Jesus Protects Mary's Love for Him

This is a wonderful piece of history where Jesus' protection for people is seen very clearly. Six days before Jesus is going to die He has a meal with Mary, Martha and Lazarus whom Jesus has recently raised from the dead. As he is reclining at the table Mary takes a pint of very expensive perfume and pours it over Jesus' feet and gets down on her hands and knees and wipes his feet with her hair! Wow, the devotion and love that Mary had for Jesus was extravagant! This perfume was worth a years wages and was probably her entire retirement! Mary doesn't consider her loss of the money but only Jesus. As she is in the middle of pouring out her love for Jesus in an unashamed and very vulnerable way, Judas criticizes her actions. He can't see the worth of Jesus only the amount of money that the perfume was worth. "Why wasn't this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year's wages." Sounds pretty noble until the text continues, "He did not say this because he cared about the poot but because he was thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it."

To get the full picture here we need to wrestle with who Judas is a bit and who he is stealing from. First consider someone who steals from Bill Gates verses someone who steals from Mother Teresa. It is true that stealing is evil in either case. And sin is sin. However, there is something more wicked about the person who steals from Mother Teresa who is pouring out her life to care for others than the person who steals from Bill Gates. It is still evil, but the first person is so much more wicked. Consider who Jesus was. He was/is the only innocent person ever to walk the earth. He was the only hope for those with skin diseases (leprosy), the only hope for those who were demonized, the only hope for the poor to hear the truth... and Judas was stealing from Him! Judas was seeing the miracles first hand. Judas was hearing the truth from Jesus own mouth. Judas was seeing the compassion of Jesus on the sick, hurting and weak... and He was stealing from Jesus all the time. Consider also that many of those who were supporting Jesus were older widows and women who gave money out of their limited means. Judas was stealing that money. The offense of the sin is so great because of the beauty of God that is revealed by Jesus in His earthly ministry. The wonder and hope of God was clearly shown by Jesus. And Judas was attacking that!

Jesus intervenses and puts a stop to Judas - "Leave her alone." Jesus possibly said this quite firmly. He is probably not shouting, but He isn't being passive either. "Leave her alone." In a moment Jesus surrounds Mary extravagant devotion with His arms of protection to reject the criticism of the accuser. That accusing, fault-finding voice of Satan is shut up! The vulnerable display of love from Mary is protected. Her heart will be covered, not trampled upon.

That is Jesus. And if you can believe John 14:9 ("If you have seen Me [Jesus], you have seen the Father") - then that is God as well!

Jesus Enjoys People and Praises Them!

Often I have been completely out of touch with the emotions of Jesus or of God. Usually I related to Jesus in stricly mental principles. However, the more I learn about Jesus and how He related to people, I find He has a wide range of emotions that are very delightful!

Getting in touch with the fact that Jesus praised some people was a real encouragement to me. Often I could only see Jesus or God as finding faults with my short comings. However, when you take time to read the Gospels looking for how Jesus related to people, rather than just the words He spoke, you find some very encouraging human interactions.

In Matthew 8:5 and Luke 7:1 you have the moment in history when Jesus entered the city of Capernaium. A Roman Centurion (captian of roughly a 100 men) came asking Jesus to heal his servant who was at home in terrible suffering. Jesus responds that He will go and heal the servant. The Centurion (a Gentile not a Jew) tells Jesus not to bother walking to his home because he knows that Jesus need only speak the word and the servant will be healed.

The fascinating part is that Jesus is "astonished!" Luke 7:9 says that Jesus was "amazed!" Have you ever thought about Jesus being "amazed?" Well, He can be!

Jesus turns to the people who were folling and exclaims "I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith." Jesus basically heaps praise on the non-Jewish Centurion! That is quite a compliment when you are a foreigner and Jesus tells everyone you have faith greater than any Jewish person - they have the history of the Law and the Prophets! That is pretty amazing. Jesus doesn't hold back with His praise.

