Advertising Jesus

        I cycled along the Lakeshore bikeway near Burloak, the other day and, as I paused on a bench to eat my snack, an older gentleman walked by. His unremarkable grey T-shirt had imprinted on it 

        I couldn’t help calling out to him, “Have you ever been up in one of those?” He paused, came over to me, and said, “Yes, I have.” I was suitably impressed because he was nowhere near old enough to have fought in one. Then he explained—his son had bought him an hour-and-a-half ride in the Lancaster from Mount Hope Airport, for about $350. We chatted a bit more, about the terrible lot of the rear gunners in those bombers, and the cost and time to restore the plane. (We joked that his $350 might have bought a screw for one of the struts!) Then he went on his way. 

     This got me thinking about the effect of his low-key advertising. Why don’t we do more of this with the gospel? I’ve resisted putting a “fish” sticker on my car bumper because I don’t want to appear hypocritical if I speed or if I park in the wrong place. But what about more personal advertising, like a cross in a lapel, or on a necklace or neck chain? Again, I’m afraid of hypocrisy. The truth is, these little things may still spark valuable conversations, even if it is a worldling’s rebuke of our hypocrisy. Turn it to good—we’re all sinners, none of us is perfect. The Good News is still there—Jesus, Himself, lived the perfect life, then died for us. And Jesus saves sinners. 

        N.T.Wright tells a story of being stationary in heavy traffic in London. Because of his appearance (in his case, “collar on backwards”) the cab-driver identified him as a Christian. This led to Wright’s “great gospel moment”, as the driver turned around to face him and said, “What I always say is this: if God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, everything else is basically rock ‘n’ roll, i’n’it?” [Surprised by Scripture, p.207]                

Whose Son is the Messiah?

        Only about two days before the crucifixion, Mark tells us, “Jesus was teaching in the temple courts.” After Herod’s reconstruction of the temple, these were huge flat areas outside but surrounding the temple building itself. Most were open to the sky, but there were also four covered sections on the perimeter, the eastern of which was Solomon’s Colonnade (John 10:22), above the Kidron Valley. 

        As He was teaching, again in Mark’s words, “the large crowd listened to him with delight.” (12:37) This is intriguing. Just what was He teaching them? For the people to be ‘filled with delight’, it must have been something they enjoyed—nothing accusatory, nothing harsh, nothing to condemn them. Possibly what they learned that day was a true understanding of the law and how its burden could be lifted. They may have learned to understand the prophets better. They may even have learned whose son the Messiah would be. In fact, this is the question Jesus raised, but apparently left unanswered. 

        In three simple verses (Mark 12:35-37), Jesus touches on prophecy of the Messiah, His incarnation, and His ultimate victory. It’s delightful to see the puzzle Jesus raised. As an aside, Gary Weeks did a similar thing in his book, Could You Ever Love Me Again? Gary asked, “How can a person born once, die twice; and a person born twice, die once?” 

     But, to get back to Jesus’ puzzle… Surprisingly, the teachers of the law were right. The problem was that they weren’t following through. To be true to Scripture, they should have looked more closely at Psalm 110. 

        It is a psalm of David. In the first verse, the LORD, God, Jehovah speaks, and He speaks to David’s Lord. And David’s Lord is sitting at God’s right hand, until a battle has been fought and a victory gained. The apparent impossibility in this text is for David to call any of his descendants, ‘Lord’. It should always be his descendants calling him, ‘Lord’. 

        But where does it say that Messiah is David’s son? For that we have to go to several Old Testament scriptures that start with a wider focus—a descendant of Judah (Gen.49:10), of the house of David (Isa.9:7), in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), of a virgin (Isa.7:13, 14). The teachers of the law knew all this—they could have gone through all these prophecies, checked them off, one by one, and known that Jesus was the fulfillment. Why didn’t they? It seems they just weren’t ready to humble themselves, unlike Nicodemus. Pride and power-hunger held them back. Getting back to the crowd and their experience—how delighted we are too, as we work our way through the stories of Jesus. He walked on water, He calmed the waves, He raised the widow’s son in Nain, He healed the madman of Gerasa. This is the Man who is our Lord, too. We belong to Him. ‘Delighted’ is hardly enough (Are we getting too mystical‽) —we have a better word— ‘thrilled’, ‘captivated’, even ‘enraptured’, might be our choice.

