Category Archives: Truth

Good Question

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If you could ask just one question of Jesus, you probably couldn’t come up with a better one than they did.  But Jesus refused to answer them.  But if you  asked Him, would He answer you?  Maybe, maybe not.  Let’s set the stage:

” Jesus entered the temple courts, and, while he was teaching, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him. “By what authority are you doing these things?” they asked. “And who gave you this authority?”” (Matthew 21:23)

Trouble with that question is that most of the time it’s not really a question, it’s a challenge.  It translates as, “Who do you think you are?”  plus, “Don’t you realize who I am?”  People ask “by whose authority” in order to assert their own authority.  They aren’t really looking for an answer, just a surrender.  Jesus knew that and gave a masterful, “chess move” response.  He asked them to identify the authority behind John the Baptist’s baptism: was it from Heaven or was it from men? The priests refused to answer because either way they answered would have weakened their own authority over the people.

It was a beautiful trap – too detailed to explain in this short format, but worth reading (Matthew 21:23-27).  But with that question, Jesus established that they were not really interested in knowing Who had given Him His authority!  They were only interested in putting down His challenge to their own.  Think about that: the priests were not really interested in learning more about God!

 

But if someone really wanted to know the answer, that would be an excellent question to ask Jesus!  In fact, Jesus came to earth in great measure to answer that question!  God Almighty exists beyond the plane of human sight.  Jesus revealed Who He is in ways humans could understand.  In the same way you are looking at your computer monitor (or phone screen) to understand what is happening in the invisible realms inside your computer, Jesus came to make God visible and comprehensible.  He said:

Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.  (John 14:9b)

If the priests and teachers had really been seeking an answer, He would have given them the answer, the answer that would have blown their minds open and transformed them.  They had a good question but missed out on the answer.  It’s easy to make that mistake when we read the Bible.  If you have a chip on your shoulder when you approach the Bible, if you read it to judge it, you won’t find many answers.  But if you come with a humble, open heart, the answers will amaze you and nourish your soul.

Quotes: The Holy Bible : New International Version. 1996, c1984 (electronic ed.). Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

Risk it All

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Hey Mom!  Look at those funny skis; they are the oldest skis I’ve ever seen!  She tried to shut him up, but the damage had already been done – to my fragile ego.  It’s true I’d bought the skis (used!) in the early 60’s, some 30 years earlier, but I was proud of those skis because they weren’t made of wood and they didn’t have leather strap bindings.  Everyone else on the mountain was ignoring my shame, but not the kid.  Kids have a way of blurting out true but awkward things.

Like Who they knew Jesus was.  He’d just scolded the merchants who had set up shop in the Temple (Matthew 21:12ff) and then began miraculously healing people.  Check out the two reactions to what He was doing:

“But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple area, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they were indignant.” (Matthew 21:15)

Jesus was revealing His identity to anyone who could see it. He was the promised Messiah, the Son of God.  The children got the picture and whooped and hollered.  The chief priests, the Bible teachers, the experts who should have known more than anyone else?  They were indignant.

Our first response is to criticize the priests for their blindness.  But not so fast: Let’s acknowledge that they had far more to lose by recognizing Jesus.  They had gradually advanced into positions of prestige and privilege.  They were comfortable.  If they acknowledged Jesus’ identity publicly, all that was at risk.  Even the way they had come to understand life itself would have been up for grabs.  The children had none of that baggage; it was easy for them to see the truth.

I was slow to recognize Jesus for the same reasons. I sensed doing so would put too much at risk.  I’d worked for years to develop a successful business.  My marriage, rocky at times, seemed to be in a comfortable place.  I couldn’t predict how surrender to Jesus would shake everything up, but I was afraid to risk it.  Until it became too hard to ignore what I knew was true.  Looking back almost 30 years later, my leap of faith really did shake things up in my home life and business.  But it did so in amazingly good ways.  There is no comparison between what I called life back then and what Jesus described as a more abundant life.  But I couldn’t experience that new life until I was all in, until I risked it all.

Maybe you can relate to the priests’ fear and blindness, too.  it’s pretty common.  If so, let me encourage you to look through the eyes of a child, to see the truth and risk it all.  You will discover knowing Jesus is really worth it.

