Worthless influencers make me worthless

Even though church-age believers are not required to live by the Levitical Law, reading the Old Testament is a good habit for us to maintain.  Paul said that the Old Testament is full of examples for us church-age believers to follow (1 Corinthians 10:11).  One powerful lesson we can learn comes from the author of 2 Kings, as he describes why God punished His chosen people when he allowed the Assyrian Empire to subjugate and exile the Israelites:

2 Kings 17:21-23
When the Lord tore Israel from the house of David, Israel made Jeroboam son of Nebat king.  Then Jeroboam led Israel away from following the Lord and caused them to commit grave sin.  The Israelites persisted in all the sins that Jeroboam committed and did not turn away from them.  Finally, the Lord removed Israel from His presence just as He had declared through all His servants the prophets.  So Israel has been exiled to Assyria from their homeland to this very day.

The land God had promised to Israel could only be kept by following God’s commands.  From the founding of the nation, God had warned them not to fall under the influence of the surrounding nations and to not abandon their relationship with and worship of God.  If they took that path, God warned that they would be removed from the land and placed into exile.  It would be easy for us modern-day believers to wag our fingers and shake our heads at Israel’s situation.  They were warned, right?  How could they fall like that, if they knew how great the consequences would be?

A little earlier in this same chapter, the author of 2 Kings gave a more detailed synopsis of how it all went wrong throughout the 700 years since the nation of Israel made their covenant with God:

2 Kings 17:7-15
This disaster happened because the people of Israel sinned against the Lord their God who had brought them out of the land of Egypt from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt and because they worshiped other gods.  They lived according to the customs of the nations that the Lord had dispossessed before the Israelites and according to what the kings of Israel did. 

The Israelites secretly did things against the Lord their God that were not right.  They built high places in all their towns from watchtower to fortified city.  They set up for themselves sacred pillars and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every green tree.  They burned incense there on all the high places just like the nations that the Lord had driven out before them had done. 

They did evil things, angering the Lord.  They served idols, although the Lord had told them, “You must not do this.”  Still, the Lord warned Israel and Judah through every prophet and every seer, saying, “Turn from your evil ways and keep My commands and statutes according to the whole law I commanded your ancestors and sent to you through My servants the prophets.”

But they would not listen.  Instead they became obstinate like their ancestors who did not believe the Lord their God.  They rejected His statutes and His covenant He had made with their ancestors and the warnings He had given them.  They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves, following the surrounding nations the Lord had commanded them not to imitate.

Israel’s heart was divided.  Throughout the centuries, they picked up their cues from the culture around them, rather than solely trusting the guidance God had given them.  Eventually, they looked just like those God had warned them to not be like.  Everywhere they turned in society, there was another “god” for them to follow or worship.  The Old Testament is chock full of prophets telling the people to return to God, but despite numerous warnings, God eventually followed through on His promise to remove them from the Promised Land.

This is the phrase that struck me as I read this passage: they followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves.  There’s something about that description that just stings.  Israel’s situation was completely self-inflicted.  They made the choice to follow worthless idols, to imitate the culture around them, and to live a lifestyle that was contrary to what God had called them to. 

They became what they worshiped.  They became what they imitated.  They became what they followed.

This example makes me stop and ask a few penetrating questions:

Who or what am I following?
How quickly does my hand reach for my phone in the morning?
What am I compulsively checking for in my email, text, or social media accounts?
How much of my time do I allow for social media each day?
Which news organizations, streaming channels, or podcasts influence my daily narrative and activities?
What apps/games do I immediately open if I have time to kill or I need to wait for something?

Are the answers to the above questions leading me toward better or leading me toward worse?
In comparison to God’s direction for living our life to the fullest…which answers to the above questions would He consider worthless?

These are hard questions.  These are difficult stare-at-yourself-in-the-mirror questions.  While God did not abandon the Israelites, He was willing to remove blessings in order to get their attention.  From their example, we see that God takes our value very, very seriously.  He does not want us to become worthless, and so it matters greatly who and what we allow to have influence in our lives.

Keep Pressing,
Ken

Yeah, it's that easy

We like things to be easy, but we’re very leery of an easy solution to what we see as a difficult problem.  We don’t go to a doctor unless we can’t get well taking care of ourselves at home.  We hire professionals to do repair work because we don’t have the skill to fix it ourselves.  We expect the experts to solve our hard issues with complex solutions…but when they come back with simplistic answers, we become skeptical, even angry.

