Jesus Our All in All (#10)

This will be the final quoted selection from Frank Viola's book, "Jesus Manifesto". I highly recommend this book to anyone hungry to encounter Jesus...

A House of Figs (Part 2) - The Significance of Bethany

"When Christ entered this world, He was rejected in all quarters.

Consider His birth...
When He was about two years old...
When He began His ministry around the age of thirty...
When He sought entrance into Samaria...
He was also rejected by His own hometown, Nazareth...

In short, the Lord had no home on this earth (Luke 9:58)...There was only one exception. Throughout His entire earthly life, there was only one place on the planet where Jesus Christ was received with welcome...a tiny, obscure village called Bethany and the home of Mary, Martha, Lazarus, and Simon the leper - Jesus' friends.

From Genesis to Revelation, the forces of evil have disputed God's right to have a home on this earth. But from the beginning, God has wanted a 'house' - a place where He could rest and 'presence' Himself. This is what Bethany symbolizes - a home for Christ.

Following are some of the outstanding features of Bethany, all of which depict what the Lord is looking for in every city across this planet:

1. Bethany is the place where Jesus was utterly welcome (Luke 10:38)...(this) means giving Him the place of primacy...Jesus desires to be more than a guest. And His Father expects Him to be Master of the house...(this) also means receiving His entire ministry...and receiving all who belong to Him.

2. Bethany is the place where women and men are His disciples (Luke 10:39)...Mary is seated in the living space with the 12 disciples...Every first century rabbi had male disciples only...Jesus was the only teacher in antiquity to include women in His circle of followers...Many Christians are busy serving God...But how many know the secret of loving Christ, sitting at His feet, listening to Him share His heart, and allowing His life to be the source of their service?...Bethany is the place where both women and men sit at His feet and hear His word.

3. Bethany is the place where Christ is loved and befriended (John 11:3,11)...Jesus desires friends over servants...It is possible to serve without loving...In the cold temple of Jerusalem, God was served. But in the warmth of a Bethany home, He was loved and befriended.

4. Bethany is the place of death and resurrection (John 11:43,44)...Lazarus has died...there is crisis and suffering in Bethany. The cross sits at the very center of a body of believers that authentically gathers as the church...Note that Jesus waited four days after Lazarus' death before He raised him up. Death is hopeless. But four days after death is beyond hopeless....every crisis you face is a God-given opportunity to rediscover Christ in a bold new way...So be prepared to meet a God who seems to have the disturbing habit of leaving the scene when you most need Him...if you endure, outwaiting your impatience for His timing, Christ will roll the stone away and raise you from the dead. While you may stumble and fumble at the goal line, Jesus will eventually carry you across.

5. Bethany is the place of liberty from bondage (John 11:44). 'Take off the grave clothes and let him go.' Jesus dispenses His resurrection life...(but) Jesus did not unbind Lazarus. He told the crowd to do it. We discover two things here: First, Bethany is the place where God's people are set free from all bondages (religion, legalism, sin, the world, serving God in the flesh...) Second, we are the Lord's colleagues in setting others free.

6. Bethany is the place where the supreme worth of Christ is recognized (John 12:3). (Here we see) a family feasting in the presence of Jesus Christ. They are supping with Him and He with them. That's Bethany. It's a riveting picture of authentic church life...Mary has with her a sealed flask of precious perfume...She breaks open the seal and pours the perfume upon the Lord's head as though He were a king...Jesus interprets this act as preparation for His burial...the value of Mary's flask of perfume was about $46,000 USD...Mary's act demonstrates extravagant worship. Profuse loyalty. Larger-than-life beauty. Lavish love and devotion. In Bethany, Jesus is valued for His exceeding worth...The disciples were scandalized that Jesus had defended luxury over justice. Few things are as close to God's heart as helping the poor and the oppressed. But preeminently important is Jesus Christ Himself...

