Make Them Wait!

Meanwhile, when a crowd of many thousands had gathered, so that they were trampling on one another, Jesus began to speak first to his disciples, saying: “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy."

Luke 12:1

Many thousands had gathered to see Jesus, to hear Him speak, to be touched and healed by Him. Can you imagine the weight of those expectations? I can't. I can't imagine what it would feel like to have thousands of people all wanting to see me and hear from me at the same time. But notice what Jesus does. He ignores the thousands for the moment and speaks directly to His disciples first.

It strikes me that Jesus always does the most needful thing. He never seems to get distracted by the pressure to meet people's expectations of Him. Because Jesus doesn't care about pleasing people. He only cares about pleasing God with each and every second of His life. 

How often do you run yourself ragged trying to please everyone, or even trying to please only one person, when what you ought to be doing is living to please God?

Lord, help me to be like Jesus. Help me to do what is most needful. Help me to be immune to the pressures of other people's expectations of me. Help me to be comfortable allowing everything else to wait while I do the one thing that is most needful: living to please You. Amen.

Upside Down Houses

Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

Luke 2:34-35

In recent years people have begun building upside down houses as tourist attractions. Of course it requires quite a bit of architectural ingenuity and construction know-how to make the house structurally sound while looking as if it is sitting on its roof. Tables and chairs bolted to a ceiling that looks like a floor. A bed, neatly made, with sheets, covers, and pillows glued in place, all defying gravity and hanging overhead. Imagine what it would be like to really live in a house like this, though. None of the furniture would be usable. Only a few of the appliances would be reachable. Can you even imagine how dangerous ceiling fans would be?!

This is the kind of topsy-turvy image I get in my head when I read Simeon's words in Luke 2. He prophesies that Jesus will cause the rise and fall of many in Israel. He will be opposed and will reveal the condition of people's hearts. Simeon says in essence that Jesus is destined to turn the world upside down. Or more accurately, He will turn the world right side up. 

You see, the world we live in is like those upside down houses. When mankind rejected God and began to worship ourselves and the created order instead of the Creator, we turned the world on its head. Deep in our hearts we all know this to be true. Our world is deeply flawed. Everything is not as it should be, but this is all we have ever known. We are like people who have lived in that upside down house for our whole lives. It is all we know. We get used to it. It makes sense to us. You can imagine how someone like that would react if a person came to set things right... to turn our home right side up again. That's exactly how many people react to Jesus. They think He is turning their world upside down, when in reality He wants to turn it right side up. 

Jesus flipped the societal expectations and order of His day in innumerable ways. And I believe He does the same thing in our hearts. When Jesus begins to work in a person's life, He systematically goes about undoing the perversion of sin in their life. One by one He walks around the little upside down houses that are our hearts and begins turning things right side up. How we respond to Jesus as He challenges our old ways of living reveals the condition of our hearts. Consider for a moment two ways Jesus flipped the script on people in His day, and consider how He may want to do the same today with you.

First, Jesus confronted religion that was merely outward ritual and form, and offered a close relationship with God in its place. He accosted hypocrisy. He attacked profiteers who had turned worship into a marketplace for their own gain. We all have flawed perspectives on God and religion, and Jesus must confront these flawed views. He will not be satisfied with worship that equates to giving God a day here and there, or to performing some outward ritual alone. Jesus wants your whole heart and will offered up to God. You can fight Him all you want, but He won't accept anything less.

Second, Jesus challenged people's views of what success looks like. He taught that the greatest among men ought to make himself the servant of all... and then He lived this truth. He lived it out not only in His life but also in His death. And in so doing He flipped our concept of winning as well. Success isn't about what you accomplish in this life; it's about what you accomplish for the life to come. This perspective is what makes great sacrifice possible for believers. Make no mistake, when you follow a crucified Lord, sacrifice is part of the deal. The good news is that Jesus promises rewards in the next life for all we sacrifice for Him in this life.

Maybe your life has been in upheaval lately. Maybe it feels like God is challenging you or turning your life upside down. It's tempting in those moments to complain. Instead, stop and ask yourself this question, "How might Jesus be using this situation to turn my life right side up?"

A Life Permanantly Marked by God

“Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven...Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it."

Matthew 10:32-33, 37-39

It wasn't that long ago that carnivals in America featured tattooed ladies in their so-called freak shows. While many people landed in carnival sideshows as a result of a birth defect or some physical abnormality or exception, this wasn't the case with tattooed ladies. They chose their physical abnormality and even endured pain to make their bodies permanently different. Now I am not trying to hold these women up as examples to live by, but if nothing else you have to respect their resolve. There were literally covered in tattoos in a culture that disapproved. They were permanently marked by their love of this lifestyle and they made no attempt to hide it.

In an odd sort of way, this reminds me of Christ. I know it is an unorthodox comparison, but stay with me. Like these ladies, Christ was permanently marked by His love. Even now as He sits at the right hand of God the Father in heaven, Christ still bears the scars in His body that prove His love for you. He made no attempt to hide this after His resurrection (John 20:24-29). On the contrary, His scars are trophies of His great victory over sin. These precious scars proclaim His glory to the whole world. In the same way a Christian's life ought to be permanently marked by his or her love for God. A person that is truly changed by the dumb-foundingly amazing love of God that he or she encounters in Christ should be irreparably changed. "Like a tattoo that can be seen at all times,"* Christians should be permanently marked by a changed life that is constantly visible. 

