The True Vine (4)

The branch has but one object for which it exists, one purpose to which it is entirely given up. That is, to bear the fruit the vine wishes to bring forth. And so the believer has but one reason for his being a branch—but one reason for his existence on earth —that the heavenly Vine may through him bring forth His fruit. Happy the soul that knows this, that has consented to it, and that says, I have been redeemed and I live for one thing—as exclusively as the natural branch exists only to bring forth fruit, I too; as exclusively as the heavenly Vine exists to bring forth fruit, I too. As I have been planted by God into Christ, I have wholly given myself to bear the fruit the Vine desires to bring forth. (Day 3, The True Vine, by Andrew Murray - public domain).

I am struck by the Christ-centeredness of Murray’s writing; it is in stark contrast to our contemporary norm - which is preaching and teaching centered on us. Murray uses terms of absolute surrender and dedication to Jesus Christ; we don’t typically hear this language today.

There is nothing more “practical” than learning to abide in the Vine, nothing that will have greater impact on our lives, nothing that will make a more significant difference in the lives of those around us. Perhaps we have sunk into the abyss of moralism and self-improvement and motivational living and living to be successful to the point where Murray’s language is difficult to relate to. But are we not called to surrender our lives to Jesus Christ? Are we not called to deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow Him? (Mark 8:34 - 38). Are we not called to live wholly and completely for Jesus Christ?

As Paul reminds us, we are no longer our own, we have been bought with a price (1 Cor. 6:19 - 20). We are to truly live for one thing, one Person, Jesus Christ - and in Him we will find other relationships, other callings, other facets of life - but our life and our purpose are to be Jesus first and last; all of life must stand in relation to Jesus Christ.

Yes, this is radical. Sadly what was once radical in the eyes of the world has now become radical in the eyes of much of the professing church...at least in the West. We have so lowered the Gospel bar, we have so sought accomodation with the world, that in becoming “seeker sensitive” we have lost our sensitivity to the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ. Would the NT and Early Church recognize our preaching and practices as the Gospel?

One of the prices we pay for our current situation is that we rob believers of the joy of knowing intimacy with Jesus Christ, of the joy of abiding in the Vine as a way of life. But O the joy of living for Jesus, in Jesus, unto Jesus - for the joy of breathing Jesus as our life, for following Jesus as our way, as knowing Jesus as our truth. When Jesus is our truth then only that which is grounded in Him is true and we need not rationalize other teachings, other ways of living, we need not accommodate ourselves to anything other than the truth of Jesus.

When this life on earth is over we will only have Jesus - why not only have Jesus now? When we only have Jesus we have others, when we only have Jesus we have eternal purpose, when we only have Jesus we experience the restoration of the image of God in our lives.

Why not only have Jesus now?

The True Vine (3)

THE HUSBANDMAN
And My Father is the Husbandman—John 15.1

“A vine must have a husbandman to plant and watch over it, to receive and rejoice in its fruit. Jesus says: “My Father is the husbandman.” He was “the vine of God’s planting.” All He was and did, He owed to the Father; in all He only sought the Father’s will and glory. He had become man to show us what a creature ought to be to its Creator. He took our place, and the spirit of His life before the Father was ever what He seeks to make ours: “Of him, and through him, and to him are all things.” He became the true Vine, that we might be true branches. Both in regard to Christ and ourselves the words teach us the two lessons of absolute dependence and perfect confidence.

My Father is the Husbandman.—Christ ever lived in the spirit of what He once said: “The Son can do nothing of himself.” As dependent as a vine is on a husbandman for the place where it is to grow, for its fencing in and watering and pruning. Christ felt Himself entirely dependent on the Father every day for the wisdom and the strength to do the Father’s will. As He said in the previous chapter (14:10): “The words that I say unto you, I speak not from Myself; but the Father abiding in Me doeth his works.” This absolute dependence had as its blessed counterpart the most blessed confidence that He had nothing to fear: the Father could not disappoint Him. With such a Husbandman as His Father, He could enter death and the grave. He could trust God to raise Him up. All that Christ is and has, He has, not in Himself, but from the Father.” Andrew Murray - The True Vine, Day 2

Murray goes on the discuss the second lesson of absolute dependence, which is that we are to live as Christ lived, as He drew His life from the Father we are to draw our lives from Him, as He did “nothing of Himself” so we are to do nothing of ourselves. We are not to go to God for the things that we cannot do on our own - we are to go to God for everything, we are to live in Christ in everything, As the branch is to the vine, so are we to Christ. The branch cannot survive if separated from the vine, we cannot survive if we are separated from Jesus Christ, the True Vine.

