Category: Jesus

Reflections on Praying, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will Be Done, on Earth As It Is In Heaven”

Intellectual faith vs. doing faith

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Neighbors cleaning a sunlit city street together

When Jesus taught his disciples to pray he taught them to recognize God: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” Immediately after recognizing God for who He is, Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” These things are the foundation of our prayer life with God, according to Jesus.

As I think about this today, the realization strikes me that praying, “Thy kingdom come,” needs to be accompanied by a willingness to reflect God’s kingdom and God’s will in the way we live. If we pray for God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven and don’t think that prayer means anything for us in the way that we live, do we really mean it?

These thoughts came to me as I was worshipping God and thinking about the song we were singing, which was an expression of faith in the promises of God. If we

pray or sing these words to God without any intention to reflect the God we are worshiping and praying to in our daily lives, is our worship and prayer anything other than a clanging gong or a banging cymbal that Paul speaks of in 1 Corinthians 13?

When Jesus began his public ministry, the message he preached was the coming of the kingdom, which he said is near at hand. (Mk. 1:14-15l Matt. 4:17, 23) Jesus said that the reason he was sent was to preach the coming of the kingdom of God. (Luke 4:3)

When Jesus spoke in his hometown synagogue, he said it a little bit differently: he said that he came to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom to prisoners, to give sight to the blind, and to set the oppressed free. (Luke 4:18-19)

Throughout his public ministry Jesus demonstrated what he came to do. He touched lepers, though doing so would make him unclean under Jewish law, and he healed them. He gave sight to the blind. He healed the sick and the lame. He set people free from demonic influences. He forgave sins. He lived out a tangible demonstration of what it means for the kingdom of God to come, and he extended God’s favor to Samaritans, a Canaanite woman, and a Roman centurion.

He also challenged the religious people of his day. He repeatedly healed people on the Sabbath. He even went right into the synagogues and healed them in front of the religious leaders, knowing that it would provoke them in their religiosity, because they didn’t understand what it means for God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven.

The religious leaders were angry when Jesus challenged their understanding of the law and therefore of God. In their best moments they were just confused.

When Jesus healed ten lepers and instructed them to go show themselves to the priests, only the Samaritan leper came back and thanked Jesus. The priests asked, when would this kingdom that Jesus was preaching come? Jesus said, God’s kingdom isn’t any particular place, because God’s kingdom is within us. (ἐντός (entos), meaning inside (us) (adverb or noun) — within (us), sometimes translated “among us” or “in our midst”)

They still didn’t know what he meant. All they could see was that he was breaking the rules – the requirements they had established to protect people from breaking the mosaic Law of not working on the Sabbath. They didn’t understand that the Lord of the Sabbath was standing in front of them, telling them they were getting it wrong.

Jesus said the kingdom is in the midst of His followers. He come to announce that God’s kingdom has come, though it is also still to come. He introduced his kingdom, and he called his followers to recognize it, to repent, and to live in its reality.

The question I want to ask today of myself and anyone who might be reading this is this: Are we doing that?

Continue reading “Reflections on Praying, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will Be Done, on Earth As It Is In Heaven”” →

The Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdoms of This World: A Political Primer

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Ornate crown with jewels lying on cracked desert ground

In the episode of the After Class podcast link to above, the theologians who do the podcast continue their discussion of politics and the Bible. Among other things, they talk about how Israel rejected God by wanting a king like all the other nations.

I have read that story many times, but the import of it didn’t hit me until a number of years ago. It must have been 2016-17 when the following words God spoken to the prophet, Samuel, settled into my heart and have continued to hang over me ever since. The people of Israel demanded a king, and Samuel warned them about what they were requesting. Then God said to Samuel:

“Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king.”

1 Samuel 8:7

God gave them a king even though they were rejecting God as their king by their very request. This is a sobering thought, because Paul tells us in Romans 1 that God gives us over to our delusions if we persist in them.

