It’s finally happening: the CDC issued a new set of guidelines that essentially tell us we really don’t need these masks anymore.  That’s oversimplifying it, but considering the availability of the COVID vaccine to everyone who wants it, its astonishing effectiveness, the huge number of people who vaccinated already—including an overwhelming majority of those over age 65, the group at the highest risk—and also considering we can never eliminate all risk to life and health, that we bear responsibility for our own decisions, and that there have been huge costs in other areas due to the pandemic…considering all of that and more, the sentiment of most people by now is that it’s about time!  For over a year, we’ve been trying to get back to normal, and we’re getting a glimpse of normality as the most visible symbol of pandemic life begins to fade away.

Yet, is “normal”  something we can really expect to see returning?  Many times throughout history, something extraordinary happened, and everyone thought things would go back to the way they were, afterward.  For example, when a large group of Roman senators conspired to assassinate Julius Caesar, they really thought that with this menacing dictator out of the way, things would go back to normal—that their civilized republican government would pick up where it left off and bring back the way things used to be.  They ran through the city shouting, “people of Rome, we are once again free!”  In reality, they had not ushered in peace and security, but fourteen years of unrest and civil war, and the endpoint was not a revival of the good old Roman Republic, but the beginning of the Roman Empire.  Back to normal?  Not so much.

The scribes, Pharisees, and chief priests learned something similar, a few decades later when they, just like the Roman senators pining for the good old days, decided conspiracy and murder were the way to get things back to normal.  Here this Jesus guy exploded onto the scene and started teaching “as one who had authority, and not as their scribes” (Mt 7.29), and had the audacity to back up his authoritative claims with good works of great power, so that many of the people actually believed in him!  Well, they didn’t much care for that, so they tried to undermine him.  On one occasion, it was by attempting to get him to sin, or at least appear to have sinned:

And a man was there with a withered hand. And they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”—so that they might accuse him.

(Matthew 12.10)

Sure enough, Jesus tells them that “it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath” (v12), and heals the man.  Having gotten what they wanted from Jesus, but apparently not from the popular opinion, “the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him” (v14).  This is surely a violation of the commandment, “You shall not join hands with a wicked man to be a malicious witness. You shall not fall in with the many to do evil” (Ex 23.1-2).  But they don’t care.  They think they know what is good, and they’re willing to commit as many acts of evil as necessary, in order to bring about their supposedly good objective.

This continues for some time, eventually working its way up the totem pole to the council in Jerusalem:

So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.”

(John 11.47-48)

Notice that they aren’t concerned with right and wrong, or with violations of the law—they’re concerned with their place, and their nation.  They think Jesus is an existential threat to their nation because, regardless of whether Jesus actually is who he says he is, they see the political ramifications of this religious revolution.  They are, of course, correct about how the Romans would respond; but entirely wrong about what they should do about it.  But even before that, their first concern was that Jesus threatened their place, meaning their position of authority, power, and honor.  They don’t like the way things are going, and they want to go back to normal.  Why?  Because they liked the way things were before.  Jesus promises forgiveness, cleansing, and eternal life, and performs enough miracles to convince them he’s not just a whackadoodle, and should be taken seriously.  But they don’t want those things.  They’re happy to be in charge in the here and now, and to enjoy the fruits of appearing to be righteous, even while their hearts are rotten.  How far does this extend?  The high priest himself—who should be a devout and trustworthy voice for God, the law, righteousness, and purity—says, “it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish” (Jn 11.50).  John points out that he’s quite right, in a sense, but in order to get back to normal, he’s willing to descend into the pit of hell.  Ultimately, no matter what they did, they couldn’t stop God’s plan, and things would never truly get back to normal.  And thank God for that!  Jesus brought something far better than the good old days, which weren’t so good after all. 

