WE, THE WICKED

Then Jesus said, “Assuredly, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own country.”    

This quote appears in all 4 gospels.  The context indicates that Jesus said this on the way to visit His hometown  (John 4:44) , during worship while visiting His hometown (Luke 4: 24), and each time He went back to His hometown to visit (Matthew 13: 57; Mark 6: 4).

It’s like Jesus was sighing. 

In Luke 4, after coming off a powerful 2 day revival in Samaria, and a successful preaching tour of Galilean villages, Jesus circled round to Nazareth.  He went to worship in the church where He’d grown up.  He even taught the morning Bible lesson.  To His cousins, His classmates, His brothers-in-law, His old playmates, His old teachers.  Not just generically or spiritually His people, but HIS PEOPLE.   He loved them, so He had to tell them.

He knew how they’d respond, but He had to tell them the truth.

“But I tell you truly…” (Luke 4: 25-27)

The truth is that sometimes God punishes the people in the right country with the correct religion who voted for the most patriotic candidates because you’re just as full of sin and corruption and hypocrisy as the heathens and the Jezebels.

The truth is that God loves you all, but sometimes the person in the room that God likes most is the single mother with the lowest socio-economic status and the wrong ethnic background.

The truth is that the lifelong skeptic/ heretic/ infidel who humbles himself and obeys the word of the Lord will experience the miraculous power of the Holy Spirit before you do.

The truth is that you are pissed off now.  Sigh. 

So all those in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath, and rose up and thrust Him out of the city; and they led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, that they might throw Him down over the cliff. (Luke 4: 28, 29)

You don’t have to throw me under the bus or off the cliff.  I already know.  It’s always like this when you tell the truth at home.

When the prophets speak of God’s favor on the righteous and His wrath against the wicked, we shout, “Amen,” because we think we're  the righteous and those people are wicked.   Sigh.

But God seldom sent His prophets to speak to the righteous.  He sent the prophets to warn the wicked.

Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; therefore hear a word from My mouth, and give them warning from Me. (Ezekiel 3: 17)

It makes us so mad, so form-a-mob-and-throw-him-off-the-cliff mad to hear  that maybe, maybe WE are the wicked.

WE ARE the wicked.

You know this one well, don’t you?   2 Chronicles 7: 14  if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

But go back to the verse before.

When I shut up heaven and there is no rain, or command the locusts to devour the land, or send pestilence among My people (2 Chronicles 7: 13)

“When,” not “If.”   God PROMISED to punish the land because of what His people did.  Not because of what the heathens did.  Not because of what the unbelievers did. 

WE ARE the wicked.

Ever heard a televangelist declare coming judgment for greed?  Or vanity?  Or self-promotion?  Or falsely prophesying the date for judgment so you could raise a million dollars but not sending anyone’s money back when the world didn’t end as predicted?  Stop listening to them telling you that judgment is coming for all the sins they don’t commit.

Stop trying to humble the Muslims, the Wiccans, the Atheists, the Republicans, the Democrats, the not-us.  We have to humble OURSELVES.

Stop seeking a preferred place in power, in history, and  in money.  Seek God’s face.  Cause He wouldn’t have told us we need to if that’s what we’d been doing.

The biggest problem isn’t THEIR ways of being wicked.  The problem is that we haven’t turned from OUR WICKED WAYS. 

Try this. Grab a piece of paper and write down the top 3 sins in America,  the 3 moral issues that are destroying the nation.  Done?  Now list the 3 sins you personally commit most often.  

Which list do you spend more energy protesting against, voting against, and condemning on social media?

(Oh, and if you listed as one of your sins, "I don't stand up for what's right," you aren't paying attention.  That's just another way of saying "I don't focus on other people's wrong instead of mine.")

I know. YOUR sins aren't that bad.  The problem with this country is what everybody else does wrong.

Sigh.

In 2 Chronicles 7: 15, 16, the Lord promised that His house would always have a special place in His heart and whenever WE who come to the house of the Lord and call ourselves by His name decide to pray the way He told us to, “My eyes will be open and My ears attentive to prayer made in this place.”

The prayers of the righteous church can avail much, but first there must be the prayers of the present church that humbles itself and confesses OUR wickedness.

But you hate me calling you “wicked.”  I really need to check myself on that.    I know.  You’re right.  Sigh.

In John/ Luke, Jesus hometown folks tried to throw Him off a cliff because He told them the truth about themselves. In Matthew/ Mark, Jesus went to the same people and told them the same truth knowing they’d get mad at Him all over again.

