Category Archives: Lord Jesus

We can love Him here and He feels it there

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If you love me, keep my commandments (John 14:15).  He who has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me (John 14:21).  If anyone loves me, he will keep my word (John 14:23).  If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love (John 15:10).  You are my friends if you do whatever I command you (John 15:14).

Anyone see a trend in these verses? He wants us to love Him and tells us how: Obedience. 

With that in mind, the question before us is this: Is it possible to do something so loving, so affectionate, so Christ-honoring here on earth that Jesus will feel it in Heaven’s Throneroom?

Can I do something loving for Jesus here and have Him feel the love there?

Yes.  Absolutely.

We direct your attention to the woman of Luke 7:36ff.

 

Then one of the Pharisees asked Him to eat with him. And He went to the Pharisee’s house and sat down to eat. And behold, a woman in the city who was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at the table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster flask of fragrant oil, and stood at His feet behind Him weeping; and she began to wash His feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head; and she kissed His feet and anointed them with the fragrant oil….

What courage it took for this fallen woman–known to be so–to enter a home where she was not welcome in order to see the Savior.  What depth of love drove her to His feet where she wept and worshiped.  Then, seeing what she had done and with nothing to dry the tears on His feet, she let down her hair and used it for a towel.  Then–in for a dime, in for a dollar–she broke open a flask of ointment and began to anoint His feet. The fragrance filled the house.  No one was unaware of her presence or of what she was doing.

A drama ensued. The Pharisee-host fumed inwardly, and our Lord turned it into one of Scripture’s greatest object lessons. We do love everything about this wonderful story.

It’s a lovely story.  We admire this woman.  And in some ways we envy her. We wish we had her courage, ignoring what people were thinking in order to do something that pleased Jesus.

What Christ-lover would not relish the opportunity to sit at the feel of our Lord and worship Him with our tears and our touch.

That day is coming, saints of the Lord.  Be faithful.

There is a sense, however, in which we can do that now.

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The one question we have for Jesus

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Now when Herod saw Jesus, he was exceedingly glad; for he had desired for a long time to see Him, because he had heard many things about Him…. And he questioned Him with many words…. (Luke 23:8-9).

Someone asked Larry King, the legendary television interviewer, if he could sit across the table and interview one person in all of history, who would it be.

“Jesus Christ,” answered this man who is Jewish.

“And what would you ask him?”

“I would like to ask Him if He was indeed virgin-born.  The answer to that question would define history for me.”

To be sure. That answer could change everything.  As it has for many a person.

So with the resurrection.  Answer that in the affirmative and everything else falls into place.

Many people asked questions of Jesus…

In the Gospels, we find people asking one question of the Lord Jesus, then going their way.  We have to wonder if through the years, as they reflected on their single moment with Destiny, this one touch with the Divine, they didn’t regret the shallowness or superficiality of their request.  Here are some…

–The disciples of John asked why they had to fast, but Jesus’ disciples were not required to.  Matthew 9:14.

–The tricksters asked Him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” that they might accuse Him.  Matthew 12:10. It’s not a bad question, although they didn’t care for the Lord’s answer.

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Proof that we are lost without Jesus

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The overwhelming proof of the lostness of mankind is that people rarely look up from the humdrum existence of their daily lives to ask, “Where is all this headed? What is out there? Where are we going?”

In a 1965 sermon reprinted in the May 2010 issue of Decision magazine, Billy Graham tells of the time when Robert Ingersoll, well-known atheist of the 19th century, was addressing an audience in a small town in New York. The orator forcefully laid out his doubts concerning a future judgement and the reality of hell.

At the conclusion, a drunk stood up in the back of the room, and said through slurred speech, “I sure hope you’re right, Brother Bob. I’m counting on that!”

Billy Graham commented, “Modern man does not like to think of God in terms of wrath, anger and judgment. He likes to make God according to his own ideas and give God the characteristics he wants Him to possess. Man wants to remake God to conform to his own wishful thinking, so that he can make himself comfortable in his sins.”

That struck a note with me. I had just been reading where someone did just that.

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Why Christians make so much of Jesus

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Jesus Christ was the First. The Most. The Best. The Last. The Everything.

Scripture ransacks the human language looking for superlatives enough to give mankind some kind of idea who this Person was who was born of a virgin, lived without sin, taught us of Heaven, and died in our place.  His resurrection and ascension forever secured His place in the history and thought and conversation of this small planet.

Earth has never seen another like Him.  He is unique.

Christianity and the Christian life are all about Jesus.

Regardless of what they tell you, the Christian faith is not about love.

It’s not about morals and doing good.

The Christian faith is not about helping one another and be ye kind and see you in church.

Love and morals and doing good, helping one another and showing kindness and attending worship are the byproducts of the Christian faith when done right.

But the Christian faith itself is all about one Person and One Person Only:  The Lord Jesus Christ.

