Category: Band

Are we willing to risk for the sake of giving God glory? Are we willing to potentially ruin our reputations or our financial situations or even our positions within our communities or the marketplace so that God would be glorified?

There are moments when this is the question that we have to answer:

Me? Or him?

Do I choose my security? My comfort?

Or do I choose God’s glory?

Jesus had healed a man who had been blind from birth. Even Jesus’s disciples had fallen into the trap of the story that had been told by the local Jewish leaders as an explanation for why this man had been born blind: Either this man was a sinner, or it was his parents. One or the other.

And so the disciples asked Jesus, which one was the sinner? Surely this is true, isn’t it? No, Jesus explained. This is only that God’s works would be shown in this man. And so Jesus healed the man and he was able to see!

Now the Jewish leaders came to the man’s parents for an explanation. How was their son healed?

“We know he is our son,” the parents answered, “and we know he was born blind. But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don’t know. Ask him. He is of age; he will speak for himself.” His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders, who already had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. That was why his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”

John 9:20-23

Did the man’s parents know that Jesus had healed their son? Yes.

Did they think that Jesus was the Messiah? Very likely.

So what was the problem? They weren’t willing to risk being put out of the synagogue. They preferred their position in the society. They preferred their position in the synagogue. As a result, they were willing to deny what they believed before others, especially those in authority, and keep what they had.

And what was their prize? What was their reward? They could stay in the synagogue, the very place led by people who were denying that their son was healed, preferring instead to continually declare that either they, or their son, were sinners that deserved the punishment of their son’s blindness.

So, because the parents deferred the response to their son, the Jewish leaders called him in. He had, in fact, already told them once what had happened, but the leaders weren’t satisfied with his response, so they wanted to hear from him again, hoping that he would change his story.

The man, of course, knew the consequences of his testimony. He knew as well that he could be thrown out of the synagogue. He knew as well that he could lose whatever position, or whatever place in the society that he had.

But he was willing to risk it all. The man was willing to speak of what he knew and what he believed.

And why? Because his life had changed. He was blind and now he could see:

The man answered, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”

John 9:30-33

Unfortunately, the man did have the pay the penalty for not aligning himself with the Jewish leaders. Those who were in charge of the synagogue did have a specific idea of what they wanted the man to say, but he wouldn’t say it. The man knew what had happened to him. He knew that he had sat in darkness for decades, and now he saw the light. And that was enough for him. He would speak of what he knew. He would speak of what he had experienced.

The consequence, though, was that he was thrown out of the synagogue. He had taken a risk and, at least within the context of the society that he lived, it didn’t work out. He was willing to risk and he was punished for his right stand.

But there was a reward that was even greater. Instead of maintaining whatever position he had in the society, this man found Jesus. He went to Jesus and looked into the face of God. He found and heard the Son of Man. And he worshiped him.

We also have moments in which we can risk for the cause of Christ:

Do I speak with this person about Jesus and risk my relationship with them? Or risk what they would think about me? Or do I stay silent?

Do I take on this ministry? Or this project? Do I risk looking like a fool if it doesn’t work? Do I risk losing my money or my position? Or would it be better to stay as I am?

Should I move somewhere? Should I risk changing my job? Or my source of income? Or should I stay where I am?

Reckless risk is foolish. There is a type of risk that makes no sense and lacks wisdom.

But there is a type of risk that is simply overcoming fear. There is a type of risk where you are simply allowing God to use you. You are overcoming the inertia of where you are currently, or who you have been up to now and you place yourself in a position where God can do what he wants to do.

Risk is required if we want God to use us. Fear is found within each of us. For those that God is using in great ways and those that God is using in small ways, every one of them has been afraid. Afraid to fail. Afraid to get hurt. Afraid to lose.

Yet they were willing to take a risk. They had faith that God would use them, and so they started. Or they spoke. Or they went. This is the nature of faith. Not faith in themselves, but faith in the one that goes with them. Faith that the works of God would be shown in them, just as they would be in the man who had been born blind. Faith that it is OK to take a risk.

I’m a pretty good guy.

I haven’t sinned as badly as that other person.

I’m doing better…

Well, actually, I’m doing worse, but I’ll do better…

We tell ourselves a lot of stories about who we are. We tell ourselves that we’re actually pretty good. If we look around us, it isn’t very hard to find someone else to whom we can compare ourselves and come up with a determination on our own that we are pretty good.

But we should ask ourselves about the standard that we are using. If I say that I am pretty good, what exactly am I basing that upon?