How well do you know me?  Maybe too well.  Maybe so well that you know I’m not perfect, so why should you listen to me.  Maybe you know me so well that you can’t get past who I am (or am not) to see the truth that I’m speaking.  You probably can’t help it.  You can’t stop knowing me, and I can’t stop loving  you, so I have to tell you the truth. 

If I’ve offended you---- it won’t be the last time.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves 

#Awordtothewise

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

IMPOSSIBLE FAMILY

The more you love people the more it hurts when they hurt you.  That’s why the pain of family betrayal is so nearly impossible to get over.

Now think about what family did to Mary, Joseph, and Jesus .

When Mary became pregnant with Jesus, she had done nothing wrong.  She hadn’t violated the law or dishonored her parents’ teachings.  But they thought she had.  If Joseph hadn’t intervened the men of the village, including Mary’s own father, would have publicly stoned her.  In fact, Mary’s father would have been expected to cast the first stone in his daughter’s execution.

Imagine how you would feel if you knew that your own father had been seriously contemplated bashing your head in with rocks while you were pregnant.   That’s the thought Mary carried with her to Bethlehem.

After Joseph agreed to take Mary as his wife,  they were still ostracized.  Mary couldn’t stay with the other women, so she walked from Galilee to Bethlehem with her new husband.

In Bethlehem their entire extended family turned on them.  They were alone, in the dark, in the cold. When Mary went into labor none of the women in Bethlehem came to her aid.  Not one auntie.  Not one cousin.  None of them.

They went back to Nazareth but soon returned to Bethlehem, probably because no one back home would hire Joseph. 

Imagine that.  You’re a new husband.  A new father/ stepfather.  You’re an honorable man who has done nothing but honor your vows to God and to your fiancé, but you can’t get a job.  Not because of the economy or the market, but because your own people, the folks you grew up with, won’t hire you.

After all those years, all the things you’d done for so many people in your family (cause a man who’d stick with Mary is a man whom everyone in the family would call for help) this is how they treat you.

At every turn, it was strangers---- shepherds, Eastern magi, and Egyptians---- who had encouraged and supported them.   Family had given them nothing but pain.   Years later, when the family returned from Egypt, Joseph didn’t want to go home to Nazareth.  He wanted to return to Bethlehem.

But when Joseph heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea instead of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And being warned by God in a dream, he turned aside into the region of Galilee. And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth (Matthew 2: 22-23)

Too much wrong had been done by these folks in Nazareth.  Too many so-called loved ones had turned their backs in their moments of greatest need.    After years--- YEARS--- the family was too broken to heal.

But with God, nothing is impossible.

In Luke chapter 2, when Jesus was 12 years old, he, Mary and Joseph had established a family tradition of traveling to Jerusalem for Passover.    

His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover. (Luke 2:41)

But Mary, Joseph, and Jesus weren’t alone.  They made the yearly road trip in a caravan full of family and friends from Nazareth and the surrounding area.

By the time Jesus was 12, the extended family were all so close that Mary and Joseph thought nothing of Jesus spending the entire day off playing with friends and cousins.

Supposing Him [Jesus] to have been in the company, they went a day’s journey, and sought Him among their relatives and acquaintances. (Luke 2:44)

In the few years since their return to Nazareth after the death of Herod something impossible had happened.

A broken family had been healed.

What happened? 

Jesus happened.

In Nazareth, “the Child grew and became strong in spirit, filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him.” (Luke 2:40)

The entire family loved Jesus, so they stopped looking sideways at Mary and Joseph.  No one really believed their story about not having sex until after Jesus was born, but they loved Jesus so much that they let it go.  The Nazareth family didn’t necessarily accept Joseph’s theology of the Messiah, but they loved the boy anyway.

1 John 4 teaches that genuine love for God will manifest as genuine love for each other.

If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?

And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also. (1 John 4:20, 21)

We might not agree on doctrine.  We might still think you were wrong for what happened back in the day.  But if we can all just love Jesus, then He will heal the hurt between us.

I know.  I know.  After everything they did and everything you did, reconciliation is impossible.  That’s O.K.

It was impossible for Joseph, Mary, and Jesus to reconcile with their family in Nazareth. 

But it’s Christmas, and with God nothing is impossible.

