Friends: Let’s build our faith this holiday season, and remember God’s great, constructive gift to us: Jesus Christ.  Merry Christmas! Bob

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Spirituality Column #945

December 24, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Eve of Construction

By Bob Walters

“And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” Paul, in 2 Corinthians 4:3-4

“Our gospel” begins with the birth of Jesus, celebrated on Christmas Day. In a world previously doomed to destruction, Jesus came to construct a world where fear would be overcome by hope, and grace would tear down condemnation.

Counter to a 1960s political protest song that came to mind, Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction,” Christmas Eve is a time to know Christ came to build our future into an eternity with God.  Anticipating the arrival of Jesus is the Eve of Construction.

Humanity was a fearful mess when Jesus showed up with a message only a rare few were truly ready to hear. Yes, in His righteousness God had condemned mankind, but in His great faithfulness and eternal love sent the loving face of Jesus into the world and into humanity. Our destruction isn’t God’s greatest desire; He craves our salvation. Israel’s scriptural prophets predicted all this – a baby of a virgin birth, a life of humility, Jesus’s suffering, service, teaching, sacrifice, horrible death, and renewed life.

Yet the deliverance of the savior – the whole world’s savior – had fallen off the prophetic script of the nation of Israel.  Jewish leaders had remade “the Law” into an unrecognizable shadow of works shaded by their earthly pride, greed, and fears.

The salvation of the world will come through the nation of Israel? And the restoration of man’s image in relationship with God built on the shoulders of Jesus?

No, said Israel. It wanted a savior who would kill the Romans, subdue not only Israel’s enemies but all the earth, and put the Jewish leaders in ascendant leadership over all. By Christ’s power, all would bow to the Pharisees. That was never God’s plan.

The angel Gabriel told Mary and Joseph that her son’s seed was of the Holy Spirit. Angels told the shepherds to “fear not,” for “good tidings and great joy” were theirs in the birth of Christ the Lord, their Savior, in nearby Bethlehem.  The angels declared “peace on earth,” and the shepherds hurried to Jesus and “spread the word.”

Jesus, from a helpless human baby, grew up to declare, “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life.” He came for all mankind because of God’s love for the world. The Gospel was unveiled in that manger for all to see … if they could, if they would.

Jewish leaders refused the story, and saw Jesus as a threat, not a savior. They feared his ministry rather than embraced it.  They wanted destruction of Jesus’s message, which even still today is veiled “to those who are perishing” and the small “g” “god of this world.” That “god” would be Satan, who knows exactly Jesus’s mission and “keeps them [unbelievers] from seeing the glory of Christ.” Christmas is no time to hide.

Christmas is a time of unveiling: of opening presents, sharing hearts, and declaring faith. It is the construction of our heavenly destiny, not our earthly destruction.

The shepherds were told to “fear not” for the angels’ message was good news. We may fear physical pain, mental anguish, public humiliation, and death, but in Jesus, we no longer need to fear the loss of God. In faith, destruction is no longer on the menu.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) vividly remembers the protests and turmoil of the 1960s, but also remembers songs like “Snoopy’s Christmas” by the Royal Guardsmen.

 

Spirituality Column #805

April 19, 2022

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

The Voice of God

By Bob Walters

“Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”– John 8:28 

Jesus was and is the glory of God, and in this passage from the Gospel of John Jesus was calmly telling his listeners that, though his soul was deeply troubled, that the time had come for him to be glorified.  He beseeched God, “Father, glorify your name!”

And John writes: “Then a voice came from heaven: ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”  The verse goes on to say that some in the crowd thought the voice was thunder; others said an angel had spoken to Jesus.  But Jesus was quick to point out to them that God was speaking for their benefit, not His. 

It was time for the judgment of the world, and time for Jesus to go to work.  The Glory of God – Jesus – would go to the cross as a perfect sacrifice for our sin, and then the Glory of God would leave the grave empty on the day of resurrection. 

But at that moment of thunder or an angel’s voice, no one but Jesus had an inkling what would happen in the ensuing four or five days.  But they would have been dumbfounded by what was happening at that moment: Was that God speaking to them?

This passage is nestled in John’s brief account of Holy Week.  The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke go into several chapters of Jesus’ teaching and activities between “Palm Sunday’s” triumphal entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem and the “Maundy Thursday” Last Supper in the Upper Room.  John dedicates less than a chapter to it.

But it includes this event, which would have rocked any Jews who happened to hear it, whether they believed Jesus, hated Jesus, or thought Jesus was a fraud.  This “voice from heaven” … could it possibly be … God?  Speaking directly to them?