We are not to lean on our own understanding (Proverbs 3:5), not just when we encounter things that are beyond our understanding, but in all phases and aspects of life we are to trust in God and seek His wisdom and knowledge. When someone says, “God expects us to do what we can do and only go to Him when we need Him,” that person lacks a basic understanding of the life of the Christian, for the Life of a Christian is Jesus Christ - He has no desire that we should live apart from Him or do anything apart from Him. We are not to say to God, “I’ve got this but I need your help with that,” we are to abide in Him every moment and seek to see as He sees, act as He acts, think as He thinks (who can understand this? See 1 Corinthians Chapter 2), live as He lives.

When we think that we can act by ourselves and understand by ourselves we fail to see the devastating effects of sin in our lives, the damage that was done to us all when Adam and Eve fell from their relationship with God. We all live with impaired understanding, and with impaired capacity to understand and clearly see what is around us. Even though the mind of Christ is being nurtured and matured (we hope!) in us as individuals and as a people, this is a work in progress, and as Paul writes, “Now we see through a glass darkly…” Our vision, our understanding, our knowledge, is impaired - we dare not go it alone - we need Christ and we need each other.

We can trust our kind heavenly Father to care for us in Jesus Christ. We can trust the Trinity to teach us to live by the life of the Vine. We can rest in the care and protection and nurture of our Father. Our union with Jesus Christ is a reality, are we learning to live in that reality?

A Way of Life - God’s Word

With my whole heart have I sought thee: O let me not wander from thy commandments.
Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.
Blessed art thou, O Lord: teach me thy statutes. (Psalm 119:10 - 12).

In Luke 24 we read that when Jesus was walking with two disciples on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus that “beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.”

Later in that chapter, when Jesus is with His disciples in Jerusalem, He also taught them about how He, the Messiah, is portrayed in the Scriptures.

What is the image in our minds when we read about Jesus teaching from the Scriptures? Is it an image of Jesus and the disciples reading a book? A scroll? Is it the equivalent of what we do as we gather as the church?

A Torah, just the first five books of what we call the Old Testament, likely weighed around 25 pounds and stretched many many feet - imagine what all of the Old Testament scrolls would have been like. Also, consider that they were not mass produced. People did not walk around with Old Testaments the way we can walk around with Bibles.

The disciples must have known the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings well enough to converse in them and about them, and be taught from them - without having the actual scrolls to refer to during their Bible studies. This would have also been true for any other formats in which the Scriptures were produced - you just didn’t walk into a bookstore and purchase the Scriptures.

Which is why I’m reminded of the above passage from Psalm 119 - God’s people are to be a people who hide and treasure the Word of God in their hearts.

And so Paul writes in Colossians 3:16, “Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”

We are to be a people living in God’s Word, with God’s Word living in us. We ought to speak it to one another, sing it to one another, live it with one another.

If our Bibles were taken away tomorrow, would we know the Word of God as the first-century disciples knew the Word of God?

God’s Word should be our language, it should mold our thought patterns, it should shape our desires, it should be our treasure.

God’s Word in Christ should be our way of life in the Way of life.

How are we doing?

Why This Waste?

Now when Jesus was in Bethany, at the home of Simon the leper, a woman came to Him with an alabaster vial of very costly perfume, and she poured it on His head as He reclined at the table. But the disciples were indignant when they saw this, and said, “Why this waste? For this perfume might have been sold for a high price and the money given to the poor.” But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, “Why do you bother the woman? For she has done a good deed to Me. For you always have the poor with you; but you do not always have Me. For when she poured this perfume on My body, she did it to prepare Me for burial. Truly I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be spoken of in memory of her.” Matthew 26:6-13 (See also Mark 14:3-9; John 12:1-8).

We know from John 11:1 that this woman was Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus.

In Matthew’s account it was the disciples who were indignant, Mark simply says that “some” were indignant, while John singles out Judas Iscariot as asking why the perfume was not sold and the money given to the poor - John then gives us insight into Judas’s motive, “Now he said this, not because he was concerned about the poor, but because he was a thief, and as he had the money box, he used to pilfer what was put into it.”