Another fascinating passage is Luke 15:21 where the Canaanite woman came asking Jesus to drive a demon out of her daughter. There is a strange encounter betweent he woman and Jesus as He describes his mission 1st to the Jews and then to the Gentiles. Rather than get offended at this I tend to think that Jesus was drawing this woman's faith out. In the end the woman persists with asking Jesus for help and He exclaims, "Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted." And her daughter was healed that very hour.

On of the things to notice here is how Jesus pours on the praise! Notice the exclamation mark. He doesn't just say, "Nice job." Jesus probably was speaking louder and with excitement because nothing excites Him more than faith: "Woman, you have great faith!" The disciples must have been amazed! They frequently were. The woman must have been thrilled! Jesus was.

Another wonderful event is where Jesus praises Peter for hearing God's voice. Jesus is asking His disciples who people think Jesus is. Then Jesus asks, "Who do you think I am?" Peter replies, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus basically says, "Peter you are blessed! You have heard from my Father about my real identity" (Paraphrase - mine). Jesus praises Peter for hearing from God! Jesus is praising Peter in front of the rest of the disciples. He doesn't hold back!

Jesus was not a boring emotionless person. He was very animated, very emotional. He was not passive. Jesus' emotions were stronger than ours! But His emotions were clean and entirely healthy!

The Things I Love About Jesus: His Anger Is So Clean & So Appropriate

One of the things I love about Jesus is that He clearly shows us how anger is supposed to exist in a healthy person. Much of our culture today strongly manipulates people to become passive... as if all anger is bad. Jesus does the opposite. He is deeply angered by evil and passive about things like people's appearances or station in life. He doesn't give more respect to a person who is influential or wealthy than a poor person.

In Mark 3 Jesus enters a Synagogue presumably to teach. There was a man there who had a deformed hand that was shriveled or withered. The Pharisees and other leaders of Israel were present because they wanted to accuse Jesus and destroy Him. They are waiting to see if He will heal someone on the Sabbath which they feel is breaking the Law of Moses. Jesus knows all this.
Jesus calls the man with the deformed hand to step up and stand before everyone. The man does. Jesus then presents a question to the entire crowd and all the leaders that are conspiring against Him, "Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life and or to kill?" The biblical text says that all the leaders kept silent!

Wow, don't you think even a child could answer that question? Surely God did not invent the Sabbath Law, that provides rest for people 1 day a week, to forbid that someone would get healed on that day? Any child could see that it would honor or glorify God to have a miracle happen on the Sabbath. But they kept silent.

The text says Jesus "looked around at them with anger, being grieved by the hardness of their hearts." He then turns to the man saying, "Stretch out your hand." And the man is instantly healed!

What I love about Jesus is that He is angry about the right things! He is angry that their hearts are so hard and un-yeilding towards caring about others. They are so committed to their religious system that is bringing shame to God's name. As if God was more concerned with a rigid and legalistic application of the Law than healing one of His humans! Their attitudes grieve Jesus! He is not passive about their attitudes. Jesus looks them all in the face clearly showing the anger on His face!

Much of our culture would pressure us to conceal our anger in this situation. We are told to "be tolerant of all people." Our highest standard is being "nice" not honest. We are manipulated by our culture to not fight for what is right but to go limp and passive. Jesus doesn't do that. He stands up to the entire crowd.

Most of the time our anger goes wrong because what we do with it is sinful. It is right to feel anger when someone is abused, manipulated, cheated or hurt. But how we act or react with this anger is the issue. Jesus doesn't swear, He doesn't rant or rave, He doesn't hit people or physically injure the leaders. He is angry and He doesn't hide it. But He maintains the Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22) called Self Control. Then He heals the man!

Jesus' anger reveals God's anger. Jesus' emotions reveal God's emotions. Remember the verse in John 14:9 "If you have seen Me [Jesus], you have seen the Father!

