Hard Truth ...

I can’t figure out if the fault is in our educational systems, or perhaps stems from our media.  Maybe it comes from our horrific parenting skills that attempt to treat 2-year-olds as if they were somehow our mental equivalents.  I have just been unable to put my finger on it.  But somehow, some way, our culture has become one of affixing blame for anything and everything that happens – on someone else.  Self-reflection and self-awareness are as rare as the dodo bird.  And nobody wants to hear it.  Even less are willing to accept it.  It is as if Satan has convinced us all that “if” we should be going to hell, well then, that is God’s fault.  “We” are not responsible for a single thing that happens to us, even though 90% of it stems from simple cause and effect that “we” initiate.  Look around, you will find this everywhere.  I get in a car accident, and guess where the “fault” will be assigned if I have anything to do with it.  Two dogs fight in a street (mostly because owners overreact in fear and stupidity) and blame is the first item on the agenda.  Something goes wrong at work, and everyone begins looking for a fall guy.  That guy could be anyone, except me.  For I am a precious snowflake that nothing should be able to touch – just ask my mom, she can verify it. 😊 Some might argue, she created it.

You would think that inside the church this could not be true.  But it is.  The kind of people we are outside of the church building, is the kind of people we bring to it each week, and the kind we find there sitting next to us.  So to combat this, I hear a good many pastors lamenting over the “soft truth” sermons spoken from the pulpit today.  Sermons designed to offend no one, and accomplish little.  I hear a lament to return to the good old days of “hellfire and brimstone” sermons designed to scare the be-geezes out of parishioners and get them to straighten up and fly right.  But those good old days did nothing to prevent the backlash in our culture that today chooses to blame first, and think later, if ever.  People just don’t forsake sin from fear, at least not for long.  But there is a hard truth that might be worth telling, even if it does not come on the topic we traditionally think of.  The emphasis of this hard truth is not on sin at all.  That might make it more popular.  It is actually focused squarely on me (the larger me in this context, that includes you, etc.).  That might make it wildly popular in our age, particularly if you plan to tell me how great I am (you know, just like mom does).

But then telling me how great I am, does not sound like a hard truth at all, it sounds more like a fantastic truth.  So what is the hard part, if it is about me, and not about my sin?  Perhaps the hardest truth I may ever hear.  And it does not come from me, that is today’s me, it comes from a sermon Jesus preached a long time ago.  Stick with me, this sermon is decidedly not what you would expect.  Luke records it in his gospel letter to his friend in the 4^th chapter picking up in verse 16 saying … “And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read.”  Now for some context.  Jesus has already picked up disciples and begun his ministry.  He has already performed miracles throughout the countryside and healed and preached to a great many.  He is now famous.  People are talking about Him everywhere, and nearly all the time.  But Luke is not focused on that here, he is focused on the simple fact that on Sabbath – Jesus goes to church.  It was His custom.  It was Jesus who made the 7^th day holy, and it was His choice to spend at least some of it in the synagogue (or local church) wherever He happened to be.

Another bit of subtle context, not everyone who went to church back then, was “able” to read.  It was usually only the scribes or Pharisees or Sadducees or elite educated who had ever picked up the skill.  The poor who went to church were dependent on others to read to them.  It is how they learned.  On this occasion it was to be Jesus who would read in His home church in the city of Nazareth where He was from, but had not spent any time as yet in His ministry.  Kind of like having a guest pastor at the church, one who is very famous and well known at the time.  Luke continues in verse 17 saying … “And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, [verse 18] The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, [verse 19] To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. [verse 20] And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him.”

First, re-read the text from the book of Isaiah Jesus read to the crowd.  Does any of that sound like a “Debbie-downer” sermon to you?  Kind of just the opposite right?  It is about uplifting mankind.  It is about ministering to mankind.  Healing, reaching out to the poor, preaching deliverance to those who are captives (read slaves, or prisoners, or those of us made slaves to our own sins).  This may be some of the happiest scriptures Isaiah ever penned, and here is Jesus simply reading them to His homies.  And every eye in the joint is fixated on Jesus to see what He will say next.  Everyone wants Him to preach here.  You will notice they already had a local minister (it is the guy Jesus returned the book to when He went back and sat down in the chamber).  But the people wanted more.  They wanted to hear more from Jesus.

