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Showing all posts from March 2011
Saturday, 03.05.11
Jesus’ Family - Part 6
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Verse for today's Daily Journey: Matthew 1
This week we’ve been looking at the Jesus genealogy. And in it, we find that Matthew keeps throwing in these very particular names – women, pagan, scandal. What was Mathew trying to say to us and about Christ? Matthew was saying that this is a record of the people of Christ. This is a record of the people that Jesus Christ will identify with and welcome into his kingdom and these are not the kind of people who everyone expects them to look like. It is a gospel message that simply shows us that Jesus just wants everybody in his family. Hittites, Moabites, Canaanites, Jericho-ites, New Age-ites, Arcola-ites, Democrat-ites. He just wants them all to come in.
Martin Luther said, “It is as though God intended for these people to hear this genealogy and say to themselves, ‘Oh, Christ is the kind of person who was not ashamed of sinners! See! He even puts them in his family tree.’”
So if you are tempted to think, “Not me. I have messed up too much. My sin is too dark. God cannot use someone who has done what I have done.” I think Jesus would say, “Are you kidding? Look at my family! You have no idea what I can do if you would just open your life up to me.” Jesus embodied this so deeply that he became known as the “friend of sinners.”
Here is a question for you. When someone sins around you and does some wrong, do you find yourself getting closer or moving farther away? Do you say, “I want to get closer” or do you say, “Get away from me”? What we get in the Genealogy of Jesus Christ is one who, when we were in our utter ugliest moments, he came closer.
Why then do we move away? “Oh we don’t do that sort of thing. I don’t want to be considered ‘unclean’ or ‘someone like that’.
And yet, Scripture is absolutely clear: “How can they hear unless you go? How can you go unless you are called?” And you are called. When you are around those who have sinned slipped up, are you attracted? Or are you repelled? Church, Jesus got closer and more loving, not farther away. You can actually make the case that the farther away you were the more quickly and deeply God comes. Much like when a child does something wrong, you get closer not farther away. The more hurt this child is, the more urgently your heart rushes toward them.
This is what it means that Jesus was a friend of sinners. Matthew was the one who would tell us that when the soldiers mocked Jesus, they put a scarlet robe on his body. They put a crown of thorns on his head, and nails in his hands, and a sword that pierced his side. On that cross, Jesus did not leave you but stayed… in fact, stuck there for you.
APPLICATON: And if you know Jesus and have experienced the grace of God in your life. We must ask ourselves, how is our heart for those who are far away? Are you attracted? Are you repelled? Who do you pray for? He’s got everyone on that list - from prostitutes to kings. Who is in your list? Is it the same? Be the hands and feet of Christ… Christ is still waiting for folks who think they’re a million miles away. It may be starting with you.
Friday, 03.04.11
Jesus’ Family - Part 5
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Verse for today's Daily Journey: Ruth 1:8-17; 4:13-17
On the heels of the Lent Season, we’ve been looking at the family line of Jesus Christ and focusing on particular people in that line. Ruth has been one these past pair of days we have been spending particular attention. And today, even further…
You see, what the book of Ruth teaches us is that you must never lose hope because God is always working beneath the surface of things. No matter what may be going on in your life, do not lose hope. God is doing a million things for His glory and for your good even when it appears that he may be absent. There are signs of hope in every life.
One of the great things about the book of Ruth is that there is really nothing very miraculous. There are no miracles. There are no dreams. There are no visions. There are no words from God in her head. This is a book for those people who look around their life and see no dramatic answers to prayers, no dramatic events of any kind, who see nothing but mundane times and hard times. The book of Ruth is saying that under the mundane and hard moments, God is still at work. He is still there even though you may not see it. You must learn to see the signs of work that are hidden under the surface.
When Naomi comes back in verse 21 and says, “I am empty”, what she doesn’t realize is that she comes back with Ruth. This amazing person that’s going to change her life and the life of all those to follow. Ironically, Naomi says, “I’m empty” though, in truth, she is blessed and full. The lesson is because Naomi is living out of her own agenda of what she thinks God should be doing in her life and because God’s agenda is not her agenda, she can’t see the signs of hope that God has put in her life. She can’t see the great things that God has put there.
Some of us are in this same place right now. You have an agenda and things aren’t going your way. And you are either blind to the incredible things that God has put in your life. You just don’t see it. You won’t see it. You have no hope. Ruth is teaching us that it is in the mundane things, the monotonous things that God indeed dwells. Ruth just happened on the field of Boaz. It just happened that she met the one guy that she had to marry in order for the Messiah to be born into the world. Did it all just happen? The thing is God loves to work in the mundane where you can’t see it.
How many thrones are there in the world? Not many. How many mangers? A lot. God comes through mangers. He comes through the mundane.
What this also implies then is this. Do not look out into your life and see the mundane things, the hard things, and you say, “I don’t see any answers to prayer. God has abandoned me. God has given up on me.” Naomi says, “God has abandoned me.” But when Ruth was clinging to Naomi, God was clinging to Naomi. She didn’t see it but God was holding on. And God is clinging to you. That you might believe it…
William Cowper, prone to tremendous depression, wrote a beautiful hymn that touches upon this truth entitled “God Moves in a Mysterious Way”.
Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy and shall break
In blessings on your head.
Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust Him for His grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.
His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.
