Month: February 2025

February 25, 27 A.D.  –  Lazarus is dying — The Year of the Lord’s Favor #73

David Chupp The 70 Weeks with Jesus Blog , , , , , ,

Week 54 — Lazarus is dying
John 11:1-16

It was just 9 weeks ago that Jesus spent a week with his friend Lazarus and his sisters Martha and Mary.  He stayed with them during the holidays of Hanukkah at their home in Bethany, as he often did, for Bethany is just over a mile from Jerusalem.  During that visit, he again clashed with the religious leaders in Jerusalem who were already seeking to kill him. At one point, they “picked up stones to stone him” (John 10:31).  So Jesus left Judea after Hanukkah and went east to Perea, the territory on the other side of the Jordan, to preach and heal there.  This is the territory of Herod Antipas, and 2 weeks ago, Jesus learned that this Herod was also seeking to kill him and began to move northward, away from Herod’s palace at Macherus, back towards Judea.  He is teaching as he goes.  He has just told the parable of the rich man and Lazarus.  It is at this point that Jesus receives the news that his friend Lazarus is very ill.

John 11:1-16   Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.  (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.)  So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.”
When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.”  Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.   So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days,   and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”
“But Rabbi,” they said, “a short while ago the Jews there tried to stone you, and yet you are going back?”
Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Anyone who walks in the daytime will not stumble, for they see by this world’s light.  It is when a person walks at night that they stumble, for they have no light.”
After he had said this, he went on to tell them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.”
His disciples replied, “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.”   Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep.
So then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”
Then Thomas (also known as Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

The Gospels repeatedly emphasize Jesus’ love for Lazarus and his sisters, including in verse 5 here. But that makes verse 6 all the more puzzling. 

Now, Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.   So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days,   and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”

The reason why Jesus didn’t leave immediately to go see about his friend was “that he loved them so much”?  Jesus receives a desperate plea for help and demonstrates his love by waiting 2 days before he leaves.

Let’s look at the timing here.  Lazarus is ill to the point that his sisters feel the need to call their miracle-working friend to come and heal him.  It would take a full day’s journey for a messenger to get the word to Jesus. It was at least 22 miles.  He delays 2 days and then takes a full day to travel to Bethany. Verse 17 tells us, “On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days.” Do the math.   Lazarus must have died shortly after Mary and Martha sent the messengers off to tell Jesus of his illness.   Lazarus is already in the grave before the messenger arrives and makes it to Jesus.

This is Israel 2000 years ago.  There was no embalming of bodies as they did in Egypt. Oh, they used spices and perfumes to cover the smell, but they did nothing to stop the decay.  And in such a climate, decomposition of the body began quickly.  Except in unusual occasions, bodies were prepared for burial and placed in the tomb on the same day of death.  Today, in Orthodox Jewish communities, burial is still held within 24 hours of death.  (The rabbis see this as a command from Deuteronomy 21:23.)   So soon after the messenger left, Lazarus died, and they closed his eyes, washed his body, anointed it with perfumes and spices, and wrapped the corpse with strips of cloth.  Then, there would be a procession of family and friends to the family tomb, where the body would be placed on a slab of stone cut out of the cave’s walls.  The tomb was then sealed with rocks or a rolling stone.  Mourning would continue at the home for seven days.  After a year, the tomb would be opened, and the bones collected and placed in a stone box called an ossuary.

So, by the time the messenger arrives to tell Jesus that Lazarus is ill, he has already died and been placed in the tomb. It is too late to prevent his death. Jesus could rush to Bethany immediately and join Mary and Martha in grieving, or he could rush back and stop their mourning by raising Lazarus the next day, but he waits two days before he leaves.  

In the first century, there were no doctors to examine someone and pronounce them dead.  And rarely, someone could appear dead when they were not.  Their heart could be fibrillating, and their breathing so shallow that most people would not detect any signs of life.  There are reports of people being carried to their tombs and rising back to life.  This led to the belief that the spirit hovered over the body for three days, hoping to reenter the body, but then after 3 days, when full decomposition had begun, the spirit departed.

Had Jesus left immediately and revived Lazarus after only a day or two, it would have been impressive but not an undeniable miracle of God.  Jesus wanted there to be no doubt when Lazarus was raised to life that he was dead beyond hope of resuscitation.  Jesus would not let God’s victory over death be cheapened because people had these mistaken thoughts about the spirit hovering.

Jesus frankly tells the disciples that he knows that Lazarus is already dead and says something that seems really odd, “for your sake, I am glad I was not there so that you may believe.”   Jesus says I am so glad I was not there to heal Lazarus before he died.  What must the disciples have been thinking when Jesus said this?  They didn’t know yet that Jesus would raise Lazarus from the dead.  So they see Jesus doesn’t rush off to heal when he hears Lazarus is sick, and then Jesus says, “I am so glad I wasn’t there to prevent Lazarus’ death.” 

I think of the many times in my career as a pediatrician that I raced to the hospital to resuscitate a newborn.  Many was the night I received a phone call and drove way over the speed limit to rush up to the hospital nursery because a baby had been delivered prematurely and needed advanced resuscitation.  Many times, I ran from our office across the hospital campus and up the stairs to the OB ward or nursery to prevent the death of a baby.   Thankfully, most of those trips were successful, but some were not.  And still today, there are some times when I still relive those moments in the early mornings, even now wondering if I could have gotten there sooner or done something more.  In my job, illness and death were the enemy we all dreaded, but they were always near at hand.  

But Jesus says, “I am so glad I was not there to prevent Lazarus’ death.”

What is Jesus saying?

Jesus is living out the second beatitude.   The sermon on the mount begins in Matthew 5 with eight statements of the good life, descriptions of the ones living the good life, the lucky ones, the happy ones.  And they are groups of people who would be least expected to be happy:  the poor, the hungry, the disadvantaged, the powerless.   The second beatitude is:

Matthew 5:4  Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Happy are they that mourn!  How lucky are the mourners, for they will find comfort!  
How odd are the Beatitudes!  How in the world do you expect people mourning the death of a loved one to be the fortunate people?  For they will be comforted.

Some lessons you can’t learn from just hearing them.  Some things can only be learned from experience.  The disciples had listened to his sermon back in July, but they hadn’t lived it yet.  There is a big difference between hearing the words of Jesus and experiencing the words of Jesus.   They knew that Jesus said that those who mourn were the lucky ones, and some of the disciples wrote it down.  But did they understand what Jesus was saying?  Do we understand what Jesus was saying?

Don’t just read the words; live the words.

Can you imagine the joy that Mary and Martha felt when they realized Lazarus was alive again?  Some of you can.  Some of you have had news that came close.  When the follow-up scan says, there is no more sign of cancer when you get news that your family member in the horrible accident that you were told would probably die is now expected to live.  

I remember clearly a certain premature baby.  I spent over an hour resuscitating and ventilating this baby one early morning.  Born at 24 weeks, her prognosis was very poor.  She needed surfactant, a medicine instilled into the lungs of premature babies to allow their stiff lungs to expand.  But that is not available in any rural hospital.  Nor was the high-frequency oscillating ventilator we needed to breathe for her with her premature lungs.  So I breathed for her with a hand-squeezed bag for over an hour because that was the best you have in any rural hospital.  And that morning, the transport team was delayed.  It became harder and harder to breathe for her as her lungs became stiffer and stiffer.   Despite our best efforts, her oxygen was dropping, and then her heart stopped.  We continued to ventilate and do chest compressions for more than 15 minutes, giving all the code blue medications possible to attempt to revive her.  One by one, the nurses and respiratory techs said we needed to stop because she was gone.  But I couldn’t let go.  I couldn’t stop.  And then, unexplainably, her heart started beating, her oxygen came up, and just after that, the transport team arrived with the medicine needed to decrease the stiffness in her lungs.  She survived that night and, after 4 months in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, was able to go home.

But that moment when her heart started… There is no possible way I can explain to you the joy that spread in that room.  She had been given up for dead, the room was full of tears, and we were all mourning, but then she came back to life, and let me tell you, worship broke out in that nursery, praising God for the gift of life.  For it was nothing we did.  We had exhausted every intervention available to us.       But God…

Oh, what a moment, when everything changes
Imagine the glory; imagine the praises.1

I don’t have to imagine it, for I have lived it more than once.

There is no rejoicing like the rejoicing of the victory of life over death.  You can read the words of the Bible, and you can study them, but they come truly alive when we see how we have lived them out and then share them with each other.  How wonderful it is for those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

This is the attitude we see in David in Psalm 30.   David was sick to the point of death with no medical treatment available, and he cried out to God, and God healed him, and Psalm 30 is his response.

O Yehovah, my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me.
O Yehovah, you have brought up my soul from the grave; you restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit.
Sing praises to Yehovah, O you his saints, and give thanks to his holy name.
Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.
You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth, and clothed me with gladness, that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent.
O Yehovah my God, I will give thanks to you forever!

David thought he was going to die, but God turned his mourning into dancing.  And in our passage today, Jesus knew something that the disciples didn’t realize — Lazarus’ death was only temporary.  Those who now mourn will soon find comfort, and they shall rejoice.

