Sun Bursts

Posted on by korgrocker

“ … God has made a home in the heavens for the sun. It bursts forth like a radiant bridegroom after his wedding. It rejoices like a great athlete eager to run the race. The sun rises at one end of the heavens and follows its course to the other end. Nothing can hide from its heat.”
Psalm 19:4b-6 NLT

In our enlightened days, we know that it is not the sun that moves across the heavens; rather, the earth rotates on its axis causing the illusion of a moving sun. But regardless of what moves, the effect is still the same. The sun bursts into a dark world every day, bringing light and heat, without which mankind would be unable to exist. And at the end of the day, it disappears in the same way it appeared, but over a different horizon. We very much take the sun for granted. All our lives it appears and disappears, so predictably that our weather scientists are able to determine to the minute the sun cycle each day. And around the world, the times of the sun vary because of the earth’s rotation. But this will not always be so.

In Matthew 24:3 we read a question that the disciples asked of Jesus, “Later, Jesus sat on the Mount of Olives. His disciples came to him privately and said, “Tell us, when will all this happen? What sign will signal your return and the end of the world?”” Jesus then told then about a series of events that will happen as the current age draws to a conclusion, and we eventually reach Matthew 24:29, “Immediately after the anguish of those days, the sun will be darkened, the moon will give no light, the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken“. The extinguishing of the sun precedes the next event which we read in Matthew 24:30, “And then at last, the sign that the Son of Man is coming will appear in the heavens, and there will be deep mourning among all the peoples of the earth. And they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory“. The prophet Joel also wrote about the sun in the end times, as we read in Joel 2:31, “The sun will become dark, and the moon will turn blood red before that great and terrible day of the Lord arrives”. But we can be assured that the sun will never disappear, stopping its life-supplying powers, until the time is right.

The sun provides light for our physical bodies and for all the functions necessary to sustain our planet. But there is another side which we mustn’t forget – nourishment for our souls. The sun cannot penetrate there but the Son can. Jesus said, “ … I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life” (John 8:12). There is a strange thing about human beings, in that they can walk around in their lives physically alive but spiritually dead – Ephesians 2:1, “Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins.” Colossians expands on this theme, “You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins”(Colossians 2:13). ‭‭We know that when sin entered the world a spiritual death followed, because the warmth and light of a relationship with God was cut off. But as Jesus said, because He is the Light of the world, our spirits become alive when we confess our sins and find righteousness before God, relationship restored. 

The importance of God’s Word, the Bible, is essential to maintain life for our souls. God’s Word is constant and available, just as the sun is, but in both cases we have to do something to maximise the benefits so that our lives can function properly. The psalmist who wrote Psalm 119 understood the importance of God’s Word. “The teaching of your word gives light, so even the simple can understand” (Psalm 119:130). But although the sun will one day disappear, We read in Isaiah 40:8, “The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God stands forever”. Jesus said, “Heaven and earth will disappear, but my words will never disappear” (Matthew 24:35). As we face into our mortality, we can be assured that our spirits will live on, refreshed and kept alive through the Word of God.

In Psalm 113:3 we read, “From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets, the name of the Lord is to be praised”. We pilgrims have the opportunity to obey the Psalmist’s command to continual praise the Lord’s name. This is not to say that we ignore every other purpose in our work-a-day lives, but in all that we do we consider the importance of our relationship with God, keeping His name honoured. So today, as we face into all that is before us, we praise and worship our awesome God, behaving as prophesised by Malachi, “But for you who fear my name, the Sun of Righteousness will rise with healing in his wings. And you will go free, leaping with joy like calves let out to pasture” (Malachi 4:2). 

Dear Lord God. Today we worship the Son. There is none other who has the words of eternal life. Amen.

‭

Who Is The Son of Man?

Posted on by korgrocker

“He said this to indicate how he was going to die. The crowd responded, “We understood from Scripture that the Messiah would live forever. How can you say the Son of Man will die? Just who is this Son of Man, anyway?””
John 12:33-34 NLT

The people in the crowd were just not getting it. Just a few minutes before, Jesus had referred to Himself as the Son of Man – John 12:23, “Jesus replied, “Now the time has come for the Son of Man to enter into his glory”. And the same people were there when He spoke about the kernel of wheat, and then when He had a conversation with His Father in Heaven. Of course, we also mustn’t forget that the miraculous raising of Lazarus from the dead was still foremost in their minds. What else did Jesus have to do to get across to them that He was the Son of God, the Messiah, and the Saviour of the Jews? 