Immitation alone is not the main way we will change our emotions to be like His emotions. This is good, but the real power of change and transformation lies in the Holy Spirit. The Cross of Christ and the subsequent indwelling of the Holy Spirit are ways God deeply changes us. Our efforts to immitate Jesus are definitely required by scripture but we need to rely or lean on the Holy Spirit to bring the changes to pass. He is the One (based on what Jesus had done for us) that transforms our emotions and makes us like Him!

Our anger can be clean AND serve the good purposes of God! Think of some of the followers of Jesus who actually got angry enough about injustice, abuse or poverty and actually did something about it?

Jesus' Words Can Only Be Understood in the Context of WHO He Is

Often it seems that we listen to and wrestle with Jesus' words on their own apart from WHO Jesus is. We don't consider how He related to people AS we are trying to understand WHAT He said. Jesus' words can take very different meanings depending on who is uttering them. The issue concerns the character of the person uttering these words. What we need to do is consider the character of Jesus and then use that to interpret or apply His words. (Both interpretation and application are subject to His character.)

Therefore I propose to examine Jesus' character and emotions to learn how to interpret and apply what Jesus says. The way I suggest doing this is to dig through the Gospels and look at how Jesus relates to different people. Once we get a more firm picture of Jesus' compassion, His mercy, His clean anger, His intensity, His patience and other character attributes ... then we are in a more healthy position to evaluate what He says. The difficulty is building a comprehensive picture of Jesus' character and emotions. It is easy to build a lop-sided view of Jesus as if He were only or excessively compassionate. Or draw a picture of Jesus that was only angry and intense. The liberal left in the Church want to portray Jesus as excessively compassionate without balancing it with Jesus' anger at evil or His justice. The extreme right in the Church want to portray Jesus as excessively angry or intense without remembering His tenderness or compassion or patience. Both of these extremes are heresy. That is a pretty strong word but it is true. C.S. Lewis often comments that Satan loves to get us to one of the 2 poles of extremes. We can be easily defeated in these positions. We need a healthy Biblical picture of Jesus that holds in tension His compassion and anger, His mercy and judgement and His other attributes. Then we have a clear less-distorted picture of Jesus... who is the very image of the invisible God! ("If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father!" - John 14:9)

The Things I Love About Jesus: Jesus Accepts the Sinful Woman but the Pharisee Rejects Her

There are lots of them. My heart throws off the heaviness of the world by gazing upon Jesus. He is absolutely stunning!

Jesus is invited to have a meal with a Pharisee. During the meal a 'sinful' woman hears that Jesus is eating with this Pharisee and finds Him. (Luke Chapter 7: The text does not specifically mention her sin but is may very well be she was a prostitute.) The woman enters the house and stands behind Jesus weeping! Who knows what everyone was thinking. Did Jesus and this woman know each other? Why is she weeping behind Him? They are watching this woman that they know is an immoral woman weep and cry, at Jesus feet. Then she starts to wash His feet with her tears! She wipes them with her hair. Wow - that is pretty intimate, or strange, or something...

The Pharisee reasons in his heart that Jesus definitely isn't a prophet because if He were, He wouldn't even let her touch Him! But here is what I love about Jesus: He is calm, steady and makes no move to reject or criticise this woman. In fact, he makes no move to distance Himself from her. He feels no need to clarify his relationship to her at all. Everyone can watch and think what they want. Jesus isn't worried about their opinions. He is just being all that He needs to be for this woman to be completely cleansed and healed. She is being given a new lease on life!

Jesus accepts broken sinful human nature that falls at His feet! He is God! (John 14:9 "If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father") So Jesus shows you exactly what God is like.

The question that this passage answers is, "How do God and Satan relate to imperfect, sinful, weak human beings?" The other question is not even worth thinking about, "How do God and Satan relate to perfect human beings... beings who always do what is right and good." This 2nd question is worthless because there is not a single human that always does what is right and good. We are all evil, somewhere on the spectrum between Mother Teresa and Hitler. If Mother Teresa did things that were bad so that she needed to ask God for mercy (forgiveness) then certainly everyone else on the planet needs God's mercy as well. Therefore we are all imperfect, sinful, weak human beings.

