Shalom Aleichem...
Reflections is a weekly Christian Teaching Ministry. Each week we will talk about the Bible and lessons we can put to use in our daily life. We will try to, on a weekly basis, provide to you stories, thoughts, and just easy ways to live your life on a straight path.
THIS WEEK'S TEACHING....August 31, 2020
The reality that we live in a hostile environment challenges Christians to take heart in God's promise of a glorious future and see that He is at work to bring about that which is best for His children both now and forevermore.
TO TAKE HEART AND TRUST GOD IN ALL THINGS IS TO SEE THE GLORY OF GOD
Going about this business of living, whether it' s one day at a time or while making plans for the future, it often happens thot our routine is interrupted by an unexpected turn of events, of which there are many different kinds, not the least of which are disease and death.
Going about his Father's business ... Jesus received word that his friend Lazarus was sick unto death -John 11:1-4
See the significance of this story in the context of the Apostle John's reason for writing the Gospel that bears his name: "These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name." (20:31)
In writing his Gospel, John first introduced Jesus as the Son of God, then, to confirm his identity as the Messiah, John pointed to John the Baptist's testimony. After telling about the baptism of Jesus, John transitioned to several of Jesus' disciples who also testified about Jesus: Andrew who told Peter 'We have found the Messiah" --- Philip who found Nathaniel and said, "We have found the one Moses wrote about: Jesus the son of Joseph, from Nazareth". Skeptical of Philip's claim, Nathaniel found Jesus and had a conversation with him, after which he had no doubt about who Jesus way, exclaiming, "You are indeed the Son of God!"
Rather than rely solely on verbal testimonies of disciples who had met the Messiah and had been convinced of his messiahship by talking to and listening to Jesus, John did the smart thing: He presented evidence comprised of seven signs (miracles) that proved Jesus to be the promised Messiah.
Please indulge my interest in journalism by thinking with me of John's seven signs as
HEADLINES that might have appeared in The Jerusalem Times: (1) Jesus Turns Water Into Wine. (2) Jesus Heals Royal Prince. (3) Jesus Heals Poor Man Disabled For 38 Years. (4) Jesus Feeds Throng 5,000Strong. (5) Jesus Walks On Water. (6) Jesus Heals Man Born Blind. (7) JESUS RAISES LAZARUS FROM THE DEAD!
Seven times in his account of the Gospel Story, John presented undeniable evidence to prove that Jesus was the Messiah - the Redeemer of those who by repentance and faith accept Christ as Savior and Lord.
The most striking aspect of the seventh proof is our Lord's authoritative assertion to his disciples before leaving his safe haven to go to the scene of the crisis: This sickness will not end in death but is for the glory of God. (v. 4)
There's no doubt about Mary and Martha's love for God and devotion to Jesus - which reinforces my contention that to take heart and trust God in all things is to see the glory of God! Sooner or later, we see the glory of God!
By the time Jesus arrived in Bethany, Lazarus had been dead several days. To Jesus, though, it did not matter how long he had been dead. Instead, it was as if his friend were asleep - waiting for the Lord God giver of life to wake him up!
Which Jesus did to the amazement of everyone who witnessed the glorious resurrection of Lazarus -John 11:38-45 ... "Loose him and let him go!"
No wonder many skeptics believed in Jesus and received Him into their hearts as Savior and Lord! They saw the wonder of what God can and will do!
Folks: It doesn't matter how long the body of a loved one or your own for that matter has been interred or whatever, when the voice of God shouts "Come forth” or "Arisen or "'Wake up”, guess what! Well, there's really no guessing to it!
A dead body that once housed the soul of a human being - a soul redeemed by the blood of the Lamb and sanctified by the Spirit of God - will respond to the voice of God just as Lazarus did!
Be advised...
In our own situation as in that of Lazarus God does not work on our timetable. Our Lord's delay in responding to the sisters' request did not mean denial – either of their need, or the Lord's response to it.
We may have no choice but to wait on God to act on our behalf. Inevitably He will - but a delay is not because God does not care.
What it means is...
God our Father has something greater in mind!
So....
Jesus took time to prepare the Disciples, Mary, Martha, friends gathered at their home --for a greater understanding of who He is and what all believers have in store for them by virtue of their (our) acceptance of Christ as Savior and Lord.