Naaman was the commander of the army for the king of Aram.  He was an accomplished warrior and leader, but he was plagued by a skin disease.  He had tried everything to cure it, but nothing had worked.  When he heard there was a prophet in Israel who could cure him, Naaman immediately sought him out.  When he finally arrived at the prophet’s house, Elisha wouldn’t see him.  Instead he sent out his messenger:

2 Kings 5:10-13
Then Elisha sent him a messenger, who said, “Go wash seven times in the Jordan and your skin will be restored and you will be clean.”

But Naaman got angry and left, saying, “I was telling myself: He will surely come out, stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over the place and cure the skin disease.  Aren’t Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?  Couldn’t I wash in them and be clean?”  So he turned and left in a rage.

But his servants approached and said to him, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it?  How much more should you do it when he only tells you, ‘Wash and be clean’?”

Naaman expected a big show from Elisha or to have the prophet give him some difficult task to prove his worthiness for healing, but he was given neither of those.  Instead, he was only told to wash off in the Jordan River.  This was too simplistic for Naaman’s expectations.  After all his struggles and attempts to fix it himself, surely there something more fantastic than dunking in the muddy Jordan river to fix his problem.  However, after his servants’ prompting, Naaman relented.  He went to the Jordan, washed seven times…and he was healed, just as the prophet had said.

The people of Jesus’ day also had the same problem with an unexpectedly easy solution.  As the crowds were starting to grow and follow Him around, Jesus challenged their motives in seeking Him out.  While doing so, He also confronted their preconceived ideas on how to obtain eternal life:

John 6:26-28
Jesus answered, “Truly I tell you, you are looking for Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate the loaves and were filled.  Don’t work for the food that perishes but for the food that lasts for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal of approval on Him.”

“What can we do to perform the works of God?” they asked.

Notice their question – they were looking for works, plural, expecting that Jesus was about to give them a long list of behaviors with do’s and don’ts, if they were to earn eternal life.  The Jews were used to performing ceremonies and rituals, as well as following the Mosaic Law and the teachings of the Pharisees…so they were ready to hear commands for them to perform multiple difficult works, each to be checked off and help them earn eternal life from God.

Instead, Jesus answers them in the singular:

John 6:29
Jesus replied, “This is the work of God – that you believe in the one He has sent.”

I can totally see Jesus putting “air quotes” around the word “work”.  His answer is pretty much tongue-in-cheek, because we cannot earn eternal life by working – instead, we simply believe in Jesus for eternal life, and we will have it.  Notice too, what Jesus said about eternal life – “the Son of Man will give [it to] you.” 

But if eternal life truly is a gift from Jesus…then what did Jesus mean by telling them to “work” for it?

Jesus was warning them not to put in the effort to seek Him out for merely their next physical meal, but they should instead seek Him out for what He freely offers – eternal life to all who believe in Him.  Of course, they had trouble with how “easy” of an answer Jesus gave them, so He continued to teach them, still using the bread analogy:

John 6:35, 40
“I am the bread of life,” Jesus told them.  “No one who comes to Me will ever be hungry, and no one who believes in Me will ever be thirsty again…For this is the will of My Father: that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

Although the crowd struggled with His teaching, Jesus did not add any other pre-conditions (like confession, repentance, or vows of good behavior) or post-conditions (like continuance in good works, baptism, or church attendance) to His offer of eternal life.

Over and over, when Jesus is witnessing to others, the only condition for them to receive eternal life is to simply believe in Him.  This might sound strange to you, too.  You may have heard something different in church.  You may think that it’s too good to be true.  But don’t just take my word for it – read through the book of John, the only book in the New Testament written explicitly to unbelievers, and you’ll see a no-strings-attached offer repeated: Jesus gives eternal life to those who believe in Him.

Yeah, it’s that easy.

Have you accepted His free gift?  Do you believe in Jesus for eternal life, no strings attached?

Keep Pressing,
Ken

An outcast of outcasts

We saw last time that Jesus purposely spent a lot of time with those who found themselves on the fringes of society.  These people were outcasts due to disease, physical brokenness, demonic influences, scandalous choices, or society’s prejudices and attitudes.  And yet, Jesus still connected with them, regardless of whether their situation arose due to their own choices or if their condition was due to circumstances outside of their control. 

