Luke 15

Verse 20

“And he arose and came to his father.  But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.”

Instead of maintaining his rightful dignity and honor as an oriental patriarch, however, he abandoned social propriety and ran out to meet his son while he was still far away.”  - David K. Bernard

Our God is a desperate God,
He is a God that ridicules and makes a fool of Himself by begging.

Desperate because He is doing everything in His power to bring us back to His Harmony.

And yet we still reject Him in exchange for suffering.

He is desperately crying out to us with all His might;

so loudly it even killed Him at the cross;

so loud the fires of hell burned inside His throat.

He does so because He is not willing to lose us to that hell fire.

He does so because He knows about the impending pain we will go through; it is already hurting Him, He already sees it coming, He is already experiencing it for us, and He is warning us.

He does so because He is willing to set Himself on hellfire to get our attention,

if it means we will be saved.

He is not just as desperate as I am from my own suffering, He is even more desperate, because He is even sympathetic for the suffering that I have numbed from and have tucked away.

He is resorting to ridicule Himself, not because He is foolish, but because we have already crossed those lines ourselves.  What kind of father would be afraid to get a little mud on his shoes to save his child out of the pile of dung that is pinning him down?

He ridicules Himself; it reflects how wrecked our situation really is.

Because if a reasonable God who knows everything is acting like this about us…

What must He know?

And if an omnipotent God is doing all He can do for us…

What is there left to do?

Written on August 26, 2012

Matthew 27

Matthew 27:17

"So when the crowd came together, Pilate asked them, 'Which prisoner do you want me to set free? Do you want Jesus Barabbas or Jesus who is called the Messiah?'"

The crowds were given a choice to set free either
Jesus Barabbas (Jesus Son of the Father) or
Jesus Christ  (Jesus the Savior)
("Christ" is a Greek translation for "Messiah")

The crowds here are setting free Jesus the Son of the Father, but also accomplishing the work that Jesus came to do as the "savior". So in a sense it is like the Jews themselves, by crucifying Jesus are willingly doing and accepting the will of God.

This note would have not stepped out to me if I had not first noticed a suggested interpretation of Matthew 27:25 "And all the people answered, 'His blood be on us and on our children!'"
According to Mark Allan Powell, a funny interpretation could suggest that the crowd here is actually accepting the blood of the sacrifice as ransom for their sins.

Verse 17 and verse 25 have the crowd ironically accusing Jesus but accepting his mission at the same time. Almost as if God used the Jews to accomplish His work. Jesus would have not been sacrificed for all of humanity if the Jews knew what they were actually doing.

In John 11:50-51 Caiaphas's response also has the same double impression as these.

Matthew 2

Matthew 2:23
"He will be called a Nazarene"
Now the footnote on the CEV says that the prophet who prophesied this is unknown.
But I really do remember reading this one in the old testament.

"Nazarite" is a term used to name people who would dedicate themselves to God in a special way.
They would not touch anything dead, they would not drink hard drinks or even eat grapes and raisins, and they would not cut their hair.  People could decide to do this for a time or forever. (Numbers 6:1-21)

Samson was dedicated as a lifelong Nazarene from birth:
unfortunately he touched a dead thing (Judges 14:9, 15:15),
he exposed himself to alcohol drinking, although text does not indicate if he actually drank wine (Judges 14:10),
and he cut his hair (Judges 16:19)

As far as Jesus prophesied to be a Nazarene, I am just noting this verse down to see if I see it in the old testament.

Matthew 1

Matthew 1:11-12
Coniah = Jeconiah = Jehoiachin
and Josiah the father of Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon. After the exile to Babylon: Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, (NIV)

Jeconiah is the king of Judah who reigned during the exile, of which Jeremiah says:
This is what the Lord says: “Record this man as if childless, a man who will not prosper in his lifetime, for none of his offspring will prosper, none will sit on the throne of David or rule anymore in Judah.” (Jeremiah 22:30)

According to Dr. Henrietta C. Mears, the Jehoiachin's line was cursed so that his lineage would no longer be king.  But, as she points out, Jesus's father was not Joseph (who's lineage came from Jehoiachin), but from God himself.

Thus, we also have the mother's lineage in Luke, and thus Luke says:
"Everyone thought he was the son of Joseph. But his family went back through Heli," (Luke 3:23 CEV) Therefore Jesus was not from Joseph's cursed lineage but "The family of Jesus went all the way back to Adam and then to God" (Luke 3:37 CEV)

Luke gives us Mary's lineage and Matthew gives us Joseph's lineage; but the actual father's "genealogy" mentioned in John 1:1-14