Also, if you are interested in some classic Head skis…

Quotes: The Holy Bible : New International Version. 1996, c1984 (electronic ed.). Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

The Path to Freedom

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When he pushed a 2×4 into the bear trap, the huge, rusty, steel jaws of that thing snapped shut, breaking that piece of lumber like a toothpick.   Everyone in that football stadium, attending Promise Keepers, flinched from the violent sound of it.  Then a father and his son were invited up onto the stage.  The son was blindfolded while a few bear traps were placed in the middle of the stage.  The father then called to his son, telling him to listen to his instructions as he walked across the stage.  At one point, as the kid was heading right toward a trap, the father shouted, “STOP!”   He did stop.  He followed his father’s spoken instructions, eventually winding up safely in his father’s embrace.  As you can imagine, this object lesson was indelibly pressed upon us that day.

Jesus said,

“To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31-32)

We are blindfolded from the truth in this earthly life, deceived by our limited understanding and false assumptions.  We stumble through life, unknowingly and inevitably heading toward peril.  That is, unless we “hold to” the teaching of Jesus.  It’s not enough to hear Him say, “STOP!”  Holding to His teaching means also responding to what He says.  If we do, Jesus says, we will “know the truth and the truth will set [us] free.”   Real freedom comes to us when we carefully follow the instructions spoken to us by the One Who knows where the traps are.  Real freedom is the path that leads to the full embrace of our Father.

July 4th is the day we celebrate freedom in this country.  According to our Declaration of Independence, we believe all people have been “endowed by their Creator” with the “unalienable right”  to liberty or freedom.  Such freedom may be our right but it is not guaranteed to those who refuse to listen and respond to the Creator.  It is those who “hold to [His] teaching” who “know the truth” and are thereby set free.

No Lie

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Jesus knew He would be tortured to death within the next several hours. He knew the men around Him had left everything behind to follow Him, that soon they would be consumed by a tsunami of terror and grief. He had one last chance to speak with them. It was time for straight talk. Here’s what He began with:

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” (John 14:1-4a)

In effect, He said:
A. No matter what happens, don’t panic; God is trustworthy and so am I
B. I am going to fix it so that we can live together with God forever.
C. It really is true that God’s “house” has “rooms” (literally, places for people to move in and live forever).
D. There is no way I would lie to you about this at a time like this.
E. I’ve got to leave you, but I will come back for you.

All of that is comforting. It sounds like what a loving father might say to his family just before he leaves to immigrate to a new country where they will be safe, and where he will bring them as soon as he has a job and a place to live. “Don’t worry! I will come back for you!” Comforting.

But then Jesus said:

“You know the way to the place where I am going.” (John 14:4b)

You can imagine how that comment raised anxious questions:

Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (John 14:5-6 )

Jesus wasn’t lying about any of that, either.

Foxhole Radio

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A razor blade and a pencil!  Prisoners of war in WWII who could scrape together a razor blade and a pencil were able to construct simple radios, allowing them to hear the truth about allied advances.  Their captors lied to them about who was winning the war in order to discourage them and manipulate them into doing self-destructive things.  But hearing the truth through these “foxhole radios,” many prisoners found the strength to resist.

You and I have been “prisoners” in this world, kept in the dark and lied to by Satan, in an attempt to control us and cause us to do self-destructive things.  We don’t need a razor blade or a pencil; we need God’s Holy Spirit to “guide [us] into all truth” John 16:13.  Jesus gives this Spirit to all those who fully trust Him.

Jesus said:

 “If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.  (John 14:15-17)

Notice that the kind of trust Jesus responds to is the trust that is turned into action through obedience.  That is because Jesus’ commands tend to contradict the things the world tells us.  Who you trust is revealed by who you obey.  Also see in those verses that the Holy Spirit does not merely visit, He lives within the believer forever! This is the best part of the “Good News.”  If Jesus merely died for our sins, we would still be stuck in our same. sinful condition.  But by giving us the Holy Spirit, Jesus connects us to God in the way God designed for humans to operate.  Now we have access to the truth from within our souls, truth that contradicts the lies we are taught in the world.  (An example of a contradictory truth is Jesus’ teaching that the greatest person in a group is the one who takes the lowest position and serves the most.  Luke 22:26)

John has been living with this Spirit and knows how wonderful the difference is.  He also knows how deceptive and tempting the lies of the world are.  So John reassures believers with these words:

You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them (deceiving spirits – in verse 3), because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.  (1 John 4:4-6)

The Spirit of God is our foxhole radio.  During the war, foxhole radios only helped the prisoners if they listened to them and believed what they were hearing.  You get the point…

Confidence with God

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Who is your worst critic? Who runs you down the most?  It’s you isn’t it?  Most people tell themselves things that, if spoken to others, would qualify as emotional abuse.  That is why John talked about how to “set our hearts at rest… whenever our hearts condemn us.”  