Are you a Second Beatitude believer?  Can you see tragedy, illness, and death as just another opportunity for God to reveal his glory? Can you grasp the incredible brevity of our grief compared to the eternity of our joy?  The key to our passage today is verse 4:

John 11:4  Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.”

“This sickness will not end in death.”  Don’t miss the point that Jesus makes this statement, knowing that Lazarus is already dead.  It is not a statement about the prognosis of the illness but about the temporal nature of death.   Jesus says, “This sickness will not end in death” because Jesus knows that death is not the end.  Death is never the end.  It was not the end for Lazarus, and it is not the end for you either.   The year after the dash on a headstone is not an ending date but a relocation date.

Let’s look at another Psalm.  This one you know very well, Psalm 23.  

Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.  

I know you have this memorized, but look at this carefully.  You walk through the valley of the shadow of death.  The valley of the shadow of death is not a destination, it is not where we go to but where we go through.  Death is not the end.  Then, what is the destination of the journey in the 23rd Psalm?  It is in the last verse:

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,

For all the days I live, God’s goodness and mercy follow.  But wait, ‘follow’ is too tame a word for the Hebrew there ‘radaf.’  ‘Radaf’ doesn’t mean ‘follow,’ but ‘pursue,’ chase after with the intent to do something.  ‘Radaf’ is the picture of a lion pursuing its prey.  A lion doesn’t follow; a lion pursues — the lion’s intent is not just to see where it goes, not just to catch it, but to consume it.  ‘Radaf’ is to chase after something with the intent to act on it.  God’s mercy and goodness pursue us every day of our lives; they chase after us like a lion in order to change us, to change our hearts, and to radically alter our circumstances.

And then — and then after all the days of our lives – and then it is not the end — and then I shall dwell in the house of Yehovah forever.

Surely goodness and mercy shall pursue me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of Yehovah forever.

Death is not an end.  We shall dwell in the house of Yehovah forever.  This is the gospel. This is the good news.  Oh, how I would like to make signs that have Jesus’ quote from John 11:4, “This sickness will not end in death” – Jesus.”   I want to put them in every hospital cancer ward, in every ICU, in every hospice room.  Death is not the end.  Jesus has spoken.

And in just a few days, after our passage this morning, those disciples heard Jesus speak, heard him say,  “Lazarus, come out!”  And they saw the glory of God as he defeated death.  Mourning turned to joy, and grieving turned to glory. 

And in just a few months later, they see Jesus alive three days after he dies, and they will again see God glorified as he pronounces the final defeat of death.  Blessed are they that mourn, for they will be comforted.

It is natural to fear dying.  Dying can be a painful process.  But there is no need to fear death.  For it is but another opportunity for God to show his glory as he brings you closer to his side.  As long as we walk on this earth, we walk each day in the shadow of death, the shadow of the dying.  But Jesus says none of these illnesses, none of these cancers, none of these traumas will end in death.  For those we mentioned this morning who are grieving the death of their son, his story does not end in death.  For death is not the end.  We, like Lazarus, will be called out of the grave.  

John 11:25-26  Jesus said to her [Martha], “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.” 

And then he asks Martha the most important question anyone will ever ask.  

“Do you believe this?”

Do you believe this?  Are these more than just words on a page to you?  Are you living them out?  If you believe these words, it changes everything.  We need not fear the shadow of death or death itself.  We need not fear cancer, heart problems, accidents, evil, or sin.  Because none of these things will be the end.  All these things we fear in life are simply opportunities for God to show his glory as he defeats illness, sin, and death.  There may be times it seems the enemy is winning, that the disease has the better of you, that sin has a hold on you, but know this:  Sin has no victory, Illness has no victory, and Death has no victory.  

Seven hundred years before Jesus’s birth, the prophet Isaiah saw the day coming when the pursuit of God’s mercy and grace would reach its climax. 

Isaiah 25:7   And Yehovah will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations.

Right here, on this mountain in Jerusalem, God will destroy that shroud of death that hangs over all of us.

Isaiah 25: 8 “He will swallow up death forever; and Yehovah Elohim will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for Yehovah has spoken.”

He will remove the reproach, the shame of our sins from us, casting them off the planet. God has spoken; it will come to pass.

And they waited another 700 years for this.  And then Jesus came — and this resurrection of Lazarus in the suburbs of where Isaiah was prophesying was just a small taste of what Jesus would do just a few months later on that very mountain where on the cross and from the tomb like Lazarus the stone would be rolled away, and death would yield to eternal life.

Isaiah 25:9 It will be said on that day, “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us.  This is Yehovah; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”

So we say today, this is Yehovah; this is his son Jesus.  We have waited for him to turn mourning into joy.  Now, let us rejoice in His salvation.  Let us say as the apostle Paul said (1 Corinthians 15:54-56), quoting Isaiah, “Death is swallowed up in victory.” (Isaiah 25:8)  and quoting Hosea, “Death where is your victory? Grave, where is your sting? (Hosea 13:14).

1 Corinthians 15:56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

I heard an old, old story,
How a Savior came from glory,
How He gave His life on Calvary
To save a wretch like me;
I heard about His groaning,
Of His precious blood’s atoning,
Then I repented of my sins
And won the victory.

O victory in Jesus,
My Savior, forever.
He sought me and bought me
With His redeeming blood;
He loved me ere I knew Him
And all my love is due Him,
He plunged me to victory,
Beneath the cleansing flood.2

1.  Lyrics from “He Welcomes the Beggar” by 11th Hour. 2016.  This is the song our church trio sang on the day this message was given.
2. “Victory in Jesus.” Eugene Monroe Bartlett. 1939.

February 18, 27 A.D.  –  The Rich Man and Lazarus #72

David Chupp The 70 Weeks with Jesus Blog , , , , ,


Week 53 – The Rich Man and Lazarus
Luke 16:1-13

Last week, we discussed the parable of the unjust steward in Luke 16 and Jesus’ statement that “You can not serve God and mammon.”  Mammon is anything besides God that you put your trust in, especially wealth and possessions. Today, we will discuss the next parable in Luke 16, in which the primary character is an example of a man who has done just that—put all of his trust in money and not in God.

Luke 16:19   “There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day.   And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores.   The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side.  The rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side.   And he called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.’   But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish.   And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.’   And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house— for I have five brothers—so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’   But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’   And he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’   He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’”

There are two scenes in this parable:

There is life now and the life to come.  We must first recognize that the purpose of this parable is not to describe the life to come.  This is not a lecture on the afterlife. This parable is no more a description of what the life to come will look like than our previous parable is a lesson from Jesus for how to be a good land real estate management company.  Jesus is not giving business advice, and he is not giving a lecture on what heaven looks like.  So, we will not spend time discussing a description of the afterlife in this story.  If we were to spend what time we have with this parable debating if this is an accurate picture of the afterlife, then we would miss the entire point of the parable.   It is what you do in this life that matters. Concern yourself with how you live today.  It is what you do in this life that determines your placement in the afterlife.  So we see the two characters in life now and then in the life to come, and they are separated in both scenes.

And in the life to come, there is a “great chasm” between them that “none may cross.”  And the uncrossable canyon is the result of sin.  The only way to cross the chasm is by repenting, accepting Jesus as the King of your life, and living as the king would have you live.  As the wealthy man learned too late, repentance is only possible in this life.  You see, in this life, they were also separated by a wall.  But there was a gate.   There was an opportunity to cross from one side to the other.  But the rich man would not allow Lazarus to enter.   If he had repented of his worship of the idol of wealth and had shared, loving his neighbor as his self, he could have opened the gate to Lazarus.   This would be his repentance, a change in the direction of his life, a change in who directed his life, and thus a change in how he lived.  But the separation in the life to come has no gate.  The chance for repentance is past.  So,  we must not spend too much time focusing on how we will live after we die when our purpose on this earth is to live for Jesus now.  As the rich man learned, we can’t change how we live after we die.  But today, we can search God’s word and learn how he wants us to live.  Today, we can repent and live differently.  And we can then trust Yehovah, the God who loves us and has gone to prepare a place for us.   So, let’s look closely at this parable.

The rich man-  Notice that he is the character who does not have a name.  This is a reversal of what was expected.   Undoubtedly, in this life, everyone would have known the rich man’s name, but no one would know that the poor man had a name.  We are told that he is not just rich but also extremely wealthy, for he is clothed in purple and fine linen, the clothing of kings.  He feasted spectacularly every day.  Again, this identifies him as being in the place of kings.  But if you read carefully, you will find something about his character.  He is not righteous.  And we know this before we ever read about the poor man at his gate.  How?  He feasts every day.  This means he is not righteous.   God designed several feasts in the Biblical Calendar.  Feasts and celebrations are important to God.  We have discussed before the great Messianic Feast in the world to come.  God loves a good party.  God is all about celebrations.  But every day in this life is not a feast.  In God’s calendar, every day is not the same.  For the Jews in Jesus’ day, the seventh day, the Sabbath, is different.  It is special.  You do not do work on the Sabbath.  Nor do you ask any of your workers or slaves in your home to work.  But this man feasts every day.  So he is forcing his staff to work on the Sabbath.  By Biblical definition, we know he is not a righteous man.

