God wants you to be loving

Matthew 12:22-37

   When I was a rather “young Christian,” I attended the big yearly retreat for my church.  The speaker was a minister who was a friend of our pastor, and he said something I will never forget.  He said: “The heart is the core of a person.  Decision making starts in the heart.”

   In all of my years studying in school, I was taught much, however, there was little said about the “heart.”  I heard more about the heart in my rock music.  Yet as I grew as a Christian, I learned of the utter importance of the heart.

   Jesus heals a man who was demon-possessed.  The man could not even see or speak, yet the healing by Jesus enabled the man to be able to see and speak.  The response by the Pharisees was to call Jesus evil.  Jesus, who is the Messiah, the One anointed with the Holy Spirit, was called evil.  Those Pharisees were deranged, which Jesus made clear as He revealed they were evil (see Matthew 12:34).

   Nearing 2000 years later, evil in our culture is rampant!  Jesus reveals that judgment is going to take place.  Judgment will be carried out by God who knows the state of the hearts of all people of all time, and the resulting actions and words of all people of all time.  And as the prophet Isaiah stated: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness…” (Isaiah 5:20 NIV).

   Now focusing on the good, I am grateful for those good people who genuinely love people and who do good.  They bear good fruit indeed.

   Do you want to be good?  Believe in Jesus, and you will be good.  Jesus will forgive you of your sins, Jesus will justify you for all time, and Jesus will bond your heart with the Holy Spirit, thus beginning the sanctification process.  Thus you will be good.  Do understand the sanctification process takes time.  I will speak for myself and say becoming holy is a painful process.  Yet it leads to goodness.

   Being a human, you will still struggle with sin.  Yet as a follower of Jesus, you will become more and more loving.

God is good.

God is loving.

God is calling you.

Hunter Irvine

Goodness in the midst of tragedy

Matthew 12: 9-14   Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there.  Looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”

He said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out?  How much more valuable is a man than a sheep!  Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”

Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.”

So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other.  But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus (NIV).

   After having given an explanation in response to the accusation by the Pharisees, possibly within the hour, the Pharisees continue with their vindictive course by asking Jesus a question to try and find fault with Him.  Jesus patiently answers their question, and then Jesus does a miraculous healing right there in front of everyone in a synagogue.  What is the response of the Pharisees?  They react by working to develop some plan to kill Jesus.

   Tragically, this is one of a number of occasions recorded in Scripture where religious leaders, who probably felt a threat to their power and prestige, considered killing Jesus after He began His ministry work at about thirty years of age (see Luke 3:23).  For example, John even recorded there were people who realized that religious leaders were trying to kill Jesus: “At that point some of the people of Jerusalem began to ask, ‘Isn’t this the man they are trying to kill?’” (John 7:25).

   Jesus would eventually be killed following a Passover meal which started at twilight on the day we now call “Friday.”  (Note each ancient Jewish new day started at twilight, unlike in the U.S. where a new day starts at midnight.)  Christians around the world have taken some time year after year to remember the crucifixion of Jesus on the Friday within the week of the Jewish Passover.  (Note the day floats every year because the Jewish calendar follows a lunar cycle.)  Christians for many years have termed this annual day “Good Friday.”

   Why is the day which Jesus was murdered termed “good?”  Because God’s plan all along was for Jesus to die on a cross as the atoning sacrifice for the sins of people.  The death of Jesus, God the Son, goes beyond my understanding, yet the result: Jesus made it possible for every person ever created to have the gift of eternal life.  This is because Jesus was the substitute for the consequence of sins, which is spiritual death.  On the cross, Jesus died for your sins.  If you believe in Jesus as your Savior and Lord, you will be forgiven of your sins, you will be justified before our Holy God, and you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit, who will dwell in your heart forever.  You also will begin a process of being sanctified, which means you will be changed to be more and more holy.  That means there is going to be some suffering as you are changed, yet you will be a person you can be proud of, proud in a good way.

   Only God could take such a disaster and bring eternal good from it.  And our Holy God wants to enable us to carry on doing good for people, and even ourselves, day after day.

