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

A filter to see God (Ephesians 2:18)

Today’s Readings: Ephesians 2:18

For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

I’ve always enjoyed science. I remember my brother and I getting a chemistry kit for Christmas one year and trying to blow up the basement. What fun putting together all those chemicals just to see what would happen! I still can’t believe some of the things they put in those sets all those years ago. Today the set would have so many warning labels and tags on the bottles, you’d never get them open in the first place. My have times changed!

One of the areas of science I really enjoyed, though, involved astronomy and the heavenly bodies. I remember the first time I saw the corona of our sun through a telescope. I think it was in the third or fourth grade, when the our teacher took us on a field trip to an observatory. Those days we raced against the Soviet Union to the moon and all of us had visions of vacationing on Mars or Venus. We thought about an age or routine space flight and knew all of us would one day become as adept at tooling around in rockets as our parents were in their new automatic transmission cars.

At the observatory, we got a short lecture on the telescope, then got to peer through the filtered lens at the sun. I’d never looked directly at the sun for very long, of course. You can’t help but close your eyes when you look at the sun because it is so bright. But that day, I saw something I’d never seen before except in pictures. I saw the sun’s corona during some of its major eruptions.

Lost in the brightness when viewed by the naked eye, solar flares burst out from the surface for millions of miles. The telescope filtered the brightness by covering the bright central disc of the sun and letting the glory of the corona shine through. An incredible sight.

In some ways, that’s what Jesus does for us. He lets us see God. John says He was with God in the beginning and is God. We don’t understanding the Triune nature of God completely, but we can believe it. We don’t have to understand everything around us to know it is true. Jesus lets us see a part of God without destroying us. Remember Moses, Elijah, and many of the other Old Testament prophets who feared to look upon God because of the brightness of His glory. They knew they would die if they saw Him directly.

Jesus gets us around that problem while He dwelled among us. He let us see God through Him. Like looking at the sun through the filter in the telescope, we see a part of the Triune Godhead without fear of death by looking at Jesus. We can see the corona of the sun with the filter in place. We can see God through the presence of His Son, Jesus. He is our filter to the Father so the angels can say, “Do not be afraid. For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior. . .”

Join me next time, won’t you?

Richard

Pray continually (1 Thessalonians 5:17)

Today’s Readings: 1 Thessalonians 5:17

. . .pray continually,. . .

Jesus prayed. He slipped away by Himself at night and early in the morning. He prayed before every major decision in His life. He prayed before selecting His disciples. He prayed before His transfiguration. He prayed before His trial and crucifixion. He prayed when He healed the sick and when He preached to the lost. Jesus prayed continually.

We see throughout Jesus’ life that His source of strength during His ministry came through His regular prayer life with His Father. It comes as no surprise that He encourages His disciples to follow His example and teaches them to pray, not as the Pharisees with lofty words and long speeches, but in the simple language we see in what we call the Lord’s prayer.

Just a few words, acknowledging God in an intimate yet supreme relationship with us. Asking for His guidance and help each day with just enough to let us know He controls our daily lives, but not too much to make us greedy or forget to call on Him each day. Simple words in a simple prayer we learn from childhood.

“Our Father, who art in heaven. Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. Thine be the glory and the honor and the power forever. Amen!”

The early church understood the importance of prayer. Every act you see happening in the early church is bathed in prayer. In fact, scripture tells us the purpose of the early church was to gather for specifically to devote themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, and to the breaking of bread and prayer. It was during prayer that miraculous things happened. The sick discovered healing. The Spirit fell on believers. Peter found himself freed from prison. Prayer changed situations for the early church.

Today our churches seem to focus on music and sermons and programs much more than we focus on prayer. But throughout the Bible, prayer is the single common denominator that links the faithful with God’s miraculous works. In just about every instance we see God’s servant lifting his or her voice in prayer, then God works to intervene in the situation. This being true, why do we not focus on prayer more in our churches? Why do we not focus more on prayer in our homes? Why do we not focus on prayer in our individual lives?

Paul got it right as he wrote to the believers in Thessalonica. His admonition to pray continually didn’t come out of the blue. He knew first-hand the power of prayer because he experienced its power in his life. He heard from the apostles what prayer did for his Savior. He understood the importance of being in touch with the Master always.

Prayer is not less important today than in Paul’s day. Pray continually for the spiritual life you long for.

Join me next time, won’t you?

Richard

Jesus Alive! (John 20:18)

Today’s Readings: John 20:11-18

Mary Magdalene obeyed and went directly to His disciples.
Mary Magdalene (announcing to the disciples): I have seen the Lord, and this is what He said to me . . .

Each time Carole, LeeAnn, my daughter, or Ashley, my daughter-in-law, became pregnant I was beside myself. To become a father and grandfather is a really big deal for me. Whether the first, second, third, fourth,. . . it doesn’t matter. Every time, I turn into a kid opening that very special gift at Christmas. You know, the one you asked for all year long and you waited with bated breath and knew it would appear under the tree on Christmas morning. Then there it was and you couldn’t wait to rip open the paper and get to it.