We also learn he is a man who can’t see very well.  There is a poor man at his gate.  In this life, the rich man does not see Lazarus.  Oh, he may know that the poor man is at his gate.  “What an inconvenience!  How sad that all the guests coming to my sumptuous feast must pass by such a sight.  How disgusting that they have to pass by this horrible man covered in sores on their way to my beautiful party.”  The poor man’s dream is to have a few crumbs that fall from his table, but can you imagine what would happen if he gave this poor man food?  “Why, then,” the rich man would say, “he would never leave. And worse yet, even more poor, miserable people might be encouraged to come to get my scraps.  So I give the crumbs to the household dogs.  Perhaps the poor man will leave or just go ahead and die and stop ruining the curb appeal of my mansion.”

He doesn’t really see Lazarus in the parable until verse 23:

Luke 16:23  and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side.

Now he sees him.  But still, the rich man does not see.  He may have noticed Lazarus in life, but he didn’t truly see him.  He didn’t see him as a human like him, created in the image of God as he was, in desperate need of love and care, starving while he feasted, suffering while he celebrated.  Now, he only sees Lazarus as just another servant who might increase his comfort, just like his servants in his prior life.

Luke 16:24  (my paraphrase)  Father Abraham, send Lazarus like a slave to comfort me, have him bring me some cold water.  Oh, Lazarus won’t mind walking through the flames to come serve me.  He won’t care; he is just a slave. 

And when told that it is impossible for Lazarus to go where he is, the rich man asks Abraham to send him back to warn his brothers to repent.  “Oh, Lazarus won’t mind leaving heaven to go back and do some service for me.”   Notice that he never directly addresses Lazarus.  In his mind, Lazarus is still someone beneath him.  Just another person to do his bidding.   He says, “Father Abraham…  Come on, Abraham, we are family.”  But He fails to see Lazarus as part of the family.  He is just a lowly servant, someone to bring him comfort.

Even in the flames of torment, he is unrepentant, for there can be no repentance after you die.

In 2 Timothy 2, Paul instructs Timothy on how to deal with opponents of the gospel.  

2 Timothy 2:25-26   Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.

We pray that God will grant repentance. “Grant” means to bestow as a gift.  Jesus told us in John 16:8 that it is the Holy Spirit’s job to convict people of sin.  Repentance is a gift from God that, unfortunately, not all choose to accept.  On our own, none of us would ever repent.  And we see this rich man is now beyond repentance and beyond salvation.

And then there is Lazarus.

This is the only one of Jesus’ parables in which a character is named. He is Lazarus, the Greek form of the name Elazar, a common name in the Old Testament that means ‘God is my help.’  Jesus chose this name because this is a man who does not receive help from those around him; his only help comes from God.

 He is described as a “poor man.”  There are two Greek words for poor.  Penes and ptochos.  The penes are the working poor.  Those who are surviving day to day.  They are living in a shelter or a run-down shack.  They never have enough to eat, but they aren’t starving yet.  Their clothes are worn out, but they are not naked.  They have little hope that things will ever improve, but they are surviving.  This is the majority of the poor in Jesus’ day.  They lived in a foreign occupied country where work was scarce and taxes were oppressive.  These were hard times for the poor.  They were barely surviving.

But that is not who Jesus is talking about in this parable.  Jesus doesn’t use the word ‘penes’ but the other Greek word for the poor, the ‘ptochoi’ (singular ‘ptochos.’)  They are the completely destitute who own only the ragged clothes on their back and have no other possessions.  This Greek word comes from a root meaning “to cower in fear or cringe.”  They are not the working poor.  Due to physical problems, they can not work.  They can only beg.  They are not surviving.  They are dying in front of your eyes.  They have no hope.  Life will never get better.  For them, there is only suffering and then death.  

The New York Times published a picture in 1993 that I think best illustrates one who is ptochos, the hopeless poor.  It is a difficult picture to look at.  We instinctively do not want to look at the ptochoi.  But we must look.  This is a picture of a little boy in Sudan, Africa, who was one of many who was starving to death and attempting to walk to a UN feeding station.  Kevin Carter, a photojournalist, caught this picture of the child after he had collapsed on the way.  Just steps away is a hooded vulture, waiting on the child to die for its next meal.

This is the ptochoi.  This is the poor man at the gate in Jesus’ parable.  Starving, hopeless,  dying.  

Kevin Carter said he scared the vulture away before he left, but he did not know if the child ever made it to the feeding station.  [We later learned the child did make it and lived that day but died as a teenager of “fevers.”]  Kevin Carter committed suicide 4 months after he took this photo.  His suicide note said: “…I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain … of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners…”

This is a difficult picture to look at.  How are we supposed to respond when we lift up our eyes and see a child like this?  Are we supposed to be sad?  Should we mourn?

In the Old Testament book of Joel, the people had suffered a terrible tragedy.  A swarm of locusts devastated the land, destroying most crops.  Many would be hungry due to the resulting famine.  It was terrible.  And Joel said, because of your sin, Israel, even more devastation is coming.  An army will come to conquer you.  It will be an even more terrible time.  How should people react to such news?

People in those days usually reacted to terrible news by mourning and tearing their clothes, as Jacob did when he was told Joseph was dead, or as David tore his clothes when he heard of the deaths of Saul and Jonathan. But Joel tells them the proper response is not simply tearing their clothes and mourning.

Joel 2:12-13    “Yet even now,” declares Yehovah, “return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning, and rend your hearts and not your garments.
Return to Yehovah your God, for he is gracious and merciful
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and he relents over disaster.

Fasting, weeping, and mourning are all appropriate responses to disaster. But Joel says the outward show of mourning, which was common in their day, tearing their garments, was not the most important response.

Rend your hearts and not your garments.

Yes, be sad at the terrible plight of the poor, mourn that children are dying, and shed a tear when you see a child in such a state. But don’t just tear your clothes.  Tear your heart.  He says, “Return to me with all your heart.”  Return – the Hebrew shuv, which we translate as repent.  Your heart should change.  You should make a decision to repent when you see such a disaster.   Return to God for his patience, grace, and mercy are stronger than his justice.   (Notice that Joel is quoting the passage we looked at last week in Exodus 34, where God describes himself.)

The appropriate response to seeing this horrible picture of poverty and famine is not just mourning or crying.  Rend your hearts.  God expects us to react with broken hearts that lead to repentance.  Our hearts should be broken by the things that break God’s heart.  And broken hearts should lead us to return to his ways.  As he is a God of grace and mercy, he expects his children to act like their father and respond to disaster with grace and mercy.  Broken hearts that lead to actions of mercy through repentance.  But our rich man in this parable does not really see Lazarus.  His heart is hard.  He does not repent and give Lazarus mercy and grace.

They both died.  Death is the great leveler.  

Ecclesiastes 9:2  All share a common destiny—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean,
Hebrews 9:27   People are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment,

Luke 16:22 The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side.  The rich man also died and was buried,

Is there any significance that the poor man dies first?  It was no surprise that this starving man covered in sores died soon.   A 2016 study by the National Institutes of Health showed that the extremely poor in the US died on average 15 years sooner than the average wealthy person.  The gap is even wider in third-world countries.   If a celebrity dies, it makes the news.  But the news is silent on the 20 homeless people who die in our country, on our doorstep, on average every day, most of them early, preventable deaths.  And notice this detail in the parable: Words are added to note that the rich man was buried.  Those words are missing when Lazarus dies.  The rich man likely had a magnificent funeral with a beautiful silk-lined coffin, the best vault, and a lovely granite marker.  There is no mention of even a burial of Lazarus.  He dies and is forgotten.  He was unnoticed in death as he was in life.  Not even a statistic.  

Now look at the rich man’s last request.  He asks Abraham to send Lazarus back to convince his five brothers to repent before it is too late.  Abraham tells him that all they need to know is written in the books of Moses and the Prophets.  But the rich man is convinced that if only Lazarus would return from the dead and warn them.  Then they would repent and not discover the truth too late as he did.  Abraham responds:  

Luke 16:31  “If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.”

When Jesus is teaching this parable in 27 AD, it will be just a few days before he will be informed that his real-life friend Lazarus is ill.  Lazarus will die, and Jesus, 4 days later, will bring him back from the dead.  Just as the rich man in the parable asked, a man named Lazarus will come back from the dead.  And you think that would be enough to convince every person in Israel that Jesus was indeed who he said he was.  But Abraham in the parable was correct.  Even when the actual Lazarus returned from the dead, some refused to believe.  And just a few months later, when Jesus was crucified and after three days rose from the dead.  There were still those who refused to believe, refused to repent.  And there are people today who still refuse to believe, still those who refuse to repent.

This is a story of two people who lived extremely different lives in this world and then, in a great reversal, were placed in very different positions in the afterlife.  This is not about the “Haves” and the “Have Nots,” but rather the “Have more than they could possibly ever need” and The “Have Nothing, Need Everything”.   And the sad truth is that this happens every day in our time.  There are millions of the extremely poor, the ptochoi.  Some right at our doorstep.  Some are dying or starving while others feast sumptuously.    Like Lazarus in the parable, they are unseen.