So Luke continues in verse 21 saying … “And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. [verse 22] And all bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. And they said, Is not this Joseph's son?”  Jesus proclaims the good news, nay, the awesome news, that the time of this prophecy has arrived and is happening now in the ears of those who have heard the words read by Jesus Himself in this sanctuary.  These are gracious words.  These are loving words.  There is no condemnation in them.  There is no hell fire and brimstone in them.  There is no talk of sin in them.  There is only freedom in them.  There in only love in them.  There is only hope in them.  And yet, they are the hardest truth these people, and now us, have ever heard.  Why?  Because they and we do not want to hear them.  We doubt the messenger, even when He is Jesus Christ.  So we close off our ears to hear Truth even when it is wonderful Truth.  And in so doing we take awesome news and make it “Meh” news.

Jesus reads the minds of the petitioners here this day and reads the doubt.  Instead of remembering the facts of what is going on around them, they are remembering only that this Man was supposed to be nothing more than a carpenter’s son.  Carpenters are usually not very educated.  Math perhaps.  But reading scripture, not so much.  Carpenters are work men, trades men, NOT preachers of any kind.  And they realize that all the miracles performed in the ministry of Jesus have been somewhere else, not in their hometown.  So maybe it is all exaggeration or just outright lies.  And it is here where the hardest truth to our human ears begins to take shape.  It is our willingness to hear that makes a Truth easy, or makes it hard.  The facts are the same.  Jesus is the same.  But how we respond is a foretelling of whether we walk a hard path or an easy one.

Luke records Jesus as He continues in verse 23 saying … “And he said unto them, Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, Physician, heal thyself: whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country. [verse 24] And he said, Verily I say unto you, No prophet is accepted in his own country.”  Ouch!  Capernaum is the home of Peter and a neighboring town.  And in it, miracles of untold power and love have been done nearly all the time.  But in Nazareth, nothing.  What is the difference?  They are only similar towns in a similar region under similar circumstances with similar needs.  But in Capernaum, they believe, and are willing to believe.  In Nazareth, they are certain they already know the truth, and are unwilling to believe in the Truth.  Jesus is nothing more than carpenter’s son in Nazareth.  Jesus is hope personified in Capernaum.  And let us not fixate on the past.  Who is Jesus to you?  Are you even willing to believe at all, or has your belief been slain on the altar of self-love?  Have you already decided you know the truth, and have become unwilling to hear the Truth, even when the Truth is telling you awesome news?  You make your life hard.  You make the Truth hard.  When it does not need to be so.  And ONLY you are to blame.  You cannot put this off on mom, or the preacher, for getting it wrong – because the Truth is talking to you in that still small voice you should not ignore, but so many of us do.

Jesus continues in verse 25 saying … “But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land; [verse 26] But unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow.”  Aaarg!  Hard truth spills from the mouth of Jesus to us, hard because we have made it so.  There were many widows in Israel, that is, Israelite widows in the time of Elijah.  The prophet might have been sent to any one of them, to the home of any believer.  But the believers did not want him there.  They were afraid of the wrath of the King and Queen who hunted Elijah.  Elijah was billed as a trouble maker.  Elijah made life hard.  But in truth.  Sin made life hard.  The sin of widows, just like the sin of Kings and Queens.  So to a foreign woman the Prophet is sent.  To a woman of no Israelite blood.  Had the women of Israel been as likeminded as the foreign woman Elijah would have been sent to them, and in fact, the drought would not have been needed in the first place.  But women, even the widow women, had embraced the sin of Kings and Queens, and nothing but hardship would get their attention to bring them back into the fold of redemption.  Hard truths, but needed truths. 