But Jesus referred to Himself as the Son of Man. In effect, all us males are sons of man. Not to offend anyone, we are all sons and daughters of men and women. In other words, we are all human. So when Jesus referred to Himself as the Son of Man, He was emphasising His humanity. He was the Son of God and the Son of Man, divine and human. In the New Testament, Jesus referred to Himself eighty one times as the Son of Man, and then there was an eighty second mention from the lips of Stephen, as he was martyred – “And he told them, “Look, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing in the place of honour at God’s right hand!”” (Acts 7:56). 

Jesus also used the descriptive “Son of Man” as a statement of His humility. A humility that was exposed in a definite way when He washed the disciple’s feet. A humility that fulfilled the suffering servant prophecy we see in Isaiah 53. Jesus said, as recorded in Matthew 20:28, “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Jesus never went around lording it over people and using an elevated title to explain His true status. In all humility He rode a donkey into Jerusalem, hardly a mode of transport fit for the King that he was. He came to serve.

Jesus was God’s Son, part of the trinitarian Godhead, but also He was one of us as well. And, somehow, that humanity forms a link between God and His creation, mankind. In Colossians 2:9-10, we read, “For in Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body. So you also are complete through your union with Christ, who is the head over every ruler and authority”. There is also that tremendous verse – Romans 8:29 – where Paul wrote about Christ having many siblings – “For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters“. We pilgrims are part of God’s family, and all because we believed in Jesus and His offer of salvation and eternal life. The Son of Man and the sons and daughters of men and women all combine into a glorious and united family, a family that one day will be all together in the presence of our Father God. 

Father God. Through Your grace, love and mercy, You have accepted us as Your children. We are so grateful. Amen.

Truth and Glory

Posted on by korgrocker

“So for the second time they called in the man who had been blind and told him, “God should get the glory for this, because we know this man Jesus is a sinner.””
John 9:24 NLT

The Pharisees made two erroneous assumptions when they called Mr Blind-no-more into their forum for a second time. They first of all suggested that he hadn’t told everything about what had happened, implying that he was a liar, and secondly, they accused Jesus of being a sinner. They were wrong on both counts. Saying that “God should get the glory for this” does not mean that God should be glorified because of the miraculous healing that had taken place, but it was the equivalent of promising before God to ”tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”, as is said in British courts of law. 

The Pharisees couldn’t accept something as simple as what in fact happened. Jesus made mud from His saliva, spread it onto the man’s eyes, and told him to go and wash in a particular pool. When he had done that his sight was restored. A correct and truthful statement of facts. But for something as miraculous as that to happen so simply was too much for the Pharisees. They would at least have expected a visitation of angels, a public demonstration of some kind, and all authorised by the religious leaders with much prayer and incantations. To be blind-sided by this by someone who made what was to them blasphemous claims about Himself was an insult to their positions as religious leaders in the Jewish society. So the Pharisees assumed that the healing couldn’t have happened in the way Mr Blind-no-more described. What followed was a second attempt to extract the “truth” from the man before them.

The Pharisees went on to say that Jesus was a sinner. Nothing could have been further from the truth. As we pilgrims know, Jesus, who was without sin, became sin on our behalf, taking our punishment of death, all so that we could put on His righteousness before God. The divine exchange. What a Saviour! But the Pharisees were having none of His claims. They disputed the truth of Jesus’ statements that he was the Son of God, even in the face of miracles and signs that could not have come from someone of purely human origins. Every miracle committed by Jesus over and over again confronted their unbelief and animosity. To believe in Him was in effect abdicating their religious authority, handing it over to where it should have been all along, in the hands of God. 

Mr Blind-no-more told the truth and Jesus was the only sinless Man who has ever walked this planet. By their own admission the Pharisees made claims that, unless repented of beforehand, ensured their judgement in the fullness of time. We give God the glory for Jesus and all He did for us during His time here in this world. And we take heart from the example of Mr Blind-no-more who stayed faithful to the truth even in the face of aggressive questioning. 