When we began a program for the homeless in Alabama, many of those we first approached were resistant to starting services for the homeless in our county.  They said we don’t have any homeless people in Marshall County.  There is just no need.  But we had already identified hundreds of homeless people in our town and homeless children in our schools.  They were there, but no one wanted to see them. They could not see that they were already at their doorstep.  (There are entire webpages dedicated to educating tourists on how to avoid the homeless people in San Francisco, New York and other cities.)

After showing people in our county the data on our homeless population, they said if we were to begin to offer services to people without homes, it would just encourage more homeless to come to our town.  We will attract more homeless people and just have a bigger problem.  All they could see was the bigger potential problem for themselves.  They could not understand the need.  Like the rich man who refused to give crumbs from the table to Lazarus, they didn’t want to encourage the homeless to stay by giving them shelter or food or comfort.

We serve a God who sees.  When Abraham and Sarah horribly mistreat Hagar, their Egyptian slave, first sexually abusing her and then, after she was pregnant, treating her harshly, she flees to the wilderness.  In her despair, when she feels she has no hope, God comes to her and promises to care for her.  She calls God “El–Roi” the God who sees me.  God sees affliction, and he responds.  He sees the affliction of the children of Israel in Egypt.

Exodus 3:7   Then the LORD said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters.

I have a friend who suffered many years under an emotionally abusive husband.  She prayed for decades that he would come to repentance.   No one, other than her children and closest family, had any idea what she had endured.  But God saw her affliction and came to her and clearly told her that he saw her.  He was Yehovah El Roi to her.  This was the month before she was diagnosed with terminal cancer that was supposed to have ended her life several months ago.  She is still very much alive and has been delivered from the man who abused her.  When others could not see her in her distress, God saw her.  

Know that whatever you face in this life that God sees you.  He sees your affliction, he sees your sadness, he sees your family trouble, he sees your despair, he sees your grief, he sees you troubled by the same temptations.  The rich man did not see Lazarus in this life, but God saw the poor man.  And the God who sees is the God who heals, Yehovah El Roi is Yehovah rapha (Exodus 15:26.).  He is the God who provides Yehovah yireh (Genesis 22:14.)  And as the rich man in the story discovered and as many will discover one day, he is Yehovah Tzidkenu the God of righteousness, the God who judges. (Jeremiah 22:6, Jeremiah 33:16)

God sees us, and God cares for us.  This is certain.  The big question for us is, do we see as God sees?  Do we see the forgotten people on our doorstep?  Do we lift up our eyes now and see the needs around us? Do we really see them as created in the image of God, as members of the family, as brothers?  Do we see ourselves as we are, and do we repent while there is still time to repent?

In Luke 7, Jesus is dining at the home of a Pharisee named Simon.  The dinner is interrupted by a woman, a known sinner, who comes in and breaks an alabaster flask of ointment and anoints Jesus, and washes his feet.  Jesus takes that opportunity to tell the parable of the debtors.  One owed 50 and the other 500.  Neither could afford to pay, so both debts were written off.  Jesus asked Simon, “Which will love him more?”  

Luke 7:43-44   Simon answered, “The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.” And he said to him, “You have judged rightly.” Then turning toward the woman he [Jesus] said to Simon, “Do you see this woman?

Well, of course, he saw her, Jesus.  She caused a big commotion, upsetting his dinner party.  But he did not see the same woman Jesus saw.  He saw a sinner.  Someone less righteous than him.  Someone who would never be invited to his home.  Someone who was unclean.  

Jesus recognized that she was a sinner; he later tells Simon, “her sins, which are many…”  But who Jesus saw was not simply a sinner, but a repentant sinner who acted out her repentance.   And he tells her she is forgiven.  She is a sinner who has repented, acted out her repentance, been forgiven, saved by her faith, and will depart in peace. “Do you see this woman?”

Matt. 7:3 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?

Klyne Snodgrass, in his excellent book, Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus, says it well:  

“The ability to see is the mark of Christian discipleship.”1

This parable of Jesus is, in some ways, the story of the blind man who was never healed.

If only we can look at others and ourselves with our Father’s eyes.  If only we could see our own sins instead of focusing on the sins of others.  If only we could see the needs at our doorstep,  If only we can see how loving, how forgiving, how patient, and how merciful our Father is to his children.  Then perhaps we would be swift to repent, swift to forgive, swift to share, and swift to worship.  Like the man in John 9, there are lots of things I do not know or understand, but this I know.  Once I was blind, now I can see, and Jesus made all the difference.

Let us not spend our time in this world talking about heaven and the life to come.  It will come, and your destination in the world to come will be determined by your repentance or your lack of repentance today, by how you treat others, and by how you treat the poor.  Everyone reading these words is in the same situation.  We are all sinners, every one of us.  We may have different sins, but we all fall short of the glory of God.  I fall short daily.  As long as we breathe, we have another God-given opportunity to repent of whatever stands between us and God and to live today more closely following our Savior.  This is the day Yehovah has made.  Let us repent and be glad in it. 

1.  Snodgrass, Klyne R.. Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus (p. 434). Kindle Edition. 

February 14, 27 A.D. —   The Unjust Steward #71

David Chupp The 70 Weeks with Jesus Blog , , ,

Week 52 — The Unjust Steward
Luke 16:1-13

We are in week 52/70 of the appointed year of the Lord. We are walking week by week through Jesus’ ministry. Today, we will cover what many say is the most challenging parable Jesus told. It is found in Luke 16.

Luke 16:1-8   He also said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions.   And he called him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be manager.’   And the manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do, since my master is taking the management away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg.   I have decided what to do, so that when I am removed from management, people may receive me into their houses.’   So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’   He said, ‘A hundred measures of oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’   Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He said, ‘A hundred measures of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write eighty.’   The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. 

Let me see if I have this straight.  A landowner finds out that the person managing his land was cheating him.  So he fires the manager and tells him to turn in his books.  But before word gets out about his being fired, he calls in the renters one at a time and quickly changes the books so they will owe much less, hoping to gain friends and influence by being generous with his ex-boss’s money and cheating his boss even more.  Surprisingly, his former boss commends him for his ‘shrewdness.’  This is a tough one.

First, does it bother you that Jesus used a dishonest manager to make a point? It didn’t bother Jesus, for he tells several stories that use characters who act unrighteously to teach lessons in righteousness.  Jesus tells stories that include righteous and unrighteous people, for the world these disciples live in has both.  

For example, there is the short parable of the man who accidentally discovers that his neighbor’s field has buried treasure in it.   He doesn’t tell his neighbor but deceives his neighbor into selling him the field.  Is that good business practice?   It certainly isn’t righteous, but Jesus uses this real-life example to say that the kingdom of heaven is like that treasure you give up everything to obtain.  He says nothing about the man’s behavior; the parable is about the treasure, the kingdom.

Then there is the unneighborly neighbor in Luke 11 who doesn’t want to be bothered by his neighbor who needs food at night.  This man is not loving his neighbor as himself.  This is followed by Jesus asking What kind of father would give his child a scorpion if he asked for food?   This is a “how much more” parable, as seen in the explanation:

Luke 11:13  If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”  

Jesus says if an unrighteous neighbor will eventually help, how much more will righteous God help you?  Finally, there is the unrighteous judge in Luke 18:

Luke 18:1-5  He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’  For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’”

Again, this is a ‘how much more’ parable.  If even this unrighteous judge will eventually give in and give justice, how much more will a righteous God give justice to his people who cry out to him?  So don’t get hung up on the idea that Jesus uses unsavory characters in his parables.  Let’s see what Jesus is teaching using this story.

In Jesus’ day, the way to gain wealth was to play the game.  That is just the way the economy was set up. There were some honest jobs, such as fishing and being a craftsman.  But the way to get ahead financially was land ownership.  Since much of Israel in this day was occupied by the Romans, many wealthy Romans bought up land in Israel and then hired managers to collect their profits while they lived back in Rome.  This is much like many vacation towns in the US now, where wealthy people buy up many of the hotels and Airbnb’s and then hire locals to manage their property.  So, it is a story we can all identify with.  But this manager was doing a poor job, so he was fired.  The manager then acts dishonestly, cheating the owner even more by adjusting the books to gain favor with the renters.  

Then, something completely unexpected happens in the story.

Luke 16:8   The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness.

You would expect the landowner to be angry and perhaps have the manager arrested.   The story has jumped the rails.  That is not a reasonable way for the rich land-owner to act.  The story no longer makes sense in our world.  This wealthy landowner is nothing like a typical landowner, as they know.  This parable has to be an allegory to make sense.  Jesus never explains the allegory (as he did with the parable of the four soils), but he does clarify the lesson from the parable:

And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.

Here is where we know without a doubt that the story is an allegorical parable.  Who could possibly reward you with “eternal dwellings?”  This only works if the wealthy landowner is God, for he is the only one in charge of ‘eternal dwellings.’  He owns all of the riches and all of the land.  The manager is one of God’s people who was placed in charge of managing some of God’s resources.  (Recall that Adam in Genesis was placed in the garden in Eden to manage it.)   But this manager was doing a poor job of managing God’s resources.  Such a poor job that God decided to fire him and take away his resources.  But then the manager completely changes his way of dealing with people and acts in such a way that makes God commend him.  He takes God’s resources and deals them out with extravagant grace and mercy.  And God is pleased with him.  By treating all the people living on God’s land with grace and mercy and freely dispersing God’s resources, the manager has made a friend using wealth as a tool and is received into the eternal dwelling.