7. Bethany is the place where Christ is ministered to (Mark 11:11). (Between Bethany and Jerusalem, Jesus) hungered and saw a fig tree with leaves...and discovered that it lacked figs. When a fig tree puts forth leaves, it's shouting that it has figs. But not this tree...It was announcing that it possessed fruit, but it really had none at all...Strikingly, Bethany means 'house of figs.' According to many scholars, the fig tree represents Judaism - the religious establishment of Jesus' people. Israel was supposed to feed our Lord, but she did not...But thank God, there was a place that could feed Him. There was a people - a faithful remnant - who could give Him rest and satisfaction. That people and place was Bethany - the house full of figs.

8. Bethany is the place of ascension (Luke 24:50-52). He ascended from Bethany. When Christ ascended, He was enthroned as absolute head over all things. And all things were placed under His feet...Christians aren't saved from all troubles or delivered from all problems. But we have been given an ascendant life with which to rise above them...We are 'seated in heavenly places in Christ'...it means that we can walk with Jesus without feeling as if we have one foot on a banana peel and the other foot in a grave. It means we can leave the footprint of our Lord wherever we go.

The earth awaits such...May it come. And may our Lord have what His soul longs for - a Bethany in every town - a place where He can lay His head and breathe His breath."

AMEN!!

Jesus Our All in All (#9)

From part of chapter 9 of "Jesus Manifesto" by Frank Viola and Len Sweet:

"A House of Figs"

"God has chosen to vest all of power, authority, and life in the living Christ. However, God in Christ is only known fully in and through His church (Eph. 3:10).

The authentic Christian life, therefore, is not an individual pursuit. It's a corporate journey...Those who insist on flying life solo will be brought to earth with a crash. Thus Christ and His church are intimately joined and connected...You will never know the depths of Christ on your own. It matters not how intelligent, gifted, or spiritual you may be. It takes a functioning body to know Him fully...and to display His fullness. It's only by being vitally and organically connected with other members of the body in a living way that we experience the fullness of God (Eph. 3:16-19).

The church is Jesus Christ in corporate expression...Practically, this means that we know Jesus Christ through one another...We see Him, hear Him, touch Him, taste and smell Him through our sisters and brothers within whom He dwells. Genuine church life is born when groups of people are intoxicated with a glorious unveiling of their Lord. Jesus Christ is the only foundation upon which an authentic church can be built...

The calling of every person involved in church planting, then, is to build the ekklesia upon a ground-breaking revelation of the Son of God...May God give us more people who have had a head-on collision with Jesus, who have caught a glimpse of His radiance, and who, as a result, can meld a group of people together with a living knowledge of their God in the face of Jesus Christ. May He raise up countless servants who can faithfully steward the divine mystery and turn it loose on this world."

Amen and amen...this is our prayer, Lord, in these critical days of preparation before Your return.

Jesus Our All in All (#8)

Excerpts from chapter 8 of "Jesus Manifesto" by Frank Viola and Leonard Sweet:

The Forgotten Tree

"Jesus did not live by His own natural strength. Instead, He lived by the energy of His Father who indwelled Him...Therein lies the root of Jesus' amazing life.

We know that Jesus lived by His Father's life. But what about us fallen mortals?...The gospel teaches that just as Jesus couldn't do anything of Himself, we can't do anything of ourselves...We can try as hard as we wish to be like Christ, but the human effort will never touch the hem of that garment...The glory of the gospel is that we who are fallen, tarnished and marred have been invited to live our lives in the exact same way that Jesus lived His life: by an indwelling Lord...

What the Father was to Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ is to you. He's your indwelling Lord...But there is more. Because all the fullness of the Godhead was pleased to dwell in Christ, the Father and the Spirit also are pleased to dwell in you...allowing Him to live His life through you is one of the most freeing things that you can do.

(In the garden of Eden) God wanted humans to eat from the tree of life...(which) meant receiving the uncreated life of God into oneself...Today the tree of life is the Lord Jesus Christ.

Living by God's life is very different from living by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A person who is living by the tree of life doesn't say, 'Let me try to do good and avoid evil.' Instead, he allows the life of God to flow within and through him. He yields to the instincts, promptings, and energy of that God-life.

