I’ve been working on a presentation for Thursday on the Book of Ruth.  It’s one of only two books of the Bible named after a woman, the other book bearing the name of Esther.

In preparation, I always read through the passages over and over to enter into the story so I can “become” Ruth, for example, in this presentation.  The introduction in my study Bible says a few things so perfectly that I can’t resist quoting it today.

In speaking about Ruth and Boaz (who will become Ruth’s husband and together are in the ancestry of Jesus), the commentary states,

[The author of Ruth] presents striking examples of lives that embody in their daily affairs the self-giving love that fulfills God’s law (Lev 19:18; cf. Romans 13:10).  Such love also reflects God’s love…[in] God’s benevolence such lives are blessed and are made a blessing.”

Ruth, a Moabitess, was an unusual choice to be displaying the loyal love of God to the Israelite family into which she married.  And yet, there’s something beautifully affirming that participation in the family of God is not a function of birth or blood, family legacy or inheritance passed down the generations like something on Antiques Roadshow.

For us on the other side of the Cross, we see that inheritance of the Kingdom is not by birth but by rebirth and the only blood that matters is the shed blood of Jesus Christ whose loyal love deserves our obedience.

Ruth was the great-grandmother of King David and an ancestress of this same Savior, Jesus Christ.  Yet, her inclusion in the family of God is a direct result of the life of faith she had, demonstrated in the “obedience that comes from faith” (Romans 1:5).

There’s something about a New Year.  It’s not really a clean slate, but it feels like one.  It’s not really new, but it feels that way.  It’s not really a fresh start, but why not make it one?

New Years are mile markers in life.  A fresh calendar on the wall.  A starting line for changes.  A place to date the resolutions you make as beginning.

Make this the year you resolve to agree with God that He’s the One who belongs on the throne. 

Make this the year you decide the world is too much for you to handle on your own.

Make this the year you live your life for something greater than yourself.

Make this the year you turn from behaviors, actions, and thoughts you know are destroying you and ask for God to give you the peace only He can give.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. (2 Corinthians 5:17)

If you’d like to know how to begin a relationship with Jesus Christ, click the “contact me” button above.  Make a relationship with Jesus your resolution and may 2014 be the best year yet!  Happy New Year!

Many of us who have had loved ones with Alzheimer’s can testify to the beauty of a memory and the devastation to the person and the whole family when someone has lost the ability to remember.

Without a memory there is no past for that person. 

Without a memory, there is no planning for the future. 

Without a memory, there is only reaction to the present circumstances and we become like a leaf being blown about on the surface of the water.

The gracious gift of being able to remember is something that God has given us so that we might remember all that He has done for us.  It’s so we’ll remember Him.  And not to forget Him.  Yes, a memory is critical to any relationship including our relationship with God our Father.

As the hours of 2013 wane, take a moment to do more than count down.  Take a moment to remember so that you do not forget.

Deuteronomy 8:1 Be careful to follow every command I am giving you today, so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land that the LORD promised on oath to your forefathers. 2 Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. 3 He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. 4 Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years. 5 Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the LORD your God disciplines you. 6 Observe the commands of the LORD your God, walking in his ways and revering him. 7 For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land– a land with streams and pools of water, with springs flowing in the valleys and hills; 8 a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; 9 a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills. 10 When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the LORD your God for the good land he has given you. 11 Be careful that you do not forget the LORD your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. 12 Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, 13 and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, 14 then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 15 He led you through the vast and dreadful desert, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock. 16 He gave you manna to eat in the desert, something your fathers had never known, to humble and to test you so that in the end it might go well with you. 17 You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” 18 But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today. 19 If you ever forget the LORD your God and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed. 20 Like the nations the LORD destroyed before you, so you will be destroyed for not obeying the LORD your God.

As 2013 draws to a close, it’s a good time to reflect.  There will have been 365 days of sunrises and sunsets that God has graciously given us to mark the time.  What will have been this year’s highlights?  What do-overs will you wish you had?  The very best use of a day will be to trust God with your time going forward, to place your faith in Him, and to seek His heart on the best use of 2014.  He’s already planning to mark the time with sunrises and sunsets.  How will you mark your time?

John 3:17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.”

It’s Christmas Eve and our series on Emmanuel: When LOVE Showed Up In-Person will be concluding.  In our passage for today, the Gospel writer John summarizes what he’s been saying about the reason Jesus came: to save the world!

Picture an entire pool of humanity under the cloud of sin since the Fall of Man.  That whole group has been under the “you-will-surely-die” condemnation and has been awaiting God’s eventual and inevitable wrath.  Each and every man, woman, and child has inherited a death sentence. We are all terminal since the day we were conceived.  It’s a gloomy picture of darkness, punishment, and death.

But then God does something miraculous! 

LOVE showed up as our Savior. 

The Father sends Jesus—the Word made flesh—to come into the world,

not to add further condemnation upon an entire people as a judge and a punisher. 

No, He comes in love and grace to make salvation possible. 

Of course, not everyone will believe in His Name, or take His offer of grace as the free gift it is, or agree to being pulled up to eternal life out of the death spiral.  But some will.  The Light of Christ draws those who want to see more LOVE, more grace, and more Light to be found in Him.  He draws us out of the gloomy despair of human life.  The Light shows us the way to salvation even though some will reject it.

To those who are sick  and tired of hearing (as from Phil Robertson and Duck Dynasty, for example) how the Bible condemns this group or that group and consigns them to hell, the truth is we were all destined for hell had Jesus not come to save us.

The question is not “Who is under the threat of condemnation?” 

The answer to that is question is “All of us.”

The question becomes “Who among us can be saved?”  The answer to that one is the one who believes in Jesus’ Name, obeys Jesus’ teachings, and steps into the light to live in the truth.

