Bad Information

This passage comes from Matthew 16.

"When they went across the lake, the disciples forgot to take bread.  "Be careful," Jesus said to them.  "Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees." Matt 16: 5-6.

Of note, the Pharisees and Sadducees were considered to be the "smart people" of their day.

They were the "intelligentsia," the wise ones, the providers of wisdom and knowledge to the masses who didn't have their superior knowledge and intellect.

At first the disciples don't get Jesus' meaning.  "It is because we didn't bring any bread." Matt 16: 7

Jesus explains.  "How is it you don't understand that I was not talking to you about bread?  But be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees."  Then they understood that he was not telling them to guard against the yeast used in bread, but against the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees."  Matt 16:  11-12.

Bad information.  False information.  Do we deal with that today?  You bet we do!  It comes at us from all sides.  The age of the internet and social media have only compounded the problem.  We get so much bad and false information dumped on us on a regular basis that we wonder,  "What can I believe?  What is true?"

Where can we find any truth today?  Where can we find information that is reliable?  In our Bibles.

"Yes," you say, "but that stuff was written more than 2000 years ago.  How can it be relevant to me today?"

Truth doesn't change.  It is an absolute.  It is a constant.

"Ok," you say, "but it is difficult to read and it has been translated from ancient languages and sometimes it is just hard to make any sense of it."

All true.  But it is surprising how, with just a little consistent effort on our part, the difficult things become easier.  The obscure becomes understandable.  Modern Bibles like an NIV (New International Version), or ESV (English Standard Version), or NAB (New American Bible) are often accompanied with added information to help us understand the Biblical text.  In addition, they are often cross-referenced to other parts of the Bible that allow us to see how truth, in fact, really does not change over time.  The information that God is giving us in His word, is consistent and reliable.

All we have to do is read it.  Regularly.  In small doses.  And we will get it.  It's not hard.  

And we will know the truth.  And knowing the truth in our lives is what we are all looking for.

The Kingdom of God

The New Testament contains numerous passages where Christ informs us that, with his arrival into our world "the Kingdom of God has come upon you." (Matt 1:15, Luke 11:20, Luke 10:9, numerous others).  What exactly does this mean for us?  The "good times" have arrived?  "Let the party begin?"  "No more sorrow, no more woe?"

Unfortunately, no.  With His death on the cross and resurrection to new life, Christ gained the upper hand over pain, suffering and death.  Those who are convinced that in Him and through Him, access to life, real life, eternal life, life of joy and fulfillment in the presence of 
God is now available to all who come to Him seeking exactly that, receive it.  And He bestows it freely to anyone asking of Him.

But that new life is not now.  It is not yet.  We still live mired in this world. We still live with illness, suffering and death; our own and that of those that we hold dear.  It is incredibly hard to hear of people that we knew well having "passed".  It is incredibly hard to know close friends who are dealing with illnesses that will almost certainly lead to death in the months to come.  We have great hope for the future but how are we to deal with the tragedies that we face now?

Look at how Christ dealt with them.  

""On Herod's birthday the daughter of Herodias danced for them and pleased Herod so much that he promised with an oath to give her whatever she asked.  Prompted by her mother, she said, 'Give me here on a platter the head of John the Baptist.'  The king was distressed, but because of his oaths and his dinner guests, he ordered that her request be granted and had John beheaded in the prison. His head was brought in on a platter and given to the girl, who carried it to her mother. John's disciples came and took his body and buried it.  Then they went and told Jesus. (Matt 14: 6-12.)

This was John the Baptist, the last of the great prophets, the man who had baptised Jesus, Jesus' cousin.  How did Jesus respond?

"When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place."

(Matt  14: 13a).  No doubt he grieved, he cried, he sobbed, he looked to heaven and grimaced.

Then he got up and went back to finish the work that God had given him to do.

