Unwritten

 

Unwritten

Hey! Welcome back, it's good to have you this week. I've been trying to come up with something to blog about for a few days now, trying to find a lesson that needed to be taught right now. I really wanted to focus on something in the Old Testament because we have been focusing on the New Testament quite a bit. The more I tried to limit it though, the more difficulty I had. Putting a limit on God never works out for us, and actually led me to today's passage. 

It's found in John 21:25:

²⁵ Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.

This verse is located as the last thing that we read in the gospels. The last book of the bible that is explicitly about Jesus, retelling His life story and this is what John leaves us with.  We have seen four straight books of the wonders and works that Jesus has been able to do, and John gives us the closure that we need not that we want.

How many of you have ever read a book or seen a movie before that you just wish didn't have to end. You came to the end and it didn't seem real or right that the movie was ending. For me it was a tv show called Boy Meets World. I grew up watching this show, and when it came to an end after seven fantastic season, I can remember the tears flowing down my face. This seemed to be a natural reaction. My journey alongside the characters in this show had come to an end.

We seek definition. These things go on in our lives we want to know that there is more to the story. By adding an ending to something the mystery goes away. The human mind seeks things to end so that it can better understand and gain a grasp of the situation. If something doesn't end and one doesn't know the details, then curiosity can grab the better of that person. 

So why doesn't John allow us to have an end? Because we are supposed to wonder. When someone tells me just a slight something about a particular place or thing, I make it my job to try to learn everything that I can about this place or thing. You see it would be easy for us to close the book of John up and say that Jesus was such an incredible man and He did so many great things. However we wouldn't be giving Him the honor and glory He deserves. Jesus hasn't finished His work yet. He is coming back, and that is why it is unwritten. 

Jesus called us to act, now. He called us to love, now. He called us to be His hands and feet, to carry out His work while He was away. You see by losing the wonder of Christ, by forgetting that His work, His story, is not yet finished we can move on easily. I no longer worry about what is going to happen to Harry Potter, because it is finished. I don't have to worry about what happens to Frodo Baggins because his story has ended. 

Jesus hasn't finished yet. There is still a world out there that needs His love and affection. Until all have seen His love, Jesus will never be finished. His story is still being written at this very moment, the question is....what will you help contribute to it? 

Thank you for reading, and God bless.

Look Again

Look Again

Good Evening! Thank you for coming today, I want to warn you that there is a lot of scripture reading tonight. It will be a lengthy post today, but I pray that you will be as excited to walk down this path as I was when I first had it shown to me by my youth pastor when I was in high school.

Let's Go! Our passage is found in Mark 15:33-39

³³ At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. ³⁴ And at three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).
³⁵ When some of those standing near heard this, they said, “Listen, he’s calling Elijah.”
³⁶ Someone ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a staff, and offered it to Jesus to drink. “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down,” he said.
³⁷ With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.
³⁸ The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. ³⁹ And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, saw how he died, he said, “Surely this man was the Son of God!”

Now what we are reading here is Mark's account of the death and crucifixion of Jesus. Jesus, the Son of God, was sent by God to earth to take on sin and die as the ultimate sacrifice for all of humanity. That is a huge task to undertake and sometimes we forget that Jesus was 100% man and it would be a struggle to walk into something like this. In fact, the night before Jesus is taken He asks God if there is any other way that this can happen. 

Now this passage contains something unique that a lot of people like to hold onto. Jesus cries out to God in pain and says, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" It's a question that we often ask ourselves, how in these dark times does it feel like God has abandoned us. This is even more extreme though, it appears as if God has abandoned His own son! What chance do I have if God has abandoned His own son? I mean no wonder the man cries out in pain, His Father has LEFT Him. Jesus is bearing the weight of all sin from humanity and He has no God to support Him.

But what if Jesus wasn't doing this? WHAT IF Jesus wasn't upset with His father for what was going on? WHAT IF there was a bigger picture? You see Jesus knew that His father could not be with Him in that moment. God in order to remain perfect and whole has to be absent from sin. He can't have sin be part of His being, it would make Him imperfect. Jesus asked for another way not because He didn't want to be crucified or die, but rather because He didn't want to be cut off from His father. 

In Habakkuk 1:13 the Bible states that "You are of purer eyes than to behold evil, And cannot look on wickedness." Jesus knew that God couldn't have sin with His being, which is why He had to be cut off in this moment. We are cut off from God now until we reach heaven and shed this sin filled bodies. SO STILL WHY DOES JESUS MAKE THIS STATEMENT??? He knew it was coming so why still cry out to God like this? In front of everyone!

The Sanhedrin are the spiritual leaders of the day, the ones who wanted Jesus dead. They said He was a blasphemer and a liar. Something interesting about the Sanhedrin though is their education. The Sanhedrin were Jewish religious leaders who had dedicated their lives to upholding and living the scriptures. They would begin to memorize the scriptures at a very young age in order to have it fully committed to memory. These are the people standing with Jesus's family and friends, and this is where Jesus's remark makes us take another look. If you look in your Bible their will be a little letter next to verse 34 leading you to a footnote. This footnote will lead you to Psalm 22, which reads like this:

¹ My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

 Why are you so far from saving me,
    so far from my cries of anguish?
² My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
    by night, but I find no rest.^[b]

³ Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One;
    you are the one Israel praises.^[c]
4 In you our ancestors put their trust;
    they trusted and you delivered them.
⁵ To you they cried out and were saved;
    in you they trusted and were not put to shame.

