Celebrate!

See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.

– Isaiah 43:19

What is it that every Bible-believing church in the world will celebrate this weekend — and every weekend to come?

It’s the radical notion that God loves his creation so much that he sent his only Son to personally pay for the mess we’ve all made of our lives and a once unspoiled creation. With this immense price now cleared from our individual accounts, every believer — through their faith in Jesus Christ — is free to serve as his hands and feet throughout the community and even the world.

But Christ-followers are in a predicament these days. Relativism rules America, and that which is obviously right or wrong is no longer considered so black and white. Popular culture brands those who believe in Jesus and his teachings as old-fashioned and intolerant. And those who dare to point out our nation’s retreat from God are labeled as bigots, hate-mongers, or similar monikers. 

The world really is upside down. For example, it’s actually a career move for many celebrities, musicians, and sports stars when they break the law and go to jail. But if a Christ-follower — real or in name only — slips up and does something wrong, the word hypocrite quickly follows through the media.

Of course, Christ-followers should be happy to plead guilty to holding some narrow and politically incorrect beliefs. One is that Jesus is the one and only way to God. Ultimately, the world’s false philosophies and religions fall far short of our Creator’s standards. And that’s Good News that the world curses and can’t tolerate. 

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil,” responds God, “who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”

Although there’s bad news all around us, it’s particularly reassuring to know that God continues to do a new thing through Christ-followers around the world. Likewise, Jesus encourages every Believer to continue being salt and light to a distorted world in need of guidance, truth, and character. People are watching to see if our words match our deeds. May it be that we celebrate the Good News through changed lives marked with love in action! 

Time to Reflect

In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you. But the hand of him who is going to betray me is with mine on the table. The Son of Man will go as it has been decreed. But woe to that man who betrays him!”

– Luke 22: 20-22

It takes just a tiny point of reflected light from a telescope’s mirror to clarify our understanding of the universe. But when there’s a barrier — such as the earth’s atmosphere in the case of astronomy — we can be fooled by the resulting distorted image. This principle also applies to our daily walk of faith. After all, if we can’t see where we’re going, we can veer off the path and wind up in a ditch. So, let’s consider Jesus’ famous solution to this dilemma in John 8:12:

“I am the light of the world,” he proclaims. “Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."

It’s a reminder that our lives should always reflect Jesus’ love in action. Unfortunately, the world says we must beat the competition, climb the corporate ladder, and keep up with our neighbors. We also need the biggest, the fastest, and the shiniest. And most of all, it’s not bragging if we can back it up. But Christ’s concise message to us is starkly different: 

To be first, we must be last.

This sheds a new light on things … and that’s just the point. After all, how much better would society be if Christ-followers were to adopt a servant’s attitude and put the interests of others before their own?

Jesus answered this question through his own example. Although he was God’s only Son, he entered the world in the humblest of circumstances — a birth among farm animals in a filthy stable. And as he grew up, he learned to make a common-man’s living as a carpenter. Of course, Jesus could have lived in splendor as the King of Kings. But instead, he chose a nomadic existence for teaching the Good News of salvation to undeserving people like you and me.

How can we mirror Christ through our own lives? Jesus says it all starts by putting our faith in him as our Savior. As he explained to Nicodemus, a respected religious leader of the day, we must all be born again:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,” John 3:16 tells us, “that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

The fact is that we are nothing without Jesus … and we can do even less by ourselves. But when we surrender our will to God’s plan — even in the most difficult moments — it’s through this brilliant Light of the World that we find our purpose in life. Let’s reflect on that.

 

The Law of the Seed

When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, “Who is this?” The crowds answered, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.”

– Matthew 21: 10-11

In 2005, National Geographic reported that Israeli researchers had grown a 3-foot date palm sapling from 2,000-year-old seeds discovered at Masada, an ancient mountainside fortress captured by the Romans in A.D. 73.

Isn’t that amazing? Tiny seeds — dried up and dead since Jesus’ day — were literally born again centuries later into a vibrant young tree. Who knew those dormant seeds held so much potential?

It’s the perfect illustration of a biblical principal called The Law of the Seed. It states that harvesting and sowing take place in different seasons, and it takes both patience, and the death of the original seed, to produce new life. In other words, life follows death — not the other way around. And Jesus lived that out through his perfect, sin-free life. After completing his three-year ministry to save the world, he willingly died on a cross to pay the enormous price for all our sins — past, present and future. It was then he proved that he was indeed God’s Son by being raised again to life. This fulfilled Old Testament prophecies and convinced many of his disciples that they were following the right person all along. 

How does The Law of the Seed apply to 21st century Christ-followers like you and me? It sounds strange, but we all must choose to die. Of course, that doesn’t mean being nailed to a cross and earning our own salvation because Jesus already did that to pay our way. But it does mean dying to our selfish desires and dying to sin. For example, instead of spending all our free time in front of a video screen, we could spend some of it imitating Jesus by feeding the hungry, tutoring a child (or adult) to read, running errands for shut-ins, and generally helping the less fortunate. The possibilities are endless.

Let’s ask ourselves: Are we welcoming the REAL risen Jesus into our lives, or do we expect him to fit our own agendas? The Law of the Seed — personified through Christ’s own words and example — reveals that it’s through dying that we’ll find life.