The Whole Truth

Today's passage:  I Corinthians 13:6
     Often I am so busy learning about myself, that I forget it is not the only reason to read the Bible.  It is also to learn about God.  The things God has been reminding me about Himself has renewed me.  Not that He has ever needed me to have confidence in Him, I have always been confident of His love for me, of His watchfulness, of His provision.  I have always been sure of His infallible Word, of Holy Spirit conviction, of the law of sowing and reaping.  I am certain that He wants me to lean on Him, worship Him, serve Him, in that order.  Yet, even though I stand firm on all these, God still shows me more about Himself, not because He needs to instill that confidence, but because when I am confident in who He is, I am confident in who I am.  And honestly, I've needed that a little the last couple of weeks.  I have had inner wrestlings in my spirit.  I have been bearing  weights when I should be allowing God to flex His muscles.
     This has little to do with the verse today, but this chapter has reminded me so much about my loving God.  It has been refreshing to dwell on Him, and not on me.
    "{Charity}Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;"  Brackets are mine.  This seems like an obvious characteristic of God's love.  It is not ground-breaking revelation that God is not joyful about our sin.  In my prayer time this morning I thanked Him for having this quality because it was what prompted Him to plan our salvation.  As much as the Lord Jesus loathed sin, He was willing to come close to it, to have it put upon Him, so that it could be taken from me.  That is true love.  He took hateful, despicable, detestable sin upon Himself.  The Holy Spirit does not rejoice in sin. He does not hurrah every time He has to point it out in my life.  He isn't cheering when the sin I didn't know was there is revealed to me.  He doesn't wave each transgression in my face.  Sometimes it hits me hard, unveiled like a rabbit in a magician's hat, but He doesn't say "I told you so".  Sometimes He shows me in a quiet way, quivering my calm, off-balance steps, which provokes me to see the cause. 
     God also rejoices in the truth.  He is The Truth.  So does He rejoice in Himself?  I know He rejoices in His Son.  Remember at Christ's baptism and at the Transfiguration when God says, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."?  He rejoices in His Son, who is the Truth.  In Roman 13:17, Paul says, "For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost."  He is also referred to by Christ in John 17 as the Spirit of truth.  Very little here on earth or in man is truthful.  Which would leave only one answer as to what truth would cause rejoicing.  Him.  I should rejoice in Him here, but when everything points away from Him, away from the Truth, it gets very difficult.  How marvelous it will be in Heaven when everyone will rejoice in the Truth.  None of us will have hidden motives or secret agendas.  God says charity is rejoicing in the truth, and the only real truth exists in Him. When I rejoice over every sinner who has been found by Christ, I am rejoicing in the truth. 

Courtesy of http://breadsite.org

     I may give my money to many "charities" but true charity is found when I give that money to organizations that give out the truth.  Since there is only one truth, it would be better to invest my money not in humanitarian causes, but in spiritual ones.  Giving money to fight cancer, to save children in the Sudan, to political candidates is fine.  Will we ever find the solution through those?  Will there ever be a day when cancer is cured, children are no longer hungry, politics solves our problems?  I know the answer to the last two.  And while I don't condemn anyone for donating to these needs, if truth is not being revealed through all of these fine and noble organizations, it isn't true charity.  If God allows the doctors to eradicate cancer from the body, but the soul has never been touched, I don't see the cause for rejoicing.  Trust me, I want to see a cure, I'm just saying we call them "charity", but unless it somehow points to God, it is not.  Should Africa conquer malnourishment in every child on that continent, unless each little life is presented with the gospel of Jesus Christ, we have only prolonged the inevitable.  I'm not heartless.  I don't want to see those children die.  But I know that they are hungry for something more substantial.  They need to be filled with the truth.  If all the political bickering subsided, if our nation were to somehow fix unemployment, education, the deficit, foreign policy etc., etc., etc., we might think it time to celebrate.  But in our material health, our spiritual selves would lean less on Him, and more on us.  We would seek our own truth instead of the real Truth.  So as much as I would like to see members in my church family gainfully employed, as much as I would like to see the housing market rise again, I know that sponsoring a candidate to deliver us from these woes will not deliver us from our eternal ones.  I would never discourage anyone from giving to these needs, but we label them wrong.  They are not true charity unless with the earthly cure they are giving out the spiritual one. 
     God does not rejoice in iniquity, and did something about it.  He rejoices in the Truth that was sent long ago to deliver me from my iniquity.  He rejoices in every wayward sinner, trudging with Bunyan's burden, eyes opened at the Cross for the first time.  He rejoices when that burden falls from our backs and He gives us a scroll of Truth to exchange in that Celestial City.  I love God's way, when I sorrow for people in sin, and I give out the Truth of God.  I love the way God loves when I give my money to disease fighting physicians who also tell about the Great Physician, when with the morsel of bread they give out the Bread of Life, when in the political debate they offer The Way, The Truth and the Life.  Charity is God's love in action.  His actions tell the whole story, a story of the whole truth.