Jesus goes on:

Luke 16:10   “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much.  If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?   And if you have not been faithful in that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own?   

We put a lot of emphasis on ownership.  I paid off my truck last month and got the title in the mail this week.  It says that I own that truck.  But the Biblical view is that God owns this world, and we are his stewards, managing portions of God’s property.  That rancher in Yellowstone may think he owns the cattle on a thousand hills, but the Bible says differently.

Deuteronomy 10:14    To Yehovah your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it.
Psalm 24:1    The earth is Yehovah’s and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it;

Jesus ends his teaching on this parable with this verse:

No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”

Something interesting happens in the Greek in this verse.  The final word, ‘money,’ is not translated into Greek but left as a Semitic word, ‘mammon.’  So this is a Hebrew or Aramaic word spelled with Greek letters.  When the Bible was translated from Greek to Latin in the 4th century, it was again not translated but left as a Semitic word.  When the King James Bible was translated in 1611, it also kept the Hebrew word, Mammon in the verse.

Luke 16:13   “…Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”

Jesus has personified “mammon” in his statement, which led many in the Middle Ages to falsely believe there was a demon of greed and money named ‘Mammon,’ as seen in John Milton’s Paradise Lost.  But this was not what Jesus meant.

So what is the meaning of this Hebrew word, “mammon?”   It developed as a Hebrew word about 200 years after the last book of the Old Testament was written, so you won’t find it in the Old Testament.  It is, however, frequently seen in Hebrew documents in the Dead Sea Scrolls, so we know it was a commonly used word in Jesus’s day.  It was derived from a root word frequently used in the Old Testament.  It is a Hebrew word that you know: ‘Amen.’  It is another word the Bible doesn’t translate but leaves as a Hebrew word (like Hallelujah, Hosannah, Jubilee).   When we end a prayer, we say this Hebrew word, amen.  It is spelled in Hebrew with the letters, aleph, mem, nun (A, M, N).  We must understand the root word ‘amen’ to understand what mammon means.

This root carries the ideas of stability, reliability, and truth; various forms of the word are found throughout the Scriptures.  

A form of this word is found in one of the most important verses in the Old Testament.  It is in the two verses in the Old Testament that the writers of the books of the Old Testament quote more often than any other verses, Exodus 34:6,7.

These verses are the John 3:16 of the Old Testament. They are the most important verses of the Old Testament.  Let me give you the context.  In this section of Exodus, the children of Israel have left Egypt, passed through the parted waters of the sea, and camped at the base of Mount Sinai.  Moses has been up on the mountain, brought down the 10 commandments on stone tablets, and found his people worshipping a golden calf.  Moses returned to the mountain to intercede for the people and remake the stone tablets.  And Moses asks to see God’s glory.  God says, You can’t see my face, but I will show you part of my glory.  So God places Moses in a cleft in the rock, and God passes before him.  And when God is revealing himself to Moses, this is how God describes himself:

Exodus 34:6-7  Yehovah passed before him and proclaimed, “Yehovah, Yehovah, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty…”

If you want to understand who God is, then study how God describes himself.  In a job interview, you are often asked to give several adjectives to describe yourself.  God does just that with Moses on the mountain.  It is no wonder this is the most quoted verse by the writers of the Old Testament.  See the balance of love, mercy, grace, truth, and justice in God’s self-description.  We could spend weeks and weeks on understanding these verses.  The Bible Project has a 14-week series on this; you should check it out.  That is where I learned much of what you hear now. But we are just looking at the word ‘amen’ and its variants to understand this word, mammon.  

God is abounding in steadfast (covenantal) love and faithfulness.  What we translate as ‘faithfulness’ is ‘emet,’ a form of our word, amen.  Tim Mackie from The Bible Project said ‘amen’ has to do with stableness and reliability.  When Moses had to hold up his hands for hours for the Israelites to defeat the Amalekites, they put a rock under his arms so they would be stable or steady.  When emet is used for people, it describes reliable and stable character or trustworthiness. For example, when Moses appointed leaders in Israel, they were to be “people of emet,” trustworthy people who wouldn’t take bribes or distort justice.  God is stable and reliable, and his character is unchanging. he is dependable and worthy of trust because he is faithful. This is why Moses describes God as a rock.  

Jesus often said, “Verily, Verily, I say to you….

John 3:3 Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Or in the ESV:

John 3:3 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Verily is an English word from the Latin ‘Veritas,’ which means ‘truth.’  But again, in the Greek New Testament, this is our untranslated Hebrew word ‘amen.’  So Jesus literally says,

 “Amen, amen, I say to you….” Jesus says, “This is the truth; you can count on this.   I stand as a witness that this is true.”  Jesus says this over 100 times in the gospels.  

In the Old Testament, prayers, blessings, and curses were often concluded with “amen.” Paul does the same in his letters, concluding his prayers or blessings with “amen.” 

1 Chronicles 16:36 Blessed be Yehovah, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting!”  Then all the people said, “Amen!” and praised Yehovah.
Romans 15:33 May the God of peace be with you all. Amen.
Philippians 4:20 To our God and Father be glory forever and ever. Amen.

 By saying ‘amen,’ you say, “This is true, and I stand witness to it.”  

When Jesus is talking with Pilate before he is sentenced to die, Jesus tells Pilate his purpose in coming:

John 18:37-38 Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth.

Jesus came to be God’s witness to the truth.

Rev. 3:14   “And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: ‘The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s creation.

Jesus is God’s  ‘Amen’ – his life is a witness to who God is and what God has said all along.

2 Corinthians 3:20  For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God.  

Jesus is the amen.  He is the fulfillment of the promise of God given thousands of years before. He is the witness that all God said is true.

Amen is spelled a m n. (Hebrew is written right to left, typically with no vowels אמן ).  Mammon is the noun form of the verb amen.    In Hebrew, you often make a noun out of a verb or other word by adding the letter ‘mem’ (our ‘m’) to the front of it.  So we take the verb ‘amen’ and add a preceding mem and get mammon (מאמן).  Amen, the verb, means to affirm or testify as true or trustworthy.  So the noun form (mammon) is“the thing in which you put your trust.”  It came to be a word for wealth or riches because many people who have riches have put their trust in their riches instead of God.

In our scripture today, Jesus says you can’t serve both God and mammon.  It has to be one or the other.  You can’t put your trust in God and also put your trust in wealth.  Where do you place your trust?  

I have a friend who is a ‘prepper.’  He has an entire room of his house filled with food and supplies and equipment he feels he will need one day when the world system collapses.  He has spent thousands of hours researching and a small fortune and feels sure he will be ready to survive almost any catastrophe. Now, don’t get me wrong.  I was a Boy Scout, and the scouts’ motto was “Be prepared.”  There is nothing wrong with being prepared. But this friend has gone way overboard.   He has placed his hope in the future in the contents of that room.  Where do you place your trust?  Let’s see what the First Testament says:  

Proverbs 11:28   Whoever trusts in his riches will fall, but the righteous will flourish like a green leaf.
Proverbs 18:11   The wealth of the rich is their fortified city; they imagine it a wall too high to scale.

And one from the Psalms:

Psalm 20:7    Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Yehovah, our God.

The Bible tells the king of Israel never to build an enormous army or purchase horses and chariots from Egypt.  They should not trust their army for protection but trust God to be their defender.   If they build a vast army, they say they don’t trust God to protect them.  This is why David got in so much trouble for taking a census in 2 Samuel.  Remember, an enemy was threatening them, and David decided to take a census to see how many soldiers they had to fight.   The reason the Bible shows this as a terrible sin is that David showed his lack of trust in God by putting his trust in the number of his soldiers.

Mammon is something that you put your trust in instead of God.

Look at a coin or the back of some US currency.   You will find the phrase “In God We Trust.” Since 1864, this has been on coins and paper currency since 1957.  This motto was adapted from a line in Francis Scott Key’s “Star-Spangled Banner”  (though you probably only know the first verse).   Here is the fourth verse:

O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
Between their lov’d home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with vict’ry and peace may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the power that hath made and preserv’d us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto – “In God is our trust,”
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

“In God we trust” became the official motto of the US in 1956.

Knowing this, you may find it ironic that Jesus said, “You can’t put your trust in both God and money,” and then we go and place “In God we trust” directly on that other thing we can’t put our trust in.  Theodore Roosevelt thought it was more than a little ironic to put “In God we trust” on mammon, the very thing Jesus singled out as something you can not place trust in.  Roosevelt, in fact, said to put the phrase on money would be “dangerously close to sacrilege” and ordered it removed from new coinage in 1907.1  But the people of the US wanted it there, and there was such a public outcry that Congress passed an act in 1908 reinstating the motto on coinage.

I don’t have a problem with the motto being on our money. I only wish the people in charge of the money really meant it.   Perhaps we can use that to our advantage.  Every time you start to spend money on something, look at the motto and ask yourself, “Am I putting my trust in God or in mammon (money or wealth)?  (Maybe I need to have it printed on my bank card.)

