Save The Gentiles?

For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.  John 3:17

Saved: a lot of people in our Lord's time thought that this meant rescue from the Romans, followed by a return to prominence on the world stage. But Jesus did not come to replace one empire with another. He came to save God's world. And the Lord's people were rather shocked to see this meant saving the despised Samaritans, the Roman occupiers, and all manner of Gentile dogs. That does not mean our canines, but the 1st century Judean derogatory term for our Gentile ancestors. To the people of the covenant, it was bizarre, strange and just plain weird that one claiming to be the Son of God would want to save them, people not even of the Law.

But for our part, we are glad and grateful that Jesus came to save all the world!

Bucky

God So Loved

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. John 3:16

Yesterday's message was pretty horrible, so I thought to remind us all of that central statement of the Bible. While there are many difficult prophecies yet to be fulfilled, God's love by way of His Son gives to those who believe just what we long for, everlasting life. We need to go back to this frequently as our watch on world events for signs of the end is a wearisome task, and we shall see horrors come to pass. When this happens, recall God's love and His Son, Jesus the Christ. Note that God's love and His gift came before we believed.

When that belief came, we rejoiced in Him!

Bucky

A Plague Comes

And this shall be the plague with which the LORD will strike all the people who fought against Jerusalem:

Their flesh shall dissolve while they stand on their feet,
Their eyes shall dissolve in their sockets,
And their tongues shall dissolve in their mouths.
  -- Zechariah 14:12

Horror movies have nothing over the Bible for sheer horror. This plague was portrayed, with all its horror, in a scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark when an evil Nazi dude looked in the opened Ark of the Covenant. We might think we will like it when the bad guys get their just desserts, but this may just be too much to wish on anyone. Prophecy is not about what we or the prophet likes or dislikes. Those who received the word of God had to foretell some tough things. However, contained in this prophecy is the key to avoiding it: Don't fight against Jerusalem!

Seems almost too simple! Rejoice in the Lord always,

Bucky

The Hope Of Believing In Him

I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word. John 17:20

One of the great battles of all times comes in trying to turn human hearts to belief in Jesus. We read of the fight in our Lord's first disciples when He told them plainly that He would be given to the Gentiles, killed, but rise again. The disciples heard it, paused for a moment, and then wondered how to gain a prominent position in His new kingdom. They didn't believe in Him, and they couldn't yet believe His words. So, if these special twelve could not believe, what hope do we have? In this little bit of our Lord's prayers on that night before He was given up to the religious authorities, we read that those disciples would continue to spread His good news and that there would be those who will believe through those words.

Praise God, we are willing to believe in Jesus, His Son!

Bucky

God Is Just

And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. John 17:3

John 3:16 speaks of God's love and believing in His Son for eternal life. This verse speaks of knowing God and His Son Jesus for eternal life. Therefore we understand that knowing and believing in God and Jesus must be closely related. And indeed, without believing in Jesus it seems that a reading of the Old Testament will leave one feeling that God is mean. However, with belief in Jesus we read and see that it is God's justice that many confuse with meanness. With the Law of Moses, Israel made a contract with God. And everything the nation suffered was a consequence of their sin or punishment according to the terms of their contract. Repent and be restored was the message from God by way of the prophets for hundreds of years. Then God sent His Son, and still most of Israel would not believe. We enjoy a time when Gentiles will believe in Jesus, but God is not done with Israel just yet.

Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!

Bucky

P.S. Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Working In Us

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed... work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.  Philippians 2:12-13

Working out our salvation will not work without the work of God in us. Thar' be a lot o' workin' in that thar' verse! Yup, a pirate more than many occupations might recognize the tremendous amount of work that goes into taking a lost sheep and making it a warrior for the gospel of Christ. Paul speaks in another letter of taking up the full armor of God, and who has ever heard of an armored sheep? Clearly many changes will be effected in and on those sheep to become fully armored warriors wielding the sword of the Word. 