Dear Father God. We praise You today and give You the glory for all Your works here in this world. We thank You that even today Your healings continue because of Your love and grace. We praise You today. Amen. 

Adultery (1)

Posted on by korgrocker

“Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives, but early the next morning he was back again at the Temple. A crowd soon gathered, and he sat down and taught them. As he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They put her in front of the crowd. “Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?” They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger. They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust. When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?” “No, Lord,” she said. And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.””
John 8:1-11 NLT

Jesus returned to His accommodation on the Mount of Olives after His eventful last day at the Feast of Tabernacles. A day in which He had declared an invitation, “ … Anyone who is thirsty may come to me! Anyone who believes in me may come and drink! For the Scriptures declare, ‘Rivers of living water will flow from his heart’” (John 7:37b-38). A day during which He had nearly been arrested for blasphemy. A day when many in the crowd in the Temple started to declare that He was the Messiah. But John recorded that He was soon back in the Temple the next day and a crowd gathered around Him. In accordance with the Rabbinic custom of His day, Jesus then sat down and started to teach them. But the religious leaders had a disruptive plan, hoping to trap Jesus into committing an error that would give them another reason to arrest Him. How they managed it we don’t know, but somehow they found a woman “who had been caught in the act of adultery”, and they displayed her publicly right there in the Temple in front of Jesus.

As an aside, one person was conspicuously absent from the Pharisees’ plans – the man. The act of adultery takes two people, a man and a woman, to be accomplished, so where was the man? The Pharisees and the other religious leaders present quoted the Law of Moses from Deuteronomy 22:22, “If a man is discovered committing adultery, both he and the woman must die. In this way, you will purge Israel of such evil”. There is another verse in Leviticus 20:10, “If a man commits adultery with his neighbour’s wife, both the man and the woman who have committed adultery must be put to death”. The misogyny of the religious leaders was symptomatic of an age when women were considered little better than the farm animals in a man’s stable.

The religious leaders were trying to catch Jesus out, by putting Him in a no-win position. If He recommended that the woman was released, then He could have been accused once again of treating the Law of Moses with contempt. On the other hand, if He agreed with the leaders that the woman should be stoned then the Roman authorities, who exclusively had the mandate to administer a death sentence, might be upset and arrest Him. But what followed was a moment of reality to the accusers. They realised that they were all sinners, and had no mandate to judge another sinner. So when Jesus said to them that only the sinless had the authority to stone a sinner, they dropped their stones and walked away. Something powerful happened that day, even in the lives of the religious leaders who liked to display their personal righteousness before the people. Because of their public humiliation they now hated Jesus even more. But they had encountered the Son of God Himself, and perhaps received a glimpse into God’s heart of love and grace, contrasting their rigid and legalistic faith. Jesus said that His Kingdom was close at hand, and sadly the religious leaders possibly missed an opportunity to enter it.

Father God. We pray that Your Kingdom will come to this devil-ruled world. And soon. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Prophet or Messiah

Posted on by korgrocker

“When the crowds heard him say this, some of them declared, “Surely this man is the Prophet we’ve been expecting.” Others said, “He is the Messiah.” Still others said, “But he can’t be! Will the Messiah come from Galilee? For the Scriptures clearly state that the Messiah will be born of the royal line of David, in Bethlehem, the village where King David was born.” So the crowd was divided about him. Some even wanted him arrested, but no one laid a hand on him.”
John 7:40-44 NLT

There were obviously some people in the crowd who knew their Bibles. The reference to the “Prophet” came from verses in Deuteronomy 18, “Moses continued, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him. … I will raise up a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites. I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell the people everything I command him” (Deuteronomy 18:15,18). And the prophecy about the “Messiah” came from Micah 5:2, “But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, are only a small village among all the people of Judah. Yet a ruler of Israel, whose origins are in the distant past, will come from you on my behalf”. Still others didn’t rate Jesus at all, presumably considering Him to be a fraud, so they wanted to arrest Him. It was not a time in history when you would want to make claims of divinity, it seems.

