One show I used to love watching was Undercover Boss. The show's premise has the owner, CEO, or high-ranking company official change their appearance and get an entry-level job in their own company to experience reality in a way impossible to experience as a leader. The hope was that people would act in an authentic way so the leader could see what was working or not working in their company.
The show goes right to the heart of human nature. People tend to put on a show for certain people. We put on our best behavior when we date, interview, or visit someone at their home. Often, we do not let our hair down and show people our real selves, warts and all, as we often appear in our day-to-day lives.
Lately, I have been studying a lot about the incarnation of Jesus. In essence, Jesus did something similar. He left His home in heaven and lived as a man. This leader took an entry-level position to live among His creation; only Jesus didn’t do it to get a real-life feel for how things were going in His world. He came already knowing this. It was because He knew all too well how bad things were that He came to earth as a man.
But when He did, He was not dressed in His full glory. Read Revelation 1 to see how John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, reacted when He saw Jesus in His full glory as He is today. No, Jesus came as a poor man born into a poor family. His birth announcement went out to shepherds instead of royalty. Gentiles were invited to celebrate His birth instead of the ruling class religious leaders. When people looked upon Him, Isaiah says,
“For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.” (Isaiah 53:2 ESV).
Yet, when Jesus walked the earth, He still walked as royalty. He still walked as God. He still walked as the Creator of all He surveyed. Through His eyes, He saw the very people He breathed life into. He touched with human hands the people He created. He heard with human ears the cries and the cruelty that we are all capable of. When He healed, He fixed His handiwork. When He forgave, He restored His precious possession.
But from our perspective, He was just one of us. He was an entry-level human with nothing to indicate His royalty, majesty, and position as the preeminent God over all things and Ruler of the universe.
He was just one of us.
And we treated Him that way.
When He spoke, we scoffed at His arrogance and claimed He blasphemed. We leveled a charge that was impossible for Him to be guilty of because of who He was. Jesus lived a perfect life among us, but He could do things we could not do without sinning. He could forgive the sins of others because He inherently had that right. If we forgave sins, we would be guilty of blasphemy because we do not have that right.
But He did.
When He healed on the Sabbath, He had the authority to correct the current teachings on what could and could not be done on the Sabbath because He was Lord of the Sabbath. When He taught people, He did so as One having authority and not as one of the scribes. When He pronounced woes against the religious leaders, He could take away their honor because honor was inherently His to bestow or remove. He did so as their Creator.
When He looked into the eyes of a crippled man, lame for 38 years, He saw the broken body He created and felt His creation’s pain. And so, as that man’s Maker, He healed Him. When He looked into the eyes of the woman caught in adultery, he saw the precious soul He created, broken by sin, and reached out to free her of that curse. He did so because, as God, He could.
When Nathaniel first met Him, Jesus simply said to him,
“Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” (John 1:48b ESV).
Whatever that was about, it caused Nathaniel to respond without hesitation,
“Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” (John 1:49n ESV).
When Jesus taught, He saw His creation whom He made to commune with for eternity. He saw what sin had done and came to right the wrong. He came to fix what was broken and heal what was sick. He allowed men to revile Him and accuse Him. Yet, nothing changed the fact that He was royalty among them.
No, He was more than that. He was God among them. He was one of a kind. There was none like Him. Men never knew whose presence they were in. If they did, even the most vile Roman oppressor would have dropped to his knees and worshipped, overcome by the glory of being in the presence of his Creator.
Though He “emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men,” that did not rob Him of who He was. He was still God, and when He looked into the eyes of His broken creation, He saw them not as people to rule over, but His special possession to heal both spiritually and physically. When He looked into the eyes of the aged woman who cast her two mites into the treasury, He saw her as His precious little daughter whom He loved.
And when He died for us, He did so as the most powerful being in the universe. He came not in power and might but in humility and poverty. He walked among us, undercover, yet He was still the Son of Man Who rode the clouds of heaven. And when His work upon His earth was done, He took His seat on the heavenly throne to reign over all He had come to fix.
And when He looks in your eyes and mine today, He still sees us as His broken, precious child whom He came to rescue. All we need to do is let Him.
I am in the book of Hosea in my daily Bible reading. If you want to see God's heart before us, spend time in this book. You will read of His love, His hurt, His anger, and His compassion.
The people of Israel lifted themselves up in pride and decided they did not need God, even though God cared for them and protected them all their existence.
Here is one verse that spoke to their arrogance against God. It is a passage we all need to keep in mind today because we can fall into the same temptation:
“but when they had grazed, they became full, they were filled, and their heart was lifted up; therefore they forgot me.” (Hosea 13:6 ESV).
God gave them food to eat and they ate until they were full. God blessed them with a bountiful feast. Yet, they did not see a need for God when they became full.
Are we tempted to be like the Israelites? God has laid a bountiful feast before us. Never has a people been so blessed by God than those who live in this land. But do we respond to His rich blessings by lifting up our hearts in misplaced pride?
Placing our hope in our possessions and riches will lead us to the same place it led the Israelites. It will cause us to forget the Lord. We forget the very one who opened the windows of heaven like He has never done before for another people.
And when we place our love, our trust, and our hope in our things we forget the One who has given these things to us out of His great generosity and goodness.
If we continue to forget the Lord when we enjoy His blessings, there remains nothing to look forward to except for God to remove His goodness and give it to another.
