daily java

Daily Java:

The soldiers took Jesus into the courtyard of the governor’s headquarters (called the Praetorium) and called out the entire regiment. They dressed him in a purple robe, and they wove thorn branches into a crown and put it on his head. Then they saluted him and taunted, “Hail! King of the Jews!” And they struck him on the head with a reed stick, spit on him, and dropped to their knees in mock worship. When they were finally tired of mocking him, they took off the purple robe and put his own clothes on him again. Then they led him away to be crucified. (Mark 15:16-20)

One of the perks of being a Roman soldier was the entertainment of beating on prisoners. Unfortunately, soldiers have always been that way. I am not sure why. But soldiers tend to see their enemies as less than human, less than real. It was that case in the all of the wars America has fought.

Lately, there has been a lot of focus on this, but the thing is, as long as people are having to fight other people, it will be that way. It is easier to fight someone you have dehumanized than to fight someone you see as a real person.

It was the same in Jesus’ day. The governor gave Jesus to his soldiers to beat than he took him to be crucified. To the soldiers, he was nobody special, just another prisoner. He may have been a little more high profile than some, but now he was there, at least for a while, for their amusement.

They laughed at him, crowned him with a crown of thorns, dressed him in a purple robe, hit him, in general tortured him. Then they were through.

To these men, Jesus was no more than a momentary diversion. Chances are, they didn’t even think of him much that night when they went home. He was just part of their jobs (or at least part of the fun of their jobs).

To us he was the King of the Universe in human from dying for our sins, being beaten for our transgressions, bleeding for our failings.

To them, he was just part of the job of soldiering. That was all.

I suppose that is why the comment the centurion made at the foot of the cross in Mark 15:39: When the Roman officer who stood facing him saw how he had died, he exclaimed, “This man truly was the Son of God!” That soldier could see past all of the stuff and see that there was something special about Jesus, something, some spark of divinity that was lacking in the others.

To them, Jesus was part of the day’s trash, to be thrown away.

To us, he is the Son of God and our Savior.

What a difference in perspective.

without easter, christmas is worthless

But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. He is the first of a great harvest of all who have died. So you see, just as death came into the world through a man, now the resurrection from the dead has begun through another man. Just as everyone dies because we all belong to Adam, everyone who belongs to Christ will be given new life. (1 Corinthians 15:20-22 NLT)

Jesus was not the first person to come back from the dead. There are several instances in the Old Testament and Jesus himself raised three people: a widow’s son in the city of Nain, a little girl and his friend Lazarus.

But there is a difference between all those people and Jesus. The difference was that they were all raised by the power of God through Jesus. And he was raised by the power of God through his life.

Colossians 1 says:

Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.
      He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation,
 for through him God created everything
      in the heavenly realms and on earth.
He made the things we can see
      and the things we can’t see—
such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world.
      Everything was created through him and for him.
He existed before anything else,
      and he holds all creation together. (1:15-17)

That Word which was spoken was the pre-incarnate Christ, Jesus before he became Jesus. He is the one who created the world and he is the one who will conquer death.

His resurrection was not the only one. However, it is the only one that has power to bring us back from death in sin into his glorious light. His death gives us life.

All those other people died again. They got old and died natural deaths. None of them were raised for eternal life. They died and that was that.

Jesus, on the other hand, rose from his death to never die again. And because he will never die again, he gives us – by the power of God – the power to never die again.

Yes, we will die, or at least this physical body will. but our souls, that which makes us who we are, our nature, will never die.

When Jesus was there to bring Lazarus back to life, he told Martha, Lazarus’ sister: I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying. Everyone who lives in me and believes in me will never ever die. (John 11:25-26)

When we die, and we will, we can know that we are not really dead. We still live. Our nature and our form is changed, but that which defines us as who we are is not changed. In him, we live forever.

That is the point of Easter. When it comes down to it, it is a much more important holiday than Christmas. Christmas only marks the beginning of Jesus’ earthly situation, his life on this planet.

Easter marks the beginning of his reign in heaven. Without Easter, Christmas is worthless.

Without Easter, Christmas is just the introduction of yet another child into the world. with Easter, that child saves the world.

Praise be.

daily java

Daily Java:

This is to be a lasting ordinance for you: Atonement is to be made once a year for all the sins of the Israelites. (Leviticus 16:34)

But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.   (Romans 3:21-24)

The old system had atonement once a year. Once a year the High Priest would bring the blood of the sacrificial lamb into the temple and release the scapegoat into the wilderness. Only then was atonement accomplished. But it was limited atonement, only good for a short time.

With Jesus we have perpetual atonement. He made that sacrifice of his life so that we could keep ours. He was the perfect lamb slain for our sins. In him w have continual release of sin and continual salvation.

He is the only way to God and his is the only salvation. He is our Lord.

daily java

Daily Java: To do what is right and just is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.  (Proverbs 21:3)

The old expression: going to church every Sunday and living like hell each week. Folks think that by going to church, by attendance and knowing songs, by showing up bathed and dressed and looking good, they are fine. But there is more to it than that.

