If You Are

"If you are the Christ, tell us."

But he said to them,

"If I tell you,

you will by no means believe."

Then they all said,

"Are you then the Son of God"

So He said to them,

"You rightly say that I am."

Luke 22:67-70, NKJV

Everyone asked the question, sooner or later.  "Who are you?"  It wasn't always asked with the same words, or even with the same spirit behind them.  Some asked it sincerely, wanting to know his identity.  Others taunted him with the question because they wanted to use the answer against him.  Some were curious, others were afraid, and even after they got an answer, some didn't really understand.

The gospels record multiple times in which Jesus was challenged with the phrase:  "If you are the Christ..."  What you need to understand is that the Christ, the Messiah, was the most important figure in Hebrew culture and religion, a man of power and glory whose coming had been prophesied and anticipated for four thousand years.  He was the seed of the woman coming to crush the serpent's head, the blessing of Abraham to the whole world, the prophet greater than Moses, the rightful heir to David's throne, the Son of Man, the Balm of Gilead, the Son of Righteousness.  And most of those who threw the words at him, "If you are the Christ..." weren't really expecting him to say yes, because he didn't fit their idea of what Messiah was going to be.

Most were expecting the King of kings and the Lord of lords to come charging out of heaven on a white horse with a crown on his head and a sword in his hand, fulfilling the prophecies of Zechariah that foretell his arrival at the Mount of Olives.  The mountain would split and be moved apart, and a fountain of life-giving water would flow from beneath it, and the Messiah would destroy all the enemies of Israel with the breath of his mouth and the brightness of his coming.  What a glorious day that would be!

And instead they got Jesus.  A humble carpenter from Nazareth.  A teacher who had never been formally trained, yet spoke with great authority.  A man who spent his time with the needy masses rather than in the halls of power.  He didn't preach the overthrow of Herod or Rome.  He didn't put the enemies of Israel to flight.  He didn't rally the Jewish people to a battle standard and lead a revolution against their oppressors.  And the things he did do...

Satan taunted him in the wilderness, "If you are the the Son of God, turn these rocks into bread so you can eat."  I've often wondered if perhaps the stupid devil wasn't really sure, and therefore was seeking proof so he would know which Jew to kill.

The Pharisees demanded of him, "If you are the Christ, show us a sign."  Because the healing of the blind, the lame, the deaf, the mute, and the leper wasn't enough proof.  Jesus' power and authority over demons, disease and death wasn't enough.  Jesus' ability to multiple bread and walk on water and calm the wind and the waves wasn't enough.  "If you are the Christ, show us a sign" meant, "Show us what we want to see in Messiah--the power and the glory--and then we'll believe.

John the Baptist sent him a message asking, "Are the Christ, or should we look for another?"  In spite of the fact that John had been there to hear the voice of God and see the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus like a dove, in spite of announcing to the crowds that Jesus was the savior of the world.  But what he was really asking was this, "Hey, if you're really the Christ, why don't you come bail me out of jail before they cut my head off." 

Demons would cry out, "We know who you are, the Christ of God!"  And Jesus commanded them to be silent.

Peter proclaimed, "You are the Christ the Son of the Living God!"  And Jesus said, "You're right, but don't tell anybody."

Many were healed and instructed not to tell anyone who had healed them, but they couldn't stop themselves.

And now here at the end of his earthly life and ministry, Jesus was being asked the question by the priests of his people.  "If you are the Christ, just tell us."  But Jesus knew their hearts.  They didn't ask because they wanted to believe.  They asked so that they could argue with him that he was not, because he didn't come in the manner they were expecting.

Even after they nailed Jesus to the cross, they were still calling out to him--the devil, the accusers, the thief on thief on the cross--"If you are the Christ, save yourself!  Come down off that cross!"

Jesus answers prayer, performs miracles, saves souls, changes lives--and he does those things today.  His words are continually proven faithful and true, his ways are proven right.  And still people look for a sign, some definitive proof.  Jesus himself said to those seeking a sign, "If what you have seen isn't good enough, no sign will be either.  Only the wicked and perverse seek more proof.  But if you want a sign, here's one for you.  Just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a whale, so will I be three days and three nights in the grave after you kill me.  But just as Jonah came up, so will I."

And so He did.



The Lord is Good!

Oh, give thanks to the LORD,

for He is good!

For His mercy endures forever.

Let the redeemed of the LORD say so...

Psalm 107:1-2, NKJV

Where were you when Jesus found you?