When talking with a friend a few years ago about my upcoming retirement, he asked me if I felt I had enough money set aside to “feel secure.”  The answer was no.  I did not, and I do not have enough money set aside to feel secure.  And I never will.  What I have learned from the Word of God is that there is no security in money.  I have read the parable of the man who had so many possessions that he had to rent bigger storage units, excuse me, build bigger barns.  I read what God said to that man,

Luke 12:20-21 But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’  So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

I heard Jesus say the birds of the air don’t store food in barns. They aren’t preppers, but God feeds them. I remember Jesus saying we should store up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves don’t break in and steal. There is no security in money or things.

But we are tempted to put our trust in money.  How do we combat that temptation?  One day, Jesus told a young man how to deal with this.  He came to Jesus saying he had kept the commandments, but what more did he lack?  What did he need to inherit eternal life?  And Jesus saw that he was a man of great possessions and prescribed the cure for putting his faith in his wealth.  Jesus told him to give it away.  Jesus told him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”

The cure for the temptation to put trust in money and possessions instead of God:  generosity.

Jesus didn’t ask anyone else in the Bible to give it all away.  He didn’t ask that of another man who came to him with the same problem, Zacchaeus.  Zacchaeus was a man who had put all of his trust in money and put aside following God. As a tax collector, he cheated his way into as much money as possible.  Until he met Jesus.  When he meets Jesus, he decides to put his trust in God and starts giving that money away.

Jesus’ message to the rich young ruler was the same as the message he gives in our parable today:

And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.

We don’t own anything.  We are given stewardship of God’s resources.  God will commend us if we resist the temptation to keep those resources to ourselves and, like the manager in the parable, be extravagantly generous in passing along the master’s resources to those around us in need.  

This parable of the unjust steward is challenging. We worked through a Hebrew grammar lesson and an American History lesson to understand it. However, applying Jesus’ words to our lives requires more work. As discussed last week, Jesus said, “Many people will hear what I am saying, but only a few will do these words.”

Randy Alcorn said it this way:

“When I grasp that I’m a steward, not an owner, it totally changes my perspective. Suddenly, I’m not asking, “How much of my money shall I, out of the goodness of my heart, give to God?” Rather, I’m asking, “Since all of ‘my’ money is really yours, Lord, how would you like me to invest your money today?”
As long as I hold tightly to something, I believe I own it. But when I give it away, I relinquish control, power, and prestige. When I realize that God has a claim not merely on the few dollars I might choose to throw in an offering plate, not simply on 10 percent or even 50 percent, but on 100 percent of “my” money, it’s revolutionary. If I’m God’s money manager, I’m not God. Money isn’t God. God is God. So God, money, and I are each put in our rightful place.”

  1. President Theodore Roosevelt, 13 November 1907  from The New York Times 11/14/1907.
  2. Randy Alcorn, in an interview with Joshua Becker, posted on Alcorn’s website (https://www.epm.org/resources/2017/Jul/5/christ-centered-stewardship/)

December 4, 27 A.D.  –  The Good Shepherd—   The Year of the Lord’s Favor #62

David Chupp The 70 Weeks with Jesus Blog ,

Week 42 ——— The Good Shepherd
John 10:1–23 

Last week, we discussed how the Pharisees had made following God hard for the people.  They didn’t like the kind of Messiah Jesus was turning out to be.  Jesus called them idolaters.  He said they were worshiping idols.  And what is an idol?  It is a god that you make up and pretend to be real.  The Pharisees read the scriptures, but instead of worshipping the God of the Bible, they designed their own imaginary god that fit their purposes quite well.   They remade God in their image.  The god they worshiped bore little resemblance to the God of the Bible.  The god they worshiped cared more about laws than people, rituals than righteousness, and tithing spices than the poor.  

You can read the right scriptures but worship the wrong god. 

Let me set the scene of our scripture in John 10, where Jesus continues criticizing the religious leaders of his day. The 70 disciples he sent out have returned with stories of their mission’s success. It is festival time, and despite the danger of being in Jerusalem, where the Pharisees want to kill him, Jesus goes to celebrate.

John 10:22-23   At that time the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the colonnade of Solomon.

I cannot understand why the translators of the Bible go to great lengths to try to hide the fact that this ‘feast’ is Hanukkah.  While very few Christians know what the “Feast of Dedication” is, most everyone knows that Hanukkah is a Jewish holiday.  The word in the gospel of John in Greek is ‘egkania’ which is the word used in Ancient Greek for Hanukkah.  It is a festival celebrating the dedication of the temple, but  only one major version of the Bible translates it clearly  (New Living Translation.)   For many years, the institutional church was antisemitic and tried to divorce itself from its Jewish roots.  But Yehovah, the God of the Bible, chose the Jews to be the conduit of his message.  Our lord and savior, Jesus, was Jewish, and he celebrated Hanukkah.  Next week, we will discuss the history of this holiday and how Jesus used the festival theme to teach a great truth.  So, the teaching we discuss today and next week occurs during this Jewish festival.  It is winter, and Jerusalem can get quite cold.  We saw it snow in Jerusalem on our first trip.  Jesus is teaching in Solomon’s colonnade; it was a roofed outdoor section of the temple grounds, so it was somewhat protected from the elements.  It was huge, about 45 feet wide and 800 feet long.  A common place for public meetings, the early church met here.  

John 10:1-6 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber.   But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.   To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.   When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.  A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.”   This figure of speech Jesus used with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

Jesus gives this story about the sheep and the shepherd and the disciple are confused.  Now, we have the benefit of having heard the explanation Jesus gives in the following 11 verses, so we know where Jesus is going.  But the disciples needed clarification.  They shouldn’t have been.  Jesus is calling to mind a familiar metaphor from the scriptures.  Several Old Testament prophets denounced the religious leaders of their day, calling them bad shepherds of the people.  So when Jesus introduced the idea of himself as the good shepherd, they should have gotten it.  They must have missed the class on Ezekiel 34.   That is the background for this teaching of Jesus.  If you, like the disciples, have forgotten that passage, let’s take a look at it.

Ezekiel 34:1-6   The word of Yehovah came to me:  “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy, and say to them, even to the shepherds, Thus says Yehovah elohim:  Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves!  Should not shepherds feed the sheep?  You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep.  The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them.  So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd, and they became food for all the wild beasts. My sheep were scattered;  they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. My sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with none to search or seek for them.

A shepherd’s job was to care for the sheep.  These shepherds were just using the sheep.  If they were hungry they would just kill one.  If they needed a sweater they took the wool.  But they didn’t make sure the herd was healthy. They didn’t supply them with green pastures for food.  They didn’t care for the injured.  They just let them wander and become lost.  That’s what sheep do without a shepherd.  They follow another sheep head down, munching on the next clump of grass until they end up miles from the herd.  Sheep need a shepherd.  But Ezekiel said these shepherds of the people were bad shepherds, only caring for themselves.  So what did Ezekiel say God would do?  

Ezekiel 34:11-16   “For thus says Yehovah elohim: Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out.   As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, so will I seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness.  And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land. And I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the ravines, and in all the inhabited places of the country.   I will feed them with good pasture, and on the mountain heights of Israel shall be their grazing land.  There they shall lie down in good grazing land, and on rich pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel.    I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord GOD.   I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will destroy.1 I will feed them in justice.

Did you see that?  This is the message of Christmas!  These shepherds have failed to care for the people.  So God himself will come and seek them out and rescue them.  What did Jesus tell Zacchaeus? 

Luke 19:10  For the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.

David wrote a psalm about what God, as a shepherd, would do for us. You know it.  It  begins,” The Lord is my shepherd…”

Yehovah is my shepherd; I shall not want for anything.
He makes me lie down in green pastures; he restores my soul.

This picture of Yehovah as our shepherd runs throughout the Bible.  And the people of the Bible understood all about shepherding.  From Abraham on, they kept flocks. There was a special bond between a shepherd and his sheep.  The Hebrew term for shepherd of sheep is “ro-eh tzon”.    Tzon is the word for sheep.  Ro’eh is the Hebrew root we translate as shepherd, but that root is used for one who cares for another or is a close friend or companion.   So, a shepherd cares for his sheep as he would love a close friend.  Some of you have pets with whom you share this special bond.  In Leviticus 19:18  “Love your neighbor as yourself,” we see that same root for the neighbor that we are to care for.   The idea is that we should shepherd our neighbors and make sure they have food and shelter and are cared for with love.

Ohad Cohen at the Institute of Biblical Studies says, “The Hebrew context teaches us that a shepherd was not just a responsible overseer, but a caring father figure, tending to his flock out of a deep sense of love. The prophet Isaiah tells us that the shepherd “gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart” (Isaiah 40:11). The bond between a shepherd and his animals has all the qualities of a true family.” 

Jesus’ disciples could identify with this shepherd analogy.  But I’m a city boy.   The closest I ever got to caring for sheep was a wool sweater.  I had the chance one day to get up close and personal with a herd of sheep and take a crash course in shepherding.  I was in the Middle East in 2016; we were on a bus driving near Bethlehem, and several shepherds had their flocks near the roadside, so we stopped to visit with them.  We got to hold the little lambs and watch the sheep.