Planning

Today's passage:  John 12:1-11/Matthew 26:6-13/Mark 14:3-9
     I have never been much of a goal-setter. I know people who have a timeline of exactly what they want to happen in five, ten, fifteen years.  This is not a bad thing, I am not being critical.  I should do more of it myself.  I just know I would get very frustrated when I looked at my goals and found that I was nowhere near to reaching them.  It is my goal to become a published writer someday.  I have taken very small steps towards that goal, but if I had set a timeline on it, I am probably about 10 years past it.  It is frustrating, but I would not change the events that have kept me from that goal.  Having three kids in that timeline is a pretty good excuse for not getting it done, and if God gave me three more and pushed my timeline further down the road, I would be perfectly happy with that (don't tell my husband I said that).  Sometimes our goals are not in God's timeline.  Sometimes our goals are not even in God's plan for our lives.  Maybe I've learned to accept that to the point that I just do not set any goals at all, which is not really a good thing either.        
     When reading only the verses in John, it would seem that this event is taking place at Lazarus' house.  Lazarus is sitting at the table (I always picture him at the head of the table), Martha, as always, is serving, and Mary comes from her bedroom with this stark white box.  This is the picture I have always had in my head.  In the other passages of Scripture, Mary's name is not specifically given, so I always forget that she is the one who has made this great sacrifice.  This is not how it happened at all.  They are not at Lazarus' house, they are in Simon the leper's house.  In the other Scriptures, it does not appear that Simon is present (this would make sense since lepers had to live out of the city).
      I heard an excellent sermon once about the fact that they were in Simon the leper's house.  After Lazarus had died, it might stand to reason that if the man of the house was no longer living, his property would have been sold off and the sisters would have to find someplace new to live.  Since Simon is not mentioned in the passage here, just that it was his house, it would seem logical to think that if Simon was still leprous and living outside the city, if he had no family to inhabit his home, he might have rented his home out to another family.  This would make Mary's act of worship even greater because she might have been able to use this perfume as payment for another property.  Verse 2 says "...but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him."  This wording makes it sound as if Lazarus might be a guest too. If he and both of the sisters are visiting in this home, than something here really struck me.  In the past, I have always envisioned Mary, overcome with devotion,  fetching her box and spilling its precious contents upon Christ.  But if they are a guest in this home, she would have brought this box with her.  That means she was not just overcome, she had planned this.  She had given this careful thought, and had decided that she was going to surrender something to Christ. 

Mary Anoints Jesus' Feet--Taken from The Children's Friend (Part 4)
By Mrs. Adelaide Bee Evans
 Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1911, 1928

Have I considered the things I should surrender to my Lord?  Or do I wait until I just can't stand it anymore and I'm bowled over by emotion before I give up the things I should already have given up?  Goal-setting is a great thing.  Have I ever set any goals as to what I want God to do in my life?  Have I ever told the Lord He can have something before He even asks for it?  There would have been nothing wrong if Mary was living in this house and did suddenly decide to do this for Jesus, it may have happened that way.  But God should not always have to ask us for what is already His.  He should not have to break us down to the point that we are finally willing to surrender.  Remember, just a chapter earlier, Mary had lost a brother and then had him resurrected.  She could have waited for another tragic event to take place before she decided to make this sacrifice.  She could have held back, resisted the Spirit's leading, and held on to her valuable package.  She chose to give it up, but it took some heartache to get there.  Maybe God could spare us some heartache if we would evaluate some things in our life beforehand and put them at His feet before He makes the suggestion.
     Notice that she was not only willing to surrender the box, but everything in it.  I may say to God, "Here I am, Lord" but if I don't yield everything in me, I am only giving Him part, not all.  My God deserves all that I have to give.  He deserves so much more than what I do for Him.  Lord Jesus, help me to examine my life today, and see what You want from me before You have to ask for it.  Let me surrender things before You have to take them.  Let me make plans and set goals on how to serve You better before having to be told.