Religion gives people the notion that they have God under control. Religion says that we can understand God absolutely and completely...The Christian religion teaches that the Bible answers virtually every question that's brought to the sacred text. The problem with this...is that the true God cannot fit into anyone's box. God will always end up breaking out of our human expectations and understandings...

Yet many Christians have turned the Bible into a form of the knowledge of good and evil. They approach the Bible as raw material by which they gain control over their lives, so life can be more understandable and under control, less unnerving and unpredictable.

...The Pharisees' attempt to promote high moral values was based on the knowledge of good and evil. For this reason, the Lord Jesus - who had a reputation of being a 'friend of sinners' - constantly collided with the leaven-dispensing Pharisees.

Jesus pushed the boundaries of religion to their limits. He was also a fierce critic of the priestly temple system of His day...If you examine Jesus' exchanges with the Pharisees, you'll discover a common thread. The Pharisees would ask a question on one level, and Jesus would answer it on a completely different level...it would appear that Jesus was answering a different question.

Why is this? It's because the Pharisees' questions were coming from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And Jesus' response was coming from the tree of life - the life of God.

Regrettably, there is a great deal of pharisaism in the Christian family today...

The Bible teaches the highest possible moral values. But the Bible is fundamentally not about morality. Following the Lord Jesus Christ involves living out the highest moral values. But following Jesus is fundamentally not about morality. Conversion to Christ involves a moral transformation of life. But conversion is not fundamentally about morality either...It is Christ, not religion, that saves us.

...it is all too possible to confuse an academic knowledge or theology about Jesus with a personal knowledge of the living Christ Himself. There two stand as far apart as do the hundred thousand million galaxies.

...the fullness of Christ can never be accessed through the frontal lobe alone. That's why Jesus did not leave His disciples with CliffNotes for a systematic theology. He left them with breath and body. He didn't leave them with a coherent and clear belief system by which to love God and others. He gave them wounds to touch and hands to heal. He didn't leave them with intellectual belief or a 'Christian worldview.' He left them with a relational faith and an indwelling presence.

...unless the cutting edge of your life and ministry is Jesus Christ, you're building castles in the sand and skating on invisible ice. That's why...the church must be awakened to the Christ who lives within her and being to understand the limitless resources of His indwelling life."

Deliver us, dear Spirit of Jesus, from living by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and fill us with desire for the Tree of Life, Jesus Himself. Jesus, You are Life within us, Your people. Teach us to live by Your resurrected life! Thank You that You hear our cry. Amen.

Jesus Our All in All (#7)

From chapter 7 of "Jesus Manifesto" by Frank Viola and Len Sweet:

A Collision of Two Empires

"Paul said that Jesus is 'head over all things (for) the church.' Notice, Jesus is head over all things not for the state but for the church...Some have made Jesus the chaplain of the American dream. Others have made Him the chaplain of the Democratic Party. Still others have made Jesus the chaplain of capitalism and Republicanism. All are equally blasphemous...

We must never avoid social issues. But the distinctive mark of a Christian is that you don't begin with a social or moral issue. You begin with God...You make the Light of the World, not culture, your reference point. Our time should be spent figuring out our relationship to Jesus and what He is doing in the world. Why? So we can join Him in what He's already doing. If we start anywhere else but Christ, we lose our way.

...Granted, there are times when the church should stand up prophetically and speak to power, saying, 'This is wrong because it outrages the image of God in human beings.' Slavery, sex trafficking, genocide, abortion, etc., are some of those issues. But such ministry is not what the church specializes in.

Don't misunderstand...Our relationship with Christ has intense public and social dimensions. But the social and political reform of the world through the powers that be has never been the agenda of the body of Christ...

Christianity is rooted in a Passion narrative in which the worst was done not by wicked people, but by good people in cahoots with district attorneys and justice departments. Jesus was executed not by some frenzied mob or rogue justice, but by the best religion, the most powerful state, and the most perfect legal system, functioning as they were designed to do...when justice becomes a goal in itself, or God is equated with justice, then we have moved from Christianity to another religion...

