Month: February 2016

“Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life” (Pr. 4:23 NASB).

We should keep this verse ever before us, principally when viewing it through the eyes of our eternal souls… If you’re a Christian today, or, are feeling led to surrender your life to Christ, there are very clear lines in the sand we mustn’t cross. The world around you will always tell you otherwise, that’s its job…“Did God really say” (Gen 3:1 NIV)? Please, don’t take my word for this, just look around at the world, read a newspaper, sit in on a conversation. People of every walk of life are talking about how chaotic the world is today. Drive on any metropolitan highway, talk about chaos…one wrong turn and you end up in places your GPS doesn’t even recognize! Seriously. Also,Pay attention to the billboard advertisements lining those freeways; to the not-so subliminal messages aimed at shanghaiing your choices and directing them towards what the world wants you to view as important, needed, crucial.

Within our scripture passage today, we witness in part, the blessing missed out on.Those precious moments with Jesus we allow to be snatched from our hands daily, by permitting ourselves, get so caught-up in our works that we get sidetracked… often leading us into making the wrong choice in a timely moment (Jas.1:13-16 NASB).

The saying goes: life is all about choices.

We must make choices daily. Statistics tell us the average adult makes approximately 35,000 decisions a day. Now multiply that times two. Remember we had to make a choice between two options to reach that one decision. So, about 70,000 choices are contending for our attention on any given day. Ranging from the mundane… what we will eat, drink, wear, or brand of toothpaste we’ll purchase…to the more complex, spend or save, rent or own, marry or remain single. And we aren’t touching on the mixt issues of the heart, or deeper still, our singularly most fundamental of choices… where will we be spending eternity?

Choices…

Our Scripture today speaks to this very topic… Two sisters, both believers, each followers of Christ (Lk.10:38 NLT). We enter into their home as invited guests along with Jesus and the disciples. We’re graciously seated at the dinner table. Martha is busy bustling about, after all, this is technically,her home and she is hostess. Mary, her sister, has been right beside her throughout the day seeing to it that everything is just-so for their guests tonight. From the dinner preparation to flower selection Martha insisted everything be picture-perfect! After all, Jesus, their Rabbi and friend will be in attendance.

There are many times that our choices seem to be the right-thing to do; they’re done from a good-heart and certainly from a desire to please. We want to do our best and give our best to those we love undoubtedly, but how much more so when we are serving Jesus? And it is here where two sisters diverge in their definitions of what is the better portion. Everyone’s seated and Jesus begins to speak; with that Mary pulls up a stool and sits at the His feet (Lk.10:39 NLT) Oh how she loves to hear her Rabbi speak, His simplest words are like honey to her ears! While Mary sits listening to Jesus, Martha returns to the kitchen clearly irked! Mary unnoticing, is in her glory. There is nothing more in this life she enjoys than time spent with Jesus. She could sit for hours and simply drink in every word that flows from the Masters mouth…Martha also, but not now, not tonight.

Tonight, Martha has chosen to make service to the Lord her priority. After all, she has worked on this meal and its presentation all day. There will be time to sit with the Master another day, now there is still much to do…”The bread, I must put out the bread. Where is that sister of mine? I must speak to Jesus about her, surely HE will make her get up and help me”. And with that Martha knocks the basket, laden with the warm bread, to the floor. She is now beside herself and burst into the dining room in a huff to appeal to Jesus for help… Listen to her!

“Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”    Now pay attention to how lovingly, tenderly, yet plainly Jesus answers His frazzled friend… “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her” (Lk. 10:42-43 NIV).

Martha has just been taught a very valuable lesson, but, as with all of us, the question becomes was she hearing the Lord as He spoke to her?are we? or are we doing nothing more than half distractingly listening? I’m reminded of the words of the prophet Micah concerning what it is God requires of us, “He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you Except to be just, and to love [and to diligently practice] kindness (compassion), And to walk humbly with your God [setting aside any overblown sense of importance or self-righteousness] (Micah 6:8 AMP)?

Martha was not an enemy of the Lord, she was His friend, and more a true believer. A follower of The Way. Scripture makes that clear within the context of a conversation she and Jesus have when He and the disciples come to her, and her sister Mary, after the death of their brother Lazarus. Jesus tells Martha that Lazarus will live again now, and in the world to come. He asks her if she believes this. Let’s listen to her reply…

“Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world” (Luke 11:27 NLT).