But the three-way schism in the crowd that had gathered in the Temple came to nothing, because “no one laid a hand on Him”. Jesus’ presence, and His teaching and miracles, started many people off on a spiritual journey by confronting their beliefs and behaviours. If Jesus was in fact the Prophet or Messiah, then what should they do? But their religious leaders had publicly rejected Jesus because He didn’t pander to their religiosity and because He didn’t behave in the way they, the religious leaders, expected. They were perhaps expecting a Jesus such as we read about in Revelation, coming on a white horse at the head of an army, ready to do battle with the forces of evil. So the people were indeed left, as Jesus said later, like sheep without a shepherd. 

Perhaps the question for today is what do we think about Jesus? At His first coming was He the Prophet or the Messiah, foretold by the ancient prophets? We pilgrims have the benefit of hindsight, and know the truth. Jesus came as the Son of God, fulfilling the Old Testament prophecies, and offering Himself as the Saviour of everyone who believes in Him. Most people in our Western societies today will have very different views, even if they have any views about Jesus at all. But there has never been anyone born in this world who has impacted history as much as Jesus did. 

In the Temple that day, the people were not aware of the importance of the occasion. They knew Someone significant was before them but that was probably as far as it went for most of them. But there would have been a few people that God had called who listened to Jesus and then went away changed by an encounter with Him. People who desired more than anything else the “living water” that Jesus was offering. These were people who became the bedrock of the early church, and to whom we should be grateful. In the generations since, there have been a significant minority of people who have heard God’s call and who have followed Him, often in difficult and life-threatening circumstances. One day we will all meet up, and be with our Saviour for ever, rewarded for our faith and belief in Him.

Dear God. Thank You for Your Holy Spirit, so available to all who ask. We thank You for refilling us every day, and for keeping us close to You. Amen.

Jesus, the Sent One

Posted on by korgrocker

“While Jesus was teaching in the Temple, he called out, “Yes, you know me, and you know where I come from. But I’m not here on my own. The one who sent me is true, and you don’t know him. But I know him because I come from him, and he sent me to you.” Then the leaders tried to arrest him; but no one laid a hand on him, because his time had not yet come.”
John 7:28-30 NLT

Jesus didn’t just appear in this world as part of the normal reproduction of human beings. He was born in humble circumstances as a male baby, the first-born of a Jewish peasant girl. He went through all the stages of growing up as a boy did in those days. However, when He reached the age of twelve, He knew His mission in life. He stayed behind in the Temple one Passover and His parents found Him there. We read in Luke 2:49, ““But why did you need to search?” he asked. “Didn’t you know that I must be in my Father’s house?”” A reminder perhaps to His parents of that fateful day when Mary had a visit from an angel. We read in Luke 1:35, “The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God”. Jesus was born as a baby with Mary’s and God’s DNA. He was both human and divine. 

So, Jesus informed the crowd around Him at the Temple that, although they knew most of His humble origins, He had in fact been sent by His Father in Heaven. This statement of truth, however, was lost on the religious leaders who instead wanted to eliminate Him. After all, they couldn’t have someone claiming to be God’s Son around them, because if they believed Him, the consequence would be that there would be a tremendous upheaval to the political and religious life in Israel. We then have the intriguing statement that the leaders “tried to arrest Him”, but failed. The problem to them was that they were afraid of the crowd around Jesus – any attempt to arrest Him might cause unrest and threaten their authority. They needed to get Him on His own somewhere so that they could carry out their dark deeds. But there is perhaps a hint that Jesus’ Father in Heaven might have sent a few angels to protect Him, because John wrote, “His time had not yet come”. There would come a day when Jesus would be arrested but this wasn’t that time.

Jesus had been sent from God. It wasn’t a sudden appearance – that would happen at His Second Coming – but the first time round, Jesus had to come as a human being because in that way He would act as the bridge between God and mankind. We have a sinless, human and divine Saviour, who in spite of all the opposition, left us with a timeless message of love and hope, a message finally coming to fruition on a cross at Calvary. 

Dear Lord Jesus. Thank You for coming to this world in the way You did. Through Your sacrifice at Calvary we now have a way back to God, forgiven of our sins. Amen.

