Why was (and still is) Jesus such a disappointment to religious expectation?

In reading the scriptures, especially with a lifetime worth of comments and explanations ringing in our ears, it is easy to despise the Pharisees and other religious characters as hypocrites … the [...]]]> (..part of a new book)

Why was (and still is) Jesus such a disappointment to religious expectation?

In reading the scriptures, especially with a lifetime worth of comments and explanations ringing in our ears, it is easy to despise the Pharisees and other religious characters as hypocrites … the kind of hypocrites we could never be! However, modern Christianity might just have more in common with them, than what we are willing to admit. Especially in terms of their expectation of a coming Christ.

As with them, many today expect that the coming Christ will return to enforce His will upon the nations. Many are looking for a more concrete and visible kingdom. They expect more than a God who comes to tell stories, do a few miracles, dies and disappears. The significance of the incarnation is overlooked and the fact that God became man is, for the most part, simply seen as another oddity. The first coming of Christ is reduced to just another prophetic event that foreshadows the actual event – when God comes again and this time, hopefully, He will do it properly and effect some real change. What Jesus introduced is often categorised as just another dispensation, a period of time, which they give many beautiful names, like: the dispensation of grace, or the church age etc. The fact that Jesus is God’s final and complete Word, the fulness of time, is hardly acknowledged.

What did these religiously trained people, the Pharisees, expect from the coming of the Messiah, and why?

From an early age they were trained in the scriptures. And this training was by no means limited to theory – how to live it, apply it, was absolutely central to their religion. Much good came from their rigorous focus on the scriptures.

For the most part these people were sincere, honest and devout. In the midst of a world that worshipped many strange gods and esteemed many questionable values, the Jews indeed had a privileged position and knowledge of God.

So just imagine what kind of Christ they expected.
If you devoted your life to the study of God’s self-revelation through the scriptures, in the midst of many weird and plainly wrong philosophies … maybe a bit of Godly confirmation of how right you are, is not expecting too much.

In the midst of world powers who have no regard for the scriptures and who makes fun of your beliefs, is it really expecting too much for the coming Messiah to sort them out – to pummel them into submission and shame them with the foolishness of their beliefs?

If you sacrificed time with family and friends, for the sake of religious duties, if you gave up comforts and pleasures and instead developed your self-discipline to the highest degree possible and you did this without any real recognition or gratitude from those who are not as devoted as you … then maybe, the coming of the Messiah would be the event in which you received your just reward … and they, theirs. Obviously, those who do not make the effort, those ill-disciplined, pleasure-seeking unbelievers should get what they deserve as well!

Can you see how the expectations developed. They expected, not unlike many expectations today, that the coming Christ would come to set the records straight, would come and balance the books, would come to enforce the will of God, to make His justice triumph by justifying the righteous and condemning the guilty. A Christ who justifies the ungodly was simply unthinkable!

Well, these well-behaved, devout, right-believing, orthodox, sincere believers, turned out to be sincerely wrong and very disappointed with Jesus.

At the start of Jesus’ ministry, He still showed some real potential. The miracles and healings looked exactly like the kind of Christ they expected – one who could enforce Gods will, one who could take the kingdom by force, divine force! They could even excuse His odd little stories about grace, if He just continued to enforce God’s will. But then He seemed to tone down the miraculous, warning people not to say anything about it. At one of the most opportune times, when a frenzied crowd of more than 5000 wanted to make Him king, He simply left.

Then His odd stories became more and more explicit and plainly offensive. It seems as if He deliberately honours those who deserve contempt and He deliberately shames those who throughout their lives devoted themselves to the most noble occupation of interpreting and practising the holy scriptures. The heroes of Jesus’ stories always seem to be the most unlikely candidates – Samaritans, social outcasts, victims, the shameful, the last, the least the little and the lost!

His own disciples did not even know what He was on about – how unintelligible He must have been to these devout religious scholars.

