False Palm Sunday

Today we celebrate Jesus' entry into Jerusalem amid crowds acclaiming Him God’s Chosen One, Messiah and King.

So it's a good time to remember Jesus' warning in Matthew 24:5, that "...many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,' and will mislead many."  Christians in the end-times Jesus' prophesied must beware the "many" deceivers who present themselves as false Messiahs.

For example, when the ex-president re-tweeted a misled follower’s praise that Israelis today, like the crowds at Jesus' Palm Sunday, "...love him like he’s the King of Israel...like he is the second coming of God.”

Trump tweets claim Israelis ‘love him like he is the second coming of God’

 

The Untouchables

In the 1987 movie, the tough Irish beat-cop Jim Malone (Sean Connery) on Elliot Ness' squad arrives home one night, unaware an assassin is lurking outside, watching for an opportunity.  But when the mafioso sneaks up behind the seemingly-oblivious cop with knife in hand, Malone turns to thrust his gun in the man's face, disgustedly saying, "Ain't that just like a wop, bringing a knife to a gun-fight ?"

I often notice the cars in my church' parking-lot with combative pro-gun bumper-stickers of the "cold, dead hands" variety.  A few other cars sport the "Gadsden Flag" vanity license-plates--a rattlesnake and "Don't Tread On Me" motto--sponsored by my state's Rifle Association.

I have to shake my head.  Ain't that just like a "conservative Christian," bringing a gun to a spiritual fight ?

"The pursuit of Happiness"

The Declaration of Independence claims so, but I'm skeptical that all men are "...endowed...with certain unalienable Rights" by "their Creator."  I don't have Jefferson's deistic qualms about naming God as Who He IS: but the question is if He actually guarantees every human being is entitled (for what else is a "right" ?) to "...Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

It's stirring political rhetoric.  I doubt it's sound theology, as does A. W. Tozer.

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"You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier."          --2 Timothy 2:3-4.

That we are born to be happy is scarcely questioned by anyone. No one bothers to prove that fallen men have any moral right to happiness, or that they are in the long run any better off happy. The only question before the house is how to get the most happiness out of life. Almost all popular books and plays assume that personal happiness is the legitimate end of the dramatic human struggle.

Now I submit that the whole hectic scramble after happiness is an evil as certainly as is the scramble after money or fame or success....

How far wrong all this is will be discovered easily by the simple act of reading the New Testament through once with meditation. There the emphasis is not upon happiness but upon holiness. God is more concerned with the state of people's hearts than with the state of their feelings. Undoubtedly the will of God brings final happiness to those who obey, but the most important matter is not how happy we are but how holy. The soldier does not seek to be happy in the field; he seeks rather to get the fighting over with, to win the war and get back home to his loved ones. There he may enjoy himself to the full; but while the war is on his most pressing job is to be a good soldier, to acquit himself like a man, regardless of how he feels.

"Oh Lord, redirect my focus. Help me today to be a 'good soldier of Jesus Christ.' Amen."

"The Truth Shall Make You Free"

In John 8:31-2, Jesus tells “Jews who had believed Him” that “the truth will make you free.”

They began to argue with Him, saying they were children of Abraham, and have NEVER been anyone’s slaves.

They knew it was a lie.  Each Passover they recited how they were slaves in Egypt.  They also knew that their people had been carried off to Babylon as captives.  They knew that Israel had been conquered and ruled by the Persians, and then by Alexander the Great.  Even as they argued with Jesus that they were free, they knew Roman conquerors were their masters.

They were angry that Jesus challenged the lie they told themselves.  So angry He knew they wanted to kill Him: which He said showed they were actually children of the devil, loving lies and murder as satan does. By the end of the conversation they proved Him right, picking up rocks to stone Him.

“Conservatives” today have a chip on their shoulder about being “FREE AMERICANS:” and follow a liar who promises he'll save them from their own "tyrannical" government, and “Make America Great Again.”  What if Jesus told them that following those lies makes them slaves…and shows they are children of the devil ?

Jesus was right.

Jesus is still right.

Proverbs 4:23

 "Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life."     --  Proverbs 4:23 

Proverbs 23:7 puts it another way: in our usual slight misquotation, "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."

I remember a quote from a pastor, who credited it to Harry Truman: "What's down in the well comes up in the bucket."  (Trying to track down that saying's origin, I find it's been ascribed to numerous people besides Truman, including a slightly different form by evangelist Vance Havner.)  That puts Proverb's wisdom pretty well.

But I didn't realize until I started pondering and studying Proverbs 4:23 how often Jesus alludes to its wisdom:

 "...how can you, being evil, speak what is good?  For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart."

                                                                                                                                       --  Matthew 12:34

"But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man." -- Matt. 15:18

"For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts."  --  Mark 7:21

^"The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart."  --  Luke 6:45 

Proverbs' take on man's spiritual identity is exactly that of Jesus: man's identity is always in God's moral terms...and shows in all that a man does, as either righteous or evil.

John puts that wisdom even more succinctly: "By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious (my emphasis: other translations say "manifest"): anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother." (I John 3:10).

The set-up of the old joke is profoundly right: "There are only two kinds of people..."