Nick and Joe

Posted on by korgrocker

“Afterward Joseph of Arimathea, who had been a secret disciple of Jesus (because he feared the Jewish leaders), asked Pilate for permission to take down Jesus’ body. When Pilate gave permission, Joseph came and took the body away. With him came Nicodemus, the man who had come to Jesus at night. He brought about seventy-five pounds of perfumed ointment made from myrrh and aloes. Following Jewish burial custom, they wrapped Jesus’ body with the spices in long sheets of linen cloth. The place of crucifixion was near a garden, where there was a new tomb, never used before. And so, because it was the day of preparation for the Jewish Passover and since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there.”
John 19:38-42 NLT

In spite of the conspiracy theories that claimed Jesus never died on the cross and that He just “swooned”, Jesus definitely died that fateful day. The Roman soldier, used to seeing death, confirmed it with his spear, and the two Jewish leaders (secret disciples of Jesus), took Jesus’ body down from the cross and prepared His body for burial, tightly wrapping it in sheets of linen interspersed with a large quantity of spices. That they were fooled into thinking Jesus was dead when He was still alive, is so unlikely that such an event can be discounted as being totally untrue. There are all sorts of legends around Joseph but little about him can be found in the Bible. He may have been a relative of Jesus and, because Jesus’ father, Joseph, was no longer around, he may have taken on the responsibility of dealing with Jesus’ body, hence Pilate’s willingness to allow him to do so. Nicodemus we know more about, as we can read in John 3. After preparing the body, the two men laid Jesus in a new tomb, that Matthew recorded had been prepared for Joseph. But Nicodemus and Joseph were in a bit of a hurry because the start of the Passover celebrations were imminent. The proximity of the tomb to the place of execution helped them greatly.

This factual account of what happened to Jesus’ body forms another facet of the Good Friday events. They were just normal details of the process of dealing with the dead. Nothing really worthy of note at all. But John included them, facts for which we’re grateful. To just have been told that Jesus died and was buried, although true, would not have provided the authenticity that has helped people come to faith in Jesus ever since.

What do we pilgrims think of the arrest, trial, whipping, crucifixion and then burial of Jesus? It of course has formed the bedrock of our faith, that Jesus went through all of that and in the process took on the punishment we so richly deserved for our sins. It was a time when Heaven and earth collided, when sins performed in the body on earth, were forgiven in Heaven, implementing God’s plan for the salvation of the world. But, as we will find out, it didn’t just end with a body in a tomb. Jesus’ body rested there for a while as His Spirit spent time elsewhere. But we pilgrims look at the story before us with horror, that God would allow His Son to suffer what He did, but also with gratitude that His love for us was so great that Jesus’ death was a price worth paying. 

Dear Father God. We pray prayers of gratitude this morning. We worship You with wonder in our hearts. We once again confess our sins, knowing that You will forgive us and wipe the record clean. Thank You Lord. Amen.

Reproduction

Posted on by korgrocker

“Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.” “What do you mean?” exclaimed Nicodemus. “How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?” Jesus replied, “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life”.
John 3:3-6 NLT

Nicodemus just didn’t get what Jesus was saying. The concept of spiritual birth was beyond his comprehension. So he made the contemptuous and sarcastic statement about repeating his physical birth in all its natural ways. But Jesus responded with two interesting facts about God’s Kingdom – the entrance qualifications are that someone has to be born both physically and spiritually. If either requirement is missing then membership of the Kingdom of God is not possible. Jesus said that a person has to be born by the natural process created by God – “Now Adam had sexual relations with his wife, Eve, and she became pregnant. When she gave birth to Cain, she said, “With the Lord’s help, I have produced a man!”“ (Genesis 4:1). But then Jesus said there was another birth through the Holy Spirit that gives birth to a spiritual person. This process happens as described by Paul in Ephesians 2:8-9, “God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it“. Paul also told the Corinthian church in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!“

We humans are both spiritual and natural beings. To be a citizen of the Kingdom of God, we have to fulfil both the entrance qualifications, and this is only possible while we are alive. A person who hasn’t yet been born can’t apply to be a member of God’s Kingdom and neither can someone who has died. We have a relatively short opportunity to be obedient to God’s call in our natural lives. Once they have passed it is too late to apply. The Apostle Peter succinctly set out the application process in Acts 2:38-39, verses that are heavily underlined in my Bible. “Peter replied, “Each of you must repent of your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. This promise is to you, to your children, and to those far away—all who have been called by the Lord our God”. 

We pilgrims heard the “call”. We received the “gift of the Holy Spirit” when we were saved, when we made that momentous decision to follow Jesus for the rest of our lives. And through that Gift we were born again, spiritually,  into God’s Kingdom. A simple process on the face of it, but so profound. And so important because, unlike our natural citizenship to our countries into which we were born or adopted, the Kingdom of God is an everlasting Kingdom that will never end. And so when our natural bodies die we live on spiritually. John 3:36, “And anyone who believes in God’s Son has eternal life. Anyone who doesn’t obey the Son will never experience eternal life but remains under God’s angry judgment“. 

The people in this world have a stark choice, and doing nothing, deferring a decision, is not an option. We can choose to be born spiritually in God’s Kingdom or we can turn our backs on the most important choice we will ever make in this life. We need to propagate that message at every opportunity. It’s very serious!