The Local lad

Posted on by korgrocker

“Then the people began to murmur in disagreement because he had said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They said, “Isn’t this Jesus, the son of Joseph? We know his father and mother. How can he say, ‘I came down from heaven’?””
John 6:41-42 NLT

Jesus’ claim to be the Son of God was rejected by the people around Him, because they knew His natural parents. They knew that Jesus had lived in Nazareth, growing up like any other Jewish boy in those circumstances and times. They had probably enjoyed the products He made in His carpenter’s shop, window frames, furniture, agricultural implements. But here He is, standing before them, and making the claim that He was the “bread that came down from Heaven”. So the people started to “murmur in disagreement“, as they tried to make sense of Jesus’ claims. On the one hand they had before them the indisputable facts of His miracles, and that He fed them a fish supper on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. But on the other they could not get their minds around His claim to be divine. But Jesus didn’t waver from His message and His mission, and He didn’t hold back from speaking difficult truths.

We don’t know much about the years between Jesus’ birth and closing the door for the last time on His carpenter’s shop, before the start of His public mission. Was Jesus a pious and religious young man, someone who didn’t join in with the drunken revelries, or the laddish behaviour that was probably prevalent in His days, just as it is today? Someone like John the Baptist, who from an early age set Himself apart from his peers? We do know about the episode in the Temple when the twelve-year-old Jesus was found by His parents sitting amongst the religious teachers where we read, ”All who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers” (Luke 2:47). But that’s about all, except for one verse at the end of Luke 2, “Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature and in favour with God and all the people”. 

Jesus was well regarded in His community, but what about His claims that He was the “bread that came down from Heaven”? He may have grown up into a well-respected young man but the Son of God? Because we pilgrims are more detached from the culture and society of Jesus’ day we perhaps have less of a problem. We find it easier to accept Jesus as the Person he claimed to be, and we have the benefit of hindsight, knowing how His ministry and mission panned out, knowing how God’s plan for the salvation of mankind came to fruition. But how would we feel if a local lad suddenly started to perform miracles and make divinity claims? 

In our Christian journeys we pilgrims will inevitably meet those who make claims. Such meetings may be in person, but more likely would be through social media posts, extolling the virtues of men and women of God. And occasionally someone will emerge and form a sect, duping their followers with supernatural claims. The Scripture warn us about such people. But Jesus was unique in that no-one else has made the claim that he was the Son of God and has gone on to prove it through astounding miracles and a death and resurrection. There is only one Jesus, and we give Him all the glory today.

Dear Jesus. You are the only One, the only Son of God. You came to this world with a plan for man’s salvation and we praise and worship You today in deep gratitude. Amen.

The Bronze Snake

Posted on by korgrocker

“No one has ever gone to heaven and returned. But the Son of Man has come down from heaven. And as Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life.”
John 3:13-15 NLT

Jesus made a statement that people who have gone to Heaven have never returned. But why would they want to? To the thief on the adjacent cross, Jesus called it paradise, inferring that Heaven is a wonderful place. There are those who claim that they died and went into Heaven but returned to their bodies when resuscitated, though Jesus’ statement to Nicodemus puts doubts on their conclusion, albeit briefly, of a visit to Heaven.  Of course there are those who are convinced that they have seen ghosts. But we should remember that after death our spirits end up in one of two places – Heaven for the believers and Hades for the non-believers. If they exist at all, ghosts are the product of Hades. Jesus gave us an illustration about the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31) that sets out the difference between the two places. From this story, it is not surprising that the spirits incarcerated in Hades would want to escape.

But there was one exception – Jesus is the only Person who has lived in Heaven and who came to earth. He came down to this world, implying that Heaven is a place that is above, higher, than where we are. But that introduces even more wonder into His incarnation – Jesus left a place of comfort, He called it paradise, to join mankind to live as one of God’s created beings. And Jesus came to Planet Earth for one reason – to provide eternal life to all those who believe in Him. 

We can read about the episode with the bronze snake in Numbers 21. The impatient and ungrateful Israelite slaves were speaking out, grumbling, against God and Moses, because of the long journey and the sameness of the food, manna. “So the Lord sent poisonous snakes among the people, and many were bitten and died” (Numbers 21:6). This act brought them to their senses, and we read in the next verse, “Then the people came to Moses and cried out, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take away the snakes.” So Moses prayed for the people“. And God gave Moses a remedy, “Then the Lord told him, “Make a replica of a poisonous snake and attach it to a pole. All who are bitten will live if they simply look at it!”” (Numbers 21:8). What a great picture of Jesus being lifted up on the Cross at Calvary. Just as the Israelites believed that by looking at the bronze snake on a pole they would be healed, Jesus said that all those who believed in Him, dying on that Cross at Calvary for their sins, would live for ever. The bronze snake prolonged the Israelites’ natural lives, but the Calvary Cross enabled people to live forever.

