Jesus:Expect the Unexpected! by Linden Malki

It should have been obvious that Jesus had power over life and death; there are descriptions of almost 40 people that He healed from illness and disability in the Gospels, and three that were raised from the dead.  Most of the healings are recorded in Mathew, Mark and/or Luke, and three in John, which are not in the others.  The first one mentioned was in Galilee; an official who probably worked for the Romans who asked Jesus to heal his dying son; who was healed by a word of Jesus spoken to the father. We are told that the whole family believed,  but there was no apparent response from the Jewish establishment.   The other two were both on the Sabbath, both in the Jerusalem area, and both set off a firestorm with the Pharisees. (One was the man at the Pool of Bethsaida, and the other a blind man who was sent to wash his eyes in the Pool of Siloam.)

One of the resurrections from the dead is told in all three of the other Gospels; the raising of the daughter of Jairus, a leader of a synagogue in Galilee. Matthew says that the word spread, despite Jesus' word to not tell about it, but there is no mention of opposition. Another is mentioned only in Luke, early in Jesus' ministry, the raising of the son of a widow in Nain, which got a lot of talk but not opposition. So both Matthew and Luke indicate that these raisings of young men from the dead were widely known in the Galilee region but without the criticism of the Pharisees, which seems to have been primarily a Jerusalem area reaction.

It was, however, the raising of Lazarus in Bethany,  not far from Jerusalem, that blew the lid off. Jesus knew of Lazarus' illness, but deliberately waited four days after his death to make an appearance.  This allowed for the full burial rites to happen, and there was no possible chance that he wasn't actually dead. John, who seems to have had some connections within the Sanhedrin, describes their reaction: intolerable!! Time to get rid of this troublemaker! They should have been aware that Jesus had brought three people at least back from death; that He was going to be difficult to finish off. Matthew describes the efforts made to keep Him in the tomb; the others don't include the details but all mention a very large rock covering the entrance.  God's answer was a long way from the human expectation!

The Creator Breaks Through!--by Linden Malki

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." (Genesis 1:1) How do we know? Because we are here. We have a place to live that fits us like it was designed for us; we look out every day at the sun and sky and every night at an incredible panorama of a universe. The more we learn about it, the more wonderful we realize that it is. 

And we exist. We are created to be able to make a free choice to have a relationship with the Creator. He gives promises of what He can do if we accept a relationship with Him, and He lets us know what the alternatives are.

God came to Noah, commended him for his obedience, and made a covenant with Noah  for his descendants.  God then appeared to Abram (who became Abraham) and said  “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. (Genesis 17:1) The Lord then appeared to Abraham's son Isaac, and his grandson Jacob,  and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac,  ... and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring. (Genesis 28:13 )
 God also spoke to Moses and said to him: Say therefore to the Israelites, ‘I am the Lord, and I will free you from the burdens of the Egyptians and deliver you from slavery to them. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment.  I will take you as my people, and I will be your God. You shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has freed you from the burdens of the Egyptians.  I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord.’” (Exodus 6:2 -8)

And then God spoke all these words:  I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. (Exodus 20:1-3), followed up with the basic principles of this relationship. The calling for this group of people was the challenge to be an example to the rest of humanity: to demonstrate the advantages and disadvantages of a relationship with the Creator.  Moses' final words of advice and warning: " See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the Lord your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. (Deuteronomy 30:15-16)

God gave these people 1500 years to work it out; but it became obvious that they couldn't do it on their own. So a time came that there was a cultural potential to reach beyond a single nation; that it was time to call Moses' people to a wider challenge, and also to provide a Way that would enable all of humanity to live in obedience and fellowship with God Himself. It cost 33 years of living in our midst as one of us, and to demonstrate total obedience and total fellowship--and to break out of the boundaries of the people God originally chose as His messengers and teachers.  In the past 2000 years, the Word has spread; often in fits and starts, and successes and failures, but the miracle of the Word is still alive, still spreading, still real in the real world.

God's Free Offer--by Linden Malki

"God created man in His own image, and man, being a gentleman, returned the favor." This quotation from Mark Twain is too true to be funny. We have many images of God in our minds,but underneath them all is one idol: ourself. Most of the time we don't even realize what is going on. 