We can’t undo all that has happened over the past year, and even as the viral threat fades, life will never really go back to exactly the way it was before.  This shouldn’t surprise us, and we shouldn’t be upset about it, either.  Instead, we should move forward with stronger fellowship, a firmer devotion, and a more resolute commitment than ever before, to live lives of holiness through Christ.

Jeremy Nettles

We use many different tools to make sense of the world around us.  Some of these tools were built by people like us—the instruments in our vehicles that tell us how fast we’re moving, the news media we use to stay informed about what’s happening across the world, the phones that allow us to easily communicate and make plans with distant friends and relatives, and other things like these.  Then, there are tools we didn’t build, that were given to us by God—our eyes and ears, which help us to create a 3-dimensional map of our surroundings; our nerves, which give us immediate feedback when we touch something, including whether it’s going to immediately damage our bodies; our memories, which allow us to store information we’ve already gathered and recall it later in order to make decisions or analyze complex situations; and there are many more of these, too.

One of these tools, which God has built into our minds, is narrative.  We use it to see the relationship between cause and effect, to predict the outcomes of our present decisions, to sort out our moral obligations, and more.  Much of the Bible is written in a narrative style.  Sometimes the narrative is meant to be taken literally, like the story of Nehemiah overseeing the rebuilding of the wall around Jerusalem.  Other times, the narrative is not the relation of facts, but a metaphor, such as the parable that begins, 
My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; and he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. (Isaiah 5.1-2)

In this case and others like it, we don’t ask, “where was the hill?” or “how tall was the tower?” because we understand that it is an analogy.  That doesn’t make the point of the story any less true, of course.  The narrative conveys a point that the audience may have struggled to understand when the simple facts were related.  But when a story was presented—even a figurative one—the lesson became more clear.

As we automatically frame our understanding of the world through narrative, we often oversimplify the reality in order to better relate to the story.  One of these oversimplifications is the casual way we toss characters into one of two buckets: the good guys, and the bad guys.  This is a childish way of looking at things, of course.  Young boys for ages have played games and participated in fantasies that make use of this simple distinction, with names like “cops and robbers,” the now grossly offensive “cowboys and Indians,” or even the amusingly simplified version simply called, “good guys and bad guys.”  But it’s not just kids.  When we watch a movie, read a book, or hear a story being told, the first question we generally ask ourselves without even realizing it is, “who’s the hero, and who’s the villain?”  Everything about the story hinges on the answer to that question.  Sometimes it becomes fashionable to show that the hero has a flaw, and in the genre of tragedy, the biggest flaw is a villain in itself, bringing about the hero’s downfall.  But he’s still clearly the hero, and the audience still roots for him, even while disapproving of his bad behavior and, hopefully, taking home the lesson: don’t exhibit that flaw, if you don’t want to end up like Hamlet, or Oedipus—or for some more modern examples, Harvey Dent, Ned Stark, or Anakin Skywalker.

Since we understand reality through storytelling, it’s worth asking, who’s the hero in your story?  We see the world through our own perspective, and so the most natural answer is that you yourself are the hero.  But now, we have a problem.  If you’re the hero, then you can either be an oversimplified and unrealistic “good guy”—a character we don’t see around us in reality—or if you are willing to acknowledge that you are flawed, you could be a tragic hero—in which case the story ends with your downfall.  If you’re unsure, or think that maybe you’re the white knight in shining armor, let’s remind ourselves that God tells us very plainly, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Ro 3.23).  

There are other options: you could be an antihero, or the villain, or any one of many types of second- or third-order supporting characters, but some of those are off the table due to unacceptable endings, and others would mean it’s not really your story, but someone else’s.  Let’s tug on that final thread.  Is it really all about you, or could there, perhaps, be another figure at the center of the story?  Has there ever been anyone who truly lived up to the shining white knight character trope?  Of course!  Jesus is even portrayed in the Bible as follows: 
Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. (Revelation 19.11)

We’ve been looking at the story from the wrong perspective.  You’re not the hero of your own story, nor are you the villain.  The hero is Jesus, and the villain is Satan.  But you don’t have to be some random, uncredited extra on the film set.  In fact, each of us is a uniquely important character, a member of the hero’s love interest, the human race.  That doesn’t mean the story will necessarily end with a “happily-ever-after” for you, though.  That’s only for Christ’s Bride.  He has already defeated the great red dragon in order to rescue you.  Soon, he’ll slay the beast.  The choice is up to you: do you prefer to stay imprisoned with the dragon until the end, or will you go with the hero?