This is likely a good pattern for us to follow when we lose someone very close to us.  We go off by ourselves, we grieve, we cry , we sob, we look to Heaven and cry "why!?"  Then we return to the work that God has given us, knowing that, because Christ completed His work, a much, much better day , brighter day, happier day, is coming for us all.

"Are you here for the show?"

Two thousand years ago Jesus was "The Show of the Century!"  Absolutely!  He was The Eagles, Siegfried and Roy, Bono, and Taylor Swift all rolled into one.  He was like the Olympics ten times over. People came from all over that region, what we now know as Israel, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, to see Him put on the show.  "He healed my arm!"  "I couldn't walk and now I'm walking!  Look at me!"  "I was blind and He touched my eyes and now I can see better than you do!"  "My little girl was dead and He brought her back to life!""No way!""Yes He did!  I can still barely believe it myself!"Stuff like that was a main part of "The Jesus Show."  And He did it all the time.In Matthew 12: 38, the gospel writer tells us, "Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, 'Teacher we want to see a miraculous sign from you.'"  In other words, "Do your show!  We want to see the show!"Jesus is deeply saddened by this and by the lack of belief and understanding on their part.  He calls them, "A wicked and adulterous generation."  We frown at them too, not realizing that we are not very far from them.  We are always wondering what Jesus can do for us.Jesus goes on to remind them of the story of Jonah, how the prophet went (very reluctantly!) to Nineveh to preach about God to the Assyrians in his day.  At that time (Jonah's time) Assyria was a power house in the world and dominated that part or the world.  The Assyrians were well-known to be the fiercest, most brutal people in the world.  And Jonah goes to preach to them.  Good luck!But Christ says, "they repented at the preaching of Jonah" and came back to God.  Repent.It is an interesting word.  From it we get "Repentance!"  A high sounding word.  But all that the word "repent" means is "turn around."  "You are going in the wrong direction.  Turn around."It is what Christ wants the Pharisees and scribes to understand.  They are going in the wrong direction.  They are moving away from God.  He desperately wants them to see this.  He wants to get their attention.  He wants them to repent; to turn their lives around and turn back to  God.  He hopes that the miracles of healing that He is doing will get their attention.  But all they want is to see the show.Christ offers us far more than a show.  "Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest." (Matt: 11:28-30).  "I am the way, the truth and the life." (John 14:6). So now we have to ask ourselves, "Am I just here for the show, or am I looking for something more." He is certainly offering it to us.

A Chance To Participate

I've been reading through the book of Matthew.  Today I read the well known passage about Christ feeding the 5000 (Matthew 14: 15-21).  It's a remarkable story.  Christ feeds more than 5000 people all totaled with five loaves of bread and two small fish..  It's an amazing miracle of provision, of His ability to provide.  But that is not the way the story initiates.

Seeing the very large crowds of people, the disciples, no doubt tired from a long day, come to Christ and ask him to send the people away so that they can go into the adjacent villages and get food for themselves to eat.  The passage says, "This is a remote place."  But Christ says to the disciples a very surprising thing: "You give them something to eat."  They must have looked at Him in complete disbelief.  They must have been thinking, "He's been in the sun too long!  We need to get Him into the shade.  He's lost it!"  

But Christ knew what He was saying.  He already knew what He was going to do and how He was going to do it.  He was simply offering them, the disciples, a chance to participate in the miracle that He would perform.

A chance to participate.  I wonder how many times that has been offered to me.  I wonder how many times I have encountered seemingly impossible odds and seemingly impossible situations, overwhelming circumstances and numbers of people, and responded, "Nothing I can do here!"

And I missed hearing Him say, "You give them something."

"Give them your time, your understanding, your patience, your empathy, your resources.  You give them something."  He already knows how He will handle the problem.  He is just offering me a chance to participate in something that He will do for people that will be ground-breaking.

I will try to remember this.  The next time that I encounter a situation involving a large number of people, and I think to myself, "I can't even make a dent in this problem," I will listen for the voice that says, "You give them something."  And I will look for my chance to participate.