Because we start life disconnected from God’s Spirit, we adapt; we learn to trust our feelings instead, to assess our situation.  But feelings are notoriously unreliable guides.  You can be surrounded by people who love you and still feel insecure.  You can have a problem at work and drag your feelings (anger, frutration, etc.) back home with you.  But when we trust Jesus, He connects us to His Spirit.  Now we can listen to His input and wean ourselves off trusting our feelings.  We still have feelings, but we understand how subjective and unreliable they are.  Jesus called His Spirit “the Spirit of Truth.” (John 14:17)  As Jesus says, “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32)

Freedom from having to trust our feelings, having access to the Spirit of Truth, comes with significant advantages:

Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from Him anything we ask, because we obey His commands and do what pleases Him.  (1 John 3:21-22)

Marlon Brando played The Godfather with such skill, we could easily understand why people feared “the Don.”  People in his presence acted with great reserve and an exaggerated show of respect.  But there was one scene that showed him out in his garden, with his little grandson fooling around, trying to tackle him at the knees, laughing and playing.  Perhaps it is wrong to illustrate anything about God with a movie about the Mafia.  But can you see the freedom that comes when we know we can be confident in God’s presence, freely asking Him for things that we know will please Him?  Can you picture yourself in short pants, tackling God about the knees?  Laughing with Him in His garden?

Here is how:

And this is His command: to believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as He commanded us. Those who obey His commands live in Him, and He in them. And this is how we know that He lives in us: We know it by the Spirit He gave us.  (1 John 3:23-24 )

Dangerous Faith

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Speaking of people who lived by strong faith, the author of Hebrews says:

Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated—  (Heb 11:36b-37)

Of course, that was back in the old Bible days, right?  What challenges do we face today that test our faith?  Well, last week, 20 churches were burned to the ground.  Homes were ransacked and torched.  People were beaten and a few were killed.  Why?  They were Christians living in Egypt.  In some areas of Egypt, Christians are living as prisoners in their homes, afraid to go outside, even to get food.  Most of us cannot imagine what these people are dealing with, much less really know how we would respond if we were in their shoes.  They are facing a stark challenge to their faith.  What they choose to do, in response to these attacks, will show what they believe.   The world urges us to fight back, to get even, take revenge.  Jesus taught: 

But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…  (Matthew 5:44)

Sadly, the situation in Egypt is hardly unique.  Levels of Christian persecution are higher than they ever have been.   This faith business is dangerous business.   Would you join me in praying for these brothers and sisters, asking God to strengthen their faith?

Basic Faith

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Perhaps if I gave it a chance, I might get into Downton Abbey, but something about watching stuffy aristocrats having tea just makes me restless. Give me heart-pounding, thriller action. Maybe that is why I’m drawn to Hebrews 11. It is about giants of faith who resolutely held on to what they believed was true, in the face of painful and life-threatening coercion. Some of those guys (and gals) were sawed in two and thrown to the lions because they would not deny their beliefs. Dozens of jaw-dropping acts of faith are attributed to sixteen individuals by name. But the first act of faith listed isn’t specific to any one of them; it was shared by all of them – and, hopefully, you too. After first explaining what faith is (See: Loud and Clear), the author of Hebrews gives examples of faith, beginning with this one:

By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. (Hebrews 11:3)

Since that was written, we’ve advanced quite a lot, from swords to drones, from parchment to the cloud. But how the universe came about is still being actively debated. Faith understands that God formed it, by commanding it to be. That sounds old and religious. But, more contemporary and mind-bending, it says faith knows that the tangible universe was formed out of something invisible. Scientists in the field of quantum mechanics talk like that.Notice, please, that the quote from Hebrews didn’t say faith knows when God did it, but that He did. The understanding that God made everything out of nothing (or at least out of something intangible) is a foundation stone for faith. Why start there? Perhaps because, with that understanding and perspective, everything else we do in life is colored by deep respect and reverence for God. We live with a profound awareness that this is His place, He made it.