Behind the shield of faith the making of a warrior continues,

Bucky

So He Is

You call Me Teacher and Lord, and you say well, for so I am. John 13:13

My searches for a verse tend toward the even numbered chapters in John, so I made some effort to not avoid the great food in the odd numbered chapters the last couple of days. Here is one for today that refutes again the old argument that Jesus never said he was God. One must stretch it to the breaking point to avoid the "for so I am" part of this verse. Some folks will do it though. This verse for today is part of that great lesson the Teacher and Lord gave to us for seeking to be servants, and not just any servant but the lowest of servants, the foot washer. It is not hard to imagine that most Christians know the servant lesson, but have in mind for themselves a place as the chief servant, or head of the vineyard for an absent owner, or maybe a position similar to their ideal job here in this life. No, the lesson clearly was to do the lowest jobs, like the one the Son of God did for His disciples that night.

It is not an easy lesson to put into practice!

Bucky

Cast Out

They answered and said to him, “You were completely born in sins, and are you teaching us?” And they cast him out. John 9:34

Our verse for today comes from the story of the man blind from birth, healed by Jesus, and cast out of the synagogue by the Pharisees. Now getting cast out of the synagogue was a bit more serious than we are used to. If we were cast out of one church even in a rural town, we could go to another one. We would also maintain membership in various clubs around the town. We might even take up college classes to further our education. For the formerly blind man, the synagogue was all these things rolled up into one. Losing his membership might also make it difficult for him to find work, which he could now do. But since this man now has new knowledge, he could do as the Pharisees suggested and become a teacher from the Word of God! Hmm, okay, maybe suggestion is a strong word for what they said. Is it just me, or does anyone else think it would be funny for the Pharisees to find the formerly blind man teaching Scripture classes in the town square?

There are times when a casting out is the start of a new and wonderful thing for us, especially if it comes from having Jesus open our eyes.

Blessings to you from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ!

Bucky

The Guide

For this is God,
Our God forever and ever;
He will be our guide
Even to death.
  -- Psalm 48:14

In something you have not done before it can be a great help to have a guide. In the circumstances of the world one may choose to be a mean guide and teach by hazing or mocking, but I think most of us would prefer the knowledgeable guide who teaches patiently with kindness.

A ship comes to mind as an example of what can be an intimidating situation. If a person comes from a rural town, a cruise ship may be the largest structure he or she has seen in this lifetime. Plus lurking in the dread part of their mind will be the knowledge that once the ship casts off from the pier, there will be some supports left behind. On the first cruise it can help to have a guide; someone who has taken the trip before, maybe even several times. That guide will know things that we need to learn this first time out.

And that is where our verse today comes to us. The Spirit given by Jesus is now our guide on this first time through life. God will guide us back to Himself by way of His Son.

Guided in Him!

Bucky

The Better Word?

And now I have told you before it comes, that when it does come to pass, you may believe. John 14:29

John 14 remains one of my favorite chapters in the Bible. However, my favorite does not mean that it is better for me than say, John 13 or 15. We can read even in our verse for today that something our Lord foretold had to come to pass before the disciples would even believe it or in Jesus. Thus even as a favorite chapter of mine, it does me no good if, like the disciples, I do not believe.

It has come up a lot lately in discussion that some think parts of the Word of God better than others. Again, while one of us may have favored verses, passages, and chapters of scripture, that alone does not make them better than our less favored books or stories in the Bible. I like the Christmas stories every year, but without the horrors of the scourging and the shame of our Savior on the Cross, what good would the Nativity do for me or anyone else? We have the better word, it begins with Genesis and reads through the Revelation, and in it all is Jesus our Lord!

Thank You, dear God, for Your Word!

Bucky

Yet Who Knows?

For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” Esther 4:14

It's a famous verse, been used here before, in many sermons and devotionals, and in a movie or two. What do we like about it? Perhaps it is the uncertainty Esther had to face with only faith in God to help her. She was queen and yet she did not know whether the king would hold out his scepter or let her go to her death. No doubt that moment in the movie had a dramatic pause for a little tension building. Faith is a difficult journey with lots of those moments of uncertainty. Most of them do not involve mortal peril for us, but a lack of faith certainly holds spiritual peril for us (pun certainly intended).

Believe in Jesus, and at times you will face the delicious pain of uncertainty!