Remember our Lord's earlier conversation with Martha: “Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, even though they die, will live. Everyone who believes and lives in Christ will never die.” (w. 25-26)
Jesus asked Martha two significant questions before raising Lazarus from the dead: "Do you believe this?" (v. 26).
Did not I tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?"' (v. 40} Jesus said it. That settles it. Believe it.
Martha and many of her friends believed because they actually saw Jesus perform a miracle with their own eyes. But remember what Jesus told Thomas: ". . .Blessed are those who have not seen me and yet have believed."
Blessed are we who have not seen Him bodily and yet believe! We will see the glory of God! Jesus said it. That settles it. Believe it. You may notice I have used this term, Believe it, many times in these teachings. I use it to emphasize that in order to be a Christian, a true Christian, YOU MUST BELIEVE WITH ALL YOU HEART. To truly believe means to have no doubt about what you believe in. I cannot stress this enough. It is not just good enough to say, I believe. You MUST TRULY, TRULY BELIEVE IN JESUS CHRIST as the Son of the Living God.
Was the death, burial and resurrection of Lazarus the end of the story? What happened next? “Therefore, many of the Jews believed . . . but some of them went to the enemies of Jesus and told them what he had done ... Then the chief priests and Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin" (11:45-47).
Long story short: They plotted to arrest Jesus in some devious way and get rid of him.
Jesus had already predicted what would happen, saying to His Disciples: “we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests.
They will condemn him to death and hand him over to the Romans who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later He will rise!" {Mark 10:32-34)
Hear once again what Jesus said to Martha that day in Bethany just minutes before He raised Lazarus from the dead: "Did not I tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God!" What greater glory could there be than the raising of Lazarus from the dead? Of course, the raising of Jesus from the dead!
But first things first! Before Lazarus could be raised, he had to die, then God the Son act on his behalf. Before Jesus could be raised, He had to die, then God the Father act on his behalf.
Why did Jesus (the perfect Son of God) have to die? "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved."
If fallen humanity was ever going to be saved from the penalty of their sin against God, a perfect sacrifice would be required - "a Lamb without spot or blemish". God's love for human beings is so great that He spared not His Son, whose love is so great that He freely gave His life - died for our sins -for "without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins." Amen!
I love you all!
DID YOU EVER WONDER???
If we could shrink the earth's population
If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following.
There would be:
57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south
8 would be Africans
52 would be female
48 would be male
70 would be non-white
30 would be white
70 would be non-Christian
30 would be Christian
89 would be heterosexual
11 would be homosexual
6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all 6 would be from the United States.
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
(ONE)1 would be near death;
(ONE)1 would be near birth;
(ONE)1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education;
(ONE)1 (yes, only 1) would own a computer.
When one considers our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for acceptance, understanding and education becomes glaringly apparent.
And, therefore . . .
If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75% of this world.
If you woke up this morning with more health than illness, you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week.
If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace, you are among the top 8% of the world's wealthy.
If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death, you are more blessed than three billion people in the world.
If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation, you are ahead of 500 million people in the world.
If you hold up your head with a smile on your face and are truly thankful, you are blessed because the majority can, but most do not.
If you can read this message, you are more blessed than over two billion people in the world who cannot read at all.
As you read this and are reminded how life is in the rest of the world, remember just how blessed you really are!
BOOKS OF THE BIBLE...A TEACHING
Lets continue our study of the various religions of the world...
Judaism: Historical Development
What makes a person Jewish? This seemingly basic question is not so easy to answer, even for Jewish people.
For most particular faiths described in this book, a person identifies either by birth—into a family belonging to that religion—or by adherence (even nominally) to its beliefs and practices.
While that is true for some Jewish people, many who identify as Jewish practice no religion, or practice one other than Judaism. So for some, being Jewish is more about ethnicity or family traditions than religious beliefs. Generally, if one has a Jewish mother, one is considered Jewish. On the other hand, a few people who are not ethnically Jewish convert to Judaism through profession of belief in its teachings.
So what follows is primarily a description of the religion. Many who self-identify as Jewish do not hold these beliefs or follow these practices.