In the above passage of Scripture Christ is sending his twelve disciples out to minister. He has already told them that He is sending them out like "sheep among wolves" (Matthew 10:16) and that they will be beaten and arrested on His account (Matthew 10:17-19). He even says, "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matthew 10:28). He isn't speaking of the Devil here, for only God has the power to cast into Hell. So Jesus makes clear that neither beating, nor threat of arrest, nor even death is a reason for a disciple of His to deny his commitment to Him. So imagine what He will say one day when you stand before Him and admit that you claimed to follow Him but were too scared to acknowledge Him publicly because you didn't want to be labeled a "freak" by your culture. What I wouldn't give for Christians today to have even half the backbone that these tattooed ladies had! Christ wasn't ashamed to be permanently marked by His love for you. How dare you be ashamed for your life to be publicly marked by your love for Him? Stop leading a double life. You should be as obviously Christian everyday of the week in every situation as you are on Sunday in church. 

But there is good news! Repentance is still available. Peter himself, the rock of the early church denied Christ, but was restored after repenting (John 18:15-26 & John 21). If today, the Lord has convicted you that you are leading a double life, examine your faith, repent, and proudly wear the marks of the Christian life. A public confession of Jesus is required for salvation (Romans 10:9 & Acts 2:38). If you are unwilling to claim Christ publicly, then He will not claim you as His own either.

For further reading...

• Matthew 10- Check out the entire passage. It is a challenging read.
• John 18:15-26 & John 21- Read Peter's story of redemption.

*The title of this post and some of the rough concepts in it were loosely inspired by a youth Bible study series that I received for free entitled Inked: Marked for Life. You can learn more about this study here.

Great Expectations

Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. Some people came and asked Jesus, “How is it that John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, but yours are not?”

Jesus answered, “How can the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? They cannot, so long as they have him with them. But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and on that day they will fast.

“No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.”

Mark 2:18-22

A thread runs through these first two chapters of Mark that I have yet to point out, and that is that Jesus was offensive to many in His day, especially those of the religious elite. Since verse twenty-one of chapter one, Mark has been piling up one on top of the other, almost without a break, all of the offensive things Jesus has been doing. Allow me to give a quick summary. In 1:21-31, Jesus casts out a demon on the Sabbath in the synagogue and then follows it up by healing Simon Peter's mother-in-law later that afternoon (healing on the Sabbath would soon become a serious point of contention between Jesus and the Pharisees, see Mark 3:1-6.) In 1:41 He touches a man with leprosy. Then in chapter two, He claims to have the power to forgive sins (2:10), calls a tax collector as one of His twelve disciples (2:14), is found to be consorting and eating with sinners and tax collectors (2:15), and now it is discovered that His disciples are not fasting as often as the other religious men are.

It seems that Jesus didn't live up to the expectations of those in His day. How can it be then that the church teaches that Jesus was perfect? Simple. Jesus always lived up to God's expectations. He didn't always live up to man's expectations. You see God only required the Israelites to fast one time a year on the Day of Atonement (see Leviticus 16:1-34), but the Pharisees had taken to fasting Monday and Thursday of every week.* This was a man made tradition. (Interestingly enough Lane posits that John's disciples may have been fasting as "an expression of repentance designed specifically to hasten the coming of the time of redemption" or the Messiah.) It is obvious then, that Jesus and His disciples had no reason to fast, especially if the fasts were designed to hasten the coming of the Messiah. That would be like fasting at a wedding feast, Jesus says. The Messiah has come! This should be a time of rejoicing, not of mourning.

From the beginning of Mark, Jesus' message has been that "The time has come; the kingdom of God has come near." This new situation in the world calls for a new ordering of our lives. The old traditions cannot contain this new and amazing thing that God is doing in Christ. Jesus likens it to putting a patch made of new cloth on a garment made of old cloth. The old cloth has already shrunk, but the cloth in the patch, being new, has not. Therefore, when the garment is laundered the patch will shrink and create a worse tear in the garment than was there originally. Similarly, Jesus says that you don't put new wine in old wineskins. As the grape juice in wine ferments it expands. New wineskins are elastic enough to expand with the wine, but old skins have already expanded once and are no longer elastic. If you put new wine in an old skin, the wine will expand beyond the ability of the skin and burst it. So too, Jesus is telling His contemporaries that their old ways of thinking about God and His kingdom are not big enough to contain all that God is doing now. They need a new paradigm...a new way of thinking about God's work in the world and His redemption of fallen man.

This passage is a good reminder that sometimes (only sometimes) when we don't live up to the expectations of the people around us, that says more about their expectations than it does about us. It is also a good warning against placing a higher priority on our traditions than on the Word of God? What personal preferences do you place a higher priority on than what the Bible actually says? Do you need to ask God to change your way of thinking so that you can better understand all that He is doing in our world now? Lord, make us new that we might be able to expand with Your work in this world as it ever expands to the ends of the earth and the coming of the age!

For further reading...

• John 12:42-43- Some of the saddest words in all the Bible! Whose expectations are you trying to meet?
• Matthew 15:1-9- Jesus points out a tradition of men that they were placing above the Bible. I have often wondered in what ways we do the same in our own day. 

*Lane, William L., The Gospel of Mark. The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.: Grand Rapids, MI. 1974.