Bucky

The Only Stranger In Jerusalem

Then the one whose name was Cleopas answered and said to Him, “Are You the only stranger in Jerusalem, and have You not known the things which happened there in these days?” Luke 24:18

Now there is an interesting thought, the only stranger in Jerusalem being the Son of God, the One who wants to save Jerusalem. But in verse 16, it tells us that their eyes were restrained from seeing the risen Lord Jesus. Cleopas is astounded that this stranger on the road, who inserts himself into their conversation, doesn't seem to know anything about what went on there the past few days. As we read of Jesus after His rising on that Sunday morning, we might just detect a bit of fun going on. He appears to the gathered disciples behind locked doors, he disappears from a meal faster than He entered it, He provides another miraculous catch of fish on the Sea of Galilee, and just pops in and out all around Jerusalem for 40 days. Well, if He had a bit of fun, then He certainly deserved it in my estimation. While He did it though, He also opened the eyes of the spiritually blind to the scriptures concerning Himself.

Keep on reading the Word, He will become clear to you as well!

Bucky

A Fair Wind Blowing

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.  John 1:14

Accustomed to the hyperbole and bombast of the social media age, I tend to marvel at how the writers of the Bible present remarkable events in rather unremarkable language. But then one thinks about it. The Word became flesh. Imagine for a moment that every word you or I spoke became a little creature hopping about the house. Little living beings that need care and provision to continue their little lives. It would shut a person up right quick! Okay, now that I have weirded out our Monday, John has some more words for us in this verse for today. 

God's word has glory, as of the only begotten of the Father, John writes. Glory would of course be quite remarkable. And the only begotten of the Father is full of a couple of things we need in this age, grace and truth. The Word of God seems a precious gift now, not unremarkable at all. And still the language is calm, peaceful even, and not like what we read these days in political discourse. 

A fair wind blows from Heaven, let us catch it in our sails!

Bucky

The Word Was There

By faith Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith. Hebrews 11:7

In yesterday's message we saw how the number of instances of the word faith pointed to its importance in the New Testament. Included among those are the stories in Hebrews 11, such as the one about Noah we read today. That faith as a word did not occur many times in the Old Testament does not mean that active faith was not there. What Hebrews 11 points out to us is that while no one may have said, "faith" at a particular time, they showed faith in the Lord God by believing what He said and acting on it.

The word was there, and so was the Word!

Bucky

Living Faith

Behold the proud,
His soul is not upright in him;
But the just shall live by his faith.
  -- Habakkuk 2:4

Woohoo! My first accomplishment of note for today, I spelled Habakkuk's name correctly on the first try. A search on the word 'faith' in the NKJV of the Bible produces an interesting story in itself. Moses laments in his song that the children of Israel were perverse and had no faith. Then we see the prophet (So I don't have to spell it again!) telling us of living faith. And we read the verse and don't want to be proud, since who wants to have their soul not upright in them, but wonder how to become just. In the New Testament, Jesus brings the faith in an interesting dance of contrast between His disciples with their little faith and people popping up out of seemingly nowhere with great faith, faith that has made them well, such great faith, and more. Not to worry for the disciples though, after His death on the cross and the resurrection, faith abounds in Luke's record of the Acts of the Apostles. How important does faith become? Two times it occurs in the Old Testament, 243 times used in the New Testament. And Paul comes to that just conclusion we are looking for:

Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Romans 5:1

Have faith, and live it in Christ Jesus!

Bucky

Who Can This Be?

So they watched him closely, whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. Mark 3:2

All those pronouns, who can this be? We can glean a few clues without much effort. He has the ability to heal people, but is it only on one day each week? He also has enemies or competitors who want to accuse him, and they are monitoring him. With the citation of the book and verse, we can learn easily that this is Jesus being watched, and that the watchers are the Pharisees using a cloak of legality hoping to turn good works of healing into crimes. Strangely, if just one of them remembered the law of neighborly love (Leviticus 19:18), would he have wanted the suffering man to suffer one more minute, much less to suffer until the next day? Of course we know from further study that these Pharisees cared not a bit about the man's withered hand, but wanted only to destroy Jesus.