There is one interaction I want to focus on, but in order to get a clear picture of why this individual would be considered an “outcast of outcasts”…we need a little history lesson:

The Assyrians brought about the end of the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 BC.  They deported around 30,000 people from the Northern Kingdom/Samaria and replaced them with captives from abroad (2 Kings 17:24-34).  Intermarriage occurred between the northerners who remained and the imported refugees, and a pluralistic culture of sorts developed.  Some of those refugees embraced a number of articles within Judaism, although they still mixed in their old religions, and in time came to regard themselves as Jews (Ezra 4:1-2).  However, their bid for membership in the Jewish community was rejected by post-exilic Jews (Ezra 4:3-5).  This event set into motion a religious animosity between the Jews and Samaritans that persisted throughout the remainder of the biblical period (Luke 9:51-56, John 4:9 and 8:48).

Samaritans claimed lineage through Joseph’s children.  When the tribes of Israel came to the Promised Land, half were instructed to stand on Mt. Gerizim and the other half were to stand on Mt. Ebal.  The half on Mt. Gerizim received the pronouncement of blessing from God – representing what would happen to the entire nation if they chose to follow God (Deuteronomy 28:1-14) and the other half, standing on Mt. Ebal, received the pronouncement of cursing from God – representing what would happen to the entire nation if they chose to not follow God (Deuteronomy 28:15-68).  Joseph’s tribes were among the those who stood on Mt. Gerizim and heard the blessing (Deuteronomy 27:12-13); however, the Jews would have viewed the Samaritans as being among the cursed.  Roughly 400 years prior to Jesus’ time, the Samaritans had built an alter to God on Mt. Gerizim, but it was later destroyed by the Jews in 128 BC.

A significant piece to understanding the Jewish-Samaritan tension is that the Samaritans only accepted the Moses-authored, books as their bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy).  The Samaritans acknowledged no prophet after Moses other than the one spoken of in Deuteronomy 18:18, and that is who they regarded as the future Messiah.  The Samaritans rejected all other Jewish writings of the Old Testament, containing history, wisdom literature, and the words of the Jewish prophets.  As such, while the Jews and Samaritans agreed in the expectation of the Messiah and His kingdom, by Jesus’ day, they were looking for different types.  The Jews expected a conquering king, who would clean up the world’s mess and establish Jerusalem as the center of His rule.  The Samaritans were looking forward to a teacher/restorer, who would set things right.

Because of the region’s mixed race history, pure-blooded Jews wanted little to do with Samaritans.  It was insulting to them that half-breeds would make equal-footing claim to their Jewish ancestors.  However, from a political perspective, Samaria was part of the Roman province of Judea in Jesus’ day.  Nevertheless, the ancient cultural barriers created a sharp divide between the residents of Samaria and the Jews who lived in Galilee (which was north of Samaria) and the Jews who lived in Judea (which was south of Samaria).

With this background, we are now ready to step into an amazingly unexpected encounter that Jesus had with an outcast from those who were regarded as outcasts:

John 4:1-7
When Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard He was making and baptizing more disciples than John (though Jesus Himself was not baptizing, but His disciples were), He left Judea and went again to Galilee.  He had to travel through Samaria; so He came to a town of Samaria called Sychar near the property that Jacob had given his son Joseph.  Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, worn out from His journey, sat down at the well.  It was about noon.

A woman of Samaria came to draw water.

Societal ranking of the day looked like this:
Jewish man
Jewish woman
Samaritan man
Samaritan woman

Collecting water was a woman’s task, and they would typically go in groups to draw water during the cooler parts of the day – either early or late.  It is very telling that this woman of Samaria came alone, when the day’s heat was at its peak.  Later on, we’ll find out other aspects of her life that would have made her an outcast, even among her own people.

Despite all the historical animosity and racial tension between the Jews and the Samaritans, Jesus saw her as someone worth His time, His effort, and His offer of Eternal Life.

Whom do we see as a modern-day Samaritan?  Whom do you shun because you see them as an outcast?

If we want to be Jesus’ disciples, we’re going to need look at the outcasts like Jesus did…and then meet them where they are.

Keep Pressing,
Ken