Dear Father God. You created us in Your image, and we have a “hole” within us that only You can fill. Thank You that You care for us. Amen.

Kingdom of God

Posted on by korgrocker

“After dark one evening, he came to speak with Jesus. “Rabbi,” he said, “we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are evidence that God is with you.” Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.””
John 3:2-3 NLT

In a recent post (“Child of God“) we considered the apparently contentious concept of being “born again”. John mentioned it in John 1:13, “They are reborn—not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God“. But here we have a late night conversation between a Pharisee called Nicodemus and Jesus. Nicodemus starts off with a complement, but Jesus cuts through the fluffiness with a response that blows Nicodemus away. Jesus said that there was only one way to “see the Kingdom of God” and that was by being born again. 

The concept of the Kingdom of God was something very familiar to the Jewish nation. They were waiting for the arrival of the Messiah who they expected would establish a Jewish kingdom on earth with God as their King. They had read the prophecies in the Old Testament. We too can read them, for example, Daniel 2:44, “During the reigns of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed or conquered. It will crush all these kingdoms into nothingness, and it will stand forever“. Such prophecy fuelled the expectation of the Jews but here they were under the yoke of a cruel occupying nation, the Romans. Their expectation of a physical Kingdom of God seemed a long way off, and we know that Jesus came to bring a different Kingdom, a spiritual Kingdom, membership of which entailed the process of being “born again”. We know that the state of Israel was finally established in 1948, a physical kingdom at last, but one day it will be the centre of the spiritual Kingdom of God. 

So we fast forward to 21st Century Planet Earth. What does this “Kingdom of God” mean to us pilgrims? Although we would love to see God rule and reign over His creation in a physical way, it is the spiritual Kingdom that we have the opportunity to be a part of. This is a Kingdom where God rules and reigns over the people who are within it – including us pilgrims. So the implication is that all those who have rejected God, (the default position of mankind), will not be able to be a part of this God-Kingdom. But we who have read to the end of the Book know that Jesus came the first time to establish the spiritual Kingdom, and will come a second time to establish the physical Kingdom. 

As we follow the discourse between Nicodemus and Jesus, we find some time-honoured truths that are life changing. Truths that have divided the church. But right at the heart of the issue of citizenship of the Kingdom of God is being “born again”. God cannot have anyone in His Kingdom who does not want that spiritual relationship with Him. So we reach out to our Heavenly Father today, assured of our salvation, basking in His love and grace. There is no better place to be.

Heavenly Father. We worship You this day and every day. Amen.

Nicodemus

Posted on by korgrocker

“There was a man named Nicodemus, a Jewish religious leader who was a Pharisee. After dark one evening, he came to speak with Jesus. “Rabbi,” he said, “we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are evidence that God is with you.””
John 3:1-2 NLT

A Jewish leader, a Pharisee called Nicodemus, emerges in the account in John, and we can read an important conversation between him and Jesus. Nicodemus emerges again in various places in John’s Gospel, but through it all he seemed to be a man who probably became a disciple of Jesus, albeit secretly.

The Pharisees were legalists who believed that their salvation could be attained by following the Law, every jot and tittle of it, and including all the additional rules and regulations the Jewish rabbis had developed over the years since Moses gave them the tablets of stone. So why would Nicodemus want to talk to this itinerant preacher called Jesus? After all His ministry was a threat to the cosy club the Pharisees had built for themselves. But Nicodemus had observed the teaching and miracles of Jesus and something stirred within him.  Could this man really be the Messiah the Jews had been waiting for? Perhaps he thought he would go and find out secretly, one to one with Jesus.

He probably did well to find Jesus available for the conversation, and he started respectfully by acknowledging Jesus was a rabbi, and that God had sent Him to teach the people. The miracles, he said, were the evidence needed to endorse Jesus’ ministry. But what was he hoping to gain from the conversation? Perhaps he was hoping that his position of being a leader in the Jewish faith would be endorsed and that he would find special favour. Or perhaps he just wanted to know more about Jesus and His background and faith so that he could gain some insight into Jesus’ future ministry and who He really was.

There are many today who would like to know more about Jesus. People have vague ideas about who Jesus was, perhaps gained from nativity scenes or memories of childhood Sunday school lessons. Perhaps they have puzzled over the liturgies in Christian marriage and funeral ceremonies. As an aside, I can remember at my daughter’s wedding one of the guests, a niece of my wife’s, asked why the minister kept mentioning Jesus in the service. Some people have preconceived ideas about Jesus perhaps fuelled by negative press reports about an errant priest or off the wall sect. But whatever the occasion, the devil has come along and has snatched away any curious thoughts about Jesus. 

What a tragedy that the Son of God Himself should be marginalised and forgotten about. Or reduced to a swear word in a conversation. But we pilgrims know differently. We have heard the Voice of God and have responded on our knees in repentance. We have worshipped the God-Man Jesus, acknowledging who He is and all that he has done for us. Like Nicodemus, there was probably a day when curiosity blossomed into our faith in Jesus. We don’t know what really happened in Nicodemus’ life later on but we know what will happen in ours. That’s all that matters. And from that faith, we tell others, introducing them to Jesus.

Dear Lord Jesus. Once again we thank You for coming to this errant world, riven by evil and sin. But You were, and are, the answer. We worship You today. Amen.