He is the only Savior. He is the only sin-offering. He is the one and only mediator between God and man. He alone reveals God the Father to us.  His is the only Name by which we must be saved.

Jesus.  It’s all about Jesus.

The disciples said to Jesus, “Show us the Father and that’ll be enough for us!”  He answered, “Have I been so long with you and you still don’t know who I am?”  He paused for effect and said, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” (That’s John 14:8-9.)

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Why we need to say “I love you.”

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“My little children, let us not love in word or tongue (only), but in deed and in truth”(I John 3:18).

In our effort to encourage people to “love one another,” we must not leave the impression that words do not count.  While deeds of love and other expressions are vital, a lot of people need to hear the actual words.

“I love you.”  “You have no idea how much you mean to me.” “Thank you for being such a precious friend.” “I treasure you.”

Speaking love is a good thing to do.

First, something inside me needs to speak words of love.  It’s good for me.

One day, my young grandson said, “Grandpa, why do you tell me you love me so much?”

How perceptive, I thought. And such a good question. Why do I do that?

I said, “Grant, the love inside me keeps building up and I have to let it out. And the only way to do that is to say the words.”  Otherwise, I seemed to feel, I would explode.

This satisfied him. And it expresses the truth as well as anything I know.

Speaking love to someone dear to us can be a kind of pressure relief value.  We will explode if we don’t tell that person of our love.

For this reason, writing a love letter to our sweetheart can be almost as good as receiving one from them.

It’s good for us to say “I love you.”

We have all heard stories of a husband saying, “Honey, I love you so much it’s all I can do to keep from telling you.”  We want to scream, “Tell her! Tell her!”

You’ve heard of the trucker whose rig went off a Colorado mountainside in a snowstorm. He was found several days later, buried in the snow, his truck a crumpled wreck.  During the hours before he died, the man had written a note to his wife. He told her how much she meant to him, and added, “I’m so sorry I never told you.”

That line is nearly as tragic as the wreck itself.

In Dan Fogelberg’s tribute to his father called The Leader of the Band, one memorable line stands out:  And Papa, I don’t think I said ‘I love you’ near enough.

Most of us do not say it nearly enough.

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Making false assumptions

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The book centered around the year 1940 and all the war-related events of that year: Hitler’s invasion of the Low Countries, Churchill’s coming to power, Dunkirk, the Blitz, FDR’s election to the third term, and the isolationism in the USA.

I emailed the author of my appreciation for the book and added, “That year is also special because I made my appearance on March 28, 1940.”

Then I added, “But don’t think me old just because I was born in 1940.”

Later, I wondered why I’d gone to the trouble to say that, seeing as how I do not know that author and don’t expect to meet him. Why was that important to me?

I decided it’s a personal thing.

None of us want to be pigeon-holed because of demographics or statistics, nor for preconceptions or ignorance. Just because you are a Southerner does not make you a redneck. Living in Mississippi does not mean you are barefooted. All Louisianians do not speak Cajun. All Yankees are not rude.

Here’s a short list of assumptions I do not want people making about me. Again, it’s just a personal thing. Readers will have your own list.

Do not assume…

1) that I’m humorless just because I’m a preacher.

2) that I’m idle just because I’m retired.

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Beware of religious people who do not know God

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“An hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think he is offering service to God” (John 16:2).  “Deceiving and being deceived” (II Timothy 3:13).

I wrote something on this website calling for transparency and integrity from churches, using as a jumping off point the billboards up and down the Mississippi Gulf Coast where casinos glorify the fun, the shows, the money, the jackpots, etc., they offer without once mentioning the addicted souls, broken lives and destroyed homes that accompany these enticements. In the piece, I was wondering what if the government’s “truth in advertising” laws required them to tell the full story.

That article was directed to the churches. But someone who found it on the internet jumped all over it (and in ALL CAPITALS!) and accused me of worse things when our churches ask people to give money.

When people cannot see the difference in a church and a casino, forget about trying to reason with them.

The mental capacities of some people have been so skewed by their calloused souls and hardened spirits that they look at black and see white, look at evil and see good, look at Jesus Christ and see darkness.

We should not let such people intimidate us. They have been around from the beginning and are instruments of the evil one, deceiving and being deceived. (In Second Timothy 3:13 Paul says, Evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. A profound observation.)

On the night before He went to the cross, the Lord Jesus, seeking to prepare His little flock for all that lay ahead, said, “An hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think he is offering service to God” (John 16:2).

That’s as bad as it gets, yet we see it happening all the time.

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The missing element in the Christmas story?

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I sat in the congregation listening to the Christmas sermon.  Something was missing and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

The minister had selected one aspect of the Christmas story and read a text supporting it, then brought his sermon on that subject.  His points were properly related to the text and no doubt most people left the worship center satisfied they had been spiritually fed.  It was only later that something occurred to me, what was the missing ingredient in that morning’s service.