The fact that God gave them the king they requested was not a blessing and it was not what God desired for them. The fact that God used Israeli kingship to establish David and his line, out of which the Messiah would eventually come, is beside the point. God is able to work all things together for the good, but that doesn’t mean that all things are good.

In case there is any doubt in anyone’s mind about these things, God spoke again through the prophet, Hosea, many years later to drive the point home:

“Where is your king, that he may save you? … [I]n my anger I gave you a king, and in my wrath I took him away“

Hosea 13:10-11

I dare say these words haunt the American church presently. We have put our faith in politics, and in doing so I firmly believe that we have rejected God.

I could easily rail on conservative Christians who have championed and defended Donald Trump as if he could do no wrong. But I could just as easily critique Christians who have rallied in opposition to Donald Trump. We have taken positions on the front lines of a cultural war of political ideologies – on both sides – to our own detriment and the detriment of the global and timeless purposes of God.

Not that we might frustrate God in achieving His purposes any more than the people of Israel did in rejecting God to want a king. God works despite us, perhaps, more often than he works through us. Meanwhile, our distraction and exhaustion with politics keeps us from being salt and light in the world that Jesus meant us be.

The United States of America is not Israel, the covenant people of God. The modern nation of Israel is not the covenant people of God either. Israel, the nation-state that exists today, is a secular nation. The Temple is not the center of Israeli religious life. The modern nation state of Israel is not governed by the law of Moses. It is not a continuation of the covenant relationship that was established under the law of Moses.

Modern Christians have even less provenance than Jewish people to support the notion that a modern nation can replace or continue the former covenant relation established by God through Moses. As Paul says, the law was only a shadow. It was only a tutor.

Jesus is the reality, and He is the fulfillment of the covenant relationship God made with Abraham who did not put stakes down into the promised land. Abraham lived in tents as a sojourner, waiting for the city the architect and maker of which is God. He was still waiting for it when He died, as were all the men and women of faith commended to us in Hebrews 11.

Jesus dispels the notion that infiltrating or overtaking and establishing a nation state on earth is a proper purpose for his followers. Jesus introduced a kingdom that is not of the world. He could have, but he did not, model Christian involvement in secular governmental authority.

God does establish secular nations and authorities under powers and principalities that He allows (and uses) to create order in the world. Though God uses them, the powers and the principalities are not all aligned with God. In fact, they are opposed to Him, and they will all crumble and be no more when Jesus takes the throne as the rightful king when God remakes the world into a new heaven and earth.

The only thing that will remain, then, is the kingdom of God. Nowhere does the Bible suggest or Jesus teach that we should usher in God’s kingdom in through secular political means. As a matter of fact, it’s just the opposite.

Continue reading “The Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdoms of This World: A Political Primer” →

The Lessons from Elisha: Foreshadowing Jesus

An examination of the differences between Elijah and Elisha

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Man in traditional robes sitting on a rock, covering face with hands, historic city with ancient buildings and Dome of the Rock in background at sunset

The contrast between the ministries of Elijah and Elisha provides insight that carries into the coming of the Messiah, the ministry of Jesus, and the New Covenant. The contrast between Elijah and Elisha is a contrast between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. It is a contrast between an emphasis on the judgment of God and an emphasis on the grace of God and salvation.

In my ignorance, Elijah previously stood out more to me than Elisha, even though Elisha famously asked for and received a double portion of the spirit Elijah had. The spirit of Elijah passes to Elisha as seen in the miracles each of them performs. Scholars often highlight the fourteen miracles performed by Elisha versus the seven miracles performed by Elijah as an example of the double portion, but the differences between Elijah and Elisha go much deeper than that.

The character of the miracles is different. This is something I might not have noticed but for a focus on the details in the story of Elijah over the last few years. Those details led me to see some lessons from the story of Elijah that do not stand out at first blush.

Elijah was an oppositional prophet. He was the antagonist to Ahab and Jezebel. He challenged the prophets of Baal and smoked them in a fiery display of God’s power over the impotent idol (Baal) that Ahab and Jezebel worshipped.