Will we be a people who give thanks to God for His generous hand, or will we take from His generous hand like a spoiled child without acknowledgment or thanksgiving?
Let us all give thanks to the Lord for His generous gifts and accept them with humility as we remember Him in all things.
I am in the book of Amos in my daily Bible reading. The shepherd and farmer, Amos, was sent from Judah to Israel with a message of judgment to the northern Kingdom.
Going all the way back to the judges, we see the cycle of sin, judgment, and deliverance of God's people. But that cycle had been broken by the time Amos came with his message. It wasn't broken for the good but for the bad:
“I sent among you a pestilence after the manner of Egypt; I killed your young men with the sword, and carried away your horses, and I made the stench of your camp go up into your nostrils; yet you did not return to me,” declares the LORD.” (Amos 4:10 ESV).
God recounted everything He had done to the people to get their attention, but they did not return to Him. The people had devolved to the point where they would no longer heed the warnings of the Lord.
What a sad state we find ourselves in when we stop listening to the Lord, when we no longer seek Him as we face adversity, when His name is no longer on our lips as we struggle with problems in life.
Once we no longer look to God, there remains little He will do for us. Like Israel, we must be willing to turn to Him in our time of need. If we are not, our walk away from Him marks our apostasy.
The Lord seeks to save us and to deliver us. He seeks to be our God and to rule over us in joy and love. But we must be willing to kneel before him and to submit our will to Him. We must be willing to live in allegiance to Him.
If we choose to live to ourselves rather than to God, we make ourselves an enemy of God and join ourselves with all those who stand against Almighty God.
Israel had fallen to such a sad state that they no longer responded to the Lord's chastisement. What about us?
I am in the book of Luke in my daily Bible reading. Luke, the Gospel that chronicles the life of Jesus, and Acts, the book that chronicles the church's growth after Jesus ascended into heaven, are written to someone Luke refers to as “most excellent Theophilus.”
Many people wonder who this man was. He seemed to have authority because of the title “most excellent.” Perhaps he was an influential Christian who asked for a written account of Jesus and His kingdom.
Perhaps he was an influential man whom Luke wanted to convert and so used these letters as a testimony written to help convert him.
I lean toward the idea that Theophilus was likely someone associated with Paul's imprisonment as a defense for the apostle. Perhaps Theophilus was Paul's lawyer, or maybe he acted on behalf of the prosecuting team. The book of Acts ends with Paul in prison, awaiting trial.
Whoever Theophilus was, it didn't seem important to the Spirit to record his identity for us. But He did use these letters to Theophilus to share the identity of Jesus and His kingdom.
While the curiosity surrounding the identity of Theophilus is interesting, let's not forget the lengths the Spirit went through to use these letters to establish in great detail the identity of Jesus as our King in heaven.
If these letters were written as Paul's defense, it worked. Shortly after Luke finished Acts, Paul was released from prison and continued his ministry of planting churches and preaching Jesus to the Gentiles.
It wasn't until years later that Nero executed Paul. Among others, Dr. Luke was with him during this imprisonment, just as he was during his first imprisonment when he wrote to Theophilus. Writing to the Colossians while in prison, Paul says,
“Luke the beloved physician greets you, as does Demas.” (Colossians 4:14 ESV).
Whoever Theophilus was, we are blessed to have the letters Luke wrote to him preserved for our faith in Jesus. They serve to acquit Jesus of all wrongdoing and testify to his kingship today.
I refuse to play the judgment game. God's grace and His justice are for Him alone to determine.
But I feel like I am on safe ground when I say this:
God's grace to men will be far greater than I can imagine, and His justice will be far less than any of us deserve.
I am in the book of Luke in my daily Bible reading. By now, the Jewish leaders had concluded that Jesus wasn't the promised Messiah. Better said, they didn't want to believe He was the Messiah.
In Chapter 11, rather than see the miracles Jesus performed as a testimony to His Messiahship, they claimed that He had performed miracles by the power of Beelzebul. Notice, they didn't deny the miracles, just the source of the miracles.
Jesus responds:
“But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” (Luke 11:20 ESV).
Jesus points out the obvious and forces a conclusion upon them. If these miracles were from God, then the Kingdom was here. He was the promised Messiah. That is the only conclusion they could make.
The same is true today. Jesus is either the promised Messiah or not. He either came from God or He didn't. There is only one truth.
If He came as the promised Messiah, He is now King of the universe and reigns over all. If He came as God among men, we have no options but to kneel before Him, pledge our allegiance to Him, and live.
That is the only option. Jesus cuts away all other options. Either He is the promised Messiah, the Son of God, the Son of Man who rides the clouds of heaven, or He is not.
The same options and conclusions He forced upon the Jewish leaders in Luke 11 are those He forces upon us today. We can choose to reject Jesus as most did in Luke 11, or we can choose to submit to His rule.
But the reality of Jesus does not depend on our choices. He is who He is, regardless of our choices. But whatever our choice, we must be willing to suffer the consequences of our choice.
If He is the Son of God, King of kings, we will answer for our rejection of Him if we do not choose to give our allegiance to Him today.
What will we do with this simple yet profound truth of Jesus,
“But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” (Luke 11:20 ESV).
I am praying for Israel today. Not as much for the war they are in, though I do want all to live in peace.
I am praying that they accept their Messiah Who came 2000 years ago to save them from their sins.
No military foe will compare to kneeling before the rejected Messiah on the Day of Judgment.
“Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.” (Romans 10:1 ESV).