After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, …
Matthew 2:1a
We can often discern when the Lord is moving in our lives, and we can discern how He intends to move by paying strict attention to the strange arrangements that He configures around us.
God intends to challenge all competing presences in our lives. God doesn’t intend to skirt around His unapologetic want for total supremacy in our lives. We never have to guess God’s motives. God wants lordship.
Nothing else gets to compete over lordship for our lives because no other connection in our lives has paid the same sacrifice that God has. We acknowledge that we love our life, but we belong to the Lord. We were bought with a price. Therefore, it is expected that we glorify God.
This is why we do not allow those who know the mess of our yesterdays to talk us out of chasing the brightness of our tomorrow. Between the mess of our yesterdays and the brightness of our tomorrow is the grace of our God. God’s grace has already paid the price for our sins. Thus, He now gets to make decisions about our eternal destination, which is going to be, as Paul said, “… in a house not made by hands, eternal in the heavens.”
God has a right to make decisions about our daily path because He is the one who feeds us our daily bread. He makes decisions about our path because He has ordered our steps according to His Word. Matthew comes along and adds this advent narrative to teach us how to discern when God is making these kinds of decisions in our lives.
We need to understand this because we don’t want to miss what God has created for our lives because we don’t pray, worship, or meditate on His presence or His word.
Here Matthew shows one of the ways that God shapes decisions for us. God gives confirmation by showing us how He works in a particular place: “Jesus, Born in Bethlehem of Judea.”
This is important because it is in Bethlehem: where Jacob was buried, where Rachael’s remains rest, where Ruth found her Boaz, and where David was born and raised. Today, we add that Bethlehem is where we Christians can say that Jesus was born.
When God is growing us and shaping us, we must learn to pay attention to how God is moving. When normalcy is stirred by a move of God in our lives, we must pay attention because whenever God is moving differently at any time throughout our journey, our journey becomes pregnant with possibility.
When what we think or feel about the place we are in suddenly changes, God is giving us a sign that He is about to birth something in us.
My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry
James 1:19 (NIV)
James focuses on the how, not the why of our trials in the verse above. God allows us to experience trials, because he is proving our faith. He is addressing our defects and doesn’t want us to lack anything. So, we can’t get angry about what is happening to us or about what others are saying to, around, or in spite of us. Whatever they are saying is much more spiritual than they understand.
Out of reverence for God, we should listen to Him and let His Word shape our speech, so that our speech can reflect our faith. God is doing more to shape and perfect us with difficult exchanges with others than we realize.
This is the how.
The why is because God wants to prove our faith, but to prove our faith, we need to be a good steward of our words. If we don’t want to experience the same trials over and over again, James makes it clear that we should let our ears lead us, our mouth follow, and let anger straggle along (James 1:19 MSG). That way, when we are faced with someone who is using reckless words, we can learn to see this as God’s work in our life and a maturing of our faith.
When James wrote this, James was standing in a world of infant Christianity. Words caused Christians to be locked up, killed, and publicly beaten. Violent rhetoric was inciting violent and senseless killings. Words were making family members enemies. Instead of people listening to what God was saying, they were acting on their own words and letting anger lead them.
Today, we often let anger take us to a place that we regret once our anger has subsided. But James reminds us that Jesus wants us to respond differently. We follow Christ, and He helps us to control our emotions. By the Grace of God and the work of the Spirit, we can be transformed until we can bring our emotions in check and line up our emotions with God’s Word and will.
If the Holy Spirit leads and emotions follow, we can make decisions that will expand the Kingdom of God.
When he finished that talk, a Pharisee asked him to dinner. He entered his house and sat right down at the table. The Pharisee was shocked and somewhat offended when he saw that Jesus didn’t wash up before the meal. But the Master said to him, “I know you Pharisees burnish the surface of your cups and plates so they sparkle in the sun, but I also know your insides are maggoty with greed and secret evil. Stupid Pharisees! Didn’t the One who made the outside also make the inside? Turn both your pockets and your hearts inside out and give generously to the poor; then your lives will be clean, not just your dishes and your hands.
Luke 11:37-41 (MSG)
The Pharisee, as soon as Jesus is at his house, begins a malicious inspection, trying to find something that can justify killing Jesus, and the Pharisee found his opportunity when Jesus did not ceremonially wash his hands before the meal.
This hand washing, a man-made rule by the Pharisees, served to help the Pharisees separate themselves from the common person. The Pharisees had developed detailed rules and regulations, concerning everything from the exact amount of water to be used, what vessels the water would be poured from, how they were to pour the water from the vessels, and more. However, they were not commanded by Levitical law to follow such practices.
The Pharisee noticed that Jesus did not wash His hands, and while the Pharisee did not express anything verbally, Jesus sees his heart. This explains why Jesus accepted the invitation in the first place. It was not because He thought that the Pharisee wanted to make a conversion. Jesus knew that it was an invitation to be on display. Jesus wanted to be there to say more about how twisted the Pharisees were.
In a moment of spiritual clairvoyance, Jesus speaks to the heart of the Pharisee. Here, Jesus puts emphasis on the inside of our spiritual lives. Following Jesus is not for the shaping of our outside devotion to God. Following Jesus is for washing and cleansing the inside of our hearts.