Elijah had all the prophets of Baal slaughtered, but Jezebel was not impressed. She called for Elijah’s head, and he fled in fear. He sulked in self-absorbed pity. He complained to God that he was the only one who was faithful, and he seemed to come close to finding fault even with God for the anti-climactic outcome.

When God tried to show Elijah that God was not in great displays of power like wind, fire, and earthquake, Elijah seemed incapable or unwilling to acknowledge what God was saying. Twice God asked why Elijah ran away to Mount Sinai. Twice Elijah gave God the exact same answer.

A man in a brown cloak entering a rocky cave surrounded by moss and vegetation

Elijah protested to God that he had been zealous, and he insisted that he, alone, was faithful to God in all of Israel…. But clearly, he was not alone. Multiple times the text tells us that Obadiah was faithful; he saved 100 prophets from Jezebel’s decree of capital punishment; and God found 7000 people left who had not bowed to Baal.

Elijah seemed not just disappointed, but upset (with God?) that judgment had not rained down on Ahab and Jezebel and all of Israel. It wasn’t that judgment didn’t loom over their heads; it was that God controls the timing – not Elijah.

God told Elijah to go back and anoint Hazael king of Aram and Jehu king of Israel and to pass his mantle to Elisha. Elijah passed the mantle to Elisha but he never followed through with the other instructions God gave him.

Elijah continued in ministry even after he passed his mantle to Elisha, but he seems to take a back seat to other prophets, and he did not change his attitude. God told him to meet the messengers of the King of Israel to deliver a message. After they delivered the message to the king, the king sent them back to summon Elijah, but he smoked them by calling down fire. The king sent another envoy of messengers, and Elijah smoked them with fire also – killing 50 people at a time.

Though God told Elijah to confront the king’s messengers with his own message, the text is conspicuously silent about Elijah calling down fire on the envoys who came to summon him. The King sent a third group of messengers to summon Elijah, and this time God told him to go with them.

Now that I have spent some time meditating on the stories of the two prophets, Elijah stands out for his brashness, but Elisha stands out as the prophet who is more true to who God is. He is the one whose ministry is more characteristic of God, and his ministry stands out in the way way it bridges the narrative arc of Scripture between Old Covenant and New Covenant, from a focus on Abraham’s descendants to all the nations, from the Law of Moses to the Law of grace, love and Christ.

Elisha signals the change from the old covenant to the new covenant. Elisha points the the direction that the arc and sweep of Scripture will take us. Elisha is the link in this point in the narrative to God’s ultimate plans and purposes in the world.

Continue reading “The Lessons from Elisha: Foreshadowing Jesus” →

Who Wanted to Throw Jesus Off a Cliff? What Provoked that Reaction, and What It Might Say about Us

Jesus provoked the response that is in all of our hearts

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In Luke four, Jesus announced his public ministry in his hometown synagogue with these words:

“The spirit is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Luke 4:18-19

Good news to the poor, freedom for prisoners, and freedom for the oppressed echoes Isaiah 61. “[T]he year of the Lord’s favor” echoes Leviticus 25, where Moses passed on the jubilee instructions given by the LORD to the LORD’s people.

Jesus was saying that these things foretold by Isaiah and the Jubilee instructions from Moses were fulfilled in him. Most of us are familiar with the way that many of the prophecies in Isaiah were fulfilled in Jesus, but we may not appreciate how Leviticus 25 takes on special significance – and controversy – in the life and ministry of Jesus.

Jesus announced his public ministry in a dramatic way in his hometown synagogue when he asked for the Isaiah scroll, opened it, read the words quoted above, and sat down. The people in the synagogue were initially “amazed at the gracious words” Jesus spoke. (Luke 4:22) By the end of the short exchange that occurred after that, the people wanted to throw Jesus off a cliff. (Luke 4:28-29) What happened?

The words of Jesus that provoked his hometown people to anger were these:

“‘Truly I tell you,’ he continued, ‘No prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.'”