We learned that shepherds kept sheep in some type of enclosure at night.  This could be a low rock wall enclosure in a field, but this is winter, so most shepherds keep their sheep in caves, which are numerous on the hills of Israel.  This provides warmth and safety from predators at night.  That makes you wonder a bit about this verse:

Luke 2:8   And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

Why are shepherds out in the field at night instead of safely in a cave or enclosure?  I think it is because these particular shepherds had loaned their cave out to a poor man and his pregnant wife that night.  So when the angels announce the birth of the Messiah to the shepherds, they don’t tell them where to find the baby, but just that the baby will be lying in a feeding trough.  They didn’t need directions if it was their cave….

But usually, sheep were in an enclosure, and the shepherd would sleep in the opening of the cave so the sheep wouldn’t wander off at night and predators would not attack them.    Most caves have multiple openings, so the shepherds would stack rocks to close off all but the one they would guard.  This is where the idea of counting sheep to sleep comes from.  They would call the sheep into the cave, and once all were in, they would lay down to seal the opening with their bodies.  Having counted their sheep as they entered the cave, knowing they were all safe, they were ready for sleep.

If you wanted to hurt a shepherd, you would open their enclosure and let the sheep wander off at night.   If one left, there was a good chance that others would follow.  That’s what sheep do.  The herd would wander off, and a thief could follow and steal the herd.   Otherwise, if you just broke in and tried to grab some, you could only steal what you could carry, so you might cause them to lose a few sheep.  They would not follow the thief. They would only follow the voice of their shepherd.

During our roadside visit with the shepherds,  If any wandered off, the shepherd would make a sound, and they would return.  The sheep were pretty skittish, so I tried to imitate the sound to get one to come close.  I apparently failed because that sheep just gave me the side eye and kept going.  But when the shepherd called out, they turned right around.  Our visit was cut short as it was late afternoon, and the shepherds said it was time to take their flocks home.  We turned to go, but our teacher said to stop and watch.  As the two groups of shepherds headed in different directions, they made their particular call sound, and the flock separated as they followed their own shepherd home.  And several Bible passages came alive for me.  Let’s return to John 10 and Jesus’ explanation.

John 10:7-16   So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them.   I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.   The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.   I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.   He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.   He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.  I am the good shepherd.  I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.   And I have other sheep that are not of this fold.   I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.

Who are those who came before him?  It is the current religious elite of Israel —the Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes.  They claimed they were the door.  If anyone wanted to worship God, they had to go through them.  They had to do it their way.  If they didn’t, then they would be turned aside and not allowed to enter the temple.  The blind man that Jesus will heal this very week will be kicked out of the Temple and excommunicated from their religion because he witnessed to others that Jesus healed him.  It was their way or the highway.  But Jesus says they are not the way.  He is the way, the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through him.  If anyone tells you there are things you must do, requirements not given by Jesus, do not listen.  He is the way, the only way.

Who are the “other sheep not of this fold”?  Jesus is saying, “It is not just about you, Jews.  You have made it that way, but that is never what God intended.  You were to be a kingdom of priest to the nations.  But you never reached out.  You insisted they become Jewish to worship me.  But I will bring them in.  I will bring in the lost tribes of Israel that were dispersed in 700 BC, I will bring in all the Gentile nations – and they will listen to me and answer when I call.  So, there will be one flock with no divisions.  No Jew and Gentile, no slave and free, one flock.”

What would Jesus say to us today?  When we see many people argue about minor points in the way we worship or, the way we stay pure or, the way we baptize, or the way we reach out.  We embrace our divisions and work to better our individual churches and denominations while God is begging us not to see our denominations as the kingdom but to work toward the good of the Kingdom of God: one flock, one shepherd.  

“And they will listen to my voice.”….. There are so many voices to listen to.  Do you hear his voice?  Do you hear the good shepherd calling out to you?  How do you distinguish the voice of God from all the other voices calling out to you?  I often run into this when talking to people about how they practice their faith.  People aren’t sure if they can hear the voice of God or how they can hear the voice of God.  If you hang around the shepherd long enough, and if you listen, you will learn to recognize the shepherd’s voice.  It takes time to learn the shepherd’s voice.  

The first thing you need to do is to turn off the noise.  We are bombarded by voices constantly throughout the day.  The television may be on 24/7, the radio always on in the car, and now there is the constant ping of your cellphone with an alert of yet another voice clamoring for your attention via text, email, or phone call.  You can’t hear the shepherd if you aren’t listening, and you need to find a time of silence to practice listening.  For many people, God can’t get a word in edgewise.  I don’t believe God is giving any believer the silent treatment.  He wants to call out to us, but I imagine he feels like me when I was in the office trying to talk to a teenager and then realizing he couldn’t hear me because he had his AirPods in his ears listening to music.  He couldn’t hear anyone else because he had the music turned up so loud. 

God wants to call out to us when we wander away, but we aren’t listening.  Take your headphones off.  Turn off the world for a few minutes and talk to and listen to God.   Every believer can hear the voice of God, but very few listen.  Spend time in prayer.  And prayer is not a monologue but a dialog.  Spend time listening and meditating. Begin with just a few minutes a day.  

How do you know it is God’s voice?  You can’t be sure if you don’t know the scriptures. We have these scriptures with the very words of our shepherd recorded in them.  Study and learn them; this is the shepherd’s voice spoken to so many others over the years.  He is the same God as the one who spoke long ago.  He will not contradict himself.  But you have to study the scriptures to have this awareness. 

If you want to read material to help you start your journey to hear the voice of your shepherd, here are three helpful books. Brother Lawrence, a monk in France in the 1600s, wrote the Practice of the Presence of God, a classic. Dallas Willard’s Hearing God was written about 25 years ago, and Mark Batterson’s Whisper is only a few years old.  

But remember the Pharisees in our passage today.  They had studied the right scriptures but worshiped the wrong god.  You can’t just interpret the scriptures any old way you want to.  You can’t read them trying to find something you agree with.  You must be honest with the scriptures, look at the context, and compare what you read to other scriptures.  Discuss them in community, not just by yourself. d We have to be students of the word to be the people of God.

As we pray, study, and listen, the Holy Spirit will begin to speak God’s word.

February 4, 27 A.D.  –  Many or Few? —   The Year of the Lord’s Favor #70

David Chupp The 70 Weeks with Jesus Blog , , , , , ,

Week 51 — Many or Few?
Luke 13:22-31

Luke 13:22-30   He went on his way through towns and villages, teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem.   And someone said to him, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” And he said to them, “Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. 

For the past four weeks, Jesus has been traveling in Perea, the land east of the Jordan River. His time is getting shorter. In this chapter of Luke, we learn that Herod is out to get Jesus.

Luke 13:31   At that very hour, some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.”

Which Herod are they talking about?  There is Herod “the Great,” the king who tried to kill Jesus after his birth, but that Herod died shortly after this event.  His kingdom was then divided among his sons, who rather confusingly also called themselves ‘Herod.’  (‘Herod’ in Greek is ‘hero.’)   Herod Philip got the territory in blue on the map below, which includes the towns of Bethsaida and Caesarea Philippi.  Herod Archelaus got the territory of Judea and Samaria in the pink, but he only ruled for 9 years.  Caesar deposed him, and the territory was made a Roman Province, with Pontius Pilate in charge of this area.   Herod Antipas (half-brother of Philip) got Galilee and Perea.  This is the Herod that was called out by John the Baptist for marrying his brother Phillip’s wife.  Herod Antipas had John the Baptist imprisoned in his fortress in Macherus in Perea and then had him beheaded.  When Herod Antipas learned of Jesus, some told him that Jesus was John the Baptist, who had been raised from the dead.  

So Jesus has been traveling and teaching for over a month in Herod Antipas’ territory in Perea.  Jesus had likely come further south, closer to Herod’s palace in Macherus, so Jesus was warned to leave the area.  Now, Jesus begins to journey back through Perea, eventually passing through Jericho and returning to Jerusalem.  On his way, someone asked Jesus a question:

“Lord, will those who are saved be few?”

“Will many be saved or few?”     It is a good question.  Jesus began with a very small following, and sometimes crowds of thousands followed him.  Then Jesus will say something the crowds don’t like, and many of them will leave.  Then he will do miracles, and the crowds will gather again.  Will there be many saved or few?  It is an interesting question today.

Remember, in the Bible’s first book, God promised Abraham that his offspring would be as countless as the stars.  

Genesis 15:5  “…number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”

In the last book, Revelation, we read this:

Revelation 7:9-10  After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” 

A multitude that no one can number- the promise to Abraham being fulfilled.

In the days of the early church, a tiny fraction of the Earth’s population were followers of Jesus.  Today, about one-third of the world’s population, 2.7 billion people, claim the Christian faith. If only 1% of the world’s current population were saved, the resulting assembly of 82 million people would look like an uncountable multitude. Still, compared to all the people who have ever lived (109 billion by some estimates), it would seem to be few.  

So, will it be many or few?  What is the answer?

Or, as some have suggested, will everyone be saved?  Will all 109 billion enter heaven?  In 2011, Rob Bell published a book entitled Love Wins, the premise being that, eventually, everyone will be saved.  He quoted 2 Peter 3:9, that God is not willing that any perish but that all should come to repentance, and interprets that to mean that one day all will repent.  He says that if God wills it, then it must happen. 