Jesus was having a long back-and-forth conversation with the Pharisees and the Jewish leaders in the temple courts as the Jews attempted to figure out who Jesus claimed to be. They were certain that he was not the Messiah, but they tried to understand if Jesus himself claimed to be.

Through the course of the conversation, Jesus talked about the difference between the free man, the one who listened to him, did what Jesus said, and then would be, as a consequence, set free.

But the Jews thought that they were in no way slaves. This was interesting, of course, because they were living under Roman rule and were waiting for the Messiah that would come to lead them in overthrowing the Romans and taking back their nation, but this isn’t the tact that Jesus takes. He leads the Jews in a completely different direction:

Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

John 8:34-36

Jesus doesn’t speak about slavery from the perspective of being ruled by someone physically in this world. That existed in that time, of course, even in addition to the oppressive government that was imposed by the Romans. But instead, Jesus was referring to a spiritual enslavement. He was saying that, if they are sinning, they were slaves to sin.

Everyone that I speak to will acknowledge that they are a sinner. “Nobody is perfect. We’re all sinners,” we might say without reservation.

But not everyone will therefore recognize that we are, therefore, slaves to sin. We become ensnared, caught in the lie that we are OK…enough. Sinners: yes, of course. Slaves: no, never. Not me.

And so that deception prevents us from understanding our need for rescue. We don’t realize that we are enslaved. We think that we can get out. We think that we can handle it. We think that we can choose. After all, I’m not really that bad, am I?

Well, in fact, we either are slaves to sin, or we have been slaves to sin and have been rescued from that slavery by the Messiah who has come to lead us out of our slavery. Sin is our Egypt and it is holding us. God has come to lead us out, just as he did with Moses and the Israelites who were enslaved in Egypt, but we have to recognize in the first place that we are enslaved so that we can understand that we need to be freed.

It is easier for us to see slavery with chains or with bars and holding cells. It is even easier for us to see slavery with addiction.

But for many of us, or maybe for all of us, it is very difficult to see our slavery to sin. We believe that we can do it. Especially us in the western world. We believe that we have agency over our lives. We believe that we are in control. We believe that we can start something and end something when we want.

But the truth is that we are slaves to the sin that we commit. We can only do that which we are commanded to do, and that is exactly what we do.

We must wake up. We must recognize that we are in slavery so that we can recognize our need to be set free. We need to be freed by the one who can make us free. Jesus is the Son and the Son came to set us free.

Do you realize that you are a slave to sin? Do you want to be free? These are important questions for each of us and there is one way in which that can happen: By doing what the Son, what Christ himself says to do, we will know the truth and that truth will set us free.

The Jewish leaders understood exactly what Jesus was saying.

Today, there are many people that deny what Jesus said, or try to explain it away, or work to distract people from the truth.

But the Jewish leaders were there. They were listening to Jesus in person, and they knew precisely what he meant:

So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. In his defense Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

John 5:16-18

Jesus had healed a man who couldn’t walk on the Sabbath. He was lame, paralyzed, and hoping for a solution, hoping for a miracle. And that is what he got. Jesus came by the pool at Bethesda and asked the man if he wanted to get well. That is an important question… Sometimes we prefer the situation that we find ourselves in. Do we want to get well?

The man did, and so Jesus healed him, telling the man that he needed to pick up his mat and walk.

Now Jesus knew the Law and the traditions of the Jewish leaders. He had just healed the man on the Sabbath, but instead of recognizing the incredible miracle that had just happened, what did the leaders focus on? The fact that the man was carrying his mat! Jesus had told the man to carry his mat, knowing that it was the Sabbath, specifically to rile the Jewish leaders, to cause a reaction upon the wrong thing. Jesus knew that they would react to the man carrying the mat instead of the fact that the man was in fact standing and walking after having been paralyzed and lame his entire life.

Jesus referred to himself as the Lord of the Sabbath. He was “entitled” to heal someone on the Sabbath – as if we would ever need an exemption from the Law to do good for someone else – because he is the Lord of the Sabbath. He made the law that says rest on the Sabbath. He could determine how it would be applied. He wasn’t breaking the Sabbath. He was doing good on the Sabbath!

But the Jewish leaders saw what they wanted to see. They saw that the man was carrying his mat and so, having been identified by the man who was healed, they went to Jesus, just as Jesus knew that they would, and Jesus explained himself this way:

My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.