Spirituality is not about having a sparkling and perfect outside. Spirituality is about making sure that the inner content of our lives is clean and purified by a devoted engagement with the one who can transform our minds. Just as Jesus later taught, “It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man. Matthew 15:11 (NASB).” Jesus is clearly focusing on the value of inside, spiritual transformation.
We see this because everyone around us is forced to live an exterior-focused life; meanwhile, they are being eaten by the maggots in their hearts. We all know the temptation of focusing on the external, while we neglect what is important on the inside. However, Jesus teaches us that power doesn’t come from the outside.
We can’t find meaning, happiness, or fulfillment from the outside. They are the result of a heart and will that has been conditioned by a relationship with Jesus Christ. We can have a strong soul when we have strong devotion to the God of our salvation.
Whatever you want to do, whatever you want to be, whatever you want to experience, you will only find true meaning if you are cleaned inside by the life-changing work of Jesus Christ, which means we have to make our spiritual life an inside project.
Afterward Jesus appeared again to his disciples, by the Sea of Galilee. It happened this way: Simon Peter, Thomas (also known as Didymus), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples were together. “I’m going out to fish,” Simon Peter told them, and they said, “We’ll go with you.” So they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.
Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus.
He called out to them, “Friends, haven’t you any fish?”
“No,” they answered.
He said, “Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.” When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish.
Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” As soon as Simon Peter heard him say, “It is the Lord,” he wrapped his outer garment around him (for he had taken it off) and jumped into the water. The other disciples followed in the boat, towing the net full of fish, for they were not far from shore, about a hundred yards. When they landed, they saw a fire of burning coals there with fish on it, and some bread.
Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish you have just caught.” So Simon Peter climbed back into the boat and dragged the net ashore. It was full of large fish, 153, but even with so many the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” None of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord. Jesus came, took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. This was now the third time Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead.
John 21:1-14
After three years of walking and talking with Jesus and witnessing His miracles, how do the disciples not recognize Him? It’s not until He performs a miracle that the disciples understand who He is. However, the disciples would have never known that it was Jesus unless they had done what He had asked.
Over the course of their journey with Christ, the disciples developed a habit of obedience that keeps them positioned to receive divine revelation. In order for us to stay in position for God to maximize our lives, we can’t just be obedient one time.
Just like the disciples, we need to learn to regularly practice obedience. This is because some of what God provides for us will not be immediate. Just like Peter had to go out of his way to cast his nets on the other side of the boat, we might also have to go out of our way in obedience to receive what God has for us.
Even in his confusion, Peter chose to obey. Like Peter, we need to stay with it. When we know what is right, we need to keep on nurturing it, and we need to stay anchored in radical obedience.
When we stay in radical obedience, we gain the reward of eating with Christ. We receive His care and love for us and His provision. Jesus appeared to the disciples to lift them out of their disappointment and to provide them unspeakable joy, which was so great that Peter couldn’t wait for the boat to get to shore.
Jesus doesn’t criticize, judge, or correct the disciples for not recognizing Him. Instead, He accepts the disciples and cooks and provides a meal. Jesus is so invested in your spiritual life, that He takes time to catch some fish for you, grill it, and eat with you.
Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.
Revelation 3:20 NIV
The thought of Jesus waiting at the door of our hearts, knocking and waiting to be let in, is spiritually breathtaking. The Lord and our Creator loves us so much that He approaches our closed space and instead of barging in, respects us enough to knock and waits at the door of our hearts.
This is all the strength of the Gospel brought to the doorstep of every human heart. Jesus doesn’t wait for us to seek and search for Him, and despite living lukewarm lives, Jesus comes knocking.
Jesus is never far off. He is always close enough that if you are listening and looking, you can hear and see that He is at your door. Even if you hesitate, Jesus is willing to knock again and again, waiting for you to open the door.
While one part of this verse is the stunning extension of grace and love, there is also the image of Jesus as a wandering seeker who only wants to be let in, even if it is to a half, cold-hearted life. If the door is open, He will come in, sit, and sup with us.
Jesus’ desire is to dine with us. He doesn’t come in to judge or correct or condemn us. He comes in to eat with us. However, it may be that the door to our hearts are locked from the inside, because we have set no table for Grace to stop by unannounced. It is one thing to get your house in order when Jesus tells you that He’s coming. It is another to always be prepared for His knock at the door of our hearts.
We must be ready to set a table in our hearts.
The door to our hearts does not have a lock or latch from the outside, but only from the inside. We are the ones who open the doors to our hearts. So, to be prepared to unlock the door for Christ, we must be faithful in our prayers, disciplines, and what we allow to occupy our time and our minds. These things reflect our truest intentions.
Faith helps us to respond to Jesus’ knock and voice by grabbing our intentions from the inside and deciding what we let pass through the door to our hearts. Faith opens the door to Jesus because what He brings always adds meaning and power to our lives.
If you struggle to open the door to Christ, ask yourself these questions:
What in this season has been your posture from the inside when you hear the knock of Jesus at the door of your heart?
How have you handled the unannounced knock at your door?
When he knocks, what has been your resistance?
Is it that you don’t really want to have a different perspective?
Are you afraid that when the Lord makes His way through that door that He will change you?
