Lenten Devotion – Day 31

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Today’s Scripture: Acts 19:1-10

“He entered the synagogue and for three months spoke out boldly, and argued persuasively about the kingdom of God. When some stubbornly refused to believe and spoke evil of the Way before the congregation, he left them, taking the disciples with him, and argued daily in the lecture hall of Tyrannus.” (Acts 19:8-9)

“Jesus is not saying, “Make sure you pray a prayer of repentance, start going to church, and wait for Me to come back.” He is saying, “You can live a radically different life because there’s a new world order that just broke in, so stop walking in the direction you’re going, turn 180 degrees, and walk toward Me and life in the kingdom of God.” - Halter, Hugh. Flesh: Bringing the Incarnation Down to Earth, David C. Cook, p. 53.

  When Luke wrote his gospel and the book of the Acts of the Apostles, the reader of both will observe that Luke had clear objectives in writing each. First, in the Luke’s gospel, Luke gives witness to the work and person of Jesus Christ, as the Son of the Living God. Then, after Jesus’ ascension, Luke begins to tell us of the work of the early church in Acts, but not just the story of the church, but he gives witness to the work and person of the Holy Spirit to proclaim, spread and invite others to enter and receive the kingdom of God. Luke begins by stating, “In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen.” (Acts 1:1-2) Luke tells us how the Holy Spirit worked through the early church and apostles to change and transform their world and bring others into the kingdom of God.

  The original apostles, as well as Paul, did not use the term kingdom of God as often as Jesus used it, but not because it was not important to their proclamation of the good news. Luke in his gospel, had Jesus using the phrase, “kingdom of God,” thirty-one times, then in Acts, the phrase is used on six occasions. They did understand and believe in the kingdom of God Jesus taught them, for the apostles and the early church they understood that they were currently living in the kingdom as their present and current reality. They would speak of the kingdom coming to completion at the end times when Jesus returned, but the kingdom currently existed, in part within the community, the body of Christ, but it did not end with the church, they proclaimed it and called to others to follow the “Way” within the context of their known world.

  At the beginning of Acts, Luke has Jesus speaking to the apostles about the kingdom of God before his ascension (1:3) Then, Paul and Phillip used phrases, such as, “proclaiming the good news about….” (the kingdom of God) (8:12); “must enter….” (14:22); “argued persuasively about…” (19:8); “testifying to the ….” (28:33); “proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ,” (28:31)

  The use of the phrase, “kingdom of God,” may not be as numerous as Jesus, but they were not deserting Jesus’ concern for the kingdom of God. They were simply expressing the same idea in their own way and spoke of the essential elements that were experienced when one lived in the kingdom. They expressed the kingdom as, God graciously giving salvation as a free gift of grace (extending His kingdom) to anyone who will receive it (enter the kingdom) through His Son Jesus Christ, and this salvation begins now (the kingdom is in the midst of you) and will be completed in the future (the kingdom will come like a thief in the night). As Paul put it, “the kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” (Rom. 14:17).

Lenten Devotion – Day Nine

Friday, February 27, 2015

Today’s Scripture: Matthew 18:21-35
"For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves…. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?'” (Matt. 18:23. 33)

A [man] had a particular besetting sin, and he used to confess it and God would forgive him. But no sooner had he been absolved than he would trip up and sin again. One day this happened, and he rushed back to God and said, "I'm sorry, I've done it again." And God asked, "What have you done again?" For God suffers from amnesia when it comes to our sins. God does not look at the caterpillar we are now, but at the dazzling butterfly we have in us to become. In the Lord's Prayer, Jesus bids us ask God to forgive us as we forgive those who have wronged us. Not to forgive others is to shut the door to our own being forgiven. - Desmond Tutu, An African Prayer Book (New York: Doubleday, 1995), 38.

  In his book Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don’t Deserve, Lewis Smedes says that the parable of the unforgiving servant is about God and us. It promises that if we act like the unforgiving servant, then God will act like the king. “Jesus grabs the hardest trick in the bag, forgiving, and says we have to perform it or we are out in the cold, way out, in the boondocks of the unforgiven .… He is tough because the incongruity of sinners refusing to forgive sinners boggles God’s mind. He cannot cope with it; there is no honest way to put up with it.”

  In the gospel of Matthew, Peter walks up to Jesus and says, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus answers, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times” (18:21-22). Then Jesus tells this parable about the unforgiving servant.

  Now some will object to this open-ended approach to forgiveness, saying that it turns Christians into doormats, fails to hold sinners accountable, and invites abusers to continue their abuse. The Chinese consider Jesus’ teaching about forgiveness unmanly.

  A Chinese Christian was once explaining forgiveness to a group of people gathered in the chapel by the mission hospital. He said, “I will tell you how we obey this commandment. When you are sick or hurt, you come to the hospital and we nurse you, dress your wounds, and care for you, but you go away and revile us and lie about us. Then, when you are sick once more, you come back and we nurse you, and care for you again and again. That is forgiveness.”

  Jesus is saying that forgiveness is at the heart of life in the church — it creates a distinctively merciful community. Why is this? The parable of the unforgiving servant answers this question by revealing the reason we must offer forgiveness to one another. It has nothing to do with the pursuit of justice, and everything to do with the character of God. Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven “may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves” (v. 23). So Jesus is saying that we can learn a little something about life in God’s kingdom by paying attention to a story about how this king deals with his debtors.

  The king begins by calling a debtor to appear before him. The man owes him 10,000 talents, which is an insanely large sum of money. The king orders the slave to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, so that a payment can be made. With nothing left to lose, the slave falls on his knees before the king and says, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.” Surprisingly, the king shows pity and releases the slave, forgiving him the entire debt (vv. 24-27).

  That’s the kind of God we have, says Jesus, a king who has mercy on us, and who forgives us our debts. Now that’s a pleasant parable, but we haven’t reached the end. That freshly forgiven slave races out comes upon a second slave who owes him a hundred denarii, a significant sum, but it’s positively microscopic compared to what the first slave owed the king. The first slave seizes the second slave by the throat and demands that he pay him what he owes. The second slave falls down and pleads with him, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you” (v. 29).