“It is today as it was then.” Boy, is it ever.
As you are about to hear in this PODCAST.
Thank you for listening, and for sharing this message!!!
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God bless you richly as you listen.
A blare of the bugles and a roll of the drums. This PODCAST breaks the seal on a brand new study.
A brief interlude in our ongoing series entitled Paul in High Definition.
Welcome to Galatians in High Definition!!!
Thank you for listening, and for sharing this message!!!
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You are about to meet two individuals, remarkable each. YET, as you are about to hear on this PODCAST, they were both utterly invisible, completely anonymous, hidden in the shadows.
Invisible, anonymous, hidden to everyone but God.
Do you ever feel invisible? As if, when all is said and done, your life might count for very little? Or nothing at all?
Encouragement for your soul is one click away!
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God bless you richly as you listen.
Peter wrote that the prophets…
“…searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances (of the predicted) sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow.”
That time had now come. And as you are about to hear in this PODCAST, it was amazing!
Last week, we made the point that the portrait of Jesus painted in the Old Testament, by the Old Testament prophets, was dramatically detailed and stunningly complete. Just reading the Old Testament leaves the reader with nothing left to the imagination as far as Jesus is concerned.
Oh sure. The New Testament adds a bit of color here, some contours there. Think of the Old Testament as a black & white photo of Jesus in contrast to a New Testament color image—vivid color at that!
The New Testament is not so much new revelation about Jesus—His incarnation, ministry, crucifixion, resurrection—as it is a magnifying glass that allows us to see a bit more detail that was already there on the canvas of Old Testament.
So we are now going to unveil for you that Old Testament canvas, allowing you to see it in all its prophetic glory.
Imagine a blank canvas before you. With each biblical brushstroke, a bit more of the portrait will gradually emerge. Are you ready?
We’ll start with this stunner, right out of the gate.
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It was a scandal in the making.
As you are about to hear in this PODCAST, a vast cultural divide threatened to rip asunder the fragile fabric of unity these first believers in Jesus earlier enjoyed.
As we learned last week (Podcast #27), the story begins,
“But as the believers rapidly multiplied, there were rumblings of discontent. The Greek-speaking believers complained about the Hebrew-speaking believers, saying that their widows were being discriminated against in the daily distribution of food.”
That was, as you will remember, a dire situation for these precious widows. Dire in the extreme. Women who had lost their husbands, and who were now among the most vulnerable in that male-dominated society. Females forced to live in a world that diminished women to a subservient status. One that rendered them uneducated, unskilled, unemployable, utterly without resources. Totally dependent.
Now that they had become followers of Jesus, they could not return to their synagogues for support. Not to worry. We read earlier in Acts 2 that
“(These first believers) would sell their property and possessions and give the money to whoever needed it… and shared their food happily and freely.”
Not any more.
Last week, we went into much detail about the collision of cultures faced by these early believers. A vast cultural divide between the Greek-speaking (Hellenistic) believers who were in the minority, and Hebrew-speaking believers who were in the majority. A cultural divide of church-splitting potential.
So wide a divide that the majority discriminated against the minority to the risk of the lives of Greek-speaking widows.
This was serious. So serious that the Apostles (all Twelve of the Apostles) were forced to drop everything in order to address problem.
Their solution was nothing short of brilliant! For them. And for us!
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God bless you richly as you listen.
As you will hear in this PODCAST, I stand in awe of our ancestors in the faith, the very first community of Christ-followers ever to walk this planet.
By way of introduction, do you remember when, so very long ago, we studied the Sermon on the Mount?
Let me remind you that Jesus introduced His signature sermon with 8 pronouncements of God’s blessing—We call them the Beatitudes. The most enigmatic of the 8 being Beatitude #3 that goes like this:
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5).
You are about to see in full color, in High Definition, exactly what meek looks like, courtesy of our earliest brothers and sisters in the faith.
Before we get to that, there is one additional Beatitude to which I want to direct your attention. It happens to be Beatitude #8, the last of Jesus’ pronouncements of God’s blessing. It reads:
“Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (Matthew 5:10).
Did you know that the words persecute/persecution/persecuted occur in the Bible a combined 142 times? In the minds of the biblical writers, it was a foregone conclusion that they and all of God’s people would be persecuted for our faith.
Jesus certainly understood this, He being the ultimate example of someone who was continuously hounded, hunted, and finally executed—persecuted—for His faith.
Persecution, Jesus repeatedly reminded His disciples, was the price tag for becoming one of His followers.
Perscute—to pursue in a hostile manner, to harass, to trouble, to molest, to mistreat.
Well, Jesus’ many warnings were now coming true for these very first committed Christ-followers. Indeed, what we are about to learn here in Acts 4 was only the beginning.
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God bless you richly as you listen.
We may not know his name.
But as you will hear in this PODCAST, we surely know his story. As did some 5000 men plus countless women and children, whose lives—after hearing this man’s story—would never be the same again.
