Insights and Inspiration on My Journey with God

Sunday, April 14, 2019

Jesus Does All Things Well

“And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, ‘He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.” – Mark 7:37 (ESV)

In today’s adult Sunday School lesson for those studying from Explore the Bible series (“Mark.” Nashville: Lifeway Press. Spring, 2019. Pp 55-63)), you will recognize the key verse above as our suggested memory verse for today’s lesson. Jesus had just healed a man who was deaf and mute. This miracle happened “on the other side” of the Sea of Galilee, in the Decapolis area (“Decapolis” meaning area of ten cities, occupied mainly by Gentiles). The people themselves became the proclaimers of Jesus’s miracle of healing the deaf/mute man. The Bible tells us, “they were astonished.” Perhaps many in that audience had not seen a miracle of healing like this before. Who was this man who traveled with twelve other men about the area, healing, feeding thousands with a few loaves and fishes, casting out demons? Jesus of Nazareth?

Jesus and His disciples had been on a trip, seeking to get away from the crowds. Yet people still went to Jesus, wherever He was, to listen to His teachings and to seek His healing.

He and the disciples had left northern Galilee and traveled to the region of Tyre, northwest of Galilee. Two towns in that Gentile area were Tyre and Sidon, both located on the Mediterranean Sea. At Sidon, a Syro-Phoenecian (Canaanite) woman had approached Jesus, asking that he heal her daughter “possessed with a demon” (see Mark 7:25-30). Although Jesus asked her If she did not know that “the children” (Jews) should be fed first, the woman, showing her understanding, replied, “Lord, even the dogs (Gentiles) under the table eat the children’s (Jews’) crumbs.” Because of her humility and her faith, Jesus healed her daughter. The woman went home to find her daughter peacefully sleeping and healed! Oh, the faith and daring-to-approach-Jesus of this mother who loved and wanted the best for her daughter.

Then, a long journey, back to the Sea of Galilee, and crossing “to the other side (Gentile territory), Jesus and the disciples are at Decapolis. A man deaf and mute is brought by friends to seek Jesus’ healing. Jesus’ healing of this man is reminiscent of the prophecy of Isaiah in 35:5-6: “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.” Jesus was fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy in their very midst. Did those who were “exuberant” at the deaf/mute man’s healing realize that Jesus was the One Isaiah wrote about hundreds of years before—the promised Messiah?

On “this side” of Jesus’s death and His sacrifice for our sins, we can truly rejoice, because we know that Jesus indeed is the promised Messiah, the Son of God, our Savior. Like the people who saw the healed man, we can proclaim that He healed us from our sins that separated us from God. “For by grace have you been saved through faith. And that is not your own doing; it is the gift of God; not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9/ ESV). Indeed, the healing of the deaf/mute man was a miracle. But Christ’s forgiving our sins and giving us the status of “Redeemed Child of God” is a miracle, for His GRACE (God’s Redemption at Christ’s Expense) is ours by faith, confession and acceptance! Praise be to God. Jesus, indeed, “has done all things well” in restoring us to God’s favor and giving us purpose for living in this life and eternity beyond this life! Selah! - Ethelene Dyer Jones 04.07.2019.

Sunday, April 7, 2019

Jesus Does All Things Well

“And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, ‘He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.” – Mark 7:37 (ESV)

Sunday, March 31, 2019

The Disciples, Sent Out to Proclaim “Repent!”

“So they went out and proclaimed that people should repent.” (Mark 6:12)

Jesus had been with his twelve chosen disciples for several months since calling them. They had traveled with Jesus during what scholars call his “Galilean Ministry.” They had heard him teach in synagogues, teach by the Sea of Galilee, teach in parables, (a story with a spiritual application) and heard Jesus explain to them more fully what the parable meant and how it applied to the Kingdom of God.

They had seen him still a storm on the Sea of Galilee by simply speaking “Peace! Be Still!” to the winds and the waves. They had seen him heal a paralytic let-down when a piece of the roof of the Galilean house (maybe the disciple Peter’s house?) was removed so the friends of the paralytic could lower him to Jesus’ feet and the man could be healed. And he was healed, miraculously.

They had seen the woman with an issue of blood for twelve years, who merely touched Jesus in the crowd, and he was aware of her touch and healed her. They had gone to Jairus’ house with Jesus because Jairus’ daughter was ill unto death. Before they arrived at Jairus’ house, servants met them and told Jairus that his daughter had already died and he should not “bother” Jesus. Then Jesus told Jairus not to be afraid, but to believe. They proceeded on to the synagogue leader’s house. Jesus asked the mourners to leave, to go outside. Jesus, Jairus and his wife, and Peter, James and John proceeded to where the twelve-year-old girl was already “laid out,” dead, awaiting burial. Jarius, a leader in a synagogue—not a priest but one who could plan synagogue programs and lead them—was hazarding the loss of his job for asking Jesus to help his daughter. That’s because the Pharisees and other religious “rulers” were so opposed to Jesus that they were already planning how they would kill the man Jesus. The religious leaders definitely did not believe He was the Messiah promised hundreds of years before by Isaiah and other of the Hebrew prophets. Animosity was growing against Jesus. But Jesus took the hand of Jairus’ daughter, and told her to arise and walk, and she did. And then Jesus asked that the girl be given something to eat (perhaps addressed to her mother and father).

They had seen Jesus heal the demoniac, casting out “demons” which went into pigs and the pigs drowned themselves in water. People who owned the pigs “on the other side” of the Sea of Galilee from the Hebrew side, did not like that the pigs had died when demons came out of the man, and entered their property—the hogs. But the healed demoniac was “dressed, and in his right mind” and seated among those who next gathered to hear Jesus teach. And in the midst of all this confusion and controversy, Jesus divided the disciples up into six teams, with two disciples on each team, and