Luke 4:24-27

Why did these two stories provoke the people to anger? Maybe the better question (the one we might not want to ask) is whether we are much different than they were?

The tension that played out in that Galilean synagogue when Jesus announced his ministry presages our modern reality 2000 years later. We still have a difficult time with the instructions, intentions and long-term plans that God announced when He told Abram that all the nations of the earth would be blessed through his descendants.

Today, I want to review some relevant provisions in Isaiah 61 and Leviticus 25 to explore why that reference did not sit well with God’s people. It wasn’t the references so much as the stories of Elijah and Elisha that he connected to them. Those stories – and what they suggest – may still not resonate well.

Continue reading “Who Wanted to Throw Jesus Off a Cliff? What Provoked that Reaction, and What It Might Say about Us” →

The Under-Emphasized Significance of Leviticus 25 in the Ministry of Jesus and Its Importance for Us

The Israelites did not follow the Jubilee instructions

kevingdrendel3 Comments

For at least 7 years, I have been drawn to the passage in Luke 4 where Jesus gives perhaps the earliest description of his public ministry. Jesus introduced his intentions by reading a select passage from the Isaiah scroll, rolled it up, sat down, and announced, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:21) These were the words that he read:

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
    to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

Luke 4:18-19

Immediately after this announcement, Jesus began demonstrating in Galilee what he came to do – teaching with authority (Luke 4:31-32); setting people free from demonic spirits (Luke 4:33-35); and healing the sick (Luke 4:36-40). At the end of this flurry of divine action, Jesus said, “I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent.” (Luke 4:43) In this statement, he clarified that the good news he came to proclaim is the coming of the “kingdom of God.”

This short passage from Isaiah 61 that recalls the Year of the Lord’s Favor (Jubilee) focuses our attention back on Leviticus 25, which is the framework for the communal life God desired His people to embrace when they settled into the land of God’s promise.

The context of these words in Isaiah 61 remind of us the significance of these words that defined the ministry of Jesus and the Jubilee principles that characterized his life and message. When Jesus quoted from Isaiah 61 in the synagogue, he was incorporating God’s great plan and purpose into the announcement of his ministry.

Isaiah 61 cannot be understood apart from Isaiah 59, which recalls the iniquities of the people that separated them from God and the blood that was on their hands. (Is. 59:1-2) They abandoned the way of peace and justice. (Is 59:8-9) They walked in darkness. (Is. 59:10) No one was available to intervene. (Is. 59:15-16), so God said He would step in (Is. 59:17) with a Redeemer for those who would repent. (Is. 59:20)

Isaiah 60 announces God’s plan of redemption: “arise, shine, for your light has come.” It presages that “nations will come to your light.” (Is 60:1:3) Isaiah 60:4-16 announces God’s intention that all the nations will come to Israel “bringing your [Israel’s] children from afar” (v.9), and “foreigners will rebuild your walls” (v.10) , and “you will drink the milk of nations and be nursed….” (v.16) Isaiah 60:17-22 promises peace, no more violence, everlasting light, and righteousness.

In that context, Jesus read the opening verses of Isaiah 61 – announcing that the time had come for proclaiming good news to the poor, binding up the brokenhearted, proclaiming freedom to captives and release from darkness for prisoners, and proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor.

Significantly, the Jesus left out the concluding words: “and the day of vengeance of our God….”

In doing that, Jesus signaled that he did not come for judgment. “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3:17) Jesus came to proclaim the good news of the coming of the kingdom of God predicted in Isaiah 61 – healing, freedom, release, and blessing – because God’s people had failed to live into and live up to the plan God had for them.

The words Jesus read culminate with a proclamation of the “year of the Lord’s favor” from Leviticus 25. This is where it gets interesting to me. I have not focused on this part of what Jesus said before, so let’s dive in.

Continue reading “The Under-Emphasized Significance of Leviticus 25 in the Ministry of Jesus and Its Importance for Us” →