And is it so for us?  It is the difference then between Nazareth and Capernaum.  Nazareth refused to see and was left mired in the same pain Capernaum had been freed from.  Hard truth.  Refusing to see meant embracing the same pain as before.  Jesus continues in verse 27 saying … ” And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian.”  Yikes!  This one was even more personal.  You see, there was not supposed to be ANY lepers in Israel.  Because the priests had a cure for it.  Rather God was the cure, the priests simply administered the rights, and the cure was had.  But the priesthood had long ago abandoned belief that cure was possible.  Sound familiar?  How many of us believe cancer is also impossible to cure with prayer – every single time, for every single person?  So Elijah was sent to a foreigner to be cleansed.  A foreigner who would be willing to believe and do what he was told.  And this was a rebuke against Israel for abandoning hope in a cure in the first place.  Remember the words of Jesus when He healed the lepers asking them to go to present themselves to the priests.  This was part of the healing ritual back in the day, and a rebuke against their lost faith in the present.  Hard truth.

And when we hear that we do have a role to play in the acceptance of the Truth in our lives, what will be our response?  When we come to realize there is no-one else to blame for our lives now?  My snowflake melts.  My mom shivers.  And the reality that life does touch me begins to sink in.  Yet nowhere in this sermon was a hard truth about calling sin by its right name.  It was about calling rejection of belief, and rejection of Jesus by its right name.  It is about losing control over salvation, and submitting to the only One who can save you, because He is the only One who ever promised to do just that.  Rejecting Jesus is embracing pain.  And that rejection cannot be blamed on others.  You must own it.  You must own it alone.  This is not about how “spiritual” you are, or how “religious” you are.  Those are nice adjectives that placate people into thinking Jesus is not necessary in the equation for self-improvement.  But it is Jesus alone who is able (and longing) to save you, from you, from who you are today.  The devil would try to distract you from this, but it remains and cannot be undone, by anyone other than you.  You must choose to embrace Jesus, or be stuck embracing the pain you always had.  Redemption is not about focusing on your sins, or trying to scare you out of them.  It is about connecting with Jesus and finally beginning to hear the awesome good news.

But delight is not the response of those who have finally heard “they” are not the precious snowflakes they once had envisioned.  Instead they got mad.  Luke continues in verse 28 saying … “And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath, [verse 29] And rose up, and thrust him out of the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong. [verse 30] But he passing through the midst of them went his way,”  They were ready to kill Jesus.  They were going to run Him off a cliff and kill Him for certain.  They took Him all the way there.  And only then does the Holy Spirit come to essentially turn Him invisible, or untouchable, and He passes right through the angry mob unnoticed and walks away.  In a twist of Irony returning from Nazareth to Capernaum.  Now consider the reaction of those called out with hard truth.  They wanted and were trying to kill Jesus over it.  Not because Jesus pronounced some curse on them, or talked about what great sinners they were.  Jesus had read a beautiful set of scriptures, with awesome good news.  Jesus said it is here for you.

They were ready to kill Jesus, because He showed them what unbelief looks like.  They were ready to kill Jesus, because they “knew” Jesus was nothing more than a carpenter’s son, instead of the Messiah.  And now to you and me, the precious snowflakes of our age.  What is to be our response?  The news is awesome and good.  The text is hope.  The promise of Jesus hope made flesh and made real.  But if we “know” how we will be saved and refuse to let Jesus do it, if we focus on the sin and not the cure, or if we refuse to believe or even be willing to believe – what hope have we but the life we have already come to know?  The Truth is not hard.  It is easy.  The news is not depressing.  It is wonderful.  Why make something hard that does not need to be hard?  Why not simply embrace what is easy, and see what a difference it can make in your life right now, today, and for each day you live from this day forward.  If you ask me, it is rejection of Jesus that is hard.  Acceptance of Jesus is a cakewalk by comparison.  I wonder how this Truth will ring in your ears?

 

The End is Near [part 3]; a complete desolation of hearts ...

