Great, greater, greatest...

Our friend Brian in the food bank in Israel

We continue our journey through the Gospel of Luke. I hope you are as curious as I am about the lessons we can learn. This time I want to stop at a familiar passage in chapter 9: the feeding of the five thousand.

When I was reading that story again, I noticed that Jesus offers His disciples a great opportunity to do something special. The disciples were worried about the large crowd of people that surrounded the Messiah. In the meantime Jesus was teaching about the Kingdom and He healed people with all kind of diseases. When evening came the disciples came to Him with their worried thinking and asked Him to send the people home. And you know what Jesus' reaction was? You give them something to eat! In other words, why ask Me to do something about it, this is your chance, test your faith, put it into practice. Do something!

Luke 9:12-13, Late in the afternoon the Twelve came to him and said, “Send the crowd away so they can go to the surrounding villages and countryside and find food and lodging, because we are in a remote place here.” He replied, “You give them something to eat.” They answered, “We have only five loaves of bread and two fish—unless we go and buy food for all this crowd.” Their response to Jesus' command was a clear sign of unbelief and doubt: We have limited resources Lord. You don't seriously mean that you want us to solve this problem?

Do we recognize this response? Jesus wants us to do great things, and often all we can see is obstacles and limitations. Jesus sees opportunities; we see limitations and have excuses. In the Old Testament we can find a similar story in 2 Kings 4:42-44. The man of God (Elisha) orders his servants to feed 100 people with 20 loaves of bread. They had their doubts, they found it hard to believe in the impossible: How can I set this before a hundred men?” his servant asked. But Elisha answered, “Give it to the people to eat. For this is what the Lord says: ‘They will eat and have some left over.’” Then he set it before them, and they ate and had some left over, according to the word of the Lord.

In the Old Testament we see this great miracle performed by men, in response to God's word. In the New Testament we see an even greater miracle performed by Jesus. And what about us? What does Jesus say to the people who believe in Him? Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father (John 14:12).

What is your excuse?

PS 1: Talking about feeding the multitudes, take a peek at Brian's blog

Baptism unraveled (3)

In my previous post I described how we can become a member of the Body of Christ, the universal church of believers, through one baptism. That one baptism is also called rebirth. The Bible also speaks about a doctrine of baptisms (Hebrews 6:1-2). I believe that out of that one (most important) baptism, other baptisms will follow. Let's take a look at the baptism in water.

In Old Testament times the Jewish ritual of ceremonial washing was quite common. Because of continual sinning, people needed to be cleansed again and again. In the New Testament John the Baptist announced a new form of ritual cleasing: the water baptism as a sign that people had truly turned their backs to sin. He called on the people to seriously repent from their sinful life and to be baptized. He did no longer use the ceremonial wash basins, as was the Jewish custom, but he went to a place where there was plenty of water. John 3:23 says about it, Now John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because there was plenty of water, and people were coming and being baptized.

Jesus came to John as well, to be baptized, which is a crazy idea of course, because Jesus was without sin. He did not need to repent, let alone to be baptized for the washing away of His sins. Yet, Jesus persuaded John to go ahead and do the will of God, Jesus answered, “For now this is how it should be, because we must do all that God wants us to do.” Then John agreed (Matthew 3:15, CEV). I love that, Jesus sets the example for all of us and humbles Himself. He could have said: 'dear John, I don't need any baptism'. Who could have contradicted Him? But He purposely decided to be obedient and do the will of His Father.

We can read how years later this new form of baptism (ritual washing) is being continued by the disciples. Paul challenged the people of his time, And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name (Acts 22:16). Here, we see again the principle of washing away sins. Through Jesus our sins are forgiven, through water baptism our sins are being washed away. That is why the apostle Peter says we should not look at baptism as a ritual cleansing of dirt, but as a pledge of a clear conscience toward God (1 Peter 3:21). Personally I do know a lot of people that have seriously given their life to Christ, they have turned away from their old life, but they still have a guilty conscience which keeps them from feeling truly free. Often it turns out they have not been baptized, which symbolically would wash away their sins. They know their sins have been forgiven, and yet they carry them around.

In the New Testament we can read many scriptures about water baptism and as I have written in my first post, the arguing about baptism (at what age it should take place and how much water should be used) has resulted in many church splits and family feuds. Personally the words of the Lord Jesus were enough to convince me not to join that discussion: 'we must do all that God wants us to do.' The New King James translations says, It is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness. If you are in doubt about the water baptism, would you please take some time to think about Jesus' words?

Apart from the baptism in water there is something as the baptism in/with the Holy Spirit, which I will discuss in the next post in this series. I hope you will read and think with me!

I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit (Mark 1:8)