It would have been a much bigger deal than scripture lets on.  Scottish Bible commentator William Barclay notes that when Jesus arrived on the scene, any notion of hearing directly from God had all but disappeared from Israel.  There were only notions of bath qol, or “daughter’s voice,” scriptures softly breathed by feminine angels.

God who spoke directly so often in the Old Testament – to Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, the prophets, and others like Samuel, Elijah and Eliphaz – had been silent for many centuries.  But in the Old Testament when God spoke, He spoke only to individuals, never to a crowd.  Now, God talks to Jesus and everyone around Him.

Think that didn’t make the Pharisees’ rage, fear, and jealousy burn a bit hotter?

This is the third time in the Gospels we hear the direct voice of God: First at Jesus’s Baptism, and then at the Transfiguration God says basically the same thing, “This is my Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased.  Listen to Him!”  And here, when “the time has come” for God to be glorified in Jesus’s sacrifice, God speaks again. 

It’s another clue the Jewish leaders missed: the voice of God speaks through Jesus, not through them.   It infuriated them, and assures us that when we listen to Jesus, we are listening to not only the Word of God but also to the very voice of God. 

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) knows that if you won’t listen, your ears can’t hear.

Spirituality Column #760

June 8, 2021

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

All the Rest

By Bob Walters

“And some of the Pharisees said to [Jesus and the disciples], ‘Why are you doing what is prohibited on the Sabbath?’ … And [Jesus] said to them, ‘The Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath.’” Luke 6:2,5

This isn’t what the Pharisees wanted to hear.

We Christians keep saying Jesus is perfect but we also notice that in the eyes of the Pharisees, Jesus caused a lot of trouble … particularly on the Sabbath.  And what they especially didn’t want to hear from Jesus was that He was “Lord” of anything.

This passage in Luke 6 was both the first we hear of Jesus’ attitude toward the Sabbath and it is also His first encounter with the Pharisees.  The Pharisees here would have picked up – and be enraged by – Jesus’ direct, personal reference to the prophet Daniel’s vision (Daniel 7:13-14) of a coming “Son of Man” with “everlasting dominion.” 

Jesus was telling them that He himself was the fulfilment of this prophecy, and as we eventually learn, Jesus was the fulfilment of all prophecy: the perfect will of God.  This was news that threatened everything the Pharisees were: their authority, stature, power, wealth, security … and their self-perceived favored position with God.

Jesus was looking at the Pharisees and saying, as He did so many times in so many words, “Time’s up.  You have failed God, failed the faith …  and MY time is nigh.”

At issue in Luke 6 was the disciples picking grain – “reaping” (working) – on the Sabbath because they were hungry. Another time Jesus healed a man with a withered hand, right in front of them, on the Sabbath.  In John 5:1-15 during a festival Sabbath, He healed the lame man by the pool at Bethesda, telling him to pick up his mat and sin no more.  In Luke 13:10-17, Jesus heals the bleeding woman – with no expression of faith on her part – who had been sick for 18 years.  The Pharisees charged Jesus with Sabbath violations in all instances and criticized the healed man for carrying his mat.

Jesus was deliberately doing divine signs (John is the “book of signs”) on the Sabbath as a proclamation to the Jews of his relationship to the Law. Jesus was/is not under the Law, he is the fulfilment of the Law; Jesus is not subject to the rules, He is the complete unerring righteousness of God.  The Pharisees were not ready for that.

The Law was general and did not account for the varying situations of personal hunger, health, help, and salvation – rescue from a well, say – that might occur on the Sabbath.  Jesus wasn’t about applying rules; He was about applying salvation.

After healing the man’s withered arm, knowing what the Pharisees were thinking – and they weren’t happy – Jesus asked them, “Is it allowed on the Sabbath to do good or evil, to save a life or to destroy?” The Pharisees saw the healing as a “work” of man.

They did not see it for what it actually was: a work of God. 

What Jesus brought into humanity, or rather, reintroduced into humanity, was the personal perfection of God which God declared and celebrated on the Seventh Day of Creation.  God blessed that rest, made the day holy, and made the Sabbath a Law for humanity to rest and remember perfection – “the Sabbath is made for man” (Mark 2:27).

When God brought us the perfection of Jesus, the Sabbath became bigger than merely a “day of the week.”  It was God telling us that Jesus is all the rest we need.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is going to go at least one more week with this series.

Spirituality Column #750

March 30, 2021

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

‘Father, Forgive Them …

By Bob Walters

“… for they know not what they do.” – Jesus on the Cross, Luke 23:34

Mercilessly hung on the cross, Jesus uttered first these words of forgiveness.