Hercule Poirot and every Christian

        The other night we watched the Hercule Poirot mystery Mrs. McGinty’s Dead. The young man convicted of her murder is in prison, awaiting execution. As Poirot waits for the train at the little Kilchester station, someone tries to push him onto the tracks. Instead of being shaken, he is ecstatic! It tells him that someone wants him out of the way, that his client is innocent, and that the real murderer is still on the loose. Agatha Christie’s insight in this plot line is amazing. 

       In a similar way, the life that rolls easily along, with no upsets or disturbances, no suffering and no pain, is questionably Christian. But if trials come, they can confirm that God is really dealing with the believer. Even prayer is no guarantee of health and wealth and happiness. Read the Apostle Peter’s blessing on Christians: “Though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials…in all this you greatly rejoice…and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.” 1 Peter 1:6,8.

“If it dies, it produces many seeds”

        The Lord told us, in John 12:24, “unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed.” Was that just typical Jewish hyperbole? Obviously, the grain couldn’t really die, or there would be nothing to grow. There had to be something still there, some hidden spark. I’ve even wished that some botanical scientist would plant a seed, then aim some electronic instruments at it to catch any change at the moment it started to grow. (Maybe one has, but I don’t know about it!) 

        Then I realized that it is the same with people—there is an exact parallel. When someone dies their body, like the seed, disperses in the earth. But there is a part of them that never dies—the soul or spirit. 

        The seed, when it germinates, never goes out of existence, and the person, when he or she dies, never goes out of existence either. In the parable Jesus told, something new returns one day. He, Himself, is the proof, the firstfruits, the forerunner. His “natural” body died on that cross; His resurrected body is still physical, but to an infinitely heightened degree of new abilities and joys, the so-called “physics of resurrection”. As the Apostle Paul said, “The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” (1 Cor.15:42-44) 

        That’s where we’re going too, someday! And, just to round out the story, the seed really does die, but no more or less than a person ever does.

How To Never Stumble

        When my wife and I visited Holland a few years ago, we learned that there are some 70,000 “stumbling stones” installed in the sidewalks of Europe. In fact, there are 350 in
the city of Maastricht alone. These stones are 4” concrete memorial cobbles each with a brass memorial plaque on top, set into the sidewalks at houses where someone was taken out and gassed or otherwise executed during the Nazi Holocaust. 

        Our daughter took us to the local library in Maastricht and showed us forty feet of wall, displaying photos and biographies— Jewish business men, a resistance worker, a 3-year old girl and her seven siblings, all gassed. These people were not soldiers but somehow they stumbled into the enemy’s clutches. 

        I walked away in quite an upset state. But take this to another level. The Apostle Peter wrote about stumbling in the spiritual life. And who knew more about stumbling than he—several slight missteps during his time with the Lord, then a huge blunder as he denied Him. 

        Peter, as no one else, knew what to do so that we would “never stumble”, and he lays it all out in 2 Peter 2:5-11:— 

Starting with FAITH,
add goodness
+ knowledge
+ self-control
+ perseverance
+ godliness
+ mutual affection
+ love.

        “If you do these things, you will never stumble, and you will receive a rich welcome into the Eternal Kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

Word accuracy can be critical

        Words have been my hobby most of my life. The right word or the wrong word, the right punctuation or otherwise, can change a statement from serious to silly, from accurate to absolutely wild. For instance, many years ago, when snow mobiles were first becoming popular, the Port Arthur newspaper posted an article for sale, identified as a “sno-traveller”. Unfortunately, the hyphen was put after the “t”. Say that out loud! Then, a few years ago, the Toronto Star published a resumé guidance article in which “misspelled” was misspelled. Just this summer, a man passed away, and the Burlington Post obituary advised us that no memorial service was held and his remains were “creamated”. We wonder if he was “liquidated”. Is this something that happens in hot water? A hyphen, an “s” and an “a” make all the difference.