Since Jesus was who Jesus is, Jesus would have known about Judas’s thievery - I simply point this out as something to ponder. Judas sold Jesus to the religious leaders - the love of money really is the root of all evil; see the role it played in “the son of perdition”.

I have chosen Matthew’s account because Matthew doesn’t let himself and his fellow disciples off the hook, it wasn’t just Judas who was indignant, it was - it appears - all of them, or most of them, it was “the disciples”.

They considered Mary’s action a “waste”. There was no pragmatic value in what she was doing, there was no return on investment, there was no direct benefit that someone could “see” - she was wasting a product that could have been sold, that could have been turned into money,  how impractical!

This is the Mary who sat at the feet of Jesus while her sister Martha served (Luke 10:38 - 42) and was criticized for it. This time Mary is not criticized by Martha, she is criticized by the disciples.

Jesus says, “Why do you bother the woman? For she has done a good deed to Me.”

Worship seems so impractical, there is no return on our investment, no practical use for it - and yet we were created to worship God. Is God worthy to be loved and worshipped for who He is? Is His Person, His essence, His character - Himself, is He worthy to be worshipped and loved? If we are not worshipping and loving God we are not fulfilling our purpose, our destiny. I may awake in the morning not being sure just what the day holds for me, but one thing I must make certain, one thing I must purpose in my heart and mind, one thing I must begin the day with - and that is the worship of God.

The world may ask, “Why this waste?” The church may ask, “Why this waste?” Other disciples may ask, “Why this waste?” Family and friends may ask, “Why this waste?” Satan may temp with the words, “Why this waste?” And my response must be, “Because He is worthy of my worship, my love, my all in all.”

Just as Mary, we are not to give Jesus our throwaways, we are to give Him our best. We are not to give Jesus leftovers; our leftover time, our leftover talent, our leftover money, our leftover resources - we are to give the our best.

Mark points out that Mary broke the vessel the ointment was in, and John mentions that the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. I don’t think it is too much to say that those things which we hold precious must be broken in our service to Jesus, in our worship of Jesus, in our love to Jesus. They must all pass through the Cross of Jesus.

People respond differently to the aroma of the perfume, to some it is sweet, to others it is putrid.

As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 2:14 - 16, “But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place. For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one an aroma from death to death, to the other an aroma from life to life.”

We ought not to be surprised at varied responses to the worship of Jesus. The big question is, what is our worship? What is our response to Him? Am I surrendering myself to Christ at the Cross to be broken and reformed into His image?

Shall I ask, “Why this waste?” Or will it be said of me, “He wasted his life on Jesus”?

Musings on The Road to Emmaus

The following account (in italics) is contained in Luke 24:13 - 35.

And behold, two of them were going that very day to a village named Emmaus, which was about seven miles from Jerusalem.

Why were they going away from where the action was? Perhaps they were going home, they obviously had a place to stay in Emmaus...but still. There was a lot of “going home” in the resurrection accounts, a lot of each going his own way - thankfully that would change, thankfully some would remain in Jerusalem awaiting the Promise of the Father. Jesus prays that we will all “be one” as He and the Father are one, and yet we have this individualistic pull that makes us want to move away from one another. What does it take to change that?

I suppose if you think what you’ve heard is “nonsense” (see verse 11) there is no reason to remain in Jerusalem. How many times have I been skeptical? How many times have I, if not with words then with actions, thought the Word of Jesus nonsense? I don’t really want to know the answer to that question. Why can’t Jesus just do His kingly thing and make everything better? Why the suffering? Why the Cross? Why the shame of crucifixion?

And they were talking with each other about all these things which had taken place. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus Himself approached and began traveling with them. But their eyes were prevented from recognizing Him.

As we see in verse 21, they were “hoping” that Jesus was going to redeem Israel. It is disappointing when God doesn’t do what we want, when He doesn’t redeem us in the sense of making things the way we want them to be. “Here’s the agenda God, now will you please fulfill our expectations.” Of course we probably don’t say “please” to God that often, but you know what I mean. Let’s not minimize the political situation, especially in Israel, a monotheistic people (finally!) surrounded by polytheism and superstition, and by an Empire that often considered its leaders gods - it was not an hospitable environment. Nevertheless, God in Christ chose the Cross...not what the disciples were anticipating - couldn’t Jesus have at least duplicated some of the miracles that God worked through Moses? How about a few frogs hopping over the land, with a few in Pilate’s bedchamber - that would be a hoot. How about some water turning to blood?