This one story—the first of fourteen separate and specific miracles recorded in the book of Acts—exemplifies why I sometimes refer to God as “The God of the surprise.”
Both then and now, God can and will—when we least expect it—apply His divine touch to our circumstances that seem to us to be impossible.
Trust me, to this man who had been lame from birth for now more than forty years (Acts 4:22), his tragic circumstance was definition of impossible. Yet, as Jesus once declared to His watching and wondering disciples (this in Matthew 19),
“With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
He is, and ever shall be, “The God of the surprise.”
Here’s the point. A grand and glorious point indeed: Within the boundaries of God’s perfect will, there is no such thing as a hopeless situation.
Once God enters picture,
“Hope always burns eternal.”
If we learn nothing else from this man, learn this: God can and will insert Himself into our most impossible-seeming situations any time He wants to.
For over forty years, this desperate man had no idea that this day would ever come. But come, it did! In God’s perfect timing, for God’s eternal purposes—including the eternal salvation of literally thousands of people.
Such is our hope! Our hope that with God there is ALWAYS hope. A glorious theme echoed throughout the entire Bible.
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God bless you richly as you listen.
There is a beautiful and breathtaking symmetry to the life and ministry of Jesus.
Case in point, as you will hear in this PODCAST, here in John 12, the beloved disciple brings us full circle. You may not see that now. But trust me, you will by the time we conclude this discussion.
Let me give you one tantalizing little hint: This beautiful symmetry to which I refer has little to do with palm branches, but everything to do with lambs.
Now watch this: When John introduced us to Jesus for the very first time, this is what he wrote:
“The next day John (the baptizer) saw Jesus coming toward him and said, ‘Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!’”
That’s in John 1.
Here in John 12, this is what we read:
“The next day, the news that Jesus was on the way to Jerusalem swept through the city.”
Now listen: In both cases, at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry in John 1, and here at the very ending of Jesus’ ministry in John 12, it’s all about a lamb.
I know that as you read any or all of the accounts of Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem as recorded in all four of the Gospels, you may not see a lamb. But trust me, it’s there. Front and center, it’s there.
Just as it is in John 1, so it is here in John 12, Jesus is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Miss that, and you miss the whole point of Jesus’ Triumphal Entry, on this — the Sunday before Passover.
Which raises a most intriguing question: Why did Jesus choose to ride into Jerusalem on that Sunday? Jesus could have ridden into Jerusalem on Saturday (If He did, we would call it Palm Saturday!), or on Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday, or Thursday.
Why did Jesus choose to ride in on the Sunday before Passover? Answer that, and you get the whole picture.
Here’s a secondary question: Since Passover did not officially begin until that Thursday night (Remember Jesus sharing with the disciples their final Passover seder in Upper room on Thursday night?), why were so many pilgrims in Jerusalem so early on that Sunday?
Answer that, and you get the whole picture.
Which underscores this point: The Bible is God’s picture book, and Jesus’ Triumphal Entry is yet another three-dimensional, High Definition portrait of breathtaking significance. A panoramic masterpiece that, though we studied one portion of the Triumphal Entry last week (Daniel’s prophecy), this picture is far too important to ignore this week.
Please remember that depending upon your web browser and connection speed, it may take up to 60 seconds for this podcast to begin to play.
God bless you richly as you listen.
Welcome to this introductory lesson that launched the series: Jesus in High Definition.
Two and a half years ago, my faith was in a free-fall. I needed to get back to the basics. Wipe the slate completely clean. Forget about everything I thought I knew and believed about who Jesus was. Forget everything I had ever been taught about who Jesus was. Forget everything I myself had ever taught about who Jesus was.
Back to the beginning I went. With no preconceived ideas about this man, Jesus, I started with His birth and began moving slowly and deliberately throughout His life and ministry.
At Safe Haven, 116 podcasts later, we are at about the halfway mark. It would be the height of understatement for me to suggest that this study has been for me absolutely REVOLUTIONARY. A picture of Jesus is emerging each and every week that is paradigm-shifting in the extreme.
This little blog post is my way of inviting you to come along for the ride. Depending upon your responses, each Thursday I’ll post the next podcast in the series. That way, you won’t have to jump in at #116. You can hear it as we gave it — every week — over the last many months.
I sure hope that you enjoy it!
By harmonizing the four Gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — we will study the life of Christ in chronological order, from the first utterances of the angels heralding His birth, to His crucifixion and resurrection. It is our sincere hope and expectation that as we immerse ourselves in Jesus’ life and ministry, we will fall more deeply in love with Him (I certainly have!), and become more and more like Him (I certainly hope that I am).
In this first lesson, we will provide you with an overview of the entire Bible — think of it as looking at the boxtop of a puzzle — so that we will understand exactly where the individual “pieces” of the Gospels fall within the grand sweep of the biblical drama.
Sit back, relax, and enjoy our study of Jesus in HD.
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God bless you as you listen. And please, invite others to join us on this journey.
Dewey Bertolini’s Podcast
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Dewey Bertolini 