God gives us choices.  It is easy for people to say, and we hear this often, "If God was real, and good, He wouldn't allow evil or pain. Therefore, He can't be real."  On the other hand, the fact that He does allow evil and pain to exist, gives us choices.  If there were no choices except "good" ones, we would be nothing more than squishy, spoiled little teddy bears. with no ability to recognize goodness, and our values  wrapped up in our own wants. If we don't acknowledge God, underneath everything we think we want, it  all boils down to "self"--which is finite and limited.

Another possible choice is to recognize the existence of something beyond ourselves, but see it as something we serve without anything in return. We often hear people say that "there are many roads to the top of the mountain," but it is very probable that most of them are dead ends, offering nothing except a relationship based on fear, again accomplishing nothing more than an escape for ourselves. It is even possible to recognize the true God Himself, but refuse to surrender our own selves, which again leaves us with nothing more than idolizing things that serve our own choices. 

God's offer is the choice to follow Him--on His terms, not ours.  It's not necessarily an easy way to live, but my experience is that we are taken care of, often in surprising ways.  When I was just out of college, I was faced with a choice to maintain a relationship with a man I had known since childhood, but who had walked away from his earlier relationship with God, and wanted to have me on "hold" as well. And then I met another man, whose family was known to a missionary cousin of mine, who wanted to build a Godly life with me. I didn't know where this would lead, but it was to San Bernardino and an amazing life in God's  hands.

My observation is that we really have only two choices: we follow what we see as our own self-interest, or we answer an invitation from the God who created all things and all options.   He created us free to make this choice!

www.linmalki.blogspot.com 04/13/19

The Power of Language--by Linden Malki

The first mention of a Name for God comes where He appears to Abraham, in Genesis 17, as "El Shaddai." An earlier word for "God" as a descriptive noun, "Elohim", is used in the earliest mentions of God. There are many words used for the Hebrew God and His attributes throughout Scripture, but the Name that was revealed to Moses in Exodus 3 is the one that is considered to be the most specific. It is often described in Jewish sources as the Tetragrammon, or Four Letters, YHWH. The ancient Hebrew language does not include written vowels, so scholars are not sure how it is pronounced, but the most commonly agreed pronunciation is "Yahweh". Because of the third commandment warning about possible misuse of the Name, it is not used in Jewish communities. Where is does appear in Scripure readings, it was most commonly read as "Adonai", which is the title "Lord." Many ancient manuscripts have notes for the reader of the vowels for "Adonai" as a reminder.  Early translators did not realize what these meant, so they added the vowels to YHWH, which led to the common translation as "Jehovah", now recognized as a mistranslation. The concept of "Adonai" by Jewish readers has become almost as sacred as the original Tetragrammon, and modern Jews commonly use the term "HaShem", which means "The Name."

The other Name which has sacred meaning is "Yeshua", which came into English through Greek as "Jesus." The original Hebrew version is what is now translated as "Joshua".  I find it interesting that English speakers almost never use the name "Jesus" as a personal name, while "Joshua" is fairly common, and "Jesus"  (pronounced "Heysus") is very commonly used in Spanish. One common interpretation of the Third Commandment, traditionally read as "Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord Thy God in vain", is that the use of the names and titles for God should not be used lightly or without their proper respect--in other words, as exclamations or expressions of negative emotional expletives. We all know people who have gotten in the habit of sprinkling their conversations with Biblical words used as curses or thoughtless descriptions without respect for their original meanings. (My mom was very sensitive about this, because we had neighbors whose idea of raising kids was to yell cuss words at them periodically, and anything that Mom considered vulgar or sacrilegious would get me restricted to the back yard for a week at a time.) So I have always been very sensitive to language, and have found that silly substitutes like "Oh, Rats!" or "Piffle!" got more attention than real bad words. Use of swear words in movies is often excused by writers that say that is just a recognition of "how people talk", but don't realize that people who do talk carelessly don't even notice it;  and people that don't, notice it enough that it messes up their appreciation of the dialogue.
Names, and language in general, can have great power! We need to be aware of our conversation and not misuse names and words that can be misunderstood.