Judaism traces its origins to Abraham or, more properly, to his great-grandchildren: the Twelve Patriarchs, the sons of Jacob, whose name God changed to Israel. Genesis gives little detail about the religious practices of Abraham and his descendants. God established a covenant with him (see Genesis 12), and we read of his sincere faith and the offering of animal sacrifices, but it is not until hundreds of years later, when Moses receives the Law on Mount Sinai, that Judaism begins to take shape. The Exodus and the Mosaic Law are foundational to the establishment of Israel as a nation and Judaism as a religion in the formal sense.
Although the priests maintained the tabernacle and its services during and after Israel’s conquest of Palestine, the biblical record in the books of Joshua and Judges indicates that not all the people actively practiced their faith. Many began to follow the religious practices of the surrounding nations, and this persisted in Israel for nearly a thousand years.
After the period of the monarchy began, and especially after the temple’s construction by Solomon, most religious rituals took place in Jerusalem, and the Law’s sacrificial system was centered in the temple. The subsequent division of the nation into two kingdoms (Northern/Israel and Southern/Judah) contributed to ongoing pluralism and syncretism. Religious observance by the masses grew or declined based on the current king’s spiritual fervor. Godly kings, unfortunately, were few in Judah and virtually nonexistent in Israel.
Much of the Hebrew Scriptures (known to many as the Bible’s Old Testament) describe this spiritual decline and the warning messages God sent through a number of prophets. Eventually, the predicted judgment came.
Israel was conquered initially by the Assyrians, and the people were taken into exile. In 586 bc, the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and its temple and took most of the surviving inhabitants into exile. This period was significant in the development of modern Judaism.
First, without the temple and the sacrificial system, new worship forms were developed, along with a theology to support them. Second, the people of Judah were now a minority in a foreign land; this, too, impacted theological thinking. Third, because the exiled people were from the land of Judah, they were first called Jews during this period. Last, although precise dates are unknown, the development of synagogues and rabbis began around this time.
After the Persians conquered the Babylonians, the Jewish exiles were allowed to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple, yet historians estimate only 10 percent went back to Palestine. As a colony, first of the Persians, then the Greeks, and finally the Romans, the Jewish people were generally free to practice their faith, but all three colonizing nations, especially the Greeks, exerted considerable influence on Jewish culture and religion. One result was a Greek-language translation of the Jewish Scriptures called the Septuagint.
Rome’s destruction of Jerusalem and the second temple brought an end to national Israel, even in a colonized form, until the modern state was formed in ad 1948. It also brought major changes to Jewish religious practice. Scattered throughout Europe and Asia (called the diaspora), a decentralized Judaism developed around the synagogue and the rabbi. With no new revealed Scripture for nearly five hundred years, no temple, no priesthood, and no sacrificial system, the rabbis began to think, debate, and write about how to keep the Law in the face of these new realities.
These writings, called the Mishnah, were compiled around ad 200, though much of their content had existed as oral tradition for several centuries. Further rabbinic writings, more applicational in nature (in general terms answering the how rather than what of the Mishnah), were compiled over the next several hundred years to become the Gemarah. Their combination is called the Talmud, which has both Palestinian and Babylonian versions and is the primary basis of modern Judaism.
One last factor that has shaped Jewish life and theology over the past two millennia is persecution. The Roman emperors, the pogroms of medieval Europe, the czars and Stalin in Russia, the holocaust of Hitler’s Germany—these only represent the best-known examples of anti-Semitism. The Jewish people have faced it all, from job discrimination to outright genocide. It’s amazing that given the current Arab-Israeli conflict, for many centuries Jewish people usually found more welcome in Muslim lands than in Christian Europe. All of this has shaped modern Judaism’s beliefs and practices, and anti-Semitism is still a chief concern for Jewish people today.
In the gospel accounts, Jesus often comes into verbal conflict with the scribes and the Pharisees. These groups attempted to strictly follow the Law but differed with Jesus (and often with each other) over correct interpretation and application. They also tended toward legalism and put the finer points of behavior above the attitude of the heart. Many of the oral traditions they followed ultimately were written down, and these scholarly opinions found their way into the Mishnah.
HAVE A SAFE AND BLESSED WEEK:)
Ho'omaikaʻi ka Pua iā kākou