⁶ But I am a worm and not a man,
    scorned by everyone, despised by the people.
⁷ All who see me mock me;
    they hurl insults, shaking their heads.
⁸ “He trusts in the Lord,” they say,
    “let the Lord rescue him.
Let him deliver him,
    since he delights in him.”

⁹ Yet you brought me out of the womb;
    you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast.
¹⁰ From birth I was cast on you;
    from my mother’s womb you have been my God.

¹¹ Do not be far from me,
    for trouble is near
    and there is no one to help.

¹² Many bulls surround me;
    strong bulls of Bashan encircle me.
¹³ Roaring lions that tear their prey
    open their mouths wide against me.
¹⁴ I am poured out like water,
    and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart has turned to wax;
    it has melted within me.
¹⁵ My mouth^[d] is dried up like a potsherd,
    and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;
    you lay me in the dust of death.

¹⁶ Dogs surround me,
    a pack of villains encircles me;
    they pierce^[e] my hands and my feet.
¹⁷ All my bones are on display;
    people stare and gloat over me.
¹⁸ They divide my clothes among them
    and cast lots for my garment.

¹⁹ But you, Lord, do not be far from me.
    You are my strength; come quickly to help me.

Now does this sound familiar? Doesn't this sound like the perfect description of what we are seeing with the crucifixion scene?  The Psalmist even opens the passage with the same words that Jesus used. Here is the catch though, Crucifixion was a death tradition carried out by the Romans. The Roman time period being hundreds of years after this Psalm was written. A psalmist writes a perfect description of the death of the Messiah in a form that he doesn't even understand.

Jesus may not have been crying out to God, but what if He was quoting a passage to the audience surrounding Him. What if He wanted them to see that He was on that cross, fulfilling yet another prophecy hundreds of years later? Psalm 22 finishes out with a message of peace that all will be reminded and worship the one true king. When you first saw this blog post the picture may have said evil, but Jesus can take evil things and when we look again they have turned good. 

"Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani." What does Jesus do with His last breath? He doesn't curse the God who gave Him everything, but rather to remind the people that He is giving everything to those who have cursed Him. 

I'd love to chat if you have any further questions!

Thank you for reading, and God bless.

The Art of Busy

The Art of Busy

Hey all, first off I want to apologize for this being a day late. That's my fault, and I hope that you have all had a fantastic week so far. Today we are going to be looking at an idea of busy. How it is the business in life that we crave and this craving effects us.

Our passage of the week is found in Mark 9:50:

⁵⁰ “Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again? Have salt among yourselves, and be at peace with each other.”

Now normally I don't feel that it's appropriate to pull one verse out of its context and just use it, because it was placed in its location for a reason. The previous portion of Mark 9 talks about how one shouldn't be a stumbling stone for others. We are given the example of if your eyes cause you to stumble it is better to pluck them out than to be cast into hell. A super intense illustration of what Jesus is trying to teach. This leads us into our verse, which talks about salt. 

Now the classic verse that people generally read is found in Matthew, but this one really jumps out. The first thing we focus on in this passage is this, Salt tastes good. Salt makes everything taste better and thus most people love salt. You have something about you that is salty. There is something about you that when you interact with other people, the people see this thing. Now this salt can be anything, your humor, your looks, your kindness, even your humility. Jesus asks for His love to be our salt, for it to be overflowing in our hearts so that it pours out onto others.

Now I have rarely seen someone scrape salt off of something before, unless it was just too much salt for them to handle. The same applies to people, we are all willing to interact with people and see what they are doing unless we don't like their salt. We try to lessen the impact that their life will have on us by moving on. In this passage though the question is raised though of how do you make something salty again?

People will soak up your salt no matter where you go, the question is how much are you spreading that salt? Have you ever bit into something and just gotten huge mouthful of salt? As if the chef when preparing the food got distracted and poured salt continuously into one area. Salt is small, and in the grand scheme of things the influence that we have is small. I feel that sometimes we bounce in between two extremes of social interaction.

On one side, we stay in the same area for so long. Jesus was constantly moving in His ministry, one day his disciples found Him alone and asked why He was alone, there was a crowd waiting to see Him. Jesus told them that it was time to go, it was time to move onto the next town. Jesus came here to love on all people and show them God's love.

On the other side we have too much business to ever spend time with people and have life experience together. The verse says to have salt with each other so that there may be peace. We sometimes try to have such a busy life trying to bounce around from area to area that we forget to ever just be and live life. We feel that we have to be everywhere all the time or else we are failing the kingdom of God by not being His hands and His feet to the whole world. 

A final analysis of salt though shows that it's never just one crystal. Even Jesus did not attempt to tackle the world alone. He knew that business and trying to do so would be impossible. So breathe, love, and spread the good news of His love one interaction at a time. 

Thank you for reading and God bless.