Lord, Liar or Lunatic

August 5, 2010

The life of Jesus. Read Today: Division among the Jews:John 10:19 - 21

John 10:19-21 (Green's Modern King James Version)

19 Then a division occurred again among the Jews because of these words.
20 And many of them said, He has a demon and is insane. Why do you hear him?
21 Others said, These are not words of one who has been possessed by a demon. A demon is not able to open the eyes of blind ones.  

Years ago, there was a witness tool that people would use.  They would ask what people thought Jesus was.  They tried to steer the conversation to one of three choices. Jesus was either the Lord of all (so follow Him), a liar (who would have been found out and not followed) or a lunatic (same).  Obviously the last two came with built in conclusions that would steer the conversation to Jesus had to be Lord.

It looks like the people of Jesus day had the same conversation.  Only they broke it down to Lord and lunatic.  And just like today, there was division over the answer.  The thing is, they made the decision.

Too often we want to let Jesus be a part of our live.  He lives out on the edges, we call Him in when we need Him.  He is not really our Lord.  I read a Christian humor column that talks about a current song ‘Jesus take the wheel’, and he quipped, and rightly so, we may give Jesus the wheel but we keep our feet on the gas and break pedals to help out.  In doing so, He is not Lord of all.

Time to ask yourself, Lord, Liar, or Lunatic?  



Read for next time: Seventy Sent Out; Luke: 10: 1 - 16
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Your Life

August 4, 2010

The life of Jesus. Read Today: Jesus explains that He is the good Sheppard: John 10:7-18

(World English Bible)
John 10:
17 Therefore the Father loves me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again.
18 No one takes it away from me, but I lay it down by myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. I received this commandment from my Father.

Yesterday I talked about how we choose to remember Jesus voice and follow it or walk away.  Today is just the same thing in a different verse.  Jesus had a choice as He walked the earth.  He could do what God the Father wanted, or not. It was not a foregone conclusion that He would want to take on the cross, He had to do it of His free will.  He had the power to lay down His life for us and He had the choice to also take back His life.

We are a little different however.  We have the power to lay down our life for Jesus.  We do it in the way we live our lives day to day.  Do we do the things Jesus would have done, or at least try to do them?  We can also take our lives back again like Jesus did.  Only with us it is different.  We choose, when we take our lives back again, to walk away from what Jesus did for us. To take control of the wheel so to speak.  At that moment in time, we start to not hear the Shepard calling to us.

Jesus took His life back so that we would be able to go to heaven, as He beat the grave for us.  We take back our lives and we start to mess up the work He has done for us.  

Who has your life now?  Jesus, or yourself?


Read for next time: Division among the Jews:John 10:19 - 21
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Hear His Voice

August 3, 2010

The life of Jesus. Read Today: Pharisees ask if they are blind: John 9:40 - 10:6


ESV: John Chapter 10

[3] To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.
[4] When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.
[5] A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.


Jesus later in this chapter tells us he is the Sheppard.  He is the one who calls to us.  Notice something very important here.  He does not push us, we have to be led.  He will call out to us, and we can hear His voice and follow.  But that is only if we are familiar with His voice to start with.  

How do we get familiar with His voice. Only way that I know how is to get in the Word.  There are many times in my life that I have lost what His voice sounded like.  At one point in my life I even pushed His voice out of my life.  In the end though, the voice called back to me and I returned to Him.  

We can choose to walk away from that voice.  It will always call us back. We will have to choose to listen to it.  I can only recommend to do what I have not done of late, get in the Word to remember what His voice sounds like.

Read for next time: Jesus explains that He is the good Sheppard: John 10:19 - 21
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I AM

August 2, 2010

The life of Jesus. Read Today: Temple debate about father Abraham; John 8:31-59

John 8:58  Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.

Did you notice it.  The very subtle verb change at the end of the verse.  Before Abraham was I am!  Jesus could have said, 'I was'.  No, He chose not to say He existed then, but that He existed for all time, then and now.

What is the big deal in tense of the verb?  Jesus said that not only did He exist then, but for all time as well. The Greek really says, before Abraham came into existence, I existed and will continue to do so.  

Jesus is real today.  He continues to live today.  Because of that, He walks with you today.  Feeling lonely, He is there as a friend.  Tempted to o wrong, talk to Him and let Him help you see the right way of doing things.  

Remember, I am!