That’s right. He said it: “My Father…” God himself is working, and so am I. That’s why I healed the man on the Sabbath. Because God worked that day. God did good on the Sabbath, and so I do good on the Sabbath. God worked on the Sabbath, so I work on the Sabbath. My Father worked on the Sabbath, so I worked on the Sabbath.

So yes, the Jewish leaders heard him correctly, and they wanted to kill him for it. According to them, Jesus was blaspheming. He called himself equal with God. And they were right. That is exactly what Jesus was doing. He was calling himself equal with God. He was calling himself God.

As I said before, there are many today that attempt to deny or distract us from the reality of who Jesus claimed to be. Muslims will say that he was a prophet and only a prophet.

Is that what Jesus said? Or is that what the Jewish leaders understood? Far from it. They understood him perfectly: Jesus claimed to be equal with God.

Or Jehovah’s Witnesses will explain away Jesus as being “a” son of God. Not God.

Is that what Jesus said or what the Jewish leaders understood? Far from it.

Or Catholics will say that we need to pray to the saints or talk to Mary. We need to pray to dead people. Just people. Not one of them claimed to be equal with God. And does that make any sense given who Jesus claimed to be or who the Jewish leaders understood him to say? Not in the least.

God himself came to earth in the form of a man to reestablish his rule and reign, to redeem and purchase a people for himself with his own blood. That reality, and that story, is greater than any lie or any distraction that could be told today. When Jesus’s disciples looked at him…when the Jewish leaders looked at him…and when we look at Jesus through his words in the Bible today…we are all looking directly at God. Jesus, as the Jewish leaders correctly understood, claimed to be equal with God.

There are those who won’t believe without signs and wonders. There are also those who base their faith on signs and wonders. Neither is good. Jesus doesn’t want us to just believe based on signs and wonders. He wants us to base our faith in him and on him.

Jesus healed people. He performed miracles and those miracles confirmed his words as he routinely, and at command, did that which only God could do.

When Jesus went to Cana for the second time – at least the second time recorded in John’s gospel – there was a nobleman who came to Jesus asking Jesus to heal his son who was dying back in Jesus’s current hometown of Capernaum. But as he comes, Jesus replies to him:

“Unless you people see signs and wonders,” Jesus told him, “you will never believe.”

John 4:48

It seems like a harsh response, but Jesus does go on to heal the man’s son, and as a result, the man does believe.

But we can contrast this with that which happened at Sychar in Samaria. Just before going to Cana, Jesus had been passing through Samaria where he met the Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus performed a “sign” in the sense that he told the woman that she’d had five husbands, and was now living with a man who was not her husband, something that he couldn’t have known without supernatural understanding or knowledge.

So the woman went and told everyone that she had found the Messiah and they came to see him, believing initially based not on a sign that they saw, but on the woman’s testimony. But then, they believed for themselves…

Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because of his words many more became believers.

They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”

John 4:39-42

The point here is that some believe as a result of a sign. Maybe there is something that happens that causes them to believe. This is good, and is consistent with what Jesus did when he was with people, but he wanted the people to grow beyond a sign to know him.

And there are others that will only seem to be able to maintain their faith if they constantly see signs. In fact, they routinely ask for signs, as if their faith depends upon it.

This isn’t the heart of knowing Jesus. Yes, we expect to see God at work around us, and yes, we expect to see the miraculous. But no, our faith should not depend on seeing signs. After Jesus fed the 5000, they continued to pursue him, yet Jesus told the people that they only came to them for food. Now, instead, if they want food, they must eat the food that is provided from heaven. He said they must eat his flesh and drink his blood . In other words, they must know him. Not just enjoy the signs or be amazed by the miracles. But to know him, our king. Our savior. Our Lord. We must live for him because of who he is, not just because of the signs and wonders that he performs.

Jesus is referred to as the Son of Man 88 times in the Gospels, either by himself or other people. In the book of John, the first time that Jesus refers to himself as the Son of Man is when Nicodemus comes to visit him:

I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven —the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”

John 3:12-15

Why does Jesus use this moment to first call himself the Son of Man? I think it is because Jesus knows that Nicodemus will understand the reference. Jesus referred to himself as the Son of Man, adopting the name from Daniel 7 where Daniel makes this prophetic statement:

In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

Daniel 7:13-14

Why would Jesus adopt this name from this prophecy in Daniel? Let’s see what we can understand from Daniel’s prophecy:

The Son of Man was in heaven, coming to the Ancient of Days on the clouds of heaven, to the One that Jesus would call Father.

