There are certain truths that bear repeating. Peter and Paul believed this wholeheartedly:

 Because the stakes are so high, even though you’re up-to-date on all this truth and practice it inside and out, I’m not going to let up for a minute in calling you to attention before it. This is the post to which I’ve been assigned—keeping you alert with frequent reminders—and I’m sticking to it as long as I live. (II Peter 1:12 The Message)

 To write the same things again is no trouble to me, and it is a safeguard for you. (Philippians 3:1)

New people must hear. Established ones must be reminded. All good pastors celebrate core truths. I listened to a message of this sort yesterday. While the material is in the School of Christ 1000-level classes, it remains alien to the core curriculum in many mainline evangelical churches. A great refresher course, in harmony with our passage, can be heard on YouTube. Look for: “Bill Johnson—The War in Your Head.”

Jesus is big on remembering as well. He returned to this one regularly: “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.” No doubt the Holy Spirit continued to remind the disciples of it and expand upon its meaning after Jesus ascended. When they recalled Jesus’ words: “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends,” there is little doubt, a dying man on a cross came to mind. But who is that man hanging there! Would love hang them on a cross, too? As they processed this question, the Holy Spirit made his key point: “A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a slave above his master. (Matthew 10:24)

Jesus absolutely had Israel on its heels. To religious leaders, he was practically an anti-Jehovah. It was obvious he was from God. His signs could have only come from heaven, but he defiled the traditions of the elders: he broke the Sabbath and he associated with unclean persons, even women!

Why? Why couldn’t Jesus simply comply—then die on the cross? Because he was showing them what God was actually like, and it was so unlike the God they had imagined. Everything until this time had been mere staging to reveal God as Father and Friend.

Religious Jews were choking on this. Running in their mind was a well-conditioned tape saying, “God is holy! God is an all-consuming fire! God is angry and ready to punish sin! God demands sacrifices of blood to cleanse men of wickedness.” God might have been Abraham’s friend, but the Pharisee’s wineskin had no place for a Father or a Friend. The leaders knew intuitively, a tribe of people thinking about God in these familiar terms was going to raise questions about their titles and roles (not to mention their neat robes.) What relevance would they have if God came down, looking man eye-to-eye, speaking to him openly and directly?

 No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. (John 15:15)

Jesus knew his old wineskin audience was tough. They had invested much, if not all, in the traditions surrounding the old covenant. Jesus had to face off with the advocates of old revelation. Religious sects like the Sadducees, the Essenes and Pharisees had collected the crumbs, but this manna (as interpreted by them) had long since gone stale. While Jesus blessed little ones he spoke woes to those misrepresenting God:

 Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. (Matthew 18:6)

 But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people; for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in. (Matthew 23:13)

 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. So you, too, outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. (Matthew 23:27-28)

We are blessed people if we find the Holy Spirit has come, troubling us with notions which are out of sync with the traditional tape running in our minds, upsetting our complacent ideas about him. God is not a spoiler as we might propose. He is our Teacher, Father, and Friend. In this capacity, it is no trouble for him to remind us:

 Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full. (John 15:9-11)

Jesus must win The War in Our Head so that “His joy may be in us, and that our joy may be made full.”

Father, by your great mercy, erase every inferior and competing thought recorded on the tape running in our heads. Slay every lofty thought exalted above the actual knowledge of who you want to be to us. Amen.

 

 

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