The wonderful thing to discover is how God relates to us. He longs to help any of us, from the most wicked to the least, to be honest about our evil and change. He wants us to ask for His help and mercy to make this possible. But He also wants us to put in our effort as well. You can see this as Jesus accepts the sinful woman, rejects all the accusing thoughts of the onlookers, and pronounces the woman forgiven. Then He compliments her on her great love!

Isn't it great to see that Jesus compliments us? If you have had bad parents you may feel like God is always accusing you when you are not perfect. Well, none of us are going to be perfect. But some are actively trying to repent and respond to God. To do things His way. These people Jesus relates to as His sheep. May other people are not making the least effort to grow in righteousness at all.

The other thing to discover in this passage is that the Pharisee basically represents how Satan relates to imperfect, sinful, weak human beings. He accuses the woman in his heart. He is not focused on helping the woman at all. The Pharisee's inner thoughts go something like this, "I am righteous, I wouldn't even let's this immoral woman touch me!" The Pharisee doesn't care about this poor woman. Yes, she has sinned. But haven't we all? How can we say our sin isn't serious but her's is? Isn't the condescending and accusing thoughts themselves sinful?

Basically, in this passage you get a clear picture of how both God and Satan relate to weak sinful people. Both know that we have sinned. Satan seeks to accuse us, drive us to depression and despair and finally kill us. Jesus, however, helps us to repent and be freed from guilt and shame. He seeks to help us develop healthy patterns relating to ourselves and others. Jesus seeks to fill us with life. Healthy life causes the person to grow and everyone can see the good benefit. The life that the world seeks to bring us robs and we end up with a broken, cynical, burned out heart.

If your "image" of God (in your heart not just your mind) becomes identical to Jesus, you internalize and experience the Good Life more fully.

The ways that Jesus showed He was God:

