Gtcotr/ss011220
Just
to keep you updated and perhaps inspired, I want to let you know that so far, I
have been able to reach and exceed my spiritual goals for 2020.
· I’ve done my Bible
reading every morning before I do anything else. This month I am doing one
chapter in Proverbs and choosing one verse in the chapter to meditate on all
day.
· I’ve randomly found at
least one person each day to tell how thankful I am to God for His blessings in
my life. I make sure they hear me say how good He is and how much I love Jesus.
It has served to really encourage me as well as those who hear me. I have found
that even when the person seems to not be a believer in Jesus, they smile and
are caught off guard and agree that they too have been blessed in some way.
You
know, God intended Jesus to be a personal experience but not a private
experience. In other words:
· Salvation is
intended to be personal but not private.
·
Contrary to some popular opinions, it’s not
all about you!
Hold
that thought while we turn our attention to the book of Matthew 16.
Yesterday
I had a desire to read about Jesus. I found that the name of Jesus is written
942 times in the New Testament, 170 of those times in the book of Matthew
alone. Jesus … every time I have mentioned His name to people in public this
week I have seen and felt something different than just mentioning God. I can
say that God is good, and people smile and agree but when I say, “I love Jesus
… I love Him so much!”, it causes a hesitation; they stop to think; that name
hits their ears in a different way.
God can be generic – Jesus is specific.
Matthew 16
13 ¶ When Jesus came into the
region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, “Who do men say
that I, the Son of Man, am?”
14 So they said, “Some say
John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
15 He said to them, “But who
do you say that I am?”
16 Simon Peter answered and
said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
17 Jesus answered and said to
him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this
to you, but My Father who is in heaven.
18 “And I also say to you
that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church, and the gates of
Hell shall not prevail against it.”
Jesus
passionately describes His primary goal … “I will build My church!” For all
practical purposes Church is Family. No
one person is the Church … the Church is people. People who are called out of
the world, saved by faith in Jesus Christ, and called together to serve Him. We
are Saved to Serve. Life is not about us,
eternal life is about us, but life is all about others.
Life is a long game … Eternal life is a really long game.
The
Bible is filled with encouraging words and admonitions which tell us that we
cannot win a long game by using short game strategies. The primary goal of
Jesus is to build His family and that is the mission we are called to serve.
Allow
me to share a brief historical account concerning some things that were
happening in England during the time the Apostle Paul was being used by God to
build the Church in other places which were also under the rule of Rome.
In
efforts to expand the Roman empire, Emperor Claudius invaded the island of
Briton, (now England), in the year 43AD. Briton was mostly made up of tribes or
clans of families bound together for common protection under the rule of a
tribal king. The Romans felt superior in intelligence and culture to those
Britons who were living off the land. Although the Celtic tribes were known to
be a culture of warriors who trained both their men and women to defend their
boundaries from other tribes, much like the Native American Indian tribes, the Celtic
leaders saw benefit in cooperating with the Roman dictates. Rather than fight,
many local Celtic kings became subjected leaders under the Roman governors who
were appointed by the Emperor.
One
such subjected king was the Iceni King Prasutagus,
an independent ally of Rome. He and his wife Queen Boudica,
lived about 75 miles north of London near modern day Norwich. She, like all
Celtic men and women were trained warriors and war was simply a part of their
culture. In 60AD, 17 years after the Romans had
invaded and occupied Briton, while the Apostle Paul was on his way to prison in
Rome, King Prasutagus died. In his will he divided the rule of his Iceni
kingdom into two parts. Half he seeded to Emperor Nero and half to his two
daughters. This incensed the Roman chief tax collector who lived in London. The
Emperor Nero and Rome, he said, should have it all.
When
the Roman troops led by this chief tax collector arrived at the Iceni camp,
they began to threaten the people and confiscated all of the gold, silver and
other valuables. Queen Boudica began to protest the treatment. The Roman
soldiers were ordered to put her in her place by publicly humiliating her. They
tied her, stripped her and beat her in front of her subjects. Then, the
soldiers raped her two daughters to further frighten anyone else who might
consider resisting them.
Queen
Boudica vowed revenge. The Roman historian Tacitus recorded her vow. She said:
“Nothing is safe from Roman pride and
arrogance. They will deface the sacred and will deflower our virgins. Win the
battle or perish, that is what I, a woman, will do.” Boudica, Celtic Queen of
Iceni, AD60)
Unlike
the Romans, the Celts saw no difference between being led into battle by a
woman verses being led into battle by a man. Boudica was able to unite the
Celtic tribes and families amassing what historians record as an army of 120
thousand warriors. Enraged by the public humiliation of a Celtic Queen and the
rape of her daughters, they all pledged their lives to follow Boudica and drive
the Romans from Briton.
