Resurrection 10 On the Move

[HKHaugan]

Resurrection 10 On the Move

One of my vacation jobs while I was in college was being a lifeguard in New England. A man, who owned a unique country lake beach with rental boats, canoes, a skating rink, a restaurant and game arcade, would come to Gainesville, Florida in the Winter and hire students to work for him in the Summer. I actually did both cooking and lifeguarding. He was always on the move from the boats and beach to the rink and restaurant. Night and day he would check each of his facilities to see that they were running properly. His motion kept us in motion. We commented on his constant presence wondering if he ever slept. In the Winter he would be on the lake cutting ice slabs for Summer use, keeping up his maintenance crew and including a month at his wife's hometown in South Florida. Even there, according to his wife, he was in motion. He had an inner drive, a passion, for his business.

Man in Motion
Jesus was a man in motion, always on the move. It was a distinguishing factor of His inner drive. All four Gospels indicate this was the way He lived. Indicating that foxes and birds have places to stay but not Him. He wanted to make clear that He was on a mission (Mt.8:20). Jesus had a passion for doing His Father's will teaching His disciples to follow His will just as He followed the will of His Father while He was on the move. He kept the disciples on their toes. He is teaching us to pray that His will be central for us as well (Mt.6:10). So a Resurrection people are always on the move.

Real Time
But it's important to see that Jesus wasn't led by clock time. For Jesus and now for us, time is spiritual. It's measured by every next relational event. It was never about having enough clock time to do what He wanted. He wasn't driven by a calendar or schedule. It was about being aware that every next moment, encounter and occasion presented an opportunity to do His Father's will. It was always 'time' to do God's will. Every next moment was 'God's-will time.' If you look at the way Jesus moved around it wasn't by a 24 hour day and night (Ps.139:12). A Resurrection people are always 'God's-will' conscious.

Real Work
His work was spiritual, personal and relational. That's how Jesus measured what real work was all about. Of course physical labor was governed by physical nights and days because that's how human beings adapt to their environment. However labor was how Jesus supported His work. Paul too. Jesus the carpenter and Paul the tentmaker. But Jesus gave them a spiritual meaning to show everything is ultimately understood in a spiritual context. Jesus said, “As long as it is day [light of Christ], we must do the work of Him who sent me (doing the Father's will). Night [sin's night is death] is coming, when no one can work (Jn.9:4).” People came to Jesus in the night and day, away from the spiritual night of sin to the spiritual day in Christ's light. Already he who reaps is receiving wages and is gathering fruit for life eternal; so that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together.…(Jn.4:36).” Resurrection people are always 'Spirit-work' conscious.

Real Way
It follows therefore that Jesus consciously made Himself available. But the way He made Himself available was choosing a small group to follow Him, pray with Him, share with Him, move around with Him and be sent off by Him to practice His teaching. All of this was done while He was on the way. They talk, pray, eat and share their experience together. Together or individually they step out in testimony and witness by listening, assessing and then responding as the Spirit leads. Wherever and with whomever, Resurrection people make themselves available.

Real Destination
There is no question that in order to complete His Father's work it would take the Cross. But it is the Cross that defines Jesus' final destination, people's hearts. If the heart is settled, the mind and the spirit follow. Jesus quotes Isaiah's prophetic assessment (Mk.7:6) when He says that people honor God with their lips “...their hearts are far from me (29:13).” He longs to reach men's hearts because it is out of them that all the evil comes (Mk.7:20-23). What happens in each of us is that we use the mind to justify our behavior and our spirit to act it out. It is the heart where sin infects the attitudes we use to present ourselves to the world around us. Attitude is how we want to be seen. Attitude reflects what is in the heart, what it trusts in to be known and what the spirit in us uses for to motivation. In that Matt.8:20 quote Jesus says that Son of Man has no place to lay His head in this world. Is He not saying that every person's heart is His final goal? It takes the Cross to get to the heart and it takes us taking up our cross of faith to look forward to every next relational moment to serve Him. Our destination then is what our cross brings us to.

Real Truth
Jesus makes an authoritative statement about Scripture when He prays for all believers and those yet to come, “Father, sanctify them by the truth, your Word is truth (Jn.17:17).” For Jesus and the Apostles, what we call the Old Testament was the only Scripture they had. Jesus brought life to it and the New Testament is the witness to how He did it. Both Testaments, through Jesus, work together to be the sole source enabling us to enter spiritual reality. The Old presents the problem. The New, its solution. Together they define reality, ultimate reality, spiritual reality.