Obedient unto death for His Father’s glory, Jesus spoke of divine forgiveness and human ignorance. He revealed His endless grace, called on God’s endless mercy, and called out humanity’s endless darkness: “…for they know not what they do.” 

On the cross, Jesus was telling us all, “You can trust me … you are forgiven.”

On the ground, people cloaked in ignorance still wondered, “Who ARE you?”

Forgiveness has a funny way of stealing the show at the crucifixion.  As Christian believers we celebrate forgiveness of our sins in Christ’s atoning sacrifice on the cross.  We are maybe a little less attentive to Jesus forgiving those in close proximity to the event: Pilate, soldiers, Pharisees, the jeering crowd, followers hiding in fear, etc.  We probably don’t spend a lot of time on the “know not what they do,” the “ignorant” part.

Early-20^th century American humorist and commentator Will Rogers was fond of saying, “Everybody’s ignorant, only on different subjects.”  Not known for his religious leanings, Rogers nonetheless perfectly hit on the confined nature of human knowledge.  We all possess some knowledge about some things, and time and again we see that the things we don’t know – our ignorance – bring out fear, hostility, and indifference.

At Calvary Pilate knew Roman governance but he didn’t know truth.  Pharisees knew the Law but for years selfishly had misapplied it.  They then blindly ignored and became hostile when the Law’s prophetic fulfillment – Jesus Christ – arrived in their midst.  They refused to see God’s Truth they should have recognized. Roman soldiers knew how to put a man to death but were entirely indifferent to who Jesus was.

Jesus’ disciples knew Him personally, yet even after all they had heard and seen, 10 of them hid in fear.  The 11^th, John, was at the foot of the cross, and the 12^th, Judas, hung himself. John, let’s note, was the only disciple not to eventually die a violent death.

When we don’t know what we are doing or what’s going on around us, our ignorance might feel like bliss and even lessen our guilt.  Are we accountable for what we don’t know?  Jesus on the cross graciously called for God’s forgiveness of his accusers despite their ignorance, hostility, and indifference; His love was that great.

Jesus tells us to love God and love others, forgive our enemies, and invites us to follow Him.  We love being forgiven, but the cross shows us how the world – in its ignorance, hostility, and indifference – reacts when Truth arrives to replace worldly lies.

The world won’t change Jesus; we can trust that.  He changes us when our trust, love, and faith join Him on the Cross; sin and ignorance fade, and truth lights our way.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) has this theory – it’s not scriptural, it’s a theory – that most of Jesus’ followers, the cheering celebrants of Palm Sunday, were not at Calvary but in fearful hiding from Jewish leaders.  The jeering crowd with the Pharisees were likely rebels who that morning had assembled before Pilate to beg Passover Amnesty for their leader, Barabbas.  The Pharisees wanted Jesus dead, this loud cohort wanted Barabbas alive, and so Barabbas, a rebel who was to be crucified that day, became the first person directly “saved” by Jesus.  One imagines the “two thieves” (insurrectionists? Mark 15:7) were surprised to see Jesus in (their ally?) Barabbas’ place.

 Spirituality Column #739

January 12, 2021

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Call a Doctor! NOW

By Bob Walters

“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Jesus to the Pharisees at Matthew’s home, Mark 2:17

“…there is no one righteous, not one …” Romans 3:10-18, quoting Psalms 14 and 53

The Pharisees were utterly clueless.  They shouldn’t have been, but they were.

Jesus, in Mark 2, is having dinner at the home of Matthew who has decided to follow Jesus and presumably is saying goodbye to his “tax collector and sinner” friends.  If the gathering were as wretched as we are led to believe, I wonder what the Pharisees were doing anywhere near it.  But, they saw Jesus and his disciples there and passed judgment on the awfulness of the gathering … and said so. 

Jesus agreed.  Yes, he was eating with sinners; they were sick with the sins of the world and needed the only doctor who could heal any of them.  It is Jesus’s comment about “the righteous” – which the Pharisees would have rightly believed was referring to them – that is clever, clandestine, and utterly revealing.

I read a Ray Stedman devotional recently which explained Mark 2:17 this way, “Jesus indicated strongly that when people think they have no need of help from God, they are in no position to be helped.  There is nothing to say to them.  But our Lord always put his efforts where men and women were open to help, where they were hurting so much they knew they needed help.”  The Pharisees didn’t know.

“Not knowing” we need help is what happens when we confuse our human opinions, passions, and desire for power and control with God’s own actual truth, certitude, and righteousness.  Righteousness is about Him, not us, and Jesus is not complimenting the Pharisees but rebuking them in a frightening and final way.