Even the most fervent of us, those who hunger and thirst after Jesus (Matt.5: ), who crave time alone with Him, get caught-up on occasion in service to Him ;forgetting to come away from all the work of our hands. We forget to simply be still in front of Him (Ps.46:10 NKJV). Like Mary, our first duty to the Lord is to Love HIM alone above all else; to seek building a relationship with Him. To know Him, love Him, spend time and converse with Him. And like Mary, desiring to take in His each and every Word (Duet.8:3 NIV).

Are women to remember their place and sit quietly at the feet of men? Or should they be allowed to Preach and teach as men do? I am by no means scholarly, nor theoretically well versed in the politics of this particular text. I leave that to my Brother The Apostle Paul and the great Theologians of our time. For our purposes, I believe the Lord clearly states that Mary, in her desire to be in a relationship with Him, and satisfy herself in Him alone, shows in this instance that she has chosen the better portion and will walk away refreshed and sated.

Neither woman was wrong in their worship of the Lord, though each demonstrated their devotion quite differently. I believe the deeper issue of what Jesus was communicating concerning Martha and Mary was one of a condition of the heart. The take-away, Jesus replied: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matt.22:37 NLT).
Let me leave you to ponder an excerpt from, Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary of our text. I believe you’ll find it to be not only eloquent, but more biblically sound…

“Here with respect to our Lord Jesus and right care of her household affairs (speaking of Martha). But there was something to be blamed. She was for much serving; plenty, variety, and exactness. Worldly business is a snare to us, when it hinders us from serving God, and getting good to our souls. What needless time is wasted, and expense often laid out, even in entertaining professors of the gospel! Though Martha was on this occasion faulty, yet she was a true believer, and in her general conduct did not neglect the one thing needful. The favour of God is needful to our happiness; the salvation of Christ is needful to our safety. Where this is attended to, all other things will be rightly pursued. Christ declared, Mary hath chosen the good part. For one thing is needful, this one thing that she has done, to give up herself to the guidance of Christ. The things of this life will be taken away from us, at the furthest, when we shall be taken away from them; but nothing shall separate from the love of Christ, and a part in that love. Men and devils cannot take it away from us, and God and Christ will not. Let us mind the one thing needful more diligently.”

In order for us to truly live out the royal command, “love your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27 NIV; James 2:NIV), we must understand it in context. Jesus is calling not only the glib lawyer from our text, but each of us, to first love the Lord your God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind, and then… love our neighbor. Christ is calling us to expand our love language, to follow his model of sacrificial loving; exemplified by His eager submission to the Father’s will, even unto death on the cross. Jesus’ ministry was one of a living illustration, as such, we too must be willingly to follow His example and submit our will and ways to the Lord. Allowing for Him to change our hearts and equip us to love those outside of our immediate circles; put another way, those we choose to love, those we feel are deserving our love.

But this is not the way God instructs us to love and certainly not the way Jesus taught us. “Do for others as I have done for you” (John 13:1-17, excerpt). God is a God of order; first we must love Him. Then secondly, through our act of submissive want to please Him, He lovingly transforms us so that others may experience His love. Without Him this is impossible to accomplish this in our own strength. Even the most submitted of us after a time, have the potential to become weary in well-doing, too selfish to sustain aiding our neighbor. We need a heart transplant, as described in Ezekiel 36:26.
The Redemptive, Restorative work of Jesus is mirrored beautifully in this parable used by Jesus to illustrate, both then and now, the broad-scope of who our neighbor truly is.

The Good Samaritan as the allusion of Jesus…

#1. We each are now or once were the wounded man on Jericho’s treacherous and hostile road; “For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard” (Rom. 3:23 NLT).
#2. And Christ, the Good Samaritan comes and reaches down across time and eternity to minister to us. Pouring into our beaten up, half dead bodies, the oil of Spirit and the New Wine of His Shed Blood as our redemptive and restorative covering (Jn.3:16 NIV).
#3. He carries us and pays the price to the Innkeeper for our stay (1Cor. 7:23NLT).
#4. He states He will return and pay any future debt (Heb. 9:28ESV).
The enemy of our soul’s however, is referred to by Jesus as, the thief that comes to kill, steal and destroy (John 10:10 ESV). The robbers on the Jericho road, taking all the man had, is a prevue of Satan who comes to rob us of all that the Father desires to freely give us…“Life more abundantly.”