Filled
with the emotion fueled by passion, pride and pain, Queen Boudica and her army,
armed with their familiar weapons of war, marched on the closest Roman city we
now know as Colcester. They quickly defeated the Roman garrison and burned the
city, destroying the temple erected in the memory of Emperor Claudius, the most
important Roman structure in all of Briton.
Roman
messengers were dispatched to other Roman commanders within Briton and soon the
9th Legion of the Roman Army marched south with 2000 soldiers to
contain these savage Brits. Queen Boudica launched a surprise attack and
quickly defeated them on the road. Then she led her army towards London. The
Romans weren’t expecting such an uprising and were unprepared. Many fled the
city including the Roman provincial governor Gaius Suetonius Paulinus who had
been waiting there for his army of 10,000 to arrive. Boudica burned London and
killed the Romans who were left behind.
Boudica
turned her attention to the third largest Roman city which she quickly defeated
and burned before continuing her pursuit of governor/commander Suetonius
Paulinus who had by now been joined by his army.
Governor Suetonius was a seasoned military commander. He knew he was
outnumbered 10 to 1 and needed to find a way to even those odds. The Roman
soldier was well equipped and in formation was a war machine. However, on the
open field 10 against 1, the lesser trained enemy could easily outflank and
overwhelm them. If he lost this battle, he would lose his life and Rome would
lose Briton. Suetonius searched and found the perfect battlefield on which he could
even the odds.
Suetonius
found a field onto which he could position his soldiers which had a narrow
opening to a larger approaching field. This allowed that the better equipped
Roman army would never be forced to fight superior numbers. In other words, the
field created a bottleneck into which his army could defend and through which
no greater number of Celts could pass.
Queen
Boudica and her followers, high on the recent victories, arrived in force
driven by her passion, her pride and the pain of her and her daughters public
humiliation. After all, she was right, and her cause was right; her heart and
her mind were soaked with vengeance and her emotions were in command. If only
she would have paused to assess the situation and reconsidered the goal. Did
she want to rid Briton of these Romans or did she want to hurt those who had
hurt her?
Was
winning the day worth risking the dream?
Moved
by her moment she made her inciteful speech, stirred her followers and gave the
order to charge. And charge they did. However, passion is not always enough …
courage is not always enough … having the majority is not always enough. At the
end of the day, 80,000 Celt warriors laid dead on the battlefield compared with
less than 400 Roman casualties. For the next 2 years Suetonius tracked down and
massacred tens of thousands of Celts before being recalled to Rome by Emperor
Nero because of his ruthless pursuit of Celtic annihilation. What happened to
Queen Boudica? It is believed she was not killed in battle that day but later
poisoned herself to keep from being taken captive, tortured and executed before
being put on public display.
Boudica
could have won a victory for her whole nation if she had not have been so
absorbed with her personal pride, passion and pain. She had such overwhelming
and superior forces. The fact that she was right did not win the day. It was due
to her lack of patience and perspective that she failed in her quest. Instead
of driving the Romans out of Briton in 60AD, she botched her chance and the
Romans ruled England for another 350 years.
Championing
our personal hurts, ambitions, goals, pains or passions above what is best and
above what will win the war is a short game strategy. Emotionally driven
decisions and decisions made in haste or anger will seldom pass the test and accomplish
God’s greater plan.
We
are soldiers of the cross, members of the Body of Christ, the Family of God. Jesus
has a way for us to win the long game! It’s not a war of guns or swords or
spears or even a war fueled by anger, pride or pain. Jesus is our example of
love, forgiveness and sacrifice.
Jesus
is building His Church and it may not always favor our moment.
· We cannot afford to make
the moment all about us.
· We cannot afford to
make emotionally charged decisions.
· We must see our
salvation and our relationship with Jesus as a means through which God is going
to achieve His plan for humanity.
Jesus
is a personal experience, but Jesus is not intended to be an isolated or
private experience. We are called to show the love of Christ to a lost and
dying world. The Church is God’s plan.
Salvation
is a personal matter, but we cannot make it a private matter. Remember Jesus is
building His Church and fighting for your eternity. He is not building a person
or fighting for someone’s personal problems. We win
when He wins. The cause of Christ is so much bigger than my pride, my
passion or my pain.
Matthew 16
18 “ … upon this rock I will
build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”
19 “And I will give you the
keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in
heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
I
am not going to make Jesus all about me … I’m going to make Him all about others
…
Here
are three things I plan to do this week to help Jesus build His Church so that
the gates of hell cannot prevail against it.
1.
Forgive my friends and my enemies.
2.
Ask forgiveness from God and others when I’m wrong.
3.
Help Jesus build His family above my passion, my pride, or my pain.