Thursday, 03.03.11
Jesus’ Family - Part 4
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Verse for today's Daily Journey: Ruth 1:8-17; 4:13-17
We continue today by continuing to look at Ruth. Naomi is trying to send Orpah and Ruth back in verses 8-9. And Naomi is doing so because she loves them and wants the best for them. In her love, she is putting their needs ahead of her own. She is sacrificially loving them even though they do not share the same beliefs as she does; she an Israelite and Orpah and Ruth, Moabites. And it is in that moment that Ruth says in verse 16: “I want Your God.”
You see, it is when Naomi loves Ruth even though she doesn’t believe, that she believes. It is when Naomi sacrificially loves somebody who doesn’t believe in her God at all, that her God begins to look credible. Ruth says, “The reason I want to believe in your God is because of the love that God engenders in your heart. I’ve never seen anyone love me the way you love me. I want that God.”
What you can see in this simple act is a profound truth: If you love people in deep friendship regardless of what they believe, what you believe will actually begin to look credible. If you love people only if they believe what you believe, why should they believe?
How do you treat people who differ from you? If you only love, care, and meet people who are just like you, or believe just like you then the very center and power of your belief holds no water. Too often even the most faithful of us pick and choose who they will spend most of their time, effort, energy, money, love, and life on. And all too often the vast bulk of it, if not all, is given over to those who share the same looks, stations, stage, beliefs, tendencies, and personalities. Very seldom are they spilled out for those who do not believe, look, walk, talk, or live like they do. You see, the most transforming aspect that facilitates an encounter with God is unconditional love in a powerful friendship. That’s what changes Ruth’s life. She makes a great commitment to courage and love to Naomi and to God because she was just the subject of sacrificial love and courage.
What she is doing is not a random act, a result of forced prodding, or something out of the blue? No. She was changed; changed by a vision of sacrificial love. That’s how most people find God. It is not through sermons or programs. That is artillery. What everyone needs at the core is to have a powerful friendship where you experience sacrificial unconditional love.
APPLICATON:
Time + Commitment + Unconditional Love = will enable people to find God authentically.
Exercise that today.
Wednesday, 03.02.11
Jesus’ Family - Part 3
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Verse for today's Daily Journey: Ruth 1:8-17; 4:13-17
In the genealogy of Jesus, we find yet another woman (unusual for any genealogy, as they were populated mainly by fathers and sons) in verse 5. She was Ruth. Ruth's story is so remarkable, one day's entry does not do justice, so we shall draw it out over a couple of days. Her story actually begins with Naomi who, with her husband (both Israelites) went to Moab during a famine. They raised two sons who married two Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth. Disaster struck one and Naomi's husband and sons died. A widow now with loss of status and standing, which were found in her family, she is about to go back to Israel b/c she has nowhere else to go to live an economically marginalized life.
When Naomi looks at her daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth, she says, “Go back to your own families.” Why? Because they’re young widows and if they go back to their families they have parents who will take care of them, they have good prospects when they stay in their same culture, race, country building another family. So Naomi says, “Go back.” The statement of Ruth is astonishing when she says, "Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me." What she’s saying is, “I bind myself to you. Whatever happens to you, happens to me. Come anything but death.”
Boaz looks on and is amazed by this, that Ruth is willing to take a dead-end life for her mother-in-law. And Ruth is amazed that any Israelite man would be kind to a racially marginalized woman such as she. Naomi watching all of this says, “Oh my, do you know that you were in the field of Boaz, one of the only Israelites that could be my kinsmen redeemer.”
[Note: What is a kinsmen redeemer? Someone who had the right to buy back the ancestral land of any family that had lost it. When Israel came into the land, every family had a set of land, and if they lost it, they lost it, it was gone. So here, Naomi sold it when she went to Moab. But a kinsmen redeemer had the right to buy that ancestral land back for the family and the person who owned it, had to sell it. The problem with this situation is that, anyone who wanted to be Naomi’s kinsmen redeemer, to get the land back and to re-establish the family line wouldn’t just have to buy back the land, he would have to marry Ruth, a woman of a despised race, the only daughter-in-law from Naomi’s son, to re-establish the line. So Naomi says, “He’s one of the only ones left that would have the right to do it, but why would he!? Why would he spend that money? Why would he marry interracially?”]
Ruth, in a bold act, goes to Boaz in the middle of the night, sits at his feet. When he wakes, she proposes marriage. She says, “I want you to be a kinsman redeemer of Naomi and myself. I want you to marry me.” Boaz so moved indeed marries her. And at the very end, you see that not only is Naomi’s line restored, but through the courageous love of Ruth, which changes Boaz’s heart and wins him, he now uses the social power in a gracious way. Now because of Ruth, Boaz and Naomi are in the line of the family of David, and of the Messiah, Jesus. So, Ruth hasn’t just brought Naomi’s name back in some general way, but the most magnificent way. Ruth is a tremendously powerful figure in Scripture and in the line of Christ. Her courageous love for Naomi against what might have been safer and more profitable was indeed a key piece, not to be overlooked, that we see in the heart of Christ.
APPLICATON:
Consider a relationship in your life that is in on your plate and in your care, one that is not easy. One in which it may be easier to leave than to stay, stick, work, covenant, and courageously love. Now adopt Ruth's words as your own and begin to sense the weight of them, their cost, and the authenticity then of the love: "Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me."
Sound familiar?
"For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:38-39
Ruth's courageous love in the face of the safer and easier choice is in fact the deep, deep love of Christ's own for you. May it unlock your heart today to dare to love others as we see today.