So, when the final shoe falls, when the door shuts on the world and Jesus returns, Scripture is the final judge of everything (Jn.12:48). It measures character, attitude, relational behavior, choice and decision. But, most importantly, it is, for believers in Jesus, the instrument through which the Holy Spirit shapes us from within. He is the Spirit of Truth that makes us come alive by its principles (Jn.14:16). It shows Jesus has saved each of us by by His Cross and Resurrection. He provides Himself, through faith, to live in our heart, mind and spirit by the Holy Spirit. He brings His grace, truth and love for our spiritual rebirth, from image of God to child of God (Jn.1:12). Salvation is the ongoing process of being re-Spirited moment by moment as we embrace the Word. All of us are maturing. That's what a Resurrection people know as part of the humbling repentance that grows us to be more like Him.

Jesus is the real deal, the real truth, Scripture in the raw, Truth alive (Jn.14:6). Following is a list of Old Testament Scriptures Jesus quoted. It is necessary to see in each the way Jesus uses them to emphasize His spiritual intent in being personal and relational as opposed to being religious and institutional. He was fulfilling the Law not doing away with it.

1 Luke 4:4 Matthew 4:4 Deuteronomy 8:3
2 Luke 4:12 Matthew 4:7 Deuteronomy 6:16
3 Luke 4:8 Matthew 4:10 Deuteronomy 6:13
4 Matthew 5:21 Exodus 20:13 Deuteronomy 5:17
5 Matthew 5:27 Exodus 20:14 Deuteronomy 5:18
6 Matthew 5:31 Deuteronomy 24:1
7 Matthew 5:33 Leviticus 19:12 Numbers 30:2 Deuteronomy 23:21
8 Matthew 5:38 Exodus 21:24 Leviticus 24:20 Deuteronomy 19:21
9 Matthew 5:43 Leviticus 19:18
10 Matthew 7:23 Psalm 6:8
11 Matthew 9:13 Hosea 6:6
12 Luke 12:53 Matthew 10:35–36 Micah 7:6
13 Luke 7:27 Matthew 11:10 Malachi 3:1
14 Matthew 12:7 Hosea 6:6
15 Luke 8:10 Mark 4:12 Matthew 13:14–15 Isaiah 6:9–10
16 Mark 7:10 Matthew 15:4 Exodus 20:12 Deuteronomy 5:16 Exodus 21:17 Leviticus 20:9
17 Mark 7:6–7 Matthew 15:8–9 Isaiah 29:13
18 Matthew 18:16 Deuteronomy 19:15
19 Mark 10:6 Matthew 19:4 Genesis 1:27 Genesis 5:2
20 Mark 10:7–8 Matthew 19:5 Genesis 2:24
21 Luke 18:20 Mark 10:19 Matthew 19:18–19 Exodus 20:12–16 Deuteronomy 5:16–20 Leviticus 19:18
22 Luke 19:46 Mark 11:17 Matthew 21:13 Isaiah 56:7 Jeremiah 7:11
23 Matthew 21:16 Psalm 8:3
24 Luke 20:17 Mark 12:10–11 Matthew 21:42 Psalm 118:22–23
25 Luke 20:37 Mark 12:26 Matthew 22:32 Exodus 3:6 Exodus 3:15–16
26 Matthew 22:37 Deuteronomy 6:5
27 Mark 12:31 Matthew 22:39 Leviticus 19:18
28 Luke 20:42–43 Mark 12:36 Matthew 22:44 Psalm 110:1
29 Luke 13:35 Matthew 23:39 Psalm 118:26
30 Mark 13:14 Matthew 24:15 Daniel 9:27
31 Mark 14:27 Matthew 26:31 Zechariah 13:7
32 Mark 14:62 Matthew 26:64 Psalm 110:1 Daniel 7:13
33 Mark 15:34 Matthew 27:46 Psalm 22:1
34 Mark 8:18 Jeremiah 5:21 Ezekiel 12:2
35 Mark 9:46 Mark 9:44 Isaiah 66:24
36 Mark 9:49 Leviticus 2:16 Ezekiel 43:24
37 Mark 12:30 Deuteronomy 6:4–5 Joshua 22:5
38 Luke 4:18–19 Isaiah 61:1–2
39 Luke 22:37 Isaiah 53:12
40 Luke 23:30 Hosea 10:8
41 Luke 23:46 Psalm 31:5
42 John 6:45 Isaiah 54:13
43 John 10:34 Psalm 82:6
44 John 13:18 Psalm 41:9
45 John 15:25 Psalm 69:4

No more obvious picture of the spiritual fulfillment of Scripture can be painted than the one Jesus did when He forgave the adulterous woman (Jn.8:1-11). The Law was clear when it said she should be stoned to death (Lev.20:10, Deut.22:22). What Jesus did was to expose the spiritual reality of what was taking place here.