Some were wandering, lost and alone, homeless, helpless, hopeless.  They were tired and weary from aimless meandering, hungry and thirsty in a way that nothing they tried could satisfy.  And then they cried out to the Lord.

Some were sitting in the darkness, surrounded by the shadows of death and despair, afflicted, tormented, imprisoned by their own choices with no thought of escape.  They had fallen and could not get up.  And then they cried out to the Lord.

Some were on their last leg, broken by sin and the destruction it had wreaked in their lives.  They were depressed, defeated, dejected, and alone, they abhorred all the things they used to enjoy and stood on the brink of choosing death over life.  And then they cried out to the Lord.

Some were in one of life's terrible storms, tossed to and fro by the fierce winds and cresting waves.  They feared for their lives, battered, beaten, blown about, unable to correct their course or save themselves.  And then they cried out to the Lord.

The Psalmist records these desperate stations in life, but he also knows that no matter where they were when the Lord found them, when they cried out to Him in their hour of need, He never failed to listen.  He heard their cry, delivered them out of their distresses, and turned their situations around.  He redeemed them from destruction, rescued them from the clutches of death, reversed the ravages of sin, sickness and satan in their lives. 

For this reason, the Psalmist pleads four times:

Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord

for His goodness,

and for His wonderful works

to the children of men! 

Too many times we cry out to God in our desperation, rejoice in his salvation, and then walk on in forgetfulness of all that God has done for us.  Too many times, God gets us out of trouble and we deceive ourselves into thinking we were able to save ourselves after all.  Too many times, we fail to remember all that God has truly done for us.

So remind yourself of the goodness of the Lord!  Remind yourself of where you were when Jesus found you, saved you, delivered you, blessed you, and set you on the path of eternal life.  Remind yourself of everything He has ever done for you along your way.  And thank Him for it.  And if you can't think of anything He's done, just thank Him for who He is.  He is good, and He deserves it!

Because God Wants You to Know!

The the angel said to them,

"Do not be afraid, for behold,
I bring you good tidings of great joy

which will be to all people.

For there is born to you this day
in the City of David

a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.

And this will be the sign to you:

You will find a Babe
wrapped in swaddling cloths,

lying in a manger."

Luke 2:10-12, NKJV

I've been remiss in making posts to my Evertold Chronicles.  And if you think that's an odd designation, let me explain it.  The four gospels are the inspired written accounts of The Greatest Story Ever Told.  Evertold.  Nearly four trips around the sun ago, I began a verse-by-verse devotional on the life of Christ.  As with my other blogging endeavors, my diligence was better at some times than with others.  Nevertheless, I am still fascinated with the Life of Christ, the greatest man who ever lived, and today continue my journey through the wonder of His miraculous birth.  Join me now as we peek in on some shepherds who have just received a startling angelic visitation...

*     *     *

I don't know about you, but I love receiving good news.  Bad news, not so much.  That's why I don't watch the news...not at noontime, not at one of the afternoon showings, and especially not at bedtime.  I don't read the paper either.  I'm convinced that the journalistic segment of our society has forgotten how to report good news.  It's always war, pestilence, famine, disease, political intrigue, murder, violence, crime, sin.  And it's everywhere.  So I stick to the Bible, which is not only always true, but it's always good.  I can't do anything about the news anyway, so I might as well focus on something I can do.

This group of Jewish men, and we're not told how many there were, were camped out on a Bethlehem hillside minding their own business and watching to make sure their sheep slept.  Having counted the sheep to ensure their flock was intact, perhaps they reclined around a campfire, talking in low and quiet voices, telling stories, trading opinions, doing what they and their ancestors had done on the same hillside for a millennium.  And then, all of a sudden, the black of night was pierced by the brightness of the glory of God, and an angel stepped out of heaven onto earth and said those famous words I love and keep referring to:  "FEAR NOT!"

He was a good news messenger, and did he have a message for them!  It was good news of great joy for everybody everywhere.

Speaking to shepherds who had been weaned on the law and the prophets, who had been rocked to sleep by their mothers singing the Psalms, who attended the three annual feasts in Jerusalem with strict religious conviction, and who had heard all their lives that Messiah was coming, the angel announced, "Messiah is here!"  Imagine the thrill in their souls, once they overcame their fright at the glorious sight.  Imagine how their pulses pounded, their breaths quickened, and their minds began to race.