He would come and stand in the presence of the Ancient of Days.

The Son of Man would be given authority, glory, and sovereign power.

The Son of Man would rule over the nations and they would worship him.

His dominion – or another way to say it – his kingdom where he would be king and would reign forever would never pass away and would never be destroyed.

After calling himself the Son of Man many times, Jesus then authoritatively yet humbly said this to his disciples before returning to heaven:

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Matthew 28:18

Do you see what he is saying? Jesus called himself the Son of Man. He performed the signs that only God could perform. He forgave sins as only God could do. He fulfilled prophecies given throughout the entire Old Testament. He was resurrected from the dead.

Now he says that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him. Just like the Son of Man in Daniel 7.

Of course, Jesus uses this form of speech precisely because Nicodemus would have understood these words. He would have understood who the Son of Man was to be.

Someone might object, though… But wasn’t Ezekiel also referred to as the son of man?

Well, almost.

Ezekiel was referred to as “son of man” or “a son of man”. One of many. He was a prophet, but he was a son of man. He was a human being. He spoke the words that God gave him to speak, but he was a human just like each of us. Calling Ezekiel a son of man was a term to remind him of the humility of his position, the humility of who he was as he stood before God, yet delivered the words of God.

Jesus, on the other hand was called, and referred to himself as, the Son of Man. It was a singular article. A unique article. Similar to how Jesus referred to himself as the way, the truth, and the life he also refers to himself as the Son of Man. He he unique. He is the one that Daniel was referring to in his prophecy. No one among many like Ezekiel. But one. And only one.

Jesus is the one who would come riding on the clouds, just as he himself prophecied that he would in Matthew 24:

Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.

Matthew 24:30

Jesus is the one who was in heaven and would return to heaven, just as I already quoted above from John 3:

No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven —the Son of Man.

John 3:13

And Jesus is the only one who will be worshiped by all nations, tribes, and languages along with all of the angels, elders, and creatures of heaven:

And they sang a new song, saying:

“You are worthy to take the scroll
and to open its seals,
because you were slain,
and with your blood you purchased for God
persons from every tribe and language and people and nation.

You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God,
and they will reign on the earth.”

Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they were saying:

“Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
and honor and glory and praise!”

Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, saying:

“To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
be praise and honor and glory and power,
for ever and ever!”

The four living creatures said, “Amen,” and the elders fell down and worshiped.

Revelation 5:9-14

Jesus is the Son of Man and it is important that we understand what he meant when he gave himself this name. Let’s not read too quickly, but instead follow Jesus’s words closely with a broader understanding of the references that he is making, and to whom he is making them so that we also can follow and worship him for who he truly is.

Like many of us, Jesus went to a wedding. At this wedding, though, it was the groom’s job to provide the wine, and keep it flowing! But they had run out and they didn’t know what to do. Jesus’s mom knew what to do. Call Jesus! 😊

So she did and he had them fill some large jars full of water and then draw out of them, only to find that the water had been transformed into some great tasting wine ever made!

After telling this story, John makes an interesting note:

What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

John 2:11

John recorded seven different signs, or miracles, that Jesus performed. He did many more, of course, and we can read about those in the other Gospels. But John used these seven very significant signs, saying that, through these, Jesus was revealing his glory.

What does that mean? What does it mean that Jesus was revealing his glory?

Jesus was revealing himself to us. Jesus came as the king over all kings. He came as the king in the kingdom of God. He was, and is, God himself, revealing himself as God to those whom he had called. He was revealing himself to his disciples and all that would receive him for who he truly is. Not for what he could give them. Not for who they thought he should be. But for whom he truly is.

Jesus extended God’s mercy to all of humanity. God’s desire was to make a way for every person to return to him, but he knew that no human would be able to do that so God himself did the work. He himself gave the sacrifice. That is what he has done through Jesus, purchasing people away from the kingdom of darkness to instead enter the kingdom of God.

God’s grace in the face of rebellion brought him glory. God’s offer of mercy for what should have been certain judgment brought him glory. Jesus himself is God, having come to the earth to be known by those who would enter his kingdom. Jesus was revealing his glory, which meant that he was both showing himself and the plan of God through Christ. In Christ, through these miracles that confirmed who he is, Jesus was revealing his glory.

We frequently name Jesus as Savior. We frequently call him Lord, even if we don’t necessarily treat him that way. But we rarely call him Creator.