What do you fear the most?  Would the sudden and permanent rejection of your love top the list?  There is a reason for the expression “broken hearts”.  There is even a physiological condition that can pair with that expression so extremely it can actually kill you.  It is said that Jesus died of a broken heart while on the cross.  The separation from His Father was so intense while He bore the sin of the world, it killed Him.  And this fear of rejected love is something our God understands very well.  For it is God who suffers a rejection of His love from His creations, despite how passionately He feels about us.  When we tell Him no.  When we keep pushing Him away, until finally our time expires and the sleep of death cements the longevity of our rejection.  This is a fate for His children that our Father never wants to see, and our enemy simply revels in.  Satan is able to wound the heart of God by seducing His children away from His love to pursue happiness another way, a self-centered way.  These wounds may always be in the heart of our God who is incapable of forgetting the child He loved so much, but was unable to bring back to His side forever.  And the central tenant that underlies an eternity of life, or death, is love.

For those who embrace submission of the heart to Jesus Christ, maintaining that submission is all that matters.  As Jesus re-creates who you are, how you love becomes job one.  Shifting your love away from self to others, and then deepening it beyond all reason, and you will begin to see what harmony with God looks like.  Anything that might interfere with that life altering love, that transformation that only Jesus can bring, must be considered the enemy of souls, more specifically of your soul.  So when Jesus looks at world events, from the time of His disciples, until the end of all things – He is not worried about “when” the end will be.  He is worried that we might turn our hearts away from Him as time ticks by.  He is worried about the loss of even one child who decides there is a substitute for Jesus, another way to get to Nirvana, a different path to God – that all may sound good, but as they lead away from Jesus, they cut us off from the only transformation we are ever offered that works.  Jesus works.  His transformation will re-create you from who you are today, into who Jesus can envision you can become.  The “other” paths are distraction that lead nowhere, but to pain, and eventually death.

An eye that can see all of time in an instant, sees only the loss of His precious children, and seeks to take that loss down to zero.  The disciples asked for signs in the gospel of Matthew chapter 24.  But Jesus seeks to keep hearts in a path that will lead to His Father.  Anything that would distract from that, are the conditions, the prophetic warnings, He must relay to us – in hopes that by telling us what is happening, and what will happen, we will be warned against the distractions and keep our eyes ever on Jesus alone.  He picks up relaying a series of events that span our world’s history but share a common theme.  It begins in verse 15 saying … “When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:) [verse 16] Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains:”  Matthew when he writes this gospel already sees signs in the exploding Christian Church of problems that were not apparent when Jesus spoke these words.

The “abomination of desolation” has meaning even in the days of Matthew.  For it will precede the destruction of the temple at Jerusalem.  But it is not, as his contemporaries will reason, the desecration of the Temple by Roman actions.  Nor is it, as we might reason, the condemnation of Jesus by the Temple priests and leadership.  It is a more insidious thing, a more cancerous virus, that spares not men, nor women, nor children.  It is an abomination of hearts.  It is the seeking of power over love, of hierarchy instead of one-on-one leadership by Jesus to every believer.  It is the attempt at making salvation personal, by taking personal control over it, wresting it away from the hands of Jesus, and placing it in our own.  Making statements that “we” must do “our part” before God will do His.  It is the ceding of a pure gospel of 100% dependence upon Jesus, with the insertion of self into every facet of the gospel.  We put self on the throne and bump Jesus into the “co-pilot” chair.  It is stone hearts that understand a lust for wealth, and are mystified at those who would give every penny they have for another in need. 

The abomination of desolation puts man ahead of God, and it comes in a variety of forms.  From the audacious who believes he is the “vicar” of Christ; to the Islamist who venerates Jesus as “great” but not God.  It happens in modern protestant churches as we proclaim our responsibility for ending sin, instead of looking for that from Jesus alone who is able to see it done.  That phrase, that fear of God, had meaning to Matthew, but it had meaning during the dark ages, and it still has meaning today.  It remains a desolation of hearts that should strike fear into us all.  For we are its target, and may well already be under its spell, looking away from Jesus for the things that only Jesus could ever see accomplished. 