How many times have my eyes “been prevented from recognizing Him”? In John’s account of the resurrected Christ, Mary doesn’t recognize Him at first, and then later by the seashore the disciples don’t recognize Him at first. Jesus doesn’t always come to us in ways that we recognize Him. We think He should look and act one way and He doesn’t cooperate with us. How many times have I missed Jesus? Sometimes it is only years later that I will look back and see how Jesus Christ walked and talked with me and I had no clue - He often does this through other people, He most often does this through other people.  

And He said to them, “What are these words that you are exchanging with one another as you are walking?” And they stood still, looking sad. One of them, named Cleopas, answered and said to Him, “Are You the only one visiting Jerusalem and unaware of the things which have happened here in these days?” And He said to them, “What things?”

Why doesn’t God know what’s happening in my life? In our nation? He must not know or He would do something. Here these two disciples were “looking sad” when the resurrected Christ was speaking to them. We act as if God is the only one who doesn’t know what is on the news.

And they said to Him, “The things about Jesus the Nazarene, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word in the sight of God and all the people, and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered Him to the sentence of death, and crucified Him. But we were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel.

These disciples were focused on Israel, God was focused on the world. The disciples could not see that the Passover Lamb had been offered for the sins of the world, that the Scapegoat had had the sins of the world imputed to Him, and that in so doing the Lamb was calling them, His disciples, to embrace the Cross and follow Him in the way of suffering on behalf of not only Israel, but on behalf of the world. Jesus had spoken more than once of taking up the cross, of laying down one’s life, of sacrificial loving and living - and then Jesus Christ demonstrated the ultimate expression of His Word on the Cross. We would rather have a prophet mighty in word and deed than a suffering Messiah - after all, what kind of Messiah is a suffering Messiah? We want someone to lead us in the way of prosperity and victory rather than in the way of suffering and defeat. We want God’s power to be displayed in our strength, not in our weakness. Well, we can always recreate Jesus in our own image so that others will be attracted to Him, Jesus needs a good advertising agency and we are just the people to help Him out.

Indeed, besides all this, it is the third day since these things happened. But also some women among us amazed us. When they were at the tomb early in the morning, and did not find His body, they came, saying that they had also seen a vision of angels who said that He was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just exactly as the women also had said; but Him they did not see.”

In verse 11 Luke tells us that the eleven apostles and other disciples considered the words of the women “nonsense”. Luke makes a special point of focusing on women in his Gospel (see Luke 8:2; 23:49, 55) which cannot have been lost on the first century reader - for women had little value in Jewish and Gentile culture. It was women who first spoke the Gospel of the Resurrection. It was a woman who first heard the resurrected Christ speak her name, “Mary” (John 20:21). Aside (for the moment) from the question of church leadership, it is incongruous that the voice of women should not be heard and respected in the church. To treat the voice of women as “nonsense” is nonsensical.

Jesus elevated all of humanity, and that humanity includes women. Dorothy L. Sayers gave a lecture (and then published it) titled, “Are Women Human?” One of her points is that we talk of women as if they are not human, as if they are something “other” than men in terms of humanness. While this may be less so in our time in the West than when Sayers lived, in some churches things have not changed. To be sure there is confusion in society about men and women, but I’m not writing about society, I’m writing about the Church of Jesus Christ - Christ came to elevate humanity in Him to relationship with God, and that includes women. So on the First Day of the New Creation it is women who first witness to the Resurrection and it is women who bring the first message of the Gospel, of the Good News, to the eleven apostles and other male disciples. However we choose to process this fact, we ought not to ignore it, to shove it aside, to treat it as an aberration, or to mitigate it.

And He said to them, “O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?” Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.