'Having faith' is less a knowledge of God's justice than trust in God's mercy. Christians want to live just lives, but we are justified not by works; we're justified by grace. Grace alone saves. The redemption story features the promise that where evil abounds, grace abounds more. God doesn't judge our lives in terms of our performance or success or length of service. All that matters in the end is the freewheeling generosity and audacious mercy of God. That's why whenever Jesus metes out justice, it turns out to be an unjust justice, a bending of the letter of the law to the spirit of the law.

Christians don't follow Christianity. The follow Christ. Jesus believed that the purpose of the Law was to structure a way of living together that He called 'love.' It is not law versus love. Rather, it is the law of love. The main theme in the preaching of Jesus was that life with the Father was all about love."

Lord Jesus, You are God's chosen Messiah, the only One Who will establish the kingdom of God on earth when You return. Thank You for showing us that our hope of justice lies only in You and Your kingdom to come, not in the religious or political systems of this age. Thank You that one day You will make all right; meanwhile, teach and empower us to live by Your life in an unjust world. Come by Your Spirit and free Your church from alliances with political parties and religious systems for Your sake and for the sake of a lost world that needs to see Your beauty in us. You are beautiful, dear Lamb of God!

Jesus Our All in All (#6)

Another portion from "Jesus Manifesto" by Frank Viola and Leonard Sweet:

"Most people think of evil as a mystery. We believe the mystery of goodness, beauty, and truth is an even greater mystery than that of evil and wickedness...After all, Jesus is the most beautiful at the ugliest moment of His life: His execution on the cross...According to the New Testament, the mystery of God is Christ, and the mystery of Christ is the church. (Col. 1:26,27; 2:2; Eph. 3:4-6; 5:32)...

There are basically two strategies that religion can employ when dealing with divine mystery: hide the mystery, or display the mystery through prayer, worship, art, and conversation. Byzantium and Eastern Christianity chose to display the mystery, whereas Western Christianity chose to hide it. But it even got worse. Beginning with Descartes, Western Christianity moved from 'truth as mystery' to 'truth as certainty.'...

When truth is encountered as certainty rather than mystery, open spaces of providence and possibility begin to close. The idea that you can discern truth by diagramming propositions or analyzing principles disenchants the world and 'drawstrings' the heavens. Only by living the mystery can truth be discovered.

This is not to say that we cannot be certain about anything...Hebrews 11:1 calls it (faith) the 'evidence of things not seen'. By faith we know God...(faith) is as real as our physical senses.

At the same time, the mystery of our faith opens the door for embracing paradox and even logical contradictions...As G.K.Chesterton once put it, 'The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.'
...embracing mystery opens the door for appreciating how infinitely 'beyond' all of us our Lord really is. It produces heart-awe mixed with a peaceful confidence in a God who is bigger than we can ever imagine.

To the person who walks in the Spirit, paradox, mystery, and uncertainty propel him forward instead of bogging him down. Those who live by faith can live in the presence of mystery and be motivated to rest in God's loving care...

Concerning the reality of Christ Himself, all the fullness of God dwells within Him. It is for this reason that every theological system breaks down somewhere...no matter how coherent or logical, eventually (it) meets some passage of Scripture or passage of life that refuses to fit into it. Such passages have to be bent, twisted, and forced to fit the system...Christ is too immense, too imponderable, and too alive to be tied into any immovable system of thought constructed by finite humans. Thus, He will always break out...Jesus Christ is too alive to be caged in any human system...

When you say yes to Jesus, you are saying yes to a person, not to a proposition...

What do you seek?

Do you seek righteousness? Jesus Christ is righteousness and sanctification. (I Cor. 1:30)
Do you seek wisdom? His name is Jesus. (I Cor. 1:24,30)
Do you desire peace? Jesus Christ is peace. (Eph. 2:14)
Do you want truth? That's what Jesus is. (John 14:6
Do you seek the power of God? Jesus Christ is the power of God.(I Cor. 1:24)"

Lord Jesus, there are no words to express all that You are! We love You, our Lord and God...