Hunter Irvine

Can you work on the Sabbath?

Matthew 12:2   When the Pharisees saw this, they said to [Jesus], “Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.”

   In examining Matthew 12:1-8 in my last piece, I illuminated the message that Jesus is the Christ, thus He knows what proper Sabbath activity is!  Yet there is still the question, “What are we supposed to be doing on the Sabbath?”

   The complete Biblical answer is quite radical: “Whatever the Spirit leads you to do.”

   Yes, I am serious.  That is what you are supposed to do on a Saturday.  And to take it further, that is what we followers of Jesus are called to do every day.

   Galatians is the Scripture epistle which explains this, and I will start by giving some context.  Hebrew people were all in a covenant often called now the Mosaic Covenant, which was between God and the Hebrew people with Moses as the mediator.  People who were not Hebrew were not in this covenant.  The Mosaic Covenant included the Ten Commandments, which all Hebrews were required to obey.  The fourth commandment was to rest from “work” on the seventh day, (now called Saturday).

   Jesus furthered the Mosaic Law (in what we call the Sermon on the Mount), and Jesus fulfilled the Mosaic Law by obeying it during His life in this world, and by dying on the cross as the eternal atoning sacrifice.  The messages of the epistle of Galatians make it clear that followers of Jesus are no longer under the Mosaic Law, thus we do not have to travel to Jerusalem three times a year, we do not have to have priests make animal sacrifices for us, and on and on.

   We followers of Jesus are under the New Covenant.  We still have commandments to obey, all based on love, as first written in the Deuteronomy 6:4-5, and as Jesus proclaimed in Mark 12:29-31.  We still must obey moral laws, which are all really aspects of loving people, as we are taught by Jesus as is recorded in places like Matthew 7:12 and Matthew 19:18-19.  Yet again, though the Mosaic Law was a root for the moral teachings which Jesus furthered, we are not under the Torah.  We Christians are under the Spirit! (see Galatians 5:18).

   This passage recorded in Matthew 12 took place before Christ completely fulfilled the Mosaic Law on the cross.  Soon after the start of Christ’s ministry, there were criticisms of Jesus from the Hebrew religious leaders called Pharisees.  But it was the Pharisees who were doing something wrong, and they were rebuked by Jesus in due time (see Matthew 23).  Pharisees were supposed to be interpreting the Bible, but they sometimes legislated rules instead.  In this case, they took a general statement on the Sabbath and developed rules for what consisted of “work” and what did not consist of “work.”  They missed the message of the commandment.  The message, in my own words: people were to rest and worship that day.

   The Pharisees made all kinds of Sabbath rules, and in retrospect they were way off the mark, considering even the most basic daily acts of us people involve work.  Getting out of bed is work.  Eating is work.  Taking care of babies is work.  And life in ancient Israel involved harder work to carry out basic daily necessities, such as getting a cup of water.  Such activities are not what God was trying to halt.  Daily “work” is a part of living.  God was not saying to lie in bed all day.  The commandment was calling for a day of rest from wage labor.

   I know from experience that taking a day “off” reinvigorates me so I can be fresh for “work” the following week.  I might do something which is physical work, like go for a hike.  Yet doing so does refreshes my soul and mind.  For me, hiking is not a “job.”

   Carrying out their control freak enforcement of the Sabbath, the Pharisees kept accusing Jesus of violating the Mosaic Law, and in the case of this verse, they were accusing His disciples.  Ironic considering Jesus is the only one who ever perfectly carried out the Mosaic Law.

   What about Sunday worship?  Sunday is a day which developed in early Church history as a day to worship our triune God, since Sunday was the day Jesus was resurrected.  Considering it has been a day of corporate worship for countless Christians for so long, I personally commit to Sunday being a day for corporate worship or extended personal worship.  Yet a special Sunday worship is not a Biblical precept.  And many churches carry out traditions, weekly or annually, and such traditions can be a blessing.  Yet traditions are not the same as Biblical precepts!  As followers of Jesus, we need to always work to make sure first and foremost we are listening and being obedient to Jesus.

Hunter Irvine