Daily Meditations on the Bible / We stand with Israel
He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”
Summary: Fathers are like belly buttons: everybody has one. Today we consider what defines the ideal father.
Continue reading “2 Peter 1:17 — God the Father”
Then Jesus cried out, ”Whoever believes in me does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me. The one who looks at me is seeing the one who sent me.”
In the early days of personal computing (This would have been late 80’s or early 90’s in my world) computers were sort of a glorified typewriter. Getting a paper printout that looked like a professionally typeset page was next to impossible. Even if the software you had was good enough, there was another level of frustration waiting in getting a printer to print what you wanted.
Then some genius came up with WYSIWYG. This stands for “What You See Is What You Get.” It was the beginning of being able to print what you saw on your computer screen and have it look exactly the same way on the printed page.
People in Jesus’ day were used to hearing what righteousness was supposed to be about. They just never seemed to see it in real life. Until Jesus. When Jesus started His ministry, people caught a glimpse of the Real Deal. God incarnate talked the talk and walked the walk. He forgave sins, he healed infirmities, he cast out demons and he confronted the phony-baloney establishment.
Continue reading “WYSIWYG – John 12: 44-45”
Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.
Yesterday’s post looked at the ultimate long life: Eternity. The challenge is that to keep eternal life we must give up our love for this life in the world. Jesus follows that statement with today’s instruction: The one who serves Jesus will follow Him and be with Him. Always.
This puts me in mind of the story in Matthew 19 about the rich man. Jesus tells him that to be “perfect” he needs to sell everything, give to the poor, and follow him. The rich man goes away sad, and the disciples, knowing that we all have “riches” of some sort, ask; “Who then can be saved?” I love the answer that Jesus gives them:
“With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
Continue reading “Servant Possibilities – John 12: 26”
“Do not believe me unless I do the works of my Father. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.” Again they tried to seize him, but he escaped their grasp.
What do you look to your father for? Help; guidance; discipline; comfort? What you see in a father probably depends a lot on the kind of father you had, if you were fortunate enough to have a father in your life.
What kind of father is God? In the Old Testament, he is the one who allows Job to be tested, who tells Noah to build the ark and then floods the world, he calls Abraham to the Promised Land, gives him a son in his old age, then tests him by asking that he sacrifice his son. The Old Testament God leads the Israelites into Egypt and then out again. He gives them his law; He gives them a place to live; He is faithful to be patient with them and faithful to punish them.
Continue reading “A Kind of Pill – John 10: 37-39”
“I and the Father are one.”
What does he mean by saying, “one?” A quick look in Strong’s Concordance suggests that the English translation here is every bit as clear and oblique as the Greek. One means one. It can mean ‘one’ as in one thing, or it can mean ‘one’ as in whole, or complete.
“I and the Father are one.”
In the first book of the Bible, Genesis, in the second chapter and the twenty-fourth verse God says, “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.” What does that mean, “one flesh?” Is that the same kind of thing that Jesus is talking about or different? It is mentioned again and again in the New Testament as an example of oneness.
Continue reading “Oneness – John 10: 30”As I read through the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life the thing that keeps jumping out at me is how foreign Jesus’ words sound to us here on earth. He continually talks about having come from somewhere else or having existed before Abraham existed; those kinds of things. Today, he does it again!
I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you are doing what you have heard from your father.
Before Jesus was born on earth he was in the Father’s presence and he remembers what that was like. Jesus knows what God knows and does what God wants him to do. He also knows who his adversaries are. He knows who their father is and he knows it is not God.
Continue reading “Not From Around Here”
This month we are preparing for Christmas by focusing on the events leading up to the birth of Jesus as they are recorded in the Gospels. So far we have focussed on the Gospel of Luke, but today we take a detour and look at the Gospel of Matthew’s account of how Jesus’ adoptive father took the news.
This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).
When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.
Something I had never thought about until this year is the fact that Jesus had an adoptive earthly father. Joseph was not the biological father of Jesus, and yet he accepted him as his own son on the say-so of an angel in a dream. (My guess is that if an angel visits a person in a dream, the experience is much more than just a dream!) And while this would have been a challenge for Joseph as a father, it would also have had some impact on Jesus as the son. In Luke 2: 41-52 we see that Jesus is aware that Joseph is not his actual father so we know he was aware of the facts about his birth.
Continue reading “Adoption”