The Cross is central to our Christian faith. Without it there is no redemption from sin. No salvation and no eternal life. In John 14:6 we read, “Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me”. There is no short cut into Heaven. The squeamish won’t find a sanitised route to eternal life. It is only through the blood of Jesus that we are saved. If anyone tries to tell us anything different, don’t believe them.

Father God. Once again, we thank You for Jesus and His willingness to come to this world to save mankind. I pray today for all those I know who have failed to embrace God’s Son and who are heading for a lost eternity. 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.

Not My People

Posted on by korgrocker

“Concerning the Gentiles, God says in the prophecy of Hosea, “Those who were not my people, I will now call my people. And I will love those whom I did not love before.” And, “Then, at the place where they were told, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called ‘children of the living God.’””
Romans 9:25-26 NLT

Imagine how the Gentile Roman recipients of Paul’s letter must have felt when they read these verses. God, through His grace and mercy, has extended His love to all those not of Jewish heritage but who called upon His name anyway. Paul quoted verses from the Old Testament prophet Hosea – Hosea 2:23 and 1:10. But the entirety of the prophet Hosea’s message didn’t come to fruition until the early Apostles started to evangelise the world of their day. It wasn’t easy for the Jewish men. Acts 10 gives the fascinating account of Peter, and how God gave him a vision about telling the Good News to a Gentile believer, Cornelius. This man, a Roman centurion, we are told, was a God-fearing man who, one day, had a visit from an angel who scared the life out of him. He was told to send for Peter, who was living at the time in a place called Joppa. In parallel with this, Peter received a vision. We read in Acts 10:11-13, “He saw the sky open, and something like a large sheet was let down by its four corners. In the sheet were all sorts of animals, reptiles, and birds. Then a voice said to him, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat them””. Peter wasn’t happy about this, because the sheet was full of animals that Jews were not supposed to eat. He said in Acts 10:14, ““No, Lord,” Peter declared. “I have never eaten anything that our Jewish laws have declared impure and unclean””. But the response to him in the vision was, “ … “Do not call something unclean if God has made it clean”” (Acts 10:15). This happened three times and then there was a knock at the door from the men that Cornelius had sent to find him. We can read how Cornelius and his family became believers in the rest of the passage in Acts 10.

Jesus of course prepared the way for salvation for all men. The famous verses we read – John 3:16-17 say, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him“.  But Jesus Himself was only sent to God’s people, the Jews. Of course, He couldn’t be everywhere. Jesus told the Syrophoenician woman, as recorded in Matthew 15:24, “He answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel’“. ‭‭But He commissioned His disciples to take the Gospel beyond the Jews, as we read in Matthew 28:19-20, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age‘”.

Today there are many Christian denominations. But regardless of which one we belong to, we know that Jesus must be at the centre. The liturgy, the prayers – they must all point to Him. He is truly the Son of God and all that we do in our churches must be to His glory. Sadly, there are one or two Christian sects who have demoted Jesus to little more than a prophet. However, the old Apostle John, living as he did in an age of all sorts of erroneous claims about Jesus, wrote in 1 John 4:1-3, “Dear friends, do not believe everyone who claims to speak by the Spirit. You must test them to see if the spirit they have comes from God. For there are many false prophets in the world. This is how we know if they have the Spirit of God: If a person claiming to be a prophet acknowledges that Jesus Christ came in a real body, that person has the Spirit of God. But if someone claims to be a prophet and does not acknowledge the truth about Jesus, that person is not from God. Such a person has the spirit of the Antichrist, which you heard is coming into the world and indeed is already here“.

We pilgrims are truly grateful that God’s grace even extended to us Gentiles. Wherever we are living in the world, or whichever race we belong to, God’s grace and His Good News reached us. There is no where we can go to escape it. And as we extend that invitation to those around us, we remember how God’s love and grace saved us from a lost eternity. Let us never forget!

Dear God. We are so grateful for all You have done for us. And for extending Your love and grace to pilgrims everywhere. we praise You today. Amen.