Instead, I think because he showed himself on the earth later in the form of a man, we don’t necessarily think of Jesus as our creator. Yet as we read the beginning of John 1, that is how we see him described:

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

John 1:3

And then a few verses later, it says this:

He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.

John 1:10-11

Jesus created us. Jesus gave form to all things. He is our author, he is our creator. But he is also our judge, and he is the one who will come to save those who have believed in him. And finally, he has all authority in heaven and on earth and he is the King over all kings.

Jesus is the one from whom all things were made. Jesus is the one for whom all things were made. And Jesus is the one from whom and through whom all things were made. Through him are all things.

Peter wraps up his second letter to the believers of his day by warning them that there will be scoffers. How right he was, both in his day as well as in ours.

Peter says that there will be people who will say that your faith is useless, based upon made up stories.

There will be people who will say that it is full of unmerited hope.

There will be people that will say that nothing has changed. Everything is continuing just as it always has. They will say that your belief in a God or a savior is ridiculous.

But then he reminds his readers that these people are thinking as humans think. They are not taking the perspective of God. God is patient. God is kind. He desires that people would come to repentance. He desires that people would leave behind their sins and their old way of life to come to him through Christ. And it is for this reason that Jesus has not yet returned. It is the grace, the mercy, and the kindness of God. Otherwise, instead of grace and mercy, the time of judgment and wrath would be upon us.

Peter explains that God is not being slow. God is being extremely patient.

But, he says, beyond the scoffing that we must endure, Peter also explains that there will be many distortions that people will apply to the Scriptures. He specifically referred to the writings of Paul, which he had clearly read because he says that Paul writes the same way in each of his letters. Peter says that people will distort that which Paul has written – which are the same letters that we have even today – just as they have distorted the other Scriptures, that of the law and the prophets:

Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.

2 Peter 3:15-16

This stuck out to me specifically today as I read these words after having read a letter from someone with whom we’ve been part of the same church, the same body of Christ, and yet have gone on to distort the scriptures. They’ve said that there are resources that will help us see a theology and justification for living a homosexual lifestyle. They’ve said that they have personal thoughts for a seemingly biblically justifiable reasons for divorce.

And they make it all sound OK. In doing these things, in admitting their homosexuality, in getting divorced, all of the present problems go away. Health problems: gone. Relational problems: much better. This is the right path. This is the way to go.

And yet, it is all an incredible distortion that may feel good either in the moment or over a period of time, but will do nothing more than eventually come to ruin.

Twisting the word of God to make it say what you want it to say? I’m sorry, that is a distortion.

Contorting yourself with your logic to come to a conclusion that you are in good standing with God to be able to divorce your husband or your wife? No doubt, it is a distortion.

These thought processes are rampant in our world today. It would be one thing if someone said that they are leaving their faith in Christ altogether because they no longer want to live the way in which we are called to live in God. But that isn’t what is happening. In this situation, and in many, many others, there is a desire to justify ourselves, distorting that which is written and is known to be true so that we can place ourselves and our opinions at the highest place of authority while continuing to say that we are justified before God. And that is a distortion of what is written.

We should instead read and understand the word of God clearly, submitting ourselves to God and what he has to say. Only in this way can we find the true life that he offers to us, without reservation, and without distortion.

And yet, I can’t finish writing my thoughts on the distortion of the word of God without saying that God remains patient. Even for those who are distorting the word of God; even for those who are leading others in the direction that will come to ruin; even with these people God is being patient. He desires that they will repent and that they will return back, that they will turn and come to Christ. God desires that everyone would be saved. God, we pray that even those who are distorting the word of God would return to you so that distortion and lies would no longer reign over each of their lives, but that the truth of Jesus would be the only way.

Sometimes, there is real money involved. Hard cash. Gold and silver.

That was the case with Balaam, a prophet who heard from God and was called by Balak, the king of Moab, to come and curse the Israelites who had been wandering in the wilderness and had now come into the Moabite territory. Balak was afraid for his people, and probably most of all for his rule as king over the Moabites, so he called for Balaam to come and curse the Israelites.

Yet when Balaam came in response to Balak’s invitation, instead of cursing the Israelites, he blessed them three times. He even gave a prophecy that the Messiah would come to crush the Moabites through these Israelite people.

God told Balaam that the Israelite people were blessed and that he could not curse them. They were blessed because they were God’s people. The very God that Balaam was calling upon to curse the Israelites was the God of the Israelites. God would not curse them.