Something else Stedman wrote recently stuck with me: "If you don't have Jesus in your heart when you live, there is nothing in you worth saving when you die." 

There is no one righteous, not one.  To live, we need a righteous doctor in the most desperate way. Which brings me to a brief commentary on recent public events.

I’d rather not face the obvious ordeal before us as a nation, but here we are.

No amount of responsibility-ducking, blame-shifting “God is in control” is going to reverse the desperate course of self-inflicted human events to come.  What I know is that God will not change.  What I hope for – in deep personal repentance and humility – is that God’s mercy rather than His wrath will be the next thing visited upon us.

My plan is to stick close to Jesus and hope for the best.  The doctor is always in.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that if you are really mad at something in this world, when you are as convinced as he is that the shades of nefarious darkness have been pulled down in corruption, injustice, and subterfuge tight against the light of truth, read Psalms 14 and 53.  That’ll stir you up, then read Psalm 4 to calm down. Then … call on Jesus for peace. No matter what happens, God’s got it and we’ll grow.  Whether we like it or not.

 

Spirituality Column #728

October 27, 2020

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Knowing What Isn’t So

By Bob Walters

“… you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee.” – John 7:52, Pharisees rebuking Nicodemus for daring to remind them that their law applies to Jesus, too.

You have to be careful about what you say to whom these days.

Whether politics or pandemics, economics or environment, gender or justice, patriotism or wokeness, religion or the Supreme Court, which lives matter or which lives don’t, public discourse is an endless minefield of truth-or-dare when we open our mouth or hit “send” on a post.  Then as now, it was the same risky idea for Nicodemus.

Unwelcome opinions guarantee a dangerous swim in roiling, unknown waters.

If there is no other lesson from the Bible – although I assure you there are many – it is that as much as humanity has “progressed” in the past 2,000 years, mankind is still basically the same. Technology is amazing; man’s proclivity to deceive is mystifying.

Nicodemus … I just love Nicodemus.  I ache for Nicodemus.  I think he truly “got it” – after a time – that Jesus was exactly who He said He was, acted like He was, and represented what He was – the Son of God, the promised Messiah, the saving Christ.

Nicodemus sensed that perhaps the prevailing Pharisaic narrative on this “Galilean” speaking so much distasteful opinion just might have an “in” on divine truth.

Jesus indeed was the fulfillment of God’s prophetic promise to reign in the whole world, over all people, through the Jewish nation and out into all the earth.  Just like the Pharisees mistakenly thought the Messiah would be a conquering soldier to kill the Romans and make the Jews the world’s most power nation, today we think Jesus came to solve our problems, heal our ills, give us stuff, free-pass our sins, and save us into heaven because by golly, we are that important.  And we ARE that important.

But not like we think. Turns out, in capital-T Truth, God’s glory is that important.

It was to the curious, highly-educated, surprise visitor Nicodemus the Pharisee, in the deep of night, that Jesus privately said the words we now know as John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”  Nicodemus had ears but didn’t hear.

The Pharisees had their narrative on Jesus almost exactly backwards.  It was Jesus’s truth that would truly fulfill the Law and save all who believe.  But it was their own destructive Pharisaical narrative they obeyed.  They were in gravest error.

John 7:52 (top) offers a seemingly minor point about Galilee, but it’s an egregious error similar to the many public narrative lies we are fed today.  In the temple the Pharisees “knew” a narrative that wasn’t so: that Jesus came from Galilee.  In truth, as prophecy said and they should have known, Jesus was born in Bethlehem. 

It was truth they ignored; a detail left unchecked.  The pious Pharisees were so darkened by their self-serving narrative that they missed God’s true light of the world.

Jesus came to initiate God’s Kingdom on earth; to fulfil the God-promised, prophetic purpose to bring the Jewish nation and all humanity back into His glory by the work, obedience, and covering of their sin by Jesus. The Messiah God, it turns out, was a loving, humble, servant of others; not a strong-armed tyrant or marauding earthly king.

The lesson is that the truth may not come from where – or be what – we expect.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) encourages all to vote with discernment.  Amen.

Spirituality Column No. 532
January 24, 2017
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

By Bob Walters

Spirituality Column No. 527
December 20, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

The Cross, Christmas and Freedom
By Bob Walters

Spirituality Column #439
April 14, 2015
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

I have a not-always-appreciated-by-others gift for sarcastic retort, penchant for sardonic response, talent for nimble-minded quips, and unrepentant respect for a well-turned phrase.

But like many a confessing Christian recently, my rhetorical savoir-faire has been more than a bit flummoxed as Indiana’s originally unremarkable, copycat RFRA law tipped over into the brightly lit, nationally tumultuous ditch of unrelentingly politically correct and factually preposterous assault and over-reaction.