Bell refers to Revelation 21:25, which says that the gates of Heaven are never shut. Bell applies that verse to Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 7 about entering through the narrow gate.  However, city gates were closed in those days to keep out an enemy or to be shut at night for safety.  But the point in Revelation is that in the world to come, there is no enemy, and there is no night.  So, gates never have to be closed.  Bell stretches this to say that, eventually, everyone, even if after spending time in hell, will decide to enter those always open gates. 

This is not a new idea.  Theologians, as early as Origen, in the third century, promoted this idea of universalism, that everyone would be saved.  ‘Love Wins.’  It is a pleasant thought, but does this fit with what Jesus said in our passage today?

Luke 13:23-28   And he said to them, “Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.  

Jesus said, “Many will seek to enter and not be able.” And he said that we must ‘strive’ to enter…”  The Greek word for ‘strive’ is ‘agonizomai.’  We are much more Greek than we realize.   Isn’t it interesting how we can see many English words in these Greek words?  There, you see our word ‘agonize.’   Jesus says it is a struggle; it takes tremendous effort.  The only other time we see that same word on Jesus’ lips is in John 18.  There it is translated as ‘fighting.’

John 18:36  Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.”

We must strive to enter; it is agonizing, a struggle, a battle.

What is this agonizing that Jesus says we must do to enter this narrow door?  And if it is a battle, who is the enemy?  And are we saying this is righteousness by works?   Are we striving to earn our salvation?  Definitely not!  You probably know this verse:   

Romans 6:23   For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

But did you know the word ‘free’ is not in the Greek there?   The Greek word for ‘gift’ is ‘charisma,’ a gift given not on merit but by undeserved favor.  So, the gift is given out of grace.  It is undeserved.  It cannot be earned.  But unfortunately, when we read the word ‘free’, some get the idea that there are no requirements to accept it. But there is a requirement.

To illustrate this in church, I held up a $5 bill and told the congregation I would give it away to anyone who asked. It was free and available to anyone, but accepting it required action.

‘Eternal life in Christ’ is an unearned gift of grace, but to accept it, there is a harsh requirement.  You have to die.  Paul said it this way:

Galatians 2:20  “I have been crucified with Christ.  It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”  

You must die to yourself.  You have to decide that you are not the best to make decisions for yourself.  You have to decide that you should not follow your own rules.  You have to determine that you can not be the ruler of your life.  You have to choose to change the way you live by changing who makes your decisions.   We call that repentance.  So you die to your selfishness and turn over your life to God instead, agreeing to live by his rules and follow his ways.  Jesus called this ‘denying yourself.’

Matthew 16:24  “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” 

The gift of forgiveness and salvation is free, but it is very costly to accept it and become a disciple.

Some people do this when they walk down an aisle and get baptized.  At that moment, they decide to die to themselves and live with a different king over their life, a king they will obey no matter what he asks.  But some people walk down an aisle and want to be saved. They don’t want to go to hell; they want to be in heaven when they die.  They are willing to say that in front of a church and are willing to get sprinkled or dunked in water publicly.  But they may not have understood that there is a prerequisite.  

The prerequisite for accepting the gift is repentance, not just a repentance of specific sins, but a complete change in how you decide your life.   You must repent of the sin of making yourself the God and the King of your life.  There can only be one God, one King, and that is not you. That is the repentance that matters.

And the gift we get differs significantly from the $5 bill I gave away.   Because this is not a gift you can hold in your hand and decide to spend whenever you want; it is not a ticket to a place called heaven that you can redeem when you die.  The gift is ‘eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.’  The gift is a relationship, life in Christ.  It is a relationship with Jesus that begins today.  But the relationship is that of a king to his subject.  If Jesus is not your king, then you have no relationship with him.  

Repentance is a struggle, not just a one-time decision.  Oh, one day, you decide to put Jesus in charge of your life.  You repent of trying to run your life your own way.    And God grants forgiveness.  But then your old self that you tried to kill — you find out that the old man dies hard.  So you find yourself ignoring God’s leadership in your life, and you are back to being your own boss and king.  Instead of doing what God wants you to do, you do what you want.  (Paul admits to having this same struggle also.)  And then you have to repent of those things, but more importantly, repent of kicking God off the throne of your life.

That is the struggle; that is where we strive.  And the enemy we strive against is our self, our sins, and our desire to make our own decisions.  This is the same struggle we see in Genesis 3.  Adam and Eve have to decide who gets to make the rules, who decides what is good and what is not good, and who is the king of their life, God or themselves?

That is not us working for our salvation; it is us doing the work that results from our salvation.  For you see, we have no hope of being successful in this without God’s help.  That is why God sent his holy spirit to dwell in us so that we would have his presence with us to enable and empower us to win this battle with ourselves.

Let’s look at the rest of our passage this morning.  

Luke 13:23-28   And he said to them, “Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.  When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, open to us,’ then he will answer you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’   Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.’   But he will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you come from.  Depart from me, all you workers of evil!’  In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves cast out.

Sadly, many will want to enter into God’s salvation but will not be able to because they are not willing to repent.  They want to be in heaven with Jesus, but they refuse to let God be king.  They have to be their own king.   If you do not know God as your king, then you don’t know him at all.

Look at the parallel passage in Matthew 7:

Matthew 7:21-23   “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.  On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’   And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

Who enters the kingdom of heaven?  Only the ones who do the will of the Father in Heaven.    

Jesus divides all people into one of two groups.  And it is not those who did bad things and those who did good things.  It is not those who were kind and those who were mean.  It is not those who went to church and those who did not.  It is those who do their own will and those who do God’s will.

Again, Jesus tells us that many will not enter the kingdom of heaven.   And look at this group who doesn’t enter.  They prophesied in Jesus’ name.  They spoke inspired words in the name of Jesus.  They cast out demons.  They did mighty, powerful works in the name of Jesus.  

They did many good things, but Jesus said he never knew them.

Doing great things will not impress God.  Doing obedient things will.   If the good things you do are not God’s will, if they are your idea instead of HIs, it doesn’t matter how good you think they are.  

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.

Do you see why Jesus talked about the kingdom of God more than anything else?  Do you see why the first word he publicly speaks is ‘Repent’?

Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.

The only way to enter the kingdom is to repent.  Repent of your rebellion against the king.  Turn your life around and decide to be obedient to the king.  You must place yourself under the king’s reign to be in the kingdom.  If you don’t accept God’s rule over your life, then you have no relation to God.  Either God is your king, or he is a stranger.   There is no in-between.

You see, you can not earn your way into the kingdom with good works.  The people in this scripture passage did powerful, wonderful things but were turned away.  “Depart, for I never knew you.”

God, through the sacrifice of Jesus, can forgive your sins and redeem you from your slavery to sin.  We are raised to new life, a life of continual surrender of our will to Him.  We don’t submit our will to God in order to do exactly what we want to do anyway. We submit to do his will.  And you can’t expect to surrender your life to God and make him king of your life and then not expect him to give you things to do.  Paul has told us that God has prepared a list of things for us to do ahead of time:

Ephesians 2:10   For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

So there will be things God wills for us to do.  And if indeed you did submit to the king, you will be obedient to all he asks of you.

You know the parable of the two builders in Matthew 7.   One built his house on the rock, and when the rain, wind, and flood came, it stood.  The other built his house on the sand, and when the storm came, the house fell apart.  This story comes right after this scripture we just read.  It begins in verse 24.  Jesus concludes his most famous sermon with this story.  He tells those listening to him that they are either the ones building off the rock or the ones building on the sand.  What is the difference?

Matthew 7:24-27     “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.   And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.   And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.   And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”

They were all hearing Jesus speak on that mountain.  But only some would do what he said.  And that makes all the difference. Hearing without doing so leads to destruction.  

Rob Bell is wrong.  Sadly, not everyone will be saved.  One day, the door will close, people will knock to enter, and God will say, “I never knew you.  I never had a relationship with you.”  One day, God will separate all humanity that has ever lived into a group on the right and a group on the left.  (See Matthew 25:31-46.)  And what does he say the difference will be?

One group gave food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, and visited the sick and imprisoned.  The other group did not do these things. And Jesus told them that these things they did for “the least of these” they actually did for him.  Jesus notes that both groups are surprised.  Neither group had any idea that what they were doing was for Jesus. All they had done was to be obedient to share what they had with others who were needy, because that was the will of their King.  

Look back at the passage from Luke 13 above.  Does this sound like the gates or doors of heaven are always open?  No.  There comes a time when the master of the house shuts the door.  And then many people will want to enter but will not be able to enter.

Jesus never answered the question, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?”

He answers this question about the number by saying: Be sure you’re in the number.  The important question is not: How many will be saved?  The critical question is, will you be saved?  Will your family be saved?  Will your friends be saved?  It is too important to make assumptions, for as Jesus has told us, many will be surprised.  I beg you to make sure you know where you and your friends stand.

That narrow door is open.  One day, the door will close.  Whatever the number, be sure you are in that number.

Oh, when the saints go marching in.  Oh, when the saints go marching in.
Oh Lord, I want to be in that number when the saints go marching in.