Read for next time: Pharisees ask if they are blind: John 9:40 - 10:6
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Being Lifted Up

March 12, 2010

The life of Jesus. Read Today: Sent by the Father John 8:21-30

John 8:28 BBE
28 So Jesus said, When the Son of man has been lifted up by you, then it will be clear to you who I am, and that I do nothing of myself, but say as the Father gave me teaching.


So far, when Jesus has talked to the people around Himself, He talked of going to His death.  Now He talks about not dying but to be lifted up.  There are two ways He can be lifted up here and the interesting thing is that both apply to the situation.

We all know that He will be lifted up on the cross.  It was only a matter of time till the people who hated Him and His teaching were going to put Him there, it was only a matter of when and how they would be able to do it.  And it would have to be done.  In order for our sins to be forgiven, the lifting up on the cross, a sign of torture and cruelty reserved for the vilest people, had to be done by one with no sin.  He paid the punishment for my sins.  One popular Christian song says, 'I'll never know how much it cost to see my sin up on that cross'.  And I never will.

But if we look at it that way, we loose half the perspective.  Though many translations say Jesus told them 'when you' but it does not say who will do the lifting in the Greek as best as I can tell.  Not only were they going to lift Jesus on the cross, but Jesus here was going to lift Himself on the cross.  He was willingly going to put Himself on that cross, and more importantly He was going to lift His status to be back with the Father.  Jesus did not just let them lift Him up on the cross, He, by giving up His mortal body, would lift Himself back to the status He once had with His Father.  And when they saw him again after His earthly death on the cross, they would know who it was that they had condemned to death. 

So while we can look to the  cross as a place where our sins were forgiven, and it was, we can also look to it as a place where Jesus lifted Himself.

In our lives we will have tribulations, Jesus promised that.  I concider those the cross that we will have to deal with.  What we do with them makes a difference.  We can fight them tooth and nail, or we can work our way through them.  Only in the latter one to we lift ourselves to be with the Father, as Jesus did.

Read for next time: Temple debate about father Abraham; John 8:31-59

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Who is your father?

March 10, 2010

The life of Jesus. Read Today: Light of the world - Taught in temple treasury John 8:12-20

John 8:19 NET

19 Then they began asking him, "Who is your father?" Jesus answered, "You do not know either me or my Father. If you knew me you would know my Father too."

The law makers here show just how unforgiving they can be.  We know Mary was an unwed mother when Jesus was conceived.  Even though the scriptures told of this, and the Pharisees knew the scripture that told of this, they looked at Mary as one who had broken her vows and that Jesus was an illegitimate child. So they tried to trap Him with who is your father.  Jesus could have easily lost face here.  It was clear that He could not have known a father who was never there.

But Jesus was confident in who He was and who had sent Him.  So he told them, you do not know Him, cause if you knew Him you would know why I was here.  He drew the line in the sand.  They claimed they knew God but could not even understand why Jesus had to be here to fulfill the scriptures, they did not know His Dad.

How about you?  Do you know what God has called you to do?  Are you confident that you could stand up to those who disagree with you? 

Read for next time: Sent by the Father John 8:21-30

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If Jesus twittered

March 9, 2010

The life of Jesus. Read Today: Adulterous woman brought to Jesus; John 8:3-11

I have written in the devotionals before about Twitter.  It is fun to think about what life would be like if some of the tools of today had been around in the time when Jesus walked the earth. For those of you not familiar with Twitter is what is referred to as micro-blogging, putting all of your thoughts into 140 characters. It can take some thought if  you have a lot to say and little space to say it in.  I suspect that is what Jesus was doing into today's scripture.

John 8:5-6 BBE

(5)  Now in the law Moses gave directions that such women were to be stoned; what do you say about it?

(6)  They said this, testing him, so that they might have something against him. But Jesus, with his head bent down, made letters on the floor with his finger.

In some ways I believe that Jesus was doing a comentary on what was going on it those peoples lives. So Jesus may have been the first person to have twittered, just not on as large a scale.

Michael Card in his song Scribbling in the Sand tells his version:


It was silence it was music

It was art it was absurd
He stooped and shouted volumes
Without saying a single word

The same finger
Of the strong hand
That had written ten commands
For now was simply scribbling in the sand

So, what if Jesus was to take your life and put a twitter commentary up on it?  Would you be like the people around Jesus that wanted to condemn the woman in their judgement and quickly walked away when they were confronted.  Or would it draw you closer to Him?

Read for next time: Light of the world - Taught in temple treasury 8:12-20

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