It was the most important announcement God had ever made to humanity.  For 4000 years, God had been preparing humanity for this arrival, starting with His promise to Eve of her heir that would crush the serpent's head, and following all the way through Israeli history to the last prophet they had heard, the voice of Malachi declaring, "The Son of Righteousness will arise with healing in his wings!"  For 1500 years, ever since Moses on his way to the mountaintop said, "There is coming one after me who is far greater than I am!"  For 600 years, they had been awaiting the restoration of the kingdom to Israel and the throne to the family of David.  At last, the day had come!

God wanted those shepherds to know the good news, but He also wanted them to be witnesses to the glorious truth--the birth of the Messiah.  So along with the birth announcement he also provided specific instructions for finding the Christ Child.

He was born that very day.  So they were looking for a newborn.

He was born in Bethlehem, the City of David.  Their gaze turned toward the nearby cluster of houses.

He wasn't born in a home.  So now their gaze turned back to the angel in puzzlement.

He's wrapped in swaddling clothes...there was nothing extraordinary about that part; all babies were wrapped in swaddling clothes after their birth, to protect them.  But here was the sign...this baby wouldn't be found in a cradle, but in a manger.

In earlier posts, I have dealt with this--the translation of the word "manger" and the understanding of it in our modern English language.  It has normally been understood to be a stone feeding trough in a barn, therefore all the Christmas songs.  But there is another meaning to the word, and it had specific significance to the timing of Jesus' birth.  A manger was also the bread basket in which Jews kept their food while camping out for the Feast of Tabernacles, the season that was upon them.  Travelers were coming from all over the world to commemorate those four decades their ancestors wandered in the wilderness, and how God brought them over into the Promised Land.  Soon the housetops and the hillsides surrounding Jerusalem would be filled with temporary structures--called tabernacles or booths--and for eight days the Israelites would live as their forbears had lived.  I think the shepherds might have understood this, therefore they didn't go looking in every family's barn to see if a baby had been born there.  They simply had to look for someone who had already built their tabernacle booth on the outskirts of Bethlehem.

You see, when God wants you to know something, He's going to be very clear in the telling.  When God wants you to find something, He's not going to shroud it in code and mystery.  When God wants you to have understanding, He draws back the veil, gives you specific instructions, and says, "Follow."  His Word will lead us into the truth. 

Who Is He?

And He asked them, saying,

"Who do the crowds say that I am?"

Peter answered and said,

"John the Baptist,but some say Elijah;

and others say that one of the old prophets

has risen again."

He said to them,

"But who do you say that I am?"

Luke 9:18-20, NKJV

People have always had funny ideas about Jesus.  Even those who knew Him during His earthly lifetime didn't always fully understand who He was.

When Mary & Joseph found him sitting in the temple reasoning with the teachers of Israel, He said, "Didn't you know I would be about My Father's business?"  And they didn't understand what He meant.

John the Baptist called him the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, the one coming after him, whose shoelace he wasn't worthy to tie.

Some called him a Samaritan, the illegitimate offspring of a wayward Jewess and her foreign lover.

Others called him the carpenter's son, and brother to better men.

Those same brothers called him crazy.

His disciples marveled at his miracles and wondered who he really was.

The Pharisees called him the son of the devil.

The High Priest called him a blasphemer and a revolutionary.

Pilate called him innocent of their accusations.

One called him a good teacher.

Of Himself, Jesus said, "I am the light of the world.  I am the bread of life.  I am the giver of living water.  I am the doorway of safety.  I am the good shepherd.  I am the way, the truth, and the life, and the only way to get to God.  I am the true vine.  I am the resurrection and the life."  He called God his father, and said, "I am God's son."

And in spite of everything he said and did, people still did not understand who he really was.  When Jesus asked his disciples what people were saying about him, they presented all kinds of theories.

You're John the Baptist, back from the dead.

You're Elijah, back from heaven.

You're Moses, or the prophet Moses promised.

You're Isaiah or Jeremiah or one of the other prophets of old, also back from the dead.

And then Jesus asked the most important question of all.  "But who do you say that I am?"

Ask ten random people on the street that question, and you could receive ten different answers.

A good man.  A good teacher.  A Jewish revolutionary.  A myth.  An ancient philosopher.  The founder of one of the world's great religions.  A liar.  A lie.  I remember hearing about a poll of school children once who said they thought Jesus was a religious figure who lived about the same time as George Washington.