As Christians, we are not recommended to obey this law, we are commanded to live it out daily. And this command to enlarge our love language from loving only those who love us, to loving our enemies, is of such eternal significance that Jesus wraps it around every  commandment; not by eliminating them, but by expanding our capacity  to love through His example (Matthew 5:17). This lawyer was familiar with the laws found in Leviticus 19:9-18. He knew the Torah and was skilled in Jewish tradition, that is clearly implied within the dialogue between himself and Jesus (Luke 1:25-28). So too are many in our churches today familiar with the religious rites and rituals, are able to recite the cannons and by-laws, know the Ecumenical Calendar like their own name, but have not love of neighbor in their stone-cold hearts. I know I have certainly had to hit my knees on many an occasion asking the Lords forgiveness for not living out this command.

In explaining this command to the lawyer, the crowd, and to us today, Jesus used a parable. We know it as the parable of the Good Samaritan. For anyone versed in the Bible, it is hard not to see the irony of Jesus’ choice in using this particular group of people. The Jews and Samaritans hated each other; they were lifelong enemies. The Samaritans thought they had the one true religion and served the one true god and the Jews defended God and Judaism as the only true religion and He, as the Only God. Looking to Scripture we become witnesses to how the Jews insulted Jesus by accusing Him of being both a Samaritan and demon-possessed!(Jn.8:48) This will help us to get handle on just how deeply the hatred between these two people’s went. To put this in modern context, think of how the majority of the world regards and reacts towards Muslims today. Seldom are distinctions drawn, Muslim equals ISIS and Isis equals terrorists and terrorists equal death.  And there is some truth in all of this, but as with Jesus, most certainly not all! This age-old debate over who is our neighbor precedes the parables lawyer, just look to the Old Testament for confirmation. It is filled with story after story of one group fearing or hating another, and seeking their extinction.

That in mind, let’s fast forward to any-street U.S.A. When faced with our neighbor, will we choose to love them as commanded, or seek to get them and anything associated with them as far from us and ours as we can? (Rom. 12:9) And further still, do we even know how to love as commanded (1 Cor.13:4-13)? Lastly, do our feelings have anything to do with His command? (1 John 4:19) It’s a theoretically loaded question forcing us to examine our hearts and thinking, asking ourselves, do I really love the Lord as I am commanded to do? And truth is, if we know the Lord, we know that answer or are learning it, and it’s a resounding NO! “For all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” We are sinners saved by grace bruising each other in our imperfect attempts at love. How then can we give to another something we don’t possess? If we are not willing to surrender our will and desire for our, my way or the highway thinking how will we ever love another flawed, mere mortal? How do we love the Syrian today seeking asylum in the United States? Wanting to live on our block? The Sunni Living in our neighborhood, next to our children and grandchildren? The Shiite who lives in the same town even! How do we tolerate living side by side with any Muslim today? We as a nation have become Muslim-phobic! like the lawyer in our passage, we too come to Jesus asking about our neighbor… but a Muslim Lord? What if he or she is a terrorist? What if they have Isis affiliations? Do I have to love them? Are they MY neighbor?

Yes. If we are living according to the Word of God.

Remember, when we said yes to the Lord we said bye-bye to being our own boss. Listen to the Prophet Jeremiah, “LORD, I know that people’s lives are not their own; it is not for them to direct their steps.” (Jer.10:23-24). “In their hearts humans plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps” (Prov.16:9). God’s Word explicitly instructs us to trust Him in all of our ways (Pro.3:5-6). It is solely by the grace of God and in His strength that we are able to live out this type of love. If we weren’t capable, God would never had commanded us to! We must have open and willing hearts, we must truly trust in the Lords divine authority over our lives. We must believe His Word over our feelings and fears, the media, family and friends, or the general consensus of the masses. As a christian, we are called to come out and be separate from the world’s thinking and ways. We are to leave the things of the world behind us and lead by example, just as Jesus did. We are not to respond as either the priest or Levite in our text. Each knew what the right thing  to do was, but for unstated reason, they chose not to do it. Perhaps they were afraid? What if they stopped to help this half-dead man his same fate would befall them?

There’s a statement I read by Peter Singer that struck me. He states, “The cost of helping is often great, but to not offer aid is a moral failure.” In closing, allow me leave to pose this question…understanding I ask it first of myself; when you hear of or see those who differ from you, be it by color, religious beliefs, in intellect or  through intolerance—what is  our first or gut reaction? Let me make this personal, how do you treat those people? I’ll leave you here to  ponder, allowing for the Word of the Lord to minister to you… “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” (Matt. 5:43-48 NIV).