Eventually the Pharisees had enough of all the paradoxical sayings about seed hidden in the ground, and yeast hidden in dough. They wanted something a bit more concrete and visible, so they come to Jesus with a straightforward question: “When will the kingdom of God come?” (Luke 17:20)

Jesus, however, had a habit of never satisfying the self-righteous with a straight-forward answer. Instead He gives them a bit more of the hidden, mysterious stuff:
He replies to them by saying, The kingdom of God does not come with signs to be observed or with visible display … (Luke 17:20 AMP)

Rather, it is already here … within you! (Remember the hidden seed and the unseen yeast) (Luke 17:21)

In the Matthew account He says: The kingdom of God doesn’t come by counting the days on the calendar … the arrival of the Son of Man isn’t something you go to see. He comes like swift lightning to you! (Matthew 24:27 MSG)

The coming, the appearing, the revelation of Jesus Christ is not a quiet, sombre or gentle realization – it is a thunderous flash of lightning that silences every other noise and blinds you to every other sight! Jesus offers more than boring academic knowledge – He offers Himself … his dangerous, adventurous, living self!

Jesus then starts speaking to His disciples. These guys who would be entrusted with proclaiming this message in the near future … they had very little insight into what was about to unfold. He says to them: “The days will come when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it. And they will say to you, Look here! or Look there! Do not go after them or follow them.” (Luke 17:22, 23 NKJV)

He is saying that there are going to be times where you would desperately desire a more visible, more concrete display of the reality of this kingdom. You would love to have an opportunity to point to something more tangible, but the message I’m entrusting you with will always be foolishness, a scandal, if judged by human wisdom. Because at the heart of this message there will always be a God who does not flaunt His omnipotence or endorses your religious convictions, but rather, a God who becomes vulnerable, a God who becomes man and simply … dies! At the core of this message there will always be a salvation that is not achieved through your good living, but a salvation that is hidden in death!

There will be plenty of temptation to pursue a logic that is a bit more acceptable or a sign that is a bit more convincing than the scandal of the cross. Don’t be suckered into that, says Jesus. My kingdom is more like lightning that lights up everything, the whole world, at once. (Luke 17:24) Remember, He comes like swift lightning to you. It lit up Paul’s world so much that he wrote: “Everything is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ.” … “So from now on, we do not look at anyone from a worldly viewpoint.” (2 Cor 5:18,15)

This event is first and foremost not an external event.
What no eye have seen, what no ear has heard, what has not entered the imagination of man, God has revealed through His spirit. (1 Cor 2:9) What you cannot learn through natural observation, what no man can teach you, and what your own imagination cannot fabricate … God makes known in the most intimate and overwhelming way possible – combining His spirit with yours – spirit fusion – infinitely more powerful and bright than nuclear fusion!

Which things also we speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Spirit teacheth; combining spiritual things with spiritual words. (1 Corinthians 2:13 ASV)

God’s word is first and foremost not aimed at your head … it is spirit – a wholly different dimension and substance and the way in which it is communicated is through spirit fusion.

Jesus then continues His conversation with the disciples: “But first must he suffer many things, and be rejected of this generation.” (Luke 17:25 KJV)

Its so easy to misread these sayings of Jesus as some long range eschatological predictions. But remember what was on His mind. He knew that in a short few days He would face a certain and horrific death. There are few things I can imagine that would so focus a persons mind as a death sentence. His own death and resurrection is most certainly on His mind. However, despite the significance of this event, it would be completely missed by most … people would continue to eat, drink, marry, plant, build and not realise the imminent death (if one died for all, then all have died) that stared them all in the face.

If you try to save your own life by the way you live … you’ll lose it. When you suddenly realize that it is not in the way you live, but rather your inclusion in my death, that saved you, don’t just continue in that old worthless pursued. When the Son of man come to you like lightning, as Paul experienced not to long after this event, then don’t just plod along in your old lifestyle, let Him take you wherever He wishes … into the full realization of your death and resurrection in Him.

If you still think these words simply predicted a future event, then don’t worry, the disciples themselves also interpreted these words as some future event, definitely not as the death and resurrection that would soon surprise them. And so they continued: “Then they asked Him, Where, Lord? He said to them, Wherever the dead body is,there will the vultures or eagles be gathered together. (Luke 17:37 AMP)

I like the insight in the Message Translation: Trying to take all this in, the disciples said, “Master, where?” He told them, “Watch for the circling of the vultures. They’ll spot the corpse first. The action will begin around my dead body.” (Luke 17:37 MSG)

A dead Christ is definitely not the kind of Christ they expected. Everyone thought the action stopped at His death; no one thought the action would begin around His dead body. But God always has a few surprises up His sleeve.