Yet Balak was still holding out a great reward and Balaam wanted the money. If God wouldn’t curse these people, was there another way? Yes, of course there was and Balaam told the Moabites what to do:

They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the LORD in the Peor incident, so that a plague struck the LORD’s people.

Numbers 31:16

Balaam, instead, advised Balak and the Moabites to use the women of the Moabites to entice the Israelite men to come and sleep with them.

And so that that is what they did. The Israelite men went with the Moabite women who had prostituted themselves to the Israelite men and lured them away from the blessing of God. The Israelites ignored the commandments of God and instead went with the Moabite women, not only sleeping with the prostitutes but also offering sacrifices to Baal Peor, the god of the Moabites. They no longer worshiped Yahweh, their God who had blessed them, but they also began to worship this Baal, this lord and master of the Moabites.

With all of this as background, we can now see why Peter, later, warned the believers that there would be false teachers and false prophets that would come in amongst the people and lure them away. Just as Balaam had given good advice on how the enemies of the Israelite people could lure the Israelites away from God, there are also people, even today, that love money and prefer to lure the people away from Biblical teachings so that they can receive a monetary reward.

They have left the straight way and wandered off to follow the way of Balaam son of Bezer, who loved the wages of wickedness.

2 Peter 2:15

These “wages of wickedness” that Peter refers to are the monies that Balaam would have ultimately received for advising the Moabites in regard to how they could destroy the Israelites. Their destruction would come when they were separated from their God, from whom they would walk away to not only fall into sexual sin, but begin to worship Baal Peor instead of the one true God, Yahweh.

As Peter has warned the people in his time, we must watch for these people in our day as well. There is an evil, fueled by the desire for the things of this world, the riches and pleasures of our world today, that lurks around the church even today. There are teachers who wish to neuter the power of the Gospel, suggesting that we can “sprinkle in some Jesus” to our doctrines while continuing to strive for our own salvation, ultimately making ourselves our own gods. There are false prophets who tell us that, if we believe, we can become rich, enjoying even ourselves the wages of the evil of our world. We too can prosper if we follow them.

So we must continue to follow the path of Christ. We must maintain our faith in the grace and mercy offered to us by God through the sacrifice of his Son on the cross. The one sacrifice that has purchased us, that ransomed us, out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God. This is the way, and it is the only way. May we not look to the wages of wickedness of our world so that we would be lured away, but instead would be found to be faithful in Christ.

The disciples had a front row seat. Peter was there, not only when Jesus drove out demons, or preached the Sermon on the Mount, or when he was baptized, but Jesus also allowed him to be there when Jairus’s daughter was raised from the dead, during the gut-wrenching moments of prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, or on the mountain at the transfiguration.

These were things that Peter saw. He heard Jesus speak. He sensed. He felt. He knew what he was seeing, and I can only imagine that he was having a hard time believing his own eyes, his own ears, or any of his other senses.

But the story was his. He could tell the story because he was there. Sometimes the story happened to him. Sometimes the story happened around him. And then he went on to tell the story, and that is Peter’s point now as he begins his second letter to the believers, those other people who had received the gift of having faith in Christ and were saved from the coming wrath of God. He was a witness:

For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.

2 Peter 1:16-18

Peter and the rest of the disciples may have had a certain advantage. They were there when Jesus walked the earth. They experienced all of it. They saw it all.

But does that mean that we are underprivileged and that we are not able to experience Christ in a similar way to Peter and the disciples? Can we not also know Christ?

Yes, we can. If we want to.

Yes, we can. If our faith goes beyond words.

Yes, we can. If our experience of Christ exists within the community of Christ, but also goes beyond the community to the risen and living person of Jesus, to our Lord and Savior who is also called our friend, our brother, our co-heir of the inheritance from our heavenly Father.

Jesus promised his disciples that he would be with them. He is also with us. He walks with us. As we go, he is there. As we read his word each day, we receive him. We soak him in. We live a life with Christ, and we see him move and work within our daily experiences.

We are also his witnesses. Peter and the other disciples were there when Jesus was physically here on the earth. We also are here now because, in us, Jesus is spiritually here on the earth. Not in the metaphorical way. In a real way. Through the word of God and through his Spirit. We can also experience Jesus, and we can also tell the stories of how he has changed us, or how he has changed our circumstances, or how he has moved in people or in situations around us. We are eyewitnesses to these things as well. We have seen it, and we, like Peter, testify to his majesty so that he will receive glory for both who he is and what he has done.