The first thing we need to see is the spiritual motivation of the Pharisees who brought her to Jesus. There was none. They brought her before Him to test and trap Him. They had no concern for the woman. She was being used.

Secondly, the Scripture was being employed as a weapon, not as the Word of God. Jesus made no bones about calling the Pharisees and Scribes 'whitewashed sepulchers and hypocrites (Mt.23:27).' They assumed a spiritual authority for which they had neither right nor knowledge.

Thirdly, Jesus' first concern was for the woman, her condition as a woman in that culture and to expose the lack of spiritual understanding that possessed the religious leadership. (By the way, the man was also supposed to be stoned. Where was he? This was as much about the unmentioned man as her.) The Pharisees were a loveless, spiritless and fearful group of party loyalists who were threatened by the spirituality of Jesus. They were the entrenched religious establishment.

Jesus was not disobeying the Law but spiritualizing it by giving it personal and relational authority. The Law was the diagnosis of man's basic problem, sin, for which Jesus was the only answer. Note also the subtle change when mankind takes over God's role in judgment, sin rules. We can see it in modern denominational systems where man despiritualizes the authority of Scripture or plays the Pharisaic game with it.

But the 'coup de grace' in this John passage shows that Jesus doesn't take a defensive position. Rather He silently stoops down and starts to write something in the dirt. But they keep nagging at Him so He stands up and says to them, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” He stooped to the ground again and wrote. One by one the accusers slipped away until only Jesus remained. You have to ask why. As Pharisees did they read what He was writing? Could it have been this passage?---“Those who turn away from you will be written in the dust, because they have forsaken the Lord, the spring of living water (Jer.17:13).” One by one they slink away.

When Jesus stands up He asks the woman where the accusers went and was no one left to accuse her. When she says there were none He tells her, “Neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin.” Just look at the spiritual dynamics of this encounter. This was an every next moment for the perfect Jesus and His perfect response was the perfect fulfillment of the only perfect Scripture.

What are we seeing so far? Jesus is in the Temple court where 'all the people' gathered around Him. It's dawn and a crowd is assembled. That would be people from every level of social, political and religious position. For you and me who haven't even had our first cup of coffee yet, that would be pressure. Think about it. This is a tough one with the need to be right, the need to perform properly. The word was out. Jesus is coming to the Temple. And what happens? The religious leadership has challenged Him by bringing this disreputable woman before Him with a 'show-me-what-you-got' mentality.

Scripture is insightful at this point. There is no hint in the passage that Jesus felt any pressure at all. He sees the woman and the hostile authorities but appears totally calm. His demeanor indicates the woman is His major concern. There is no anger or defensiveness but a simple rejoinder that no one is without sin and the conviction of that truth hit everyone there so that no one, not one was left to condemn her and neither did He. So He says, “Go now and leave your life of sin.” She knew He forgave her.

This little vignette tells us so much about the resurrected Jesus; the passionate heart He has for people, the mind reacting spiritually and His Spirit in command of the moment. Jesus is the embodiment of personal spirituality that makes Him the sinless Person He is. He thinks, feels and acts in perfection.

Now we make our own self comparison with Him and what happens? I know what I do. I simply say “Thank you Lord, for having touched my heart, renewed my mind and showed me what eternal life really looks like. Allow me the privilege of being forgiven, being open to serve you in every next moment with the compassion your Spirit provides. It's not about my past but each future moment you bless me to look forward and experience how you make a difference in the lives of others when I share your life with them. It's all about you.” We are a people of the Resurrection on the move.

[HKHaugan]

Thanks Mary,  You caught the Spirit working.  The same situation involving the man was in Gen.3.  He was standing by watching Eve instead of stepping in and protecting her from the devil.  Maybe this is why it is considered 'Adam's sin.'  Be blessed.  ><>W

[Mary Toney]

Because I have difficulty focusing on the tiny centers of issues, and tend to swirl and twirl around in order to capture the enormity of life, I often find myself experiencing inner turmoil as I observe our world. Oddly enough, though, my faith is still simple: God sits on His throne; He has not forgotten my name, nor the names of my loved ones, and friends. 

He may have removed His hand of protection from our country and given us up to our sinful desires, but He loves us, and forgiveness is there; awaiting our request and repentance. 

I needed to read this article today, and I thank the Holy Spirit for inspiring you to include all of the scriptural references, and especially for noting that the man was not brought forth along with the woman by the Pharisees. I have never even thought about that, and though it may only further prove their motivation, it taught me to study more diligently, and more quietly, so that I may see the full works of God.