So much more happened in the death of Christ, than the death of one man. When we miss the significance of this event, we will soon be distracted by new themes, enticed by alternative events … all of which will leave us disappointed.

Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” (Matthew 11:2, 3 ESV)

John became disappointed in the very Jesus he once preached. The reality of his own circumstances, the contradiction of the prison and the uncertainty of his own future loomed large in John’s mind. And so he sends messengers to ask if He is the One … if now is the time, or whether they should wait for another. Many, like John the Baptist, have become disappointed in the very Christ they once preached. In the midst of contradiction and conflict, they have answered the question for themselves ” …are you the One or should we wait for another”
Their answer might be dressed up in impressive spiritual sounding words, elaborate end-time doctrines, but in summary it is nothing less than: “…Jesus’ first coming was a bit of a disappointment, we should wait for another”.

So let me state it as clearly as I can: Jesus is not just another promise, another prophesy, another dispensation all pointing to something greater or more significant. He is the fulfilment of every promise, the completion of every prophesy, the fullness of time, the beginning and the end, God’s original thought and also His final conclusion about your life.

Can you hear Jesus saying: ”I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end”? He is your origin and He is your end!

He is the end: the end of confusion, the end of guilt, the end of distance between yourself and God, the end of your searching and the end of your waiting. He is the end of your own efforts to find peace and contentment, the end of your own philosophies to find meaning, the end of your faith and the end of your hope. Any hope you ever had to attain contentment through your own efforts, is brought to a crushing end in Him. He is your Armageddon – the final battle in which God wins. He is the final judgement; He is God’s complete will and final word. No judgement to come will contradict or dishonour what God has declared in Christ, when He embraced you to Himself.

He is your beginning – both your original creator and your new beginning, your Redeemer and Saviour. He is the beginning of a whole new way to understand God and yourself (1 John 5:20). He is the beginning of a whole new faith of which He is the author and perfecter. (Heb 12:2) He is the beginning of a new hope – a hope no attached to a future date, but and expectation fully resting upon a person present within you: Christ in you the hope of glory. He is the beginning, the source of your innocence – in His own righteous person He represents your blameless innocence.

He is the beginning of a spontaneous and adventurous life, a life of discovery and exploration of the limitless dimensions of His person. This romance needs no artificial boundaries or protocols, but inspires total abandonment – we can throw ourselves into His arms in total trust and enjoyment, for He has thrown Himself into our existence, scattered Himself onto this earth, forever committed Himself to our humanity when He became a man.

So enormous is the event of Christ, that God Himself will spend all the ages to come explaining and unveiling to us the exceeding greatness of His kindness toward us in the event of Christ. (Eph 2:7)

What God communicated in the Word that became flesh in Christ Jesus, is the unveiling of how He wants His kingdom to come – a kingdom that is not enforced on anyone, but a logic, a word, that enters into the the very heart of the conflict and contradiction of human life and brings its peace there. Resurrection life is the kind of life that can even enter death and be victorious there. The only way He ever wants to bring all things into subjection to Himself, is from the inside out through willing participation, for it is God who is at work within us both to will and to do His good pleasure. (Phil 2:13)

A video concerning this subject is available here: http://youtu.be/GZFi4c-6MQk

The rest of the series is available under ‘Audio’

If God Had a Mirror by Ted [...]]]> I shared before about Ted – he is currently in prison, but has had an amazing encounter with the Lord and is sharing this message, this beautiful gospel, even there. We were so encouraged by this poem and the letter he send – here are parts of it:

If God Had a Mirror by Ted Brason

If God had a mirror
what would He see?
If He had a reflection
it would be you and me!
His image and likeness
our true face unveiled
In flesh and bone
His glory revealed

If God had a mirror
what would it be?
His son, Jesus Christ
inside you and me
One face reflected
a two-way mirror
God and man revealed
it couldn’t be clearer

If we had God’s mirror
what would we see?
Christ our reflection
our true identity!

___________________________

Dear Andre’ and Mary Anne,
Thank-you for the words of encouragement! I was thrilled to receive your letter and to hear about how the Lord used my poem to minister to those at your meeting.