Multiply that feeling by a thousand or so and that begins to describe how I feel every time I found out about another progeny joining the family tree. I love my kids. They are the best. And I love my in-laws because my kids picked them with God’s help. And I describe my grandkids and God’s gift to me for not killing my kids when they were teenagers!

I had difficulty containing the information, though. I wanted to stand on roof tops and street corners and shout the news, but they wanted to hold on to the information until it made the family circle in the right sequence. Mothers and fathers, in-laws, brothers and sisters, close friends, all those special people had to know first so they didn’t get the news second-hand. Man, it was hard to not blast out the information across the internet in all the public forums I knew.

I imagine that’s how Mary Magdalene felt that first Easter morning. I expect she had a hard time making it all the way to the house where the disciples hid without telling everyone she met, “Jesus is alive! I’ve seen Him! He talked to me this morning!” I can imagine the excitement, the fear, the joy all mixed together as she ran to tell those men gathered together wondering what they needed to do next.

Three days earlier they watched Him breathe His last. Three days earlier they watched the soldiers roughly pull His hands and feet from the nails that held Him to the cross. Three days earlier they watched Him crumble to the ground in a heap and watched Nicodemus come with the paper from Pilate allowing him to claim Jesus body. Three days earlier they helped Nicodemus take the bruised, bleeding, broken body of their Master to the tomb and quickly wrapped Him in linen burial cloth. Three days earlier they watched soldiers roll a massive stone in front of the tomb and seal it with Pilate’s official seal.

This was a new day, however. Mary came to anoint the Anointed. She came to finish what she could not complete before the Sabbath. She came expecting to challenge the guards to open the tomb and let her in. She came expecting to see the decaying shell of her dead rabbi. She came expecting to fight the sight and smell of death to give proper respect to the man she followed for those many months.

Instead, Mary saw soldiers stunned and lying on the ground. She saw a tomb burst open from the inside. She saw heavenly messengers lounging in an empty vault. She saw grave linens collapsed on the bier and the napkin covering His face lying apart from the rest of the cloths. She saw things not as they should appear, confused in her mind. She knelt at the tomb stunned that grave robbers could do their work so quickly with guards standing by. She wondered at the messengers and why they could not protect her Lord. She wanted to see the shell of the man she followed.

Instead she heard His voice, turned around, and got the news she could not contain. Like the news I heard from Carole, LeeAnn, and Ashley, Mary heard news she wanted to shout from the housetop. She heard her Master’s voice. She turned and saw Him. . .risen. . .alive! And so she ran to tell those who needed the message most at that moment. The disciples. His closest friends. His followers. He is risen!

Shout the news! Let everyone know! He is alive!

Join me next time, won’t you?

Richard

Servant Leadership (John 13:16)

Today’s Readings: John 13:1-17

I tell you the truth: a servant is not greater than the master. Those who are sent are not greater than the one who sends them.

One of the things I learned as a young leader in the military was to never assign duties you were unwilling to do yourself. Although many of those duties I ended up not doing because of other tasks I needed to perform that my subordinates couldn’t, I was always willing to stand beside them and do them if necessary. Most of the time, my subordinates would ask me to get out of their way because they could do their tasks much better than I could anyway. Still, I never asked anyone to do anything I wasn’t willing to do myself, whatever it was or however poorly I might execute it.

The fact that I would willing do any of those tasks also means any of the staff between me and the person down the line assigned the task should also be willing to do the task. Others would find us under trucks doing our own preventive maintenance. We would help clean vehicles when we came from the field. Tents, equipment, inventories, were all joint projects. We all got involved to get the job done faster, but also to let privates know officers understood the importance and were not above getting their hands dirty to get the work done.

I’ll admit when I became a major and a senior staff officer, my drivers wouldn’t let me help, nor did I have the time. I would gladly trade places and let them take my place in the meetings I attended to spend time cleaning my vehicle instead of listening to some of the mandatory briefings I heard. Putting away tents probably would have been just as profitable as some of the meetings I went to, but that’s beside the point. Duty called and I had responsibilities elsewhere, but my drivers always knew I would gladly help and did when I could. (I still couldn’t do as good a job as they did, though. I never learned their secrets.)

I think that’s the lesson Jesus gave us through His disciples that Passover night. The lowest of the servants got the job of washing the guests’ feet. Hygiene standards didn’t meet today’s standards in the city streets back then. People shared the same space as horses, camels, sheep, goats, cows, and often open sewage as chamber pot contents went out the door in the morning. So when guests came into a home, the first thing they did was take off their shoes. The second thing that happened was the lowest servant washed their feet to keep the “stuff” from the street from spreading through the house.

Since the disciples met in an upper room apart from the rest of the house, we can surmise the normal house servants missed this important task and Jesus took it upon Himself to teach His disciples this important lesson. If He will stoop to wipe the garbage and manure from His disciples’ feet, there should be no task so menial we would be unwilling to do it for Him.

What has He asked you to do for Him lately that you thought beneath you? Perhaps it’s time to re-look that task and remember the Master with His basin and towel.

Join me next time, won’t you?

Richard