Today we finish the 7th week of reading the New Testament, leaving us only one more week to complete our challenge of starting out 2015 with reading the whole New Testament. It has been a great experience so far and I am so very glad that we took up the challenge in my church and those of you who are following along with us.
Yesterday was a bit busy for me, so, unfortunately I did not post, but I did get my reading in and was blessed by the beginning of the Gospel of John. Today we continued with this amazing witness to the life and ministry of Jesus on the earth. I hope you are staying up to date and are reaping all the benefits of your reading.
Here is what I got yesterday and today in my reading.
Spill the beans, Jesus! Tell us straight forward. Are you or are you not the Messiah, the King, the Savior of the world, the Son of God? These are the questions that Jesus got over and over again, as I saw it, in John’s telling of Jesus’ story. Are you really, Jesus, the one for whom we have been waiting?
This is not a casual set of questions. For the Jews at that time, under the rule of Rome and her Judean supporters (politically) and under the rule of the priestly line in Jerusalem (religiously), they were a people subjugated. With no real advocates in the political realm and little advocacy in the religious realm, these chosen people of promise pined for the Lord Himself to show up in power, majesty and clarity, in order to rid them of the plight of foreign rule and domestic manipulation. They longed for a savior, the anointed one, the Messiah prophesied. And that’s what got me.
Here comes Jesus in power, healing the sick, the lame, the blind and raising the DEAD, yet no one in power is getting the message. In fact, the only message the power mongers are getting is, “We better do something with this charlatan, before the rabble go to him completely and we lose our place.” Even the religious leaders of Israel, who you would think would be happy to know that God was injecting Himself directly in the affairs of men and resolving the chief problem of mankind (sin), are not buying what Jesus is offering. They keep asking Jesus if He is the Messiah, the Savior, the Chosen One; and when He gives them the “Yup, that’s me” answer, they don’t want it.
Why are we so jaded? We get the answer we are really looking for and we respond with a “Nope that’s not it,” when everything in our heart of hearts knows THAT IS IT. I see this in marriage counseling, financial counseling, relationship counseling and every other type of counseling where someone is looking for an an answer to what has stunted them. I hear people say, “I need help,” but when you offer help, real help, they don’t want it.
Jesus offers the ONLY HELP for what ails us and almost everyone rejects it! In fact, I don’t even know how I got where I am in all this. Somehow the truth was so overwhelming in my pre-Christ experience that it blew through the firewall of my heart and knocked me to my knees. Maybe that is the answer to our jaded response to the claims of the Savior. Maybe we need to turn off our firewall and the let the King of Glory in. Maybe we need to see what He is really all about, instead of looking after “our place in the world.” Maybe we need to get our stupid selves out of the way and let Jesus have His place in our hearts (you know, we really think we are pretty smart, but I bet if we really ask ourselves that question of who we really are, we’ll get a much lower score on the old personal IQ in the world scale).
I don’t know, it just seems weird that Jesus does amazing things (even today) and no one got it except the disenfranchised of the earth. Maybe that’s how it really aught to be.
Please Lord Jesus, don’t give up on this silly earth and her slow people.
Next week is the last week of reading for the completion of the challenge! Until Monday, blessings!
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