… It is encouraging to know that, like Paul, these prison walls cannot confine the message God wants to speak through me. Again, thank-you for recognizing the gift(s) God has placed in me and allowing it to reach and touch others. I so desperately want to be used by God to spread His power and love to those who need it!

That being said, I also wanted to let you know just how much your books and message have impacted and changed my life. I will never forget how you translated James 1:25 in “Adventures In Christ” “Allow what you hear to awaken the poet in you; allow what you see to awaken the artist in you. Then act.”
Also in “Imagine”, you described the book as impressionistic and hoped that each reader would complete their own picture and “discover within your own imagination the ability to recognize truth and beauty’. This really struck a chord with me and has helped to awaken a creativity in me that has been dormant. I want my own life to paint a picture of the truth and beauty of God that no one else can paint. As my life paints His beauty, He can paint mine as well because He always makes beautiful paintings out of my failures.

The gospel message you present is a refreshing contrast to what is often passed off as the “gospel” by some.
Theirs is only half the picture. Theirs only tells on side of the story. Theirs ignores our inclusion and position. Theirs robs us of our true identity. Consequently, we are left powerless and unsatisfied. This is how I have felt most of my life, but your message has freed me to enter into a greater and fuller understanding of what Christ accomplished and what it truly means for me! The theme of identity resonates loud and clear with my life and what I have been through. In fact I consider my ignorance concerning my true identity to be the main factor of why I am here today. I realize now that I was a victim of “identity theft” and the enemy is the real criminal.

I have been a Christian almost my entire life, but until recently I was blind to my true identity as God’s son. … I experienced a lot of disappointment and rejection which led to a negative and unhealthy perception of who I was. I allowed my experiences and the opinions of others to determine my value and self-worth and consequently, I developed an inferior and false identity. In my search for love and acceptance, I was driven to all the wrong places and relationships which led to an even lower value and self-worth. I was stuck in an unhealthy and destructive pattern.

Even though I attended church regularly (youth group, Sunday school, mission trips) and grew up with Godly and loving parents, I never developed an accurate understanding of revelation of God’s love and adoration for me, basically because no one really told me. Sure I know it in principle but I didn’t know it personally, but that is what religion does. I had an understanding of good and bad but I didn’t know His grace and love.

My inclusion in the work of Christ and the love and adoration He felt towards me was as foreign to me as surfing is to an eskimo. How I saw myself and how Christ saw me were world’s apart.

In the aftermath of the “perfect storm” that got me here, I fell on my face before God and he began to slowly and gently heal me. Even before I had ever picked up one of your books, the Lord spoke to me and told me that I had been suffering from an identity problem and slowly but surely he began to reveal and unveil my true face, based upon His love and affection for me.
(He never reveals the problem without providing a solution). Through His love and the love of my family and close friends, I was able to pull myself out of a pit of shame, rejection and depression that had imprisoned me for so long.

Today, I am continually learning to walk in the knowledge of my acceptance, value and self-worth based upon God’s love and nothing else. He is constantly marking me with His stamp of approval and confirming my identity as His son. He is ever gently exposing and correcting my pauper ways and solidifying my position as a prince in His royal family. I refuse to allow my mistakes to define me, knowing that nothing I can take away from (or add to ) what Christ has already accomplished for me and in me. I am seeing through His eyes- NO MORE LIES!

I am excited about my life too! But I am even more excited that the true gospel of our identity and inclusion in Christ is now being spoken by you and others throughout the Body of Christ. This is a NOW word! (Also the oldest) . And I am excited to be a part! I want my story to be a testimony for others who have become victims of identity theft. The Church is full of people who are suffering from the many side effects of a false identity, yet we continue to treat the side effects without curing the disease which is our ignorance. I want the opportunity to open up and speak honestly about what I have been through without fear of judgement or condemnation. In doing so, I hope to be able to release others to confront and confess their faults and failures and find love and acceptance in Christ and in His Body. They need to know, as you reminded me, that their value is found first and foremost in the adoration the Father has toward them and that nothing can change that!

I am excited about this connection between us that God had in mind before any of us were born. …

God Bless and much love IN HIM.

Ted Brason

But we have an open window
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