If we had nothing more to go on than these first six verses of Mark 3, we could still see that something was quite rotten in the Pharisees, and that Jesus had a wonderful healing ministry. Who can this be?

Bucky

Resting Quietly

So they answered the Angel of the LORD, who stood among the myrtle trees, and said, “We have walked to and fro throughout the earth, and behold, all the earth is resting quietly.”  Zechariah 1:11

A report comes back from the field, all quietly resting. We would call that unusual from our experience thus far in life. There always seems to be someone enduring war around the world. Centuries from this verse we read today, our new presidential administration seems to be trying to bring the wars to a rest. Will that be a successful effort? Too early to tell, but perhaps these horsemen from Zechariah will be able to do another report like this one. However, this report came after 70 years of the Lord's anger at Jerusalem and the cities of Judah. The angel asked the Lord how long His mercy might last against that anger. We might well ask the same question of our Lord, as if the judgement of the Lord as read in the Revelation of Jesus were only held back by the great dam of His mercy. 

As with any dam failure, it may be a long time coming but it happens suddenly at the end. Maybe our prayers will help to shore up the dam of our Lord's mercy. It cannot hurt to try. 

Pray for mercy, saints of our Lord Jesus Christ!

Bucky

God Will Know

Then Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “One thing you lack: Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow Me.” Mark 10:21

The rich man went home to consider for a bit, and decided to throw the big sale Jesus had told him to do. He inventoried, cataloged, priced, and hauled his goods to the auctioneer's warehouse, but then he saw that he would need part of the proceeds to repair a part of his house. He also found out that pricing goods for an auction was a waste of time, since that ain't how it works. But, there was no problem until he titled the sale, The Treasure in Heaven Sale in the advertising. Of course, people knew the story from the Bible and assumed that all proceeds would go to the poor. When the auctioneer warned the man that keeping back part of the proceeds for another purpose might cause some hard feelings, he was able to internalize and rationalize and come up with a way to justify it to himself. And the sale proceeded under that not so truthful advertising.

You will recognize a variation of the sin part of the story of Ananias and Sapphira from the Book of Acts. If you have some church in your past, you will also know how that story ends for the less than forthright couple. If not, then I'll spoil it for you, Ananias and Sapphira get buried at the end. Of course we have learned that if we are going to sell to lay up treasure in heaven, then we do it, give it, and keep quiet about it; God will know that we did it, and that is all we need.

Thank you for enduring my little story today!

Bucky

A Simple Question Of Misunderstanding

Then the Jews said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?” John 2:20

It seemed to the Jews in our verse today that Jesus had said something so far out there that they could not help but point out the obvious error in his statement. They tendered to our Lord a simple question of misunderstanding. However, we can see that this question shows just how far from understanding who had come to the temple that day these Jews were. By their question, they try to show how right they were and how wrong the Son of God was. Well when you say it that way... They did not believe in Jesus, therefore they could not understand who stood in the temple with them.

Jesus stands behind a wall of misunderstanding, holding out His mighty hand through a little hole in that wall and hoping someone will take hold of it by faith. The ignorance of the world tells us we cannot fit through that hole, but faith tells us that Jesus will take care of any barrier, no matter how strong it may lo0k from the wrong side.

Bucky

Manifesting By His Word

Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, “Lord, how is it that You will manifest Yourself to us, and not to the world?” John 14:22

With Judas being another common name at the time, John makes it a point to give us a 'not that one' when identifying this disciple. After the betrayal of our Lord, I'm sure this Judas appreciated that very much. However, it is the question we want to concern ourselves with this morning from our verse.

In one sense of the word, Jesus had manifested Himself to everyone who had eyes to see Him. But by the prophecy of Isaiah 53, Jesus did not appear to be God, or even a god to the eyes of the world. To perceive the manifestation of God, Jesus gives the key in His response: "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word." This is why we study the Bible with steadfast perseverance! The Bible is His word recorded for us and kept through the ages to read and study. To keep it means that we do not bury it in the backyard in a waterproof box, but we read, study, pray, and apply it to life and living.

Keep His word!

Bucky