Jesus reveals Himself through what we call the Old Testament, He does it with these two disciples and He does it (Luke 24:44 - 47) with the apostles. The writers of the New Testament letters, including Revelation, reveal Jesus again and again through the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings (the Old Testament). When the Church read the Old Testament they looked for Christ, they saw Christ, from Genesis to Malachi they saw Jesus Christ. Sadly, more often than not, we only see Christ in the Old Testament in isolated and disjointed passages, it is the work of an abstract painter more than it is of a portrait artist, or of an realistic landscape painter who brings various elements together into focus. The Early Church saw Christ when they saw the Old Testament - we seldom read the Old Testament, we seldom “see” it, we seldom relate to it, we seldom hear the voice of Christ, see the image of Christ, touch the person of Christ. And since we seldom do these things, we seldom see ourselves, the Church, in the Old Testament, for to see the Head of the Body is to see the Body.

The New Testament writers showed us the way to read and see the Old Testament, are we faithful to their example? The “text” without Christ is just a text - and to treat the text as something isolated from Christ is to miss Christ, to miss the sacramentality of the Word of God; the text is to become Word, it is the Spirit that gives life, the flesh profits nothing.

And they approached the village where they were going, and He acted as though He were going farther. But they urged Him, saying, “Stay with us, for it is getting toward evening, and the day is now nearly over.” So He went in to stay with them.

There is a lot to be said for hospitality. As the writer of Hebrews tells us (Hebrews 13:1-2), “Let love of the brethren continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it.” He might also have said that “by this some have entertained Christ” for we read in Matthew 25:

“Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.’ ”

We ought to pay attention to the people around us, we ought to treat them as royalty. Who knows how Christ comes to us through others? Through the most unlikely of others? When the two disciples first met the stranger they thought He knew nothing, then they came to realize He knew something, they would come to realize that they knew nothing, then they would know Him. They thought the stranger was uninformed, but it was they who were uninformed. When we are arrogant in our knowing we know nothing. I have been arrogant more than once - what a fool have I been more than once. Well, as Paul counsels, we ought to be nothing that Christ might be everything, including in what we think we know (1 Corinthians 1:18 - 31).

When He had reclined at the table with them, He took the bread and blessed it, and breaking it, He began giving it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized Him; and He vanished from their sight. They said to one another, “Were not our hearts burning within us while He was speaking to us on the road, while He was explaining the Scriptures to us?” And they got up that very hour and returned to Jerusalem, and found gathered together the eleven and those who were with them, saying, “The Lord has really risen and has appeared to Simon.” They began to relate their experiences on the road and how He was recognized by them in the breaking of the bread.

Our fellowship with Christ and with one another is centered around “the apostles teaching, the breaking of bread, and prayer” (Acts 2:42). As Christ is broken bread and poured out wine, so He calls us to be such, for as the Father sent Jesus, Jesus sends us (John 20:21). We are one loaf in the Lord (1 Corinthians 10:14 - 17). This is a holy fellowship, a holy communion, a communion with and in the Trinity. As we partake of Christ, we partake of one another, and the world - let us hope - partakes of Christ in us.

A congregation that is too busy for Holy Communion is a congregation that is too busy. Holy Communion is neither vertical nor horizontal; it is both - it is cruciform. I cannot partake of the Head without partaking of the Body; I cannot partake of the Body without partaking of the Head. Our eyes are opened in the breaking of bread, O God open our eyes.

When Christ Jesus speaks our hearts ought to burn, they ought to be on fire. To be sure  there are times when this may not be the case, and in those times we walk by faith and not by sight, for what we see we see...whether we “feel” what we see or not. And even when fog and darkness surround us and we don’t see or feel - we still “know” that He walks with us in the Valley of the Shadow of death, and we will trust Him even if we have the sentence of death upon us (Psalm 23, 2 Corinthians Chapter 1).

Our hearts are altars and there ought to be fire on altars, there ought to be sweet incense rising from our hearts to God, a fragrance that others sense (2 Corinthians 2:14 - 17). The Word of God should move us, it should animate us, it should stir our passions - and our lives should be ones of praise and witness. If we are passionate in earthly love, how much more ought we to be passionate in our heavenly Love - our Lord Jesus Christ. The church ought not to be a place or a people for entertainment, but it should be a place of fire and excitement, with altars ablaze with the Word of God set afire by the Holy Spirit. (The exuberance of many Psalms would be out of place in many of our gatherings, just as the solemnitude of many Psalms would be out of place in others - will we ever learn the Way of the Word and the Holy Spirit?)

“The Lord has really risen and has appeared to Simon.”

Has He really risen? Has He appeared to us?

Is He appearing to us, to me, to you, today?