bring us through it, if we accept His gift of love and follow Him through the paths He sets before us. Just follow Him.

Join me next time, won’t you?

Richard

Our mediator is perfect! (Hebrews 4:14-15)

Today’s Readings: Hebrews 4:14-15

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.

Almost every religion has temples or some edifice it uses as a place where priests or some specially designated person with special training intercedes with their gods for the rest of their community. Mankind for millennia felt they could not approach the gods because of the gap between us. A relationship between the superior gods and inferior man seemed an impossibility.

Even the Israelites demonstrate difficulty in communing with God when He invites them to do so. Remember their comments when God spoke from the mountain? “Moses, you speak to God for us. We’re afraid to talk with Him. We’re afraid he’ll kill us if we speak to Him!” Every religion faces the same fear of gods so powerful and us so weak. We cannot compete against God!

The difference between our God and the false gods of other religions, though, is our God invites us to speak with Him. Since Jesus ‘came and dwelled among us,’ He has intervened with God, the Father, on our behalf. He has served as mediator for us so that we can speak with God – personally. Not only that, He is God, Himself! So when we pray, we pray to God, whether to the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit. As a triune Godhead, they are all the same, one God, manifest in three persons.

But Jesus lived among us. He lived through every temptation we live through. Even though He is God, He wrapped Himself in human flesh to experience the frailties we face in our humanness. He felt every emotion we feel. He understood pain, sorrow, suffering. He knew joy, happiness, peace. He experienced, in complete human form, all the things we experience. Yet Jesus never sinned. He is the perfect mediator as both God and man.

When we pray, we talk to one who knows what our life is like. We talk to one who understands the temptations we face. We talk to one who listens and has felt the pain we feel, the agony we know, the sorrow that breaks our heart. We talk with one who has been there and knows life happens. He lived among us. He saw it all. And since He is God, He can do something about all those things. He has the answers.

Join me next time, won’t you?

Richard

The Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 18:11)

Today’s Readings: Luke 18:9-14

Once inside the temple, the Pharisee stands up and prays this prayer in honor of himself: “God, how I thank You that I am not on the same level as other people—crooks, cheaters, the sexually immoral—like this tax collector over here.

I’m teaching and recording a ministerial course right now on sharing Christ across cultural boundaries. One of the lessons discusses two extreme responses to different cultures that is apropos for this situation, I think. One is called cultural relativism which says every culture is okay, when in Rome, do as the Romans, accept every culture completely for what it is without criticism. The other is ethnocentrism which measure every other culture by your “superior” culture.

Both extreme approaches in viewing cultures are flawed. And every culture is flawed. All of us find ourselves profoundly influenced and molded by the culture in which we live, work, and worship, but because sin entered the world and we became flawed because of sin, the cultures we develop hold those same flawed concepts.

So, the Pharisee with all his piety becomes pious and his religion becomes his prideful downfall. He takes a view that his religion makes him better than those around him. His culture sets him apart as better than the tax collector who kneels at the altar near him. Surely God sees the difference between the two of them, and the Pharisee thanks God for the distinct superiority he holds in his goodness.

God has a problem with the Pharisee’s prayer. The Pharisee forgot he doesn’t come close to meeting God’s standard of goodness. In comparison, the Pharisee is much closer to the tax collector in terms of behavior than he is to God. We are all sinners and can’t live the standards God sets in our own strength. In fact, Jesus said the tax collector found himself closer to God than the Pharisee because he at least knew his position. The Pharisee did not.

The story is about humility and pride. It is also about being careful not to assume other’s position with God. And about prayer. The story tells us we all sin and fall short of God’s standard of right living. It tells us we should all take the position of the tax collector, sinner in God’s eyes, needing His forgiveness, needing His help.

The story is much more than the different cultures of the two, but it’s easy to start there. It’s easy for us to think ourselves better than others because of where we live, the color of our skin, the house we live in, or the car we drive. It might be the gang with which we associate or the job where we work or any number of things that describe our culture or subculture that makes us think we are different or better than another. But we must always remember we are nothing without the blood of Jesus. Until we become citizens of the Kingdom of God where only His culture matters, we live far below what God has in store for us.

Join me next time, won’t you?

Richard

Jesus Heals a Paralytic (Mark 2:5)

Today’s Readings: Mark 2:1-12

Jesus recognized the faith of these men.
Jesus (to the paralyzed man): Son, your sins are forgiven.

Can you picture the scene in this story? Jesus stands with His back against one wall of the small home crowded with people. He’s teaching as usual, sharing the meaning of the Prophets as God intended, a message of repentance, forgiveness, love, and hope. Suddenly dust starts falling from the thatch ceiling overhead and light begins to filter through. Jesus stops talking a looks up at the hole that appears in the middle of the ceiling and a man on a stretcher begins to descend through the newly made hole.