Merry CHRISTmas.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

BASIC JESUS: Blogging the Articles of Religion, Article #2

Article II - Of the Word, or Son of God, Who Was Made Very Man

The Son, who is the Word of the Father, the very and eternal God, of one substance with the Father, took man's nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin; so that two whole and perfect natures, that is to say, the Godhead and Manhood, were joined together in one person, never to be divided; whereof is one Christ, very God and very Man, who truly suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried, to reconcile his Father to us, and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but also for actual sins of men.

Sometime around the end of B.C. or the beginning of A.D.  Jesus was born in Bethlehem. That was when Jesus was born. 

That wasn’t when Jesus BEGAN.

Cause He has always existed.  Jesus was, is, and had always been the 2^nd person of the Trinity, better known as the Word of God. 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.  (John 1: 1-3)

In Bethlehem, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1: 14)

In the conception and birth of Jesus (known as the Incarnation), God used the virgin Mary’s genetic material to create for Himself a physical human body.  This was a unique event, but not entirely unprecedented.

And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place.  Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man. (Genesis 2: 21, 22)

See what God did there? 

God reached into a part of Adam’s body, and without the contribution of a 2^nd parent, God  used Adam’s genetic material to form a different physical body for another unique human person.  She was named Eve.

And that’s what God did for Himself.  The Nativity story (Christmas) is about how God reached into Mary’s body, and without the contribution of a 2^nd parent, used Mary’s genetic material to form a unique human body.  He was named Jesus.

And BORN into the world, the eternal Word is the Son of God.

God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds …

For to which of the angels did He ever say: “You are My Son, Today I have begotten You”?

And again: “I will be to Him a Father, And He shall be to Me a Son”? (Hebrews 1: 1, 2, 5)

Into Eve’s body, God breathed the breath of life just as He’d done for Adam.  That breath created a unique living soul  and mind that were one with the physical body.

Into the rapidly dividing fetal cells in Mary’s womb, God breathed HIMSELF.  The Word joined to that flesh and became one with the body.

“The Word became flesh.”

That’s why even when Mary was in her 1^st trimester, the prenatal Jesus’ Divine nature was apparent to those who were spiritually sensitive enough.

And it happened, when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, that the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.  Then she spoke out with a loud voice and said, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! (Luke 1: 41-42)

The New Testament Incarnation of God in the flesh was unique, but it wasn’t unprecedented.

In Genesis 18, “the Lord appeared to Abraham by the terebinth trees of Mamre, as he was sitting in the tent door in the heat of the day” (Genesis 18: 1). 

God appeared as  one of three men (Genesis 18: 2, 3).  The other two were angels accompanying Him (Genesis 19: 1.

When God and the angels appeared, Abraham fell all over himself trying to be a good host.  Abraham said, “Please let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree” (Genesis 18: 4).

You see?  This wasn’t just a VISION of the Lord.  This was God Himself inside real flesh and blood.  He walked.  His feet got dirty.  He looked like He could use a drink of water.   

God and His angels reciprocated Abraham’s hospitality by actually, literally, PHYSICALLY eating Sarah’s cooking. 

Abraham took butter and milk and the calf which he had prepared, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree as they ate (Genesis 18: 8).

Millennia before the birth of Jesus, God demonstrated that He is capable and willing to create a physical body for Himself and walk around in it, interacting with people and the world.

So, we can’t argue ---- from a Biblical perspective---- that God would NEVER accept the limitations of a literal, physical form as the New Testament says He did.

We can’t say that, because the Old Testament shows that God had done it before.

Only in the New Testament, God chose (cause God can do whatever He wants) to construct that body in Mary’s womb from Mary’s genetic material, and instead of just taking that form for a few hours, the Word of the Trinity inhabited that body for 33 or so years and then resurrected it --- forever.

For more than 3 decades, God lived as one of us.

While the Word “dwelt among us,” God was still God, present everywhere, knowing everything, never diminished, never divided.

Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:5-8)

Jesus, the Christ, the Word made flesh, the Son of God---- was gestated and birthed.  He lived and grew.  He experienced all of the reality of human life, good and bad, just like every human before and since.  But He did it with perfection.

Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.  For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4: 14, 15)

God was a better man than man had ever been.  Which was why Jesus, the God-Man, died on the cross.

God had set up a simple system.  In Genesis, He created Adam and Eve into a perfect world: no sickness, no sin.  And as long as humanity stayed out of sin, death stayed out of humanity.

The sting of death is sin (1 Corinthians 15: 56)

Of course we screwed that up, which created a genetically transmitted debt for all and each of humanity.