Knowing How It Works

I recently read an article about Jensen Huang, the founder and CEO of Nvidia, the company that makes the computer chips for AI, artificial intelligence.  Huang and a reporter were in a room filled with balls of various sizes and colors.  A robot, functioning with artificial intelligence, was moving through the room, selecting only the balls that were colored red and putting them into a basket. The reporter watched this awhile and then turned to Huang and said, "This makes me nervous! Doesn't this make you nervous!"  Huang laughed and said, "No! It doesn't make me nervous at all! I know how it works!"

Mark, in his gospel, recounts the story of Jesus calming the storm on the sea of Galilee. (Mark 4: 35-41).  The disciples put out in a boat on the Galilee water.  Jesus goes to sleep in the stern of the boat.  Mark states, "There were also other boats with him." (v.37).  The only reason that Mark can have for making this statement is that he was in one of the other boats.  This is an eye- witness account.  "A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped.  Jesus was in the stern sleeping on a cushion.  The disciples woke him and said to him, 'Teacher, don't you care if we drown!"  He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, "Quiet! Be still!"  Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.

He said to his disciples, "Why are you so afraid?  Do you still have no faith?"

They were terrified and asked each other, "Who is this?  Even the wind and waves obey him!"

In this scene, we see the disciples terrified, scared out of their wits.  By contrast, Jesus is completely calm, even annoyed a bit at having been awakened.  They are beside themselves with terror; he is completely calm.  The fierce and sudden storm doesn't bother him at all.  Why?

Because he knows how it works.  "Be still," he says.  And it's still.  He knows how it works.

Dallas Willard, a former philosophy professor at the USC Dept. of Philosophy, calls Jesus, "the smartest man who ever lived!" (The Divine Conspiracy).  He attributes Christ's miraculous works

to not so much "hocus-pocus" as to the fact that he, Jesus, understands how nature works in ways that we have yet to discover.  It is a radical idea but as you read his book, you get the distinct impression that he is on to something, something that maybe most of us have missed.

The Creator of Nature, knows Nature and knows how it works.  That makes sense.

It might be worthwhile to remember that when life terrifies us, to call on Him to help us.  After all,  He knows how it works.

Doubt

Doubt is an attitude that is common to all of us.  We all doubt.  It is not something that we are born with.  We are not "born skeptics."  Doubt is something that we develop in life.  We develop it because we learn that life often presents us with un-truths, or lies.  Our political leaders are often "fact-checked," shown to be in error in what they are telling us, and yet persist in "un-truths." Doubt then becomes a protective mechanism for us.  We learn that there is a certain degree of wisdom in doubting;  skepticism is healthy to a certain degree.

Sometimes we even doubt when the preponderance of evidence to the contrary, is overwhelming. Look at this passage from Matthew 11.  "After Jesus had finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and preach in the towns of Galilee.  When John heard in prison what Christ was doing, he sent his disciples to ask, "Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?"  (Math 11: 2)  This is a remarkable degree of doubt on John's part.  Afterall, he was Christ's first cousin and was a mere 6 months older than Jesus (Luke 1).  Further, he had himself baptised Jesus! (Mark 1).  And yet he was doubting at this point that Jesus was indeed the Christ, the one of whom he himself had declared, "Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world! " (John 1:29).  But here he had his doubts.  As we all do.

How did Christ respond to this?  By providing overwhelming evidence that testified to who he was. "Go back and report to John what you hear and see:  The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the good news is preached to the poor."  (Math 11: 4-6).  Tangible evidence; solid evidence; unimpeachable evidence.  Then Christ says, "Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me."  He is simply saying, "Overcome your doubts. Don't give up believing in me.  I am who I am.  Keep your eyes on me and I will get you home.  Stop doubting and believe."

Lord, I believe.  Help me overcome my unbelief.  (Mark 9:24)