Jeremy Nettles

Each of the four Gospels has its own flavor, and the distinguishing features have lessons to teach us.  Let’s examine one of Matthew’s tendencies.  From the very start, he stresses the fulfillment of prophecy.  All that led up to Jesus’ birth happened in order
to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us). (Matthew 1.22-23)

That prophet was Isaiah, and this is just the first of many times Matthew refers to his book for a 700-year-old prediction fulfilled in Jesus.  But Isaiah is not alone.  A few verses later, when king Herod asks the priests and scribes where the messiah would be born,
They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet: ‘And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’” (Matthew 2.5-6)

This time, the prophet is Micah, who doesn’t get very much attention these days.  But he was pointing toward the Christ, and while Herod, unsurprisingly, was not terribly familiar with his predictions, the religious leaders at the time were easily able to recognize what God had foretold.

Just after this, Joseph and Mary acted in such a way as to fulfill another prophecy.  God warned them to escape those seeking to harm the child, by going to Egypt.  Why?
This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt I called my son.” (Matthew 2.15)

This one came from Hosea.  More than 7 centuries beforehand, God predicted what would happen when his Son became flesh, and gave his servants Joseph and Mary instructions to fulfill that prediction.

Then Matthew mentions another prophecy that pertained to the events surrounding Jesus’ birth, given by yet another prophet.  When Herod acted on the information he’d just received and had all the boys under age 2 killed in Bethlehem, Matthew tells us that this
fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah: “A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.” (Matthew 2.17-18)

This one is less specific, and somewhat confusing—didn’t this occur in Bethlehem, not Ramah?  And isn’t Bethlehem in the territory of Judah, whose mother was Leah, and not in the territory of Rachel’s descendants—Benjamin, Manasseh, or Ephraim?  Yet Rachel “was buried on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem)” (Ge 35.19), and by the time of Jesus’ birth, it wasn’t just the descendants of Judah living in that territory, but a mishmash of the members of different tribes of Israel who had returned from the Assyrian and Babylonian exiles.  It’s a roundabout way of getting there, but when these innocent young Jewish boys were slaughtered to preserve Herod’s false sense of security on his throne, some of them were the descendants of Rachel, whose remains were buried just down the road from Bethlehem.  Another prophecy, fulfilled.

We’re still in chapter 2, and there’s one more left!  While Jesus is yet a very young child, Joseph brings the family back from Egypt as instructed, and takes them to live 
in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene. (Matthew 2.23)

This is one of the oddest fulfillments of prophecy mentioned in Matthew, because there’s no explicit prophecy to this effect to be found in the Old Testament.  However, above and beyond the general theme that the messiah would be despised, which is certainly fulfilled in his Nazarene origins, Isaiah calls him a “branch” from the roots of Jesse (Is 11.1), and the Hebrew word behind that term is נֵצֶר-nēṣer-“sprout.”  Matthew’s point relies on some typical Hebrew wordplay, since Isaiah’s label for the Messiah sounds just like the town in which he grew up.  When Jesus was called a Nazarene, in a sense he was also being called the Branch!

We could go on for some time like this, finding prophecy after prophecy not just being fulfilled, but being pointed out to the reader.  Why?  Well, it’s not just that Matthew enjoyed the scavenger hunt for prophecies; for him, the main reason to stress all of these is that they served as evidence for those who already accepted the authority of the Old Testament.  These are proofs for the Jews that the Messiah they’d been awaiting and expecting for so long is Jesus.

For us, that’s actually a bit less important.  The New Testament is a much better testimony to Christ than the Old.  So what does all this fulfillment of prophecy do for us?  It shows us the power, wisdom, foreknowledge, and the plan of God.  From the beginning, he intended to redeem his broken creation by sending his Son to open the door for us.  This wasn’t a lucky guess or an afterthought, it was always the plan.  At each step he was marching forward and arranging the events of history not just with a view toward justice in the present time, but also redemption to come in the age of Christ.

You’re a part of that plan, too.  Like everyone else, you have the opportunity and obligation to take refuge in him, to obey his will, to be rescued from your sins and have your name added to the book of life.  God has followed his plan to the letter.  Will you?

Jeremy Nettles

“But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are inside the city depart, and let not those who are out in the country enter it, for these are days of vengeance, to fulfill all that is written. Alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days! For there will be great distress upon the earth and wrath against this people.” (Luke 21.20-23)

Jesus spoke these words foretelling the days that would culminate in the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple, and they are very effective at creating a sense of fear and foreboding in us even today.  We live in a relatively safe and secure society, in which we generally trust that strangers have no interest in murdering us for our shoes.  We’re even more inclined to trust civil authorities, and we trust members of our own family perhaps most of all.  It hasn’t always been so prudent to assume all of that goodwill.  As Jesus said a few verses prior, “You will be delivered up even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends, and some of you will be put to death” (Lk 21.16).  The Bible tells us what was going to happen through these prophecies of Jesus, and if we know what to look for, assorted details of some later books confirm it for us, but it’s obscure, and we often get the wrong impression about how it looked when the time came.

The main problem is that we assume it was a sudden and unexpected occurrence.  Never mind that Jesus told his followers of many signs they could use to see its approach; since we focus on the simplest facts of the matter, we forget that soon-to-be-emperor Titus’ destruction of the city and temple in 70AD were part of a long series of events that led logically to that conclusion.  But Josephus—a Jewish leader who saw the signs and defected to the Romans while the getting was good—did record those events in detail.  We ought to take everything he says with a grain of salt, knowing that he has an interest in painting the Romans in the best possible light, that he has every reason to sanitize his own part in the story, and most importantly that he is not among those commissioned by the Holy Spirit to write the scriptures for us.  Nevertheless, a few details from his account are worth considering.  If they’re even half true, they teach us a lot.

While the Romans were besieging Jerusalem, a group of Idumeans about 20,000 strong was called to the city to help the Jews.  These were the people of king Herod, who reigned during Jesus’ ministry.  Far from helping, though, they simply took a side in the internal divisions, which quickly became violent on a massive scale.  These Idumeans 
vented their rage on the men who had shut them out, making no distinction between those who cried for mercy and those who fought. …The entire outer court of the Temple was deluged with blood, and 8,500 corpses greeted the rising sun. (Josephus, BJ IV.310-313)

Not content with attacking the assembled militia, they then 
plundered every house and killed anyone they met.  Then thinking the common people not worth bothering about they went after the high priests.  It was against them that the main rush was made, and they were soon caught and killed. (IV.314-316)

They committed many more atrocities before leaving the city, but even then the problems weren’t over.  After their departure, the Zealots—among whom Simon the apostle was formerly numbered—gained control of the city and began killing anyone suspected of defecting to the Romans outside the walls.

[A]nyone caught going out…was assumed to be on his way to the Romans and dispatched forthwith.  However, if he paid enough they let him go, and only if he failed to pay was he a traitor, so that the rich purchased their escape and only the poor were slaughtered.  Dead bodies along all the main roads were heaped up high.... (IV.378-380)

You can well imagine how difficult this sort of treatment made it for Christians to heed Jesus’ warning, “flee to the mountains, and let those who are inside the city depart” (Lk 21.21).  The really astonishing thing is that this occurred two full years before the final destruction of the city, and it’s not as if this was the beginning of the unrest, nor did life in Jerusalem improve much between these events and the end of the war.

These poor people lived day by day in a situation in which the Gentiles “trample the holy city for forty-two months” (Re 11.2), and yet it wasn’t until the bodies were literally piling up in the streets that many of them decided it might be time to consider going somewhere else to live.  There are implications from this on the state of our society right now, although we’re only in the early stages this kind of strife.  But more importantly, how often do we behave in this foolish and carefree manner toward sin?

Sin poses a much greater threat to us than enemies foreign or domestic—as Jesus said, “do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Mt 10.28).  Yet we allow this eternal danger to become normal and mundane, and we often don’t take it seriously, even while it is harming souls all around us, and perhaps even our own.  We must be on guard, ever watchful against our adversary, the devil.

“But stay awake at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are going to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.” (Luke 21.36)

Everyone's got an opinion.  Most people have one for every issue.  Increasingly, we struggle to differentiate between our opinions and objective truth.  Nowhere is this more glaringly obvious than in the growing acceptance of the phrase, “my truth,” as if it not only makes sense, but is somehow nobler and more authentic than the alternative.  If my truth differs from your truth, then at least one of us is at odds with reality, which doesn’t take either of our opinions into consideration!

Yet members of our society usually assume that their opinion is the correct one, and have nothing but derision for any who disagree.  Look at the state of our politics, for abundant examples.  It’s also apparent in the absurd level of fragmentation in practically every religious movement today, so that it’s a fool’s errand to count all of the different flavors of Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, and Christianity.  By the time you finish tallying them up, the number will have increased noticeably over what it was when you began!  Disagreements lead to divisions, and both sides of each division are usually willing to reconcile, just as soon as the other side admits they were totally wrong about everything, and it was all their fault.  For a more mundane demonstration, just listen to the low-level employees at most businesses discussing how things really work, when the boss isn’t around.  The boss probably has a very different opinion.  Which side is right?  Is either?

We’re inclined to pass judgment about everything, at every opportunity.  Jesus warns us, “Judge not, that you be not judged” (Mt 7.1).  On the other hand, he tells us to “judge with right judgment” (Jn 7.24).  Which is it?  Well, the prohibition was followed with an assumption that we will, in fact, judge: “For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you” (Mt 7.2).  He’s not saying that every act of judgment is a sin—he’s warning us that God will take our standard of judgment into account, and throw it right back at us.  “Judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment” (Ja 2.13).  We’re not going to make it through life without passing a few judgments, but we’d better be careful to use God’s standards, not our own—to judge with “right judgment.”  How does God’s judgment look?

Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things. We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed. (Romans 2.1-5)

Now we’ve got another problem.  It’s easy to protest: “I condemn murderers, and I’ve never murdered anyone!  I condemn adulterers, and I’ve never committed adultery!  I condemn those who swear falsely, and I’ve never done that, either!”  Jesus covered all of those, and more, saying:

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment...” (Matthew 5.21-22)

And again:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5.27-28)

And finally: 

“Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all...” (Matthew 5.33-34)

From our own perspective, we sure seemed innocent; but God sees the heart, and in our hearts we have done “the very same things” we judge in others.  God’s wrath is stored up for us.  But that’s not the whole story.  The only man who didn’t deserve God’s wrath already paid the penalty for the sins the rest of us have committed.  Mercy triumphs over judgment, and he offers it to all who will to take it.  In light of this, we should be a little more grateful to him for shielding us from the consequences of our sin.  Be a little less harsh and certain of the judgments we pass on others, and more merciful, regardless of what they deserve.  Consider withholding judgment more often, and busy yourself encouraging repentance and salvation, not perfect earthly justice.  And finally, we should be a little more concerned with cleaning up our own hearts and behaviors.

“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other.” (Luke 18.10-14)

Be the tax collector, not the Pharisee.

Jeremy Nettles