Jesus peers past the stretcher and sees four young men holding the ropes, working together to lower the paralyzed man as gently as possible to the space made empty by the people scrambling out of the way. He smiles up at the four men and understands the situation immediately. The crowd kept them from entering the door, but their faith in Him and determination to get their friend in His presence would not let the press of the crowd deter them. They took their paralyzed friend to the roof to make a path to the Healer.

What astonished the scribes, those charged with keeping the written law exact from generation to generation were the words Jesus spoke next. “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

Everyone expected physical healing. Everyone expected Jesus to tell the man to get up and walk. Everyone expected a miracle, but they expected Him to do something of worth. They expected Him to give the man back his health. But Jesus said, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

We know what the scribes felt about that. I wonder how the friends felt. They went to all the trouble of bringing their friend to Jesus. They struggled to get him to the roof, tore up the thatch, risked their lives, got him to the Healer. But all Jesus said was, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” I wonder if that was enough for them. I’m afraid too many in our churches today would feel disappointment at Jesus’ response. We might not doubt His ability to forgive sins, that one of the tenets of our faith, but do we really understand the importance compared to the physical healing the man received a few minutes later?

Jesus satisfied the scribes’ curiosity and doubt by healing the paralytic, but more important, He demonstrates to us the importance of forgiveness. Forgiveness of sins stands as the most important aspect of our relationship to God. Throughout His word He continually point us to repentance. He points to the ultimate sacrifice in the person of His Son, Jesus. He calls us to Him in so many ways. But too often, we don’t understand just how blessed we are to have our sins forgiven. Because we still live in these temporary frames in a temporary world with its blighted, short-sightedness, we don’t get the importance of those few words Jesus uttered to the paralytic that day.

Stop and listen to them again. Think about them. Let them sink into your heart and then rejoice in what Jesus does for you.

Join me next time, won’t you?

Richard

When Repentance is Real (Jonah 3:10)

Today’s Readings: Jonah 3:1-10

God saw all they did and how they turned from their evil ways. So He relented and decided not to unleash the disasters He said He would through His servant Jonah.

A few days ago we had an experience in our house. My grandkids call my wife “Mimi”. That’s not what she wanted them to call her, but when the first started calling her “Mimi,” she fell apart and, of course, she’s okay with it. So, Mimi it is for all the grandkids. Mimi is a wonderful grandmother. She is a firm believer that parents teach kids respect and values and obedience and all those tough rules of life. Grandparents are the safe, fun place for kids. We give boundaries, but our boundaries are a little looser than mom and dad’s. It’s okay to have a snack before supper at Mimi’s house. It’s okay to run around the house at Mimi’s house. It’s okay to stay up past bedtime at Mimi’s house.

As grandparents, we reinforce the values we taught our kids, but the strict rules we laid down for our kids don’t seem quite as important for our grandkids. We let a few of those slide for them since they don’t live there full-time. If they did, I’m sure we would tighten the reins just like mom and dad because kids need structure and boundaries, but as occasional visitors, we get to spoil them a little.

So with that little bit of background, let me explain the experience. Mimi has a big glass cookie jar sitting on the counter labeled “Mimi Cookies” that always has cookies in it. The grandkids know they can have cookies when they ask. Except Grayson, the just-turned-three monkey, decided she didn’t need to ask because whenever she asked, she always got a cookie. We almost always said “Yes” so why bother to wait.

She pulled a step-stool up to the counter and proceeded to try to pull the lid off the cookie jar. And therein lies the problem. It’s one of those sealed lids that takes three men and a boy to pull off. Grayson pulled with all her strength and the jar hit the floor. The glass jar was not made of safety glass. It did not break in nice square pieces, easy to see and easy to clean up. No. The jar itself stayed intact and the lid shattered into a million little slivers of glass scattered across the floor, two counters, and three rugs. Mimi was not happy!

Mimi and mom both had that MOM look in their eye. You know the one. It’s that look you get as a kid that says, “Run if you want to survive, but if you run, it will be three times as bad so you better sit still!” Mimi’s eyes locked on Grayson’s. I knew the fire was about to fall. I was trying to find a place to hide so I could escape the wrath. And then. . .

“Mimi, I sorry,” came from the sad eyes with a pouty half-smile below them.

Mimi melted. No punishment. “Don’t do it again,” was all she said.

Well, duh! How could she? It was already broken! It was already in a million pieces. No one could put it back together. Forgiveness was complete!

Mom stood back in amazement. How could she do that? How could she not do something? How could she let this little demon get away with breaking the sacred receptacle of all things good? What was Mimi thinking?

It’s pretty easy to explain. Mimi is a grandmother. God did the same for the people of Nineveh. They repented. He forgave. It’s nice to have Mimis around. It’s better to have God around.

Join me next time, won’t you?

Richard