In John 7-8, there is a passage that tells of the religious leaders bringing out a woman caught in the act of adultery. According to Old Testament law, she deserved to be stoned. The law said so. Any person versed in the law, the Bible at the time, would agree.

They brought her to Jesus, figuring that they could trap him in a contradiction. After all, Jesus preached love and peace. This woman had disobeyed the law and as such deserved the punishment. She had  not done this accidentally or anything like this. It was a willful disobedience of the law. It was her fault.

You can imagine the scene. The woman is brought before Jesus by a mob. More than likely, they didn’t even give her time to get dressed. So here is this terrified, naked young woman thrown to the ground in front of a mob of angry men. And here is Jesus.

They say, well? She was caught in the act of adultery. The law says she deserves to be stoned. What do you say?

Jesus looks at all of them and at the young woman. Yes, she is guilty. Yes, the law says she deserves to die. But then again, here is one of these people that Jesus came to touch in the first place.

They’re waiting for him to answer. If he says okay, guys, she is guilty, let’s start the stoning ball, they will accuse him of hypocrisy. Where is that “love” you mentioned. You are just like us. They will laugh at him because he chose the law over his big deal love.

If he says no, guys, let her go, they will accuse him of apostasy and heresy and disobedience of the law and he would be guilty as much as she.

So either way, Jesus was stuck. Either he was a legalist just like them, ready to stone, or he was a heretic, letting people get away with murder in spite of God’s Commands.

But Jesus took a third way. He was good at that. He knelt down and began doodling in the dirt. No one knows what he wrote, and tons of people have tried to guess. I think he was just wasting time while they stood there in “righteous” indignation (and probably ogling the helpless girl).

He looks up and says, oh, by the way, the one who is perfect can start the stoning, then looks back down at the dirt and his artwork.

When he looks back up, there is no one but himself and the woman. He asks, where are your accusers. The woman, no doubt wide-eyed with amazement – after all, a few minutes ago, this naked young woman was going to be stoned by a bunch of slobbering men – says no one, Lord. Lord was the term for anyone you were lesser than at the time. She may not have known he was the Son of God, but she knew, for sure, dude, he had saved her life.

Jesus says, neither will I condemn you. Go and quit sinning. You can imagine, knowing Jesus, that he put his coat around her, gave her a hug, and sent her on her way.

By the way, there was a guy involved that day with that woman, but no one mentioned him. I’ll bet he ran like a scalded dog.

The sacrifice in this case was the stoning of an openly adulterous woman. The doing what is right and just was the mercy Jesus showed to a sinner caught in sin.

The adultery was wrong and Jesus never says otherwise. But at that point, he wanted the woman to live to know him and to accept the grace of God that he brought.

Doing what you need to do is a fat lot better than coming to church. Yes, the coming to church is important and you need to do it. In fact, you cannot be the Christian you need to be if you don’t. But that is not all there is to life.

Life in Jesus means that you love others and not only preach what is wrong, but also live what is right. That is more acceptable to the Lord.


PS  That verse in John (7:53-8:11) is not in some old manuscripts. I believe that is so because some of the early church could not reconcile Jesus’ mercy with God’s commands. So they tried to take it out. But the problem was, it kept coming back in. The reason? God wanted it there. If God is powerful enough to speak light in existence with a word he can also guide his written word to contain what he wants no matter what other people think. It certainly fits what Jesus would do.

vbs is over

VBS is over, and now everybody is going back to normal. Analyses are being made, pictures are being looked at, funny things discussed, problems observed, next year’s VBS is initially forecast, and kids and adults have another great memory of church stored up in their hearts.

VBS does more than just teach. That’s good and necessary, but there is always more to these kind of things. It also causes fellowship.

Everybody got together for a full week and did all kinds of things. And the amazing thing about it is that very few were actually paid to do it. The vast majority, if not almost all, were doing it voluntarily. They did it out of pure love. They gave up time after work, time when they could be doing other things to stand around and jump around and sing and play and teach a bunch of kids.

That is the amazing thing about almost every VBS: it is done almost entirely on volunteer effort. People do it because they love God and they love children.

The tiredness at the end of the week is worth it because they have done something great with their week. They have shown active and sacrificial love to a hundred or so kids. And they have done it out of the generosity of their hearts.

People in the world do not understand this. To them it is a waste.

Jesus said, This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers (1 John 3:16). He “put himself out” for us, to make it sound minimal, I guess, when he gave up Godhood and took up humanity. He gave up part of himself to be with us.

VBS workers do the same thing. They give up time and energy and sometimes money for teaching materials and all. For one week, they lay down their lives for a bunch of children.

And it is a beautiful thing to see: people with that much love and compassion and desire to teach the love of Jesus and his grace in our lives.

VBS people are among the elect of God. Again, Jesus said, Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it (Matthew 10:39). People lost a lot of time last week, but they have gained a lot of glory.

Thank God for our VBS workers. They are angels in his kingdom.