Dave’s Monday Blast – September 24, 2018
Last week we introduced the idea that “for a time” Jesus was perhaps the most popular person in all of Israel (Matthew 4:25). We tied His popularity to the many things He did for the people; healing the sick, feeding the hungry, teaching with divine authority and forgiving the sinner. All of these actions added to His “likeability index”.
We know that Jesus forgives all our sins and has given eternal life to all who trust Him. This is the greatest miracle in the universe. But when we need other miracles and He does not do what we ask when we ask, we become frustrated and His “likeability index” declines.
Jim Denison comments, “It’s not that He doesn’t answer our prayers, it’s that we sometimes don’t like the answers. We don’t like it when He delays His response or responds in ways we don’t understand. But the problem is that we don’t see what He sees or know what He knows. For instance, Jesus healed a paralytic lowered to Him at Peter’s house (Luke 5:17-19), but He undoubtedly passed a paralytic at His Father’s house many times (Acts 3:1-2). What the man did not know was that the disciple who watched Jesus heal the first paralytic would be used to heal this man’s condition (vv. 3-10).”
It’s easy to become frustrated with God when we don’t know what He knows. But even such frustration belies an implicit belief in His power and goodness. In “The Question That Never Goes Away”, Philip Yancey responds insightfully to those who criticize God for allowing an unfair world. At one point, he quotes Eastern Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart, who notes that such questions “would never have occurred to consciences that had not in some profound way been shaped by the moral universe of a Christian culture.”
Denison continues, “If God is as important and uncaring as His critics claim, their attack on His character is illogical. No one blames me for the existence of cancer, since I have no ability to eradicate it. A skeptic’s insistence that God explain Himself suggests the plausibility of a God who can.” That’s good isn’t it!
One way Men of INTENTION can improve the Jesus “likeability index” in our post Christian culture is by demonstrating the relevance of His love through our service. The harder it is to love someone, the more urgent and necessary such compassion becomes.
Charles Spurgeon encouraged us to engage our culture wherever the needs are greatest: “Where should the physician be but where there are many sick? Where is honor to be won by the soldier but in the hottest of the battle? And when weary of the strife and sin that meets you on every hand, consider that all the saints have endured the same trial. They were not carried on beds of down to heaven, and you must not expect to travel more easily than they.”
Who will like Jesus more today because of you?