The antique tea cart in our living room was hand-made by my wife’s great grandfather. It is a thing of old beauty, adorned by hand-carved, swirling trim, and slender, wood-spoked wheels. It is a visible expression of great skill and passion. We don’t put cans of paint on it, don’t use it as a workbench. Sometimes I gaze at it, losing myself in the details of its construction. I imagine the man I never knew, hunched over in his shop, wiping sawdust off his glasses and leaning in to get just the right cut from his old, but carefully sharpened gouge.

That type of humility and reverence (greatly multiplied), in the midst of God’s awesome creation, is foundational for the faith that connects us to Him in a living relationship. Conversely, the arrogant attitude that dismisses such awe and humility disconnects us from that relationship with God. With tragic consequences. As the Apostle Paul said, it’s not that people don’t know that God created the tangible universe, but that they suppress this truth.

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. (Romans 1:20-21)

Looking for faith, real faith? Open your heart and mind and take a good look around at all that God has crafted so intricately and beautifully.

Stay tuned; there’s more…

God’s Name

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The bumper sticker said, “God is too big to fit into just one religion.”  Hmmmm…  If they meant that Jews and Christians worship the same God, okay, I agree with that.  But if they meant that all religions share the same God, then we got a problem – sloppy, illogical thinking.  If one person’s God says He has chosen a small tribe of people and will use them to extend blessing to the world, and another guy’s “god” says that that same tribe of people must be eradicated from the earth before his blessing can come, then those two guys are not hearing from the same God.

Because we humans cannot fully perceive or understand God, we have a tendency to define Him according to what we think He should be like.  We say things like, “If there is a God, then why do people starve?”  Questions like that presume that we have the capacity and the right to define God’s character.  We give God a make-over, according to our own preferences.  And we wind up with many different gods.

News flash: We are not in charge of Who God is.  He is.  When He called Moses to rescue the Israelites from slavery, Moses asked Him for some ID:

Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’  ”God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.  (Exodus 3:13-15)

What a perfect name: “I Am Who I Am; deal with it!”  Throughout the Bible, humans try to redefine the character of God and pretend that He is the way they want Him to be.  Tragic things ensue.  But God doesn’t change; He says, “My name (the essence of Who I am) is I AM WHO I AM.”

An acquaintance,  who is in recovery, talked about how, in AA meetings, everybody seems to have a personal “Higher Power,” each of them with different personalities.   Then he said, “But I am the lump of clay; I am the one who needs to be molded and changed, not God.”   My friend may have done some dumb things in the past, but he has discovered the beginning point for wisdom.  He knows Who God is: He is Who He Is.

You turn things upside down,
as if the potter were thought to be like the clay!
Shall what is formed say to him who formed it,
“He did not make me”?
Can the pot say of the potter,
“He knows nothing”? (Is 29:16)
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”  (Proverbs 9:10)

When Jesus taught His disciples to pray, He said they should start out by praying that the Name of their Heavenly Father would be held in high reverence.  Once you know God’s Name is I AM WHO I AM, everything else can fall into place.

Whap!!!

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Isaiah’s prophecy about Jesus’ perfect leadership (see “Will the Real Leader Please Stand Up?”) includes glimpses of the results and they read like fantasy: wolves lying down peacefully with sheep; children playing with poisonous snakes without any fear of being attacked. Whether or not those images will be fulfilled literally, the end results of perfect Leadership will seem too good to be true. Imagine a world with no need for warning labels, helmets or lawyers!

But in order to accomplish such thorough peacefulness, first, Isaiah said, Jesus would take out a mighty club and smash the wicked. Now, there is a scene rarely pictured in Sunday School books. (“You there! You’ve had your last warning! Whap! Crunch!…) Hard to imagine. Even harder when you understand that His club will be the words He speaks, His

    Truth

.

He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;
with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.

In a world in which a top law enforcement official can give testimony that by his own admission is “the least untruthful,” the Word of Jesus will descend like a mighty club, putting an end to all the nonsense. And that is good news. Whap!!!