The worship leader and musicians and the pastor all drew our attention back to that night in Bethlehem over 2,000 years ago, and they did a fair job of opening the text, explaining its message, and praising the Lord. But they omitted one major element as far as I could tell.

They forgot to give us the “so what” of the Christmas message.

They failed to drive home the continuing aspect of this most wonderful of all events in the history of our world.

He’s still alive.  He is with us.  He is Lord of the here and now. 

They told us He was God and the Son of God. They reminded us of the prophecies and told how they were fulfilled. They gloried in the appearance of the angels and we sang the same song they did, although presumably not as well or as big.  We praised and loved and enjoyed and worshiped. But then…

We left with the understanding that that’s all there is, that it was a history event and “wasn’t that wonderful!”.

They failed to tell us the “So What” of Christmas.  They omitted the lasting and eternal difference that this earth and its inhabitants have lived under ever since the Incarnation.

1) Jesus was born in Bethlehem, yes–but He is still alive and among us.

Even though this is historical and fixed to a date and time and place, it’s far more than that.  The church is not a Jesus Memorial Society. Jesus Christ is alive and He is in this place and we are His children forever.

Immanuel translates to “God with us.”  Present tense!

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Perhaps the most important “re-post” I’ve ever done

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Google J. B. Phillips.  This British pastor lived 1906 to 1982.  Wikipedia says, “During World War II, while vicar of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Lee, London, he found the young people did not understand the KJV Bible. During the hours in bomb shelters, while Germany bombed London, Mr. Phillips began translating the New Testament into modern English.  He started with the Epistle to the Colossians.  This was so well received by the young people, he kept at it.  After the war, he finished the entire New Testament and in 1958 published The New Testament in Modern English.  Time Magazine said of Mr. Phillips, “…he can make St. Paul sound as contemporary as the preacher down the street.”

His later books included classics like Ring of Truth and Your God is Too Small.

But here is the portion I wanted to share with you today.  Taken from his book Ring of Truth, which I strongly recommend.

The basic text for what follows is John 8:51.  “Whoever keeps my word shall never see death.”  Phillips writes:

Christ taught an astonishing thing about death–not merely that it is an experience robbed of its terror but that as an experience it does not exist at all.

For some reason or other Christ’s words (which Heaven knows are taken literally enough when men are trying to prove a point about pacifism or divorce, for example) are taken more with a pinch of salt when He talks about the common experience of death as it affects the man whose basic trust is in himself. If a man keeps my saying, he shall never see death (John 8:51); Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die (John 11:26).  It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the meaning that Christ intended to convey was that death was a completely negligible experience to the man who had already begun to live life of the eternal quality.

Jesus Christ abolished death, wrote Paul many years ago, but there have been very few since His day who appear to have believed it.  The power of the dark old god, rooted no doubt in instinctive fear, is hard to shake, and a great many Christian writers, though possessing the brightest hopes of ‘life hereafter’ cannot, it seems, accept the abolition of death. ‘The valley of the shadow,’ “death’s gloomy portal,’ ‘the bitter pains of death,’ and a thousand other expressions all bear witness to the fact that a vast number of Christians do not really believe what Christ said.

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Here’s what those blinded by Satan are not seeing

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But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them. II Corinthians 4:3-4

It’s not just that outsiders to the faith have not been shown the way to eternal life, as though they were sitting by the roadside waiting.

It’s not simply that the unsaved need to be instructed and helped, as though they were gathered in a celestial waiting room somewhere, eager for us to appear.

Neither are they simply blank slates on which we may write Heaven’s love-letters to their souls, as though nothing had corrupted their minds or skewed their values.

Those living without Christ are in serious trouble.

A great many have been blinded by the enemy. Not all, thankfully, but far too many.

Satan has done a number on those abandoned to his oversight.

Millions without Christ look at good and see evil, hear Truth and call it lies, see a bit of Heaven and call it hell.

If they see Jesus at all, it’s only as the enemy. If they see the gospel, they call it propaganda. If they receive a kind act from the Lord’s disciples, they grow suspicious and search for ulterior motives.

The enemy has been messing with millions without Christ, and this has left them far removed from the childlike way they entered this world. They have been mistaught by those they trusted most, misguided by those sent to instruct them, and miscast as possessors and protectors of truth while they attack the very ones sent to bring them truth.

In the Greek city of Corinth, the Apostle Paul encountered such enemies of the faith. Perhaps they were not normally mean-spirited people, certainly not murderers or thieves or abusers. Their hostility against the people of God and against the Gospel of Jesus could be explained by one thing: Satan had blinded the eyes of their understanding. They were blind to the greatest reality of all, God.

As a result, Paul said in our text, they do not see: a) the Gospel, b) Christ who is the image of God, c) the glory of Christ, d) the gospel of the glory of Christ, and e) the light of that gospel.

None of this is clear to them.

Once again, the text is Second Corinthians 4:1-6 and it’s well worth a few minutes of your time today.  Thank you.

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