For the wages of sin is death (Romans 6: 23)

This is what we call “Original Sin.”

Notice that death is the WAGE of sin, not the fine or penalty.  The 100% fatality rate among human beings is not so much the judgment for each person’s sin as it is our well-earned compensation.  It’s a flat rate pay system.  No matter when you enter the market, how long you stay, how well or badly your colleagues scale your performance as a sinner, you get what we all get: death.

Think about the parable of the laborers in Matthew 20.

So we all get to die, and then our lives are judged in the penalty phase of eternal judgment.

And as it is appointed for men to die once, but AFTER this the judgment  (Hebrews 9: 27)

In the Old Testament law, God codified a system by which sacrificial death could atone for sin. The problem is my own physical death is an insufficient sacrifice to pay off my sin account. 

For my sins to be cleared, something or someone must die FOR me. 

But what or Who has enough life in them that their death could cover the wages of their sin AND satisfy the penalty phase of mine.

Look at it geometrically.

A human life is a line segment.  

Our mortal lives have a distinct beginning and a distinct end.

The life or an angel or other spiritual creature would be graphed as a ray.

A definite beginning (because they are created) but no definite end (because they are immortal).

God has neither end nor beginning.  God began the beginning and ends the end.   Like a line.

More accurately, God is infinite, transcending even the concepts of beginning and end.

∞

Get it?

No other normal human being can die for MY sins.  A human life is too short, too limited to cover somebody else.   

Each person’s death is covered under the wages of their own sin.  And even if someone else’s death-wages were applied to me, it would first have to go toward their own sin, and would still be insufficient for the debt.

Let’s say that God let a holy, sinless angel die in my place. After all, the life of an angel can extend indefinitely.  Surely that would be enough to cover me.  Perhaps, but angels are created beings, confined to time as well.  The angel would only be able to die for one person at a time.  Which means that a separate angel would have to die for each person, or the same angel would have to be crucified over and over and over each time some new human was born or died or sinned.

The sacrificial system of a life for each sin or sinful life is fair but untenable.

For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect. ^For then would they not have ceased to be offered? For the worshipers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins. ^But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. ^For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins. (Hebrews 10: 1-4)

So, to bring salvation from sin to EVERYBODY; living, dead, not yet born, present at the sacrifice, somewhere else when the sacrifice was made---- everybody, then the sacrificial offering would have to be perfect and transcendent.    The sacrifice must have life that extends to all places and all times at the same time.  In other words, the sacrifice had to be omnipresent. 

The sacrifice has to be of the same sinful genetic flesh common to all humans but without any sins of His own.

The sacrifice had to be perfect, eternal, and infinite.

∞

Such a sacrifice would have to be man and God at the same time. 

The only possible sacrifice for the sins of the world had to be Jesus.

^And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment, ^so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation.  (Hebrews 9: 27, 28;)

^And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. ^But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, ^from that time waiting till His enemies are made His footstool. ^For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.  (Hebrews 10: 11-14)

And that is why Jesus died, literally, physically died on a Roman cross during a Jewish festival.

Salvation is not a figure of speech.  It is a literal reality.  Jesus’ death was not a spiritual passing away, a figurative faint, or a Divine sleight of hand.  Jesus’ heart stopped beating, his brain activity went to zero, his respiration ceased.  He biologically DIED, just like every other human has or will.

Jesus’ death was not a myth, a publicity stunt, or a mistranslation.  At least you and I should hope it wasn’t because if Jesus did not die in the way prophesied in the Old Testament and recorded in the New, then we are all eternally screwed.

Without the death and resurrection of Jesus, we are all stranded in sin without a sacrifice sufficient to pay the sin debt we owe after our sin wages are collected.

Fortunately, the Bible is true.

For unto us a Child is born; unto us a Son is given.  And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9: 6)

The Bible is so deep that it can blow your mind, but it’s also mind-blowingly true.

And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness:

God was manifested in the flesh,

Justified in the Spirit,

Seen by angels,

Preached among the Gentiles,

Believed on in the world,

Received up in glory. (1 Timothy 3: 16)

That’s deep. That’s wonderful.  That’s Jesus.

And these are just the fundamentals.

---Rev. Anderson T. Graves II   (email:  atgravestwo2@aol.com )

Anderson T. Graves II is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church (5220 Myron Massey Boulevard) in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my blog at www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com  

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves