Following Jesus Together

Ten years have passed since the beginning of my adventure in Australia.  It seems like a lifetime ago in 2002 I was living in southern California and working in a trade when God suddenly revealed to me while doing yardwork the plans He had for me:  "You will preach, and you will be sent."  I could accept this easily enough because nothing is impossible with God, but I had many questions which in due time God answered.  It became evident Australia was the place God planned to send me long before I knew how He would do it or when.  Along the way God has provided encouragement when needed and from unlikely sources.

When I was in the preparatory stages of answering the call to minister in Australia, I was introduced to lives of two missionary women who deeply impacted me and still do this day:  Gladys Aylward of England and Isobel Kuhn of Canada.  As I read their stories it reinforced the God who called them to China was the God who called me to Australia.  The struggles and difficulties I have faced pale in comparison to the situations God empowered these ladies to endure and overcome.  I read a biography of Gladys recently I could hardly put down.  I sat beside her on lonely train rides in a foreign land where no one spoke English, freezing with cold in the midst of a war, when her expectations of ministry were shattered, when she was made to care for stubborn mules, inspect feet and when she took in orphaned children.  It is easy to idolise the vessel God employs to do His work, but all glory and honour to God for doing His miraculous works through His people.

These missionaries and sisters in Christ will always have a special place in my heart because of my connection with them as fellow servants of the living God.  They had no idea the way God would use them in the foreign mission field and how they have ministered personally to me these many decades later.  Their faith and reliance upon God who guided and provided for them is inspirational, their insights encouraging and obedience always a timely exhortation.  Reminiscing of all God has done in my life has a place for the purpose of acknowledging His goodness, yet this is not the season to remove my hand from the plow and look back:  I must look to the LORD who has much more He intends to accomplish in these days by His grace.  Complacency and self-sufficiency go hand in hand and always lead to sloth and negligence.  God has good purposes and plans for all of us to do His work, not just with the apostles in the New Testament or missionaries to China:  God calls you and me to follow Him faithfully with great joy wherever He has us as He leads the way.

May our lives provide testimonies which extol and honour our glorious LORD and Saviour Jesus Christ, and may the influence of our words and deeds prompt those in ages to come to follow and trust Him too.  Isn't it wonderful when we follow Jesus it inspires other Christians to follow Him more closely?

The Holy Pursuit

Recently I finished reading a short book titled Enjoying Intimacy with God by J. Oswald Sanders.  There was one passage in particular which impacted me concerning our need to keep growing and embrace our sanctification.  By extension it also relates to my need to develop and grow as a member of the body of Christ and the role God has given me.  Sanders wrote:

The important thing is that we must "press on to maturity" (Hebrews 6:1).  Keep on growing.  Too many Christians become stuck in their Christian lives--"stuck between Easter and Pentecost," as Dr. Graham Scroggie put it.

I once knew a godly Christian woman who was dying of cancer.  She knew she had only a few days to live.  Her husband was attending to her needs, trying to make things as easy as possible for her.  She said to him, "You must not make things too easy for me.  I must keep growing, you know."  Her life of intimacy with God had brought her to a state of spiritual maturity in which she was more concerned about growing up into Christ than about her own very real pain and discomfort.  We too need to be ambitious to increase in our knowledge of God.

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews urged his readers to cultivate such an ambitions, in these words:  "Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity (6:1).  Dr. Alexander Smellie pointed out that the King James Version renders it, "Let us go on."  The Revised Version puts it, "Let us press on."  Bishop Westcott prefers to phrase it, "Let us be bourne on."

"The truth is that it needs all three to disclose the verb's significance and wealth.  Put them together, and they speak to us of three dangers which beset us as we look to the perfection front.  There is the danger of stopping too soon.  There is the danger of sinking into discouragement.  And there is the danger of supposing that we are alone."  How gracious God is to make provision through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, for our being "bourne on to maturity." (Sanders, J. Oswald. Enjoying Intimacy with God. Discovery House Publishers, 2000.pages 114-115)

The potential dangers mentioned by Sanders are real for all who follow Christ.  It is easy to stop too soon, to sink into discouragement or imagine we are alone.  We are called to press on to maturity and in ministry, looking to God for guidance and strength.  Apart from Him we can do nothing, but the Holy Spirit empowers us to do all things according to His will.  The weakness of our flesh is no hindrance to God's work, for it was in that place Paul discovered God's strength made perfect.  The directive given by Joshua to the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh in Joshua 22:5 is fitting for believers to heed as well:  "...to love the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways, to keep His commandments, to hold fast to Him, and to serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul."  The Christian walk is to be marked by the pursuit of Jesus and cleaving to Him, for He is our Life.

Cleansed by Grace

"Thus you shall separate the children of Israel from their uncleanness, lest they die in their uncleanness when they defile My tabernacle that is among them."

 Leviticus 15:31

Because God is holy and people are not, through the Law of Moses God instructed the people so they could distinguish between clean and unclean.  The tabernacle where the presence of the LORD dwelt was a holy place and those deemed unclean needed to wash or offer the required sacrifices before they could appear before Him.  God was gracious to warn His people of the dire consequences of bringing uncleanness into the tabernacle because it would cost them their lives.  This "Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle" (Colossians 2:21-23) mentality fostered by the Law had the appearance of wisdom, but could do nothing to render a man righteous before God or cull the insatiable desires of sinful flesh.

The apostle Peter was a man raised observing the Law of God and had been taught the difference between clean and unclean:  he knew how to wash after touching an unclean object, if he was unclean by a personal issue and what foods were to be eaten or avoided.  After the resurrection of Jesus, Peter stayed with a tanner named Simon and experienced a divine revelation.  He had gone up on the rooftop to pray and was hungry as he waited for food to be prepared.  Acts 10:11-16 says Peter "...saw heaven opened and an object like a great sheet bound at the four corners, descending to him and let down to the earth. ¹² In it were all kinds of four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, creeping things, and birds of the air. ¹³ And a voice came to him, "Rise, Peter; kill and eat." ¹⁴ But Peter said, "Not so, Lord! For I have never eaten anything common or unclean." ¹⁵ And a voice spoke to him again the second time, "What God has cleansed you must not call common." ¹⁶ This was done three times. And the object was taken up into heaven again."

Even as the Law of Moses was a revelation to children of Israel concerning the difference between clean and unclean, Peter and all others in the church needed to be instructed how Jesus fundamentally changed the definition of what is clean and unclean.  Jesus came to earth not to destroy the Law but to fulfill.  He lived perfectly according to the Law and His righteousness infinitely exceeded the scribes and Pharisees.  Jesus offered Himself as the Lamb of God without blemish to atone for the sins of the world.  The handwriting which once condemned believing sinners was nailed to the cross with Jesus, and the wall of separation between Jew and Gentile was broken down to comprise the Body of Christ, the church.  Through the Gospel both Jew and Gentile were cleansed of sin and accepted into the family of God, regenerated by the Holy Spirit who indwelt them.  The context of the revelation at Joppa makes it plain the point of the vision was not Peter's kosher diet but Gentiles he continued to view as unclean and separated himself from whom God had cleansed.

It was a shocking surprise after Peter went to the house of Cornelius when the Holy Spirit fell upon his Gentile hearers and they spoke in tongues as the Jewish believers had on the day of Pentecost.  Peter and his travelling companions marveled how God cleansed by faith in Jesus those they historically viewed as unclean:  they too had become the temple of the Holy Spirit who dwelt within them.  There is no sin so great God cannot cleanse, no uncleanness in body or soul God refuses to purify from a heart that trusts in Jesus.  Uncleanness in God's people who defiled the tabernacle were at risk of losing their lives because God is holy.  When the Holy Spirit takes up residence in a follower of Jesus Christ that person is cleansed and made holy as God is holy.  We are not clean because of the efforts of our flesh to avoid eating a kind of meat or avoid sitting on a chair an person deemed "unclean" under Law may have sat upon, but because of the cleansing presence and power of God who has redeemed us.

Paul wrote to believers in 2 Corinthians 3:2-6:  "You are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read by all men; ³ clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart. ⁴ And we have such trust through Christ toward God. ⁵ Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, ⁶ who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life."  Jesus established a new covenant which superseded the old covenant of Law.  We are not righteous because we appear in Jerusalem three times a year or tithe of our increase:  we are cleansed from sin, made righteous by faith in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit fills us.  The letter of the Law demands our blood, and Jesus shed His blood so all who repent and trust in Him can have eternal life.

What God has cleansed we should not call unclean, and those whom God has cleansed should be viewed as clean too--even when their convictions differ from our own.  Why should we condemn what God has cleansed?  May the LORD provide the revelation personally each of us need to bring to light our legalism and liberalism which strays from the love of God and others in Christ Jesus.  Let us acknowledge because we are in Christ we have been wholly cleansed by Him:  we are cleaner than those who washes in water, offers thousands of bulls as sacrifices or keeps the Law best they can.  Praise the LORD what is impossible with men is possible for God who cleanses us by His grace.

Christ Who Cleanses

I've been reading through Leviticus in the mornings and it struck me how leprosy is different from other uncleanness in that it cannot be washed away.  A person who contacted an unclean thing could wash in water and be unclean until evening, but lepers themselves were unclean.  There was no washing away the disease or the stigma of an incurable illness which required lepers to live alone outside the camp.  The Law of Moses required them to wear tattered clothing, cover their upper lip and cry out "Unclean!" to all who drew near them.

One of the more involved rituals in the Law was for the ceremonial cleansing of leprosy.  It seems a strange thing, to have an established process for lepers to be declared clean when lepers remained lepers.  The tone of the scripture implies cleansing was possible, yet there was never a suggestion as to how a leper could be healed.  Apart from Moses who was enabled by God to use leprosy as a sign and Miriam whom God miraculously healed when Moses prayed, Naaman of Syria was the only person called a leper in the Old Testament who was healed.  Jesus said in Luke 4:27, "And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian."  There may have been lepers who were somehow cleansed besides Naaman, but none are mentioned by name.

When Jesus ministered in Israel, there were many occasions when He cleansed lepers.  After Jesus healed a leper Mark 1:43-44 reads, "And He strictly warned him and sent him away at once, ⁴⁴ and said to him, "See that you say nothing to anyone; but go your way, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing those things which Moses commanded, as a testimony to them."  Leviticus 14 goes into great detail of what was required to deem an ex-leper as clean under Mosaic Law.  Birds, scarlet, an earthen vessel, cedar wood, and running water were required for the first stage; three lambs, oil and flour were needed for the second.  A leper who was cleansed was required to shave all the hair off their body and would be anointed with blood of the sacrifice and oil.  The ambassadors David sent who were shamed when their beards were cut were allowed to dwell away from Jerusalem until their beards had grown, so great was their shame.  I imagine a leper who shaved beard and even eyebrows was glad to do so even though it made him nearly unrecognisable because of the joy of being cleansed and being joined with family and society.

The cleansing of a leper and the forgiveness of a sinner have similarities:  lepers and sinners have no ability to cleanse themselves.  The power of Jesus was required to cleanse lepers, and only those who trust in Jesus Christ as LORD and Saviour are washed in His shed blood and anointed with the Holy Spirit.  As lepers were required to live outside the city, so sinners are cut off from God by our transgressions and doomed to eternal destruction.  The freshly-shaved leper would have looked markedly different from his former self, and all who are born again by faith in Jesus are transformed and made new creations through the Gospel.  Where the comparison becomes a contrast is there is no involved ritual which requires weeks for a sinner to be born again, for when we repent and trust in Jesus God accomplishes this in an instant.

Proverbs 20:9 states, "Who can say, "I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin"?  The answer to Solomon's query is no one because there is none good, no not one.  God is the only One who can cleanse hearts and purify souls, and Jesus Christ is the Messiah who gives new hearts to those who trust in Him.  David spoke wisely when addressing God in Psalm 51:10 because He alone is able to fulfill his request:  "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me."  A cleansed leper was no longer leprous could rejoice in restoration, and God supplies abundant joy for forgiven sinners.  How great is our gracious LORD who does for us by His sacrifice what we cannot earn for ourselves!