Have you ever wondered how and where Jesus showed that He was God in the Bible? Interestingly he demonstrates it with particular actions more than He declares it with literal words. He seems to preserve 'free will' choice and allows those who will believe to believe and allows plenty of room for those who will not believe. No one is ever to be forced or coercered to believe in Jesus. Free will is crucial to the human heart being fully bonded to God. Said another way, union with God can only occur where both parties are freely consenting. And God, for His part, is fully desiring us to be 'with' Him.
Below are several events from the life of Jesus where He reveals His divinity. ( A Muslim person emailed me asking for evidence that Jesus claimed to be God. That is when I composed this list.)
1. Jesus Accepts Worship
--- The disciples worship Jesus after He calms the storm on the sea: Matthew 14:33
In the chronology of Jesus' life several events have occurred. Jesus has sent the 12 out to preach and demonstrate the power of the Kingdom of God. They returned and tell Jesus what they taught, the demons they cast out and all those they have seen healed from sicknesses. They are tired so Jesus takes them to a deserted place for some rest. (Mark 6:30-32) The crowds, however, find out where Jesus is and follow Him. Jesus teaches the crowds. After some time Jesus is concerned that the people may faint on the way home. Moved by compassion Jesus multiplies 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish miraculously to feed 5,000 men and who knows how many women and children. After this He instructs the disciples to get in the boat and cross the sea to Bethsaida while He sent the multitude away. The wind is contrary to the disciples so they end up struggling at the oars of the boat to get to the other side. In the early hours of the morning Jesus sets out over the sea walking on the actual water. When the disciples see Him they are terrified. Through a series of events Peter actually steps out of the boat and walks on the water towards Jesus a bit. When Peter and Jesus both step foot the text says that the disciples "who were in the boat come and worshiped Him, saying, "Truly You are the Son of God." (Matthew 14:33) Jesus accepts this worship and does not prevent them from doing so.
This is contrasted with Revelation 19:10 where John falls at the angel's feet to worship him and the angel prevents John from doing this. An old testament Prophet would have said the same thing, "I am only a servant like you John, don't worship me." Jesus, being God, rather than an angel or a prophet does not prevent people worshipping Him.
--- Jesus accepts worship from the Canaanite woman who's daughter had a demon Matthew 15:25
A gentile woman approaches Jesus asking Him to heal her demonized daughter. The text says, "Then she came and worshipped Him, saying, 'Lord, help me!' " The woman worships Jesus and He makes no issue about it whatsoever.
2. Jesus forgives sins. Only God can forgive sins. Mark 2:5
--- Jesus heals a man who is paralysed. The man's friend actually tear a whole in the roof of the building where Jesus is teaching. They let the man down through the roof. When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven you."
The Pharisees understand what is happening. The reason in their hearts, "Why does this Man speak blasphemies like this? Who can forgive sins but God alone?"
There are other examples of Jesus forgiving sins - but one should suffice.
3. Jesus weeps over Jerusalem and discreetly confesses that He is the One who has been sending all the prophets and wise men into the world Matthew 23:37
--- C.S. Lewis notes that Jesus, as He is approaching Jerusalem before they kill Him, breaks down and weeps over the city saying, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!"
Now on a 1st reading you might miss a lot in this passage. In an almost casual way Jesus claims to be the Eternal Power that has send all the prophets and messengers to Jerusalem. It is fascinating! Without introduction or further clarification Jesus just states that He is the Eternal One who has been trying to protect and nurture the people of Israel.
4. Jesus declares that He existed before Abraham (and any other humans) were born. John 8:58
--- Only God has always existed. Scripture declares that humans only exists from their conception on into the future. Humans do not exist before they are created at conception. However, Jesus declares that He did exist before He was born as a human.
Jesus is talking with the Jewish leaders declaring that they will remain in their sin unless they believe in Him. The Jewish leaders attack Him asking where is your father that you so often talk about. Essentially they are accusing Him of being conceived outside of marriage. They may have heard the rumors that Mary was pregnant before she and Joseph were married. Jesus and the Jewish leaders start talking about Abraham. At the end of the conversation, when the argument has come to a climax, Jesus declares, "Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM."
Those 2 words, "I AM" are capitalized in the Scripture. These 2 words are the Name of God - the name that God gave Himself to Moses. Then Moses could then tell the Israelites who had sent him (Moses) to them. (Exodus 4 mentions God 1st using the name "I AM.") Jesus uses these most sacred words to essentially declare that He (Jesus) is the uncreated, eternal God!
The interesting thing about the events we have looked at (above) is that Jesus doesn't often declare in black and white words that He is God. However, the things that He does declares it loud and clear for any that are willing to believe in Him and obey Him.
Outside of these events there are, of course, the times Jesus SAYS things that reveal His equality or Oneness with God. For example:
1. "I and My Father are one." - John 10:30
2. Jesus claims to give life to people even as God Himself gives life - John 5:21
--- "For as the Father raises the dead and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life to whom He will." - John 5:21
3. Jesus equates Himself with Life Itself! Which is to equate Himself with God!
--- "Jesus said to her, 'I am the resurrection and the life."
There are others verses of course. But the point of this paper is to point out the Events in Jesus life where He REVEALS His divine nature in fascinating and shocking ways!

Audio: God Is Just Like Jesus

If you would like an audio MP3 of the Women-2-Women talk: God Is Just Like Jesus please goto this link http://www.onlinethoughts.com/character_of_God/index.htm Right click the link that says "God Is Just Like Jesus" for Nov 7th 2007 and choose "Save Target As..." This will save the audio file to your computer for listening.

If you do not have an MP3 player and need a CD of the talk, this may be possible. If this is the case please indicate in your email.

Thanks,
Chris