        Even printings of the Bible have not been without their problems. In 1631, the so-called “Wicked Bible”, a copy of the King James Version, had one of the commandments reading “Thou shalt commit adultery”! And a silly problem came up in 1950, when some unknowledgeable and unauthorized typesetter changed “skink” to “skunk” in an Episcopal version of Leviticus 11:30.

        But enough of the humour. Let’s get on to Scripture, where an unexpected re-direction of grammar, or just a change of one letter can make a powerful theological point. The earliest example is Genesis 1:1, where, in the beginning, “God created”. As many have pointed out, the word for God is plural, “Elohim”, but it has been given a singular verb. This is a strong intimation that the Godhead is multiple persons (in fact, Three) acting in utter unity, as One, the Trinity.

        Later on, Moses asks about God, “What is his name?” God’s reply is basically, “I AM”, a singular statement, whose grammar implies eternal existence and one who is eternally present. (Exod.3:13-15.) On the same occasion, God identifies Himself as “The LORD” or Yahweh, or Jehovah, which will be His name forever. This reference is key when Jesus identifies Himself to the Jews (who think He is under 50 years old) by the words, “Before Abraham was I AM.” (John 8:58.)

        Another occasion when Jesus made a strong point based on the tense of a verb is Mark 12:26-27. Speaking to the Sadducees (“who say there is no resurrection”) He quotes, “ ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken.” Not “I was.” The present tense is critical.

        Finally, some critical spelling. Paul confirms a prophecy about the Messiah, (Gal.3:16) based on one letter (at least in English). “The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say ‘and to seeds,’ meaning many people, but ‘and to your seed,’ meaning one person, who is Christ.”

        We have just barely touched on great depths of theology in these few paragraphs. Let’s be encouraged to read our Bibles very carefully and delight in the accuracy God has built into His written Word.

“My Eyes Have Seen the King!”

        The young priest, Isaiah, had just helped with the sacrifice of an animal on the altar. Now, as the embers burned down, he came inside the Holy Place, ready to offer incense. What a shock he was in for! There at the far end, perhaps fifty feet away, appeared a glorious throne and seated on it the magnificent personage of the LORD, Jehovah Himself! And, flowing all the way down both sides of the Holy Place, the great folds and radiance of the hems of His robe.

        The ceiling was over forty feet above him and, in that space, flew great six-winged angels, calling “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty.” Their voices shook the doorposts and thresholds behind him, and the room was filled with smoke.

        Isaiah was overwhelmed—he expected to die! Wasn’t this what happened to sinful men like him? Hadn’t Nadab and Abihu perished, even as they tried to offer incense? But wait. One of the angels takes a live coal off the altar, a remnant of the sacrifice that had just died. As that representation of the sacrifice touches his lips, the angel reassures him, “Your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

        This whole passage in Isaiah chapter six is a powerful bit of reporting. Some writers treat it as a vision and how can a vision hurt you? On the other hand, remember that Jacob wrestled with the Lord and came away crippled for the rest of his life. (Gen.32:30, 31.) Zechariah saw an angel, again in the Holy Place of the temple (Luke 1:8-22), as he offered incense in worship. For him, it was the loss of the power of speech.

        I think this was the real, physical thing. This was the Lord breaking through from heaven to Isaiah’s immediate world. And that ember burned his lips. He had the scars for the rest of his life. The wonderful thing is that, through the searing pain, he got mercy and assurance—“Your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

        Now the question arises—just who was that great King? Who was the “LORD Almighty”, who was Jehovah, who was Yahweh? This is where it gets even more interesting. Look at John 12: 41— “Isaiah said this because he saw Jesus’ glory and spoke about him.”  That LORD Almighty was Jesus!

        Now we’re into the New Testament and the picture changes a bit. Think of the Last Supper, and the Lord saying, “This is my body given for you…This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” (Luke 22:19, 20.)  Now we have, not a burning ember from repetitive sacrifices, but bread and wine that represent the once, forever sacrifice of God’s own Son, Jesus. May we realize, as we take these emblems, as they touch our own lips, that, like Isaiah, through Jesus “Our guilt is taken away and our sin atoned for.”