As you light candles at church tonight to sing Silent Night, think about Jesus’ being the Light of the World and how for the briefest moment, the aperture of the invisible opened…and we beheld the glory of the One and Only whose mission it was to save us.  What will be your response?

John 3:1 Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2 He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.” 3 In reply Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” 4 “How can a man be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!” 5 Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” 9 “How can this be?” Nicodemus asked. 10 “You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? 11 I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. 12 I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?

Have you ever had a situation where you’re trying to think of something and a default answer pops into your head and then you can’t think of anything else? Then once someone tells you the answer, you recognize you’d created a box around your thoughts and it kept you from thinking of anything else.  If so, then you can have some empathy for poor Nicodemus here.

Everything he’d ever been taught is that his birthright as Jew meant he was to be among God’s chosen people.  Being born a Jew meant everything!

Then, along comes Jesus with some cold water.  He says that’s not really what it’s all about.  Your physical heritage as a Jew isn’t what counts.  Being spiritually born into the family of faith is what matters.

You were thinking, I’ve been born a Jew, I’ve got it made. 

Jesus tells you that you’ve been born a Jew, but you’ve got it wrong.

To make matters worse Jesus is a fellow Jew.  He’s someone you’re acknowledging comes from God, is doing miraculous signs, but now is telling you that you need to be born of the Spirit.  The fact that Jesus prefaces His statements in verses 3, 5, and 11 with “I tell you the truth” must have thrown Nicodemus’ whole worldview into complete turmoil.

Everything he thought was the right answer wasn’t.  Every privilege he felt he had was stripped away.  Every earthly, physical, and inheritance promise was pulled out from under him and he couldn’t see how anyone can be born again in a physical sense.

Jesus points to the spiritual realm and says,

I tell you the truth.”

Sometimes you need a bigger box.

John 2:23 Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name. 24 But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. 25 He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man.

We’re closing in on Christmas and our Advent series Emmanuel: When LOVE Showed Up In-Person will be concluding.  Looking into these early verses of the Gospel of John, are we amazed, seeing the miraculous?

• The Word existing before time.
• The Word being made flesh and dwelling among us.
• The Word being the glory of the One and Only, visible to our human eyes in the Son of God as the aperture of the invisible opens for the briefest moment to allow us to see the fullness of grace and truth, to see God without it killing us.
• The Word performing the miraculous in Jesus’ actions in the same way as the very miracle of Creation, attesting to His having been God all along.

So what is our response?

Some people in Jesus’ day followed along like fans, gawkers, or prophet seekers.  They wanted to be on-hand to catch the latest miracle.  It’d be like us following Jesus around with our iPhones ready to capture a video of the latest sign and wonder to post to Twitter or Facebook.  They’re in it for the celebrity and for being so close to a miracle man.

Or is our response to be less in awe of the miracles…and more in awe that God would send Jesus—the very glory of the One and Only—to come in-person to teach us what true faith and true worship look like?

In today’s passage in Greek, there’s a word play going on between the words believed (v 23) and entrust (v 24).  Jesus’ entrusting wouldn’t happen just because a few people were following Him around for their own reasons.  Jesus closes the loop only on real genuine faith.

It comes back to our response.  What will we do with Jesus at Christmas and beyond?  Will we sing a few carols, light candles, and then move on to New Year’s?  Will we believe until the presents are unwrapped and the tree is out at the curb?  Or will His coming change our lives?  Jesus knows what is in us and how we’re responding to miracles.  He closes the loop only on real…genuine…faith.

Jeremiah 17: 5 This is what the LORD says: “Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the LORD. 6 He will be like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes. He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives. 7 “But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. 8 He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.” 9 The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? 10 “I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve.”

“Just who the hell do you think you are?”  (That’s a Barbara paraphrase of John 2:18 to show the attitude behind the question.).

John 2:18 Then the Jews demanded of him, “What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” 20 The Jews replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” 21 But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.

This is what “the Jews” (not all the Jews, but specifically those engaged in the marketplace and the leaders at the temple) wanted to know.  Think of it this way: Jesus was a Jew and so were His disciples, but to those specific Jews whose livelihood was engaged in the commerce and religiosity associated with temple worship, they wanted to know “What gives you the right to disrupt what we’re doing?”

Jesus points out that the glory of the LORD is not in the temple. 

It hasn’t been there since Ezekiel.  The lights are on, but there’s no one home. 

No glory dwells there, though God the Father meets with people in prayer.

No glory dwells there, but the Word was made flesh and made His dwelling among us. 

The real glory dwells in Jesus, the Unique Son of God.

He is Emmanuel: When LOVE Showed Up In-Person!  He IS the glory of the One and Only.  The glory in the temple would be shown when Jesus’ body was crucified, dead, and buried…but would rise again from the dead.  That would prove He was Emmanuel (God with us) for His time among us.  His bodily resurrection would prove He is God and Messiah with all authority to cleanse the temple and more than that, to pay for human sin, the very corruption that caused God’s glory to leave the temple in the first place.

The Jews demanded credentials.

To them, without credentials, Jesus was just a law-breaking vandal and a rebel. 

But Jesus’ authority didn’t come from any man-made means. 

His authority existed from before time began because He was sent from the Father,

He is God, and after dwelling with us, He would be returning to the Father.

It is nothing short of audacity to look the Son of God in the face and ask, “Just who the hell do you think you are? What gives you the right to disrupt what we’re doing?”

Questions to ponder:

1. Are there any ways in which we question God and His actions in our lives?
2. Read Luke 11:29-32, Matthew 12:39-42, and Mark 11:27-33.  How do the “Sign of Jonah” and John the Baptist’s baptism shed light on what authority we see in today’s passage from John?