What began as a wise, future-looking legal hedge against as yet unexperienced discrimination became an intellectually D-Day-esque battle royale of hysterical, accusational, Bible-warping, religion bashing histrionics of exactly the kind the law was meant to thwart.  Ironically, the assault was mounted on behalf of LGBT and presumably other groups that are currently among the most civil-rights protected and socially normative minorities in American culture.

Never mind that over the past 50 years virtually every vestige of Christian moral instruction has been tossed out of public schools, higher academia and the political marketplace of common-sense good advice.  It is not fair, the whining chorus shouts, to reaffirm America’s existing First Amendment right to religious freedom.

So, companies that happily do global business with nations routinely killing, maiming, enslaving and silencing public sinners and religious dissenters declare open disdain for unfriendly Indiana, where we Hoosiers are a bunch of bigots and homophobes, and I guess worst of all, Christians.

“But hey – why don’t you visit our new store in Riyadh? Or Beijing?”

At an honest loss for loving, effective rebuttal, I have found myself praying to receive the spiritual gift of parables Jesus so elegantly exhibited when confronted with the Pharisees of His day.  Jesus, un-flummoxed, repeatedly saved his life by telling brilliant parables in response to the accusations of cultural leaders.  I am certain that Jesus’s priority was in revealing God’s glory, power and truth, not just saving His life.

People today, often and mistakenly, think those parables – such as the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32), and many others (read the middle chapters of Luke) – are there to instruct us in appropriate Christian living.  Not even close.  Those parables, usually in response to Pharisaical accusations, were Jesus’s clever way of “blowing up” the status quo of Jewish piety.

Jesus was a rebel, no doubt.  More importantly He was – He is – a moral, perfect and unimaginably shrewd Savior who sought out sinners not to aid and abet their sin but to love them and teach them about the glory of God.

My parable prayer is not yet answered, but I’ve got this off my chest.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com), possibly only in his own mind, believes “sarcastic” is a falsehood that mocks a truth, and “sardonic” is a truth that mocks a falsehood.

Spirituality Column #373
January 7, 2014
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

Christians develop an ear for identifying like-minded believers.

Not that all Christians are like-minded – we most decidedly are not – but sheep know their master’s voice (John 10:3, 4, 16, 27).  It shouldn’t be surprising that we can discern the voice of other sheep in our flock.

For example, when we hear the phrase “on my heart” – church-speak shorthand for “God has prayerfully put something on my heart” – we’ve likely encountered another Bible-believing evangelical.   The expression typically means a person feels “led” – another Christian code word – to “speak the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15).

Christianity teaches that God’s laws are written “on our hearts” in faith.  The Bible is very plain about that (Romans 2:15, 2:29; 2 Corinthians 3:2-3).  People are saved by their faith in Christ, period (John 14:6), not their good works.

Christians properly “feel led” because Jesus says “Follow me” a couple dozen times in the Gospels.  Never once does Christ volunteer, or even remotely suggest, that He has any interest in following us.  Jesus came to lead, and to reveal the truth.

As for “speaking the truth in love,” Jesus did that a lot.  His message of faith inspired some but incensed others.  Jesus as the “fulfillment of the law” (Matthew 5:17) was something neither religious nor civil authorities wanted to hear, nor what His Jewish brethren were prepared to accept.  Jesus’s wisdom was respected and his miracles were spectacular, but His humility was mocked and His truth was attacked.

The truth of Jesus Christ has always been challenged by arrogant mankind because Christ’s truth, truly, is “the final answer.”  It is superior to any temporal “truth” – legends, societal “norms,” academic whims, political causes or spiritual fashions – created by self-praising man.

John 15:18 says not to be surprised when Christian believers are hated because the world hated Jesus first.  Modern cultural Pharisees still take Christians to task for publicly espousing the plain, scriptural totality of God’s truth in Jesus Christ.  And perhaps the three most important truths are that 1) God loves us, 2) salvation depends on faith in Christ, and 3) our human sin is a very big deal.

The Pharisees and the Romans killed the messenger who brought that message 2,000 years ago.  Many try to kill the message today.

“Duck Commander” impresario Phil Robertson, I’m guessing, can relate.  Witness the furious but mostly silly, self-righteous and biblically uninformed cultural backlash ignited by Robertson’s recent plainly spoken and scripturally-buttressed assessment of sin, love, truth and modern culture.

If we have an ear for it, we can recognize a faithful voice from our flock.

Even if it is a duck call.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) doesn’t hunt, but appreciates God’s truth. Have a happy, happy, happy New Year.