Illuminating

Today's passage:  John 8:1-29
       I must do a little promoting.  In Bible college, required reference materials in several of my Bible classes was A.T. Robertson's A Harmony of the Gospels.  It was published by Harper & Row in 1950.  I have no idea if it is still in print.  Let me also say, I know nothing of the background of this author so I do not want to endorse his theology.  There are notes at the bottoms of the pages, which I usually ignore, but I find this to be a very useful tool when reading the gospels.  There may even be a better version of this type of book out there, this is just the one I have.  If you know of a better version, comment below (if you can, since it seems nearly impossible to do so) and let other readers in on your find. This is one of those books that I really feel I have gotten my money's worth even beyond the classroom.  It lays out, verse by verse all of the gospels side-by-side, so you can contrast/compare each event that is found in each of the gospels.  I've noticed that many study Bibles have an appendix with a side-by-side layout of the events in Christ's ministry, and that is also helpful, but this gives all the gospels verse by verse.  It also shows the passages that stand completely alone and are not mentioned in any of the other gospels.  John has a lot of stand-alone's, this being one of them.
     I have always been taught that when the adulterous woman is brought before Jesus by the religious rulers, He stoops down to write in the dirt floor.  Many have suggested that Jesus wrote the names of the people that had lain with this woman.  But He was in the temple.  I might be wrong, but I think there was flooring in the Temple.  I'm not saying dirt and sand couldn't have collected there, but I'm pretty sure the Jews tried to keep the Temple pretty immaculate.  However, I think the thought on those names being written is probably correct.  Since John is the only gospel that records this event, I might have to imagine a little.  I mean, this is God.  Could He not have supernaturally written their names on the ground?  Maybe that is what caused the rulers to stammer and abruptly leave.  Maybe it wasn't so much their names, because verse 9 does say "being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last" as the manner that the names were written.  Maybe the reason the woman believed so quickly is because of what she had just witnessed.  This certainly would have convinced her that it was God who had just forgiven her of her sins, and commanded her to "sin no more".   
     Of course, if this is the case, it certainly did nothing to dissuade the rulers from continuing to attack Jesus.  If nothing else, it probably fueled the fire a bit.  Jesus launches into the Light of the World discourse.  The Pharisees attack Him at every point.  They are insistent on stopping what they believe is His foolish babble.  In Jewish law, it was customary to have two witnesses to prove identity.  Jesus says the two witnesses are Himself and His Father.  The Pharisees want to know where His Father is.  Jesus tells them that if they knew Him, they would know who His Father is.  This is the part I find interesting.  He says this to them when they are in the treasury of the Temple. Now, I'm convinced, that even locations in the Bible are mentioned for a reason.  Why does John name this particular location when talking about knowing the Father?  The treasury is where the Temple funds were collected.  The Pharisees always made a big show about giving their money to the Lord (remember the story of the widow who gave all she had, and Jesus praises her for giving all rather than the Pharisees who had given much, but could have given much more?) Is He trying to indicate something by making this statement in this particular place?  Is He again rebuking the Pharisees for their so-called love when they don't love God enough to give as much as they should?  Were they short on their tithes?  Were they even robbing the treasury?  I know that is a lot to suggest, and I am not saying it is the case,  but it does make me wonder.  Jesus did say, "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." (Matthew 6:21)  Where is my heart? Where I invest my money probably indicates a lot.  I've invested a lot of it in good things.  I can't think of anything better than putting money into my boys' schooling for a Christian education.  I tithe, I give to missions, I give special offerings.  But how much more could I do?  If I didn't put so much into that satellite TV, how many more missionaries could I be helping?  How many more teens could I sponsor to go to camp?  How much more could I give to keep my son's school running?  I've heard many recently talking about giving up that daily Starbucks splurge to free up money to donate to a ministry.  Believe me, I haven't had even a weekly Starbucks splurge, let alone a daily one.  But maybe I could give up that second cup of coffee at home ( I don't know about you, but even ground coffee from the store has gotten expensive these days) to enable us to give more for the Lord. Maybe I could trust the Lord more for my daily needs instead of depending on credit cards and watching all the interest add up and drain me of extra money I could use for Him.  Maybe the reason Jesus said all this in the treasury was not because He was making accusations as to what they were doing with the money, maybe He was just pointing out their lack of trust in the God who can supply all their needs.  He surely can provide all mine.  Do I trust Him enough to take those steps?  Jesus tells me He is the Light of the World.  He illuminates things in my life, that I didn't even know were there.  Thank You for being the Light in my life, Lord Jesus.  Help me to make you the Treasure of my heart.