Jesus begins with an answer to the original question the disciples asked, the destruction of the temple as He continues in verse 17 saying … “him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house: [verse 18] Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes. [verse 19] And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days! [verse 20] But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day:”  These words reflect a sudden desolation.  The destruction of the Temple foretold by Christ would come with devastating effect.   The Romans would march angry over continued Jewish attempts at rebellion, looking to forever crush the residents of the Holy Land.  They would kill everything they touched.  They were not there for mercy, they were there in an angry state of revenge.  No amount of blood would be enough.  So it is in that context that Jesus warns His believers not to prize belongings over their very existence.  Take what you have on you.  Trust me.  And flee for your lives.  He offers sympathy to those nursing mothers, and asks us to pray that it does not come in winter, or on Sabbath.

The destruction of the Temple would happen many years after His death.  And yet Jesus is still asking us to pray that the flight from it would not happen on Sabbath.  Clearly, Jesus still cared about His Holy day.  It was not nailed to a cross as some have conveniently tried to argue.  And all of the activities one would have to do while fleeing for their lives would prevent them from enjoying the Sabbath as it was intended with their God.  So if flight happened another day, it would be better.  Not happening in winter allows for the fact that the person in the field was to simply drop everything and run.  No time to get extra coats or clothing.  True believers in Jesus Christ have always faced persecution, and have generally always run from it.  The running has the side effect of spreading the gospel to new places and so in that sense not a horrible thing.  But Jesus tells us that persecution because we love is something we are going to face, it is the way of things.

Jesus then seems to look across time from that time to this and sees a common tragedy as He continues in verse 21 saying … “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. [verse 22] And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened.”  There was great persecution in the days of Rome, enough to turn the color representing the church from white to red in John’s prophecies.  It would continue and get worse during the dark ages.  And if the world had not opened up by the discovery of the Americas it might have extinguished those who look only to Jesus all together.  So do these days of persecution still lie ahead of us, maybe.  But there is certainly enough of it behind us to hope it is now in our past until He comes.  One thing is certain though, the devil will not go quietly, so as time moves closer to the end, you can expect his fury to grow to match the fire of people truly beginning to rediscover what it means to encounter Jesus personally.

Jesus then goes back to His earlier warnings, that even while He looked over a wide span of time were still ever present.  He continues in verse 23 saying … “Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. [verse 24] For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. [verse 25] Behold, I have told you before. [verse 26] Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not. [verse 27] For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. [verse 28] For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together.”

One of the biggest remaining fears for Jesus across all time, is our tendency to put man in the place of God.  From false folks who claim directly to be Christ, to false prophets powered by the dark side of the supernatural world.  Their signs and wonders are great, but their message similar, a distraction from Jesus.  For those who value a “show me” mentality looking for supernatural proof of God, these false leaders will have great appeal.  But it is not the great acts that change the thinking, or create passionate love where there was none before.  Those are responses to a still small voice that changes the heart of each of us as we submit ourselves to Jesus alone.  Humans are only distraction to that, especially humans we begin to follow in place of Jesus (or in partnership with Jesus).  At some point the vultures will gather over the corpses created by looking away from Jesus.  A fate Jesus wants every one of us to avoid.

It is the desolation of our hearts that comes from putting man between us and God.  Our pastors should be admired and supported in the work they do – but not as a supplement or replacement of Jesus Christ.  We should not look to our pastors for an example.  We should look to Jesus for transformation of “our” hearts.  It is our heart that is important.  Not a collective reference to the hearts of men, but our particular heart that is important to our God.  Yes He feels this passionate for each of us.  But that does not diminish how He feels about me, or you, or the loved ones around us.  Each one extremely important to Him.  Each one, a child He wants back.  A child He desperately does not want to lose.  Because He loves us just that much.  As we look through the lens of Jesus across time we see Him desperately fighting for His children.  To keep each of us locked on Him, and safe because of it.  Looking anywhere else is a surefire recipe for disaster.

But His counsel was not over yet …