One time in ten, you might get the right answer.  Like Peter, who almost always said the wrong thing, except for this one time, when he blurted across the campfire, "You are the Christ of God!"  It's recorded slightly differently by Matthew, where Peter says, "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!"  Either way, Peter was making a bold profession of belief.  For Peter, the term Christ meant the anointed, chosen, and sent servant of God who came to redeem the nation of Israel, deliver them from their oppressors, and establish the kingdom rule of God on earth.  His confession was this:  that Jesus was the One Man all the prophets had been talking about, the savior, the deliverer, the king.

Who do you say that Jesus is, today?  You can think him a good teacher, or a great man, or the greatest conman in all the world.  But I tell you, he is the Son of God, and if you put your trust in him for salvation, you will have eternal life.

Passing Through



Blessed is the man whose strength is in You,

whose heart is set on pilgrimage.

As they pass through the Valley of Baca,

they make it a spring;

the rain also covers it with pools.

They go from strength to strength;

Each one appears before God in Zion.

Psalm 84:5-7, NKJV

I've puzzled over these verses several times, read them, studied them, meditated and pondered over them.  As with all things, there is a time for understanding, and my time came today.

We are, every one of us, on a journey of birth, life, death, and after. We travel from point to point, not always by the most direct route.  The road is never an easy one to walk, for no matter how skillful or careful we are, there are always twists and turns, unforeseen detours, potholes, pitfalls, and perils along the way, not to mention other travelers.  And the only thing on the journey over which we have any control at all is ourselves.  Even then, we are sometimes our most dangerous companion!

But the Psalmist understood something about the journey, this experiential university of hard knocks, when he wrote, "The man who finds His strength in God is happy and blessed.  And he's even happier when he realizes he's just passing through."  This life, from birth to death, is a pilgrimage to our final destination.  This world is not my home, the old song says.  Like Abraham, our eyes should be fixed on the shores of a country far beyond the sky, looking for a city that has foundation whose builder and maker is God.  As one old saint told me one time, "I've got too much on the other side to want to stay here."  But between now and then, there are many things we must go through, many things we must do.

There's an old song that talks about living on the mountain underneath a cloudless sky, drinking from the fountain that never runs dry, and feasting on manna from a bountiful supply.  How wonderful it would be to stay there.  But life is not about staying here, it's about moving on.  And beyond this mountain lies a valley dark and deep, long and low, covered in shadow and uncertainty.  In order to get to the next mountaintop, it is necessary to navigate the valley.  The Psalmist gave it such an appropriate name, too; he called it the Valley of Weeping.

On that mountaintop everything is bright and beautiful.  Even the last part of the climb to reach the summit was refreshing and exhilarating, and now that we are rested and ready for whatever's next, the initial descent doesn't seem so bad either.  But down in the valley, when we can't see the peaks through the dark clouds of discouragement and despair, what's around us sometimes overshadows the reality of what is ahead.  Our tears are like springs of water, and the rain falling upon us threatens to flood our current valley.  When God is not the source of our strength, how easy it is to throw up our hands and quit, or worse yet, turn back.  I've known too many people who gave up in the valley of weeping, never knowing that joy was coming with the dawn.

But when God is our strength!  When I place my faith, my hope, my confidence and my trust completely in the Lord's ability to both see me through and bring me out safe on the other side, I can be assured that this valley is just scenery along the path.  It is not my destination, merely a landmark through which my journey must pass.  God never intended for us build our home here; we're just pitching tents until we get to the next mountain, and the one after that, until finally we arrive safe home. That is how we move from strength to strength.

God knows we grow weary in the valley, especially when we come to the steep climb that leads us out.  But as we scale the utmost heights, and catch a gleam of glory bright, suddenly our hope is renewed.  As we call out on the Lord, we hear Him answering our cry, urging us onward and upward.  And when we finally reach the top and see how far we've come, we find rest and blessing and fulfillment and triumph, all of which we're going to need.  Because we can look into the distance and see our goal, but between us and it is yet another valley.  So take a deep breath, gird up your loins, and start making your way down.  You'll never get where you're going if you stay where you are.

As I look back on nearly 40 years of living, I realize there are seasons and circumstances I am happy to have passed through.  I'm not necessarily happy about the particular situations themselves, but joyful rather that I kept on walking and didn't stay.  There are some things I wish I had done differently, some things I wish I had avoided altogether.  Nevertheless, here I am today, a learned man because of what I went through.  Had I not walked through them, I would not be the man I am today, and though I'm not yet perfected in the image and likeness of Jesus Christ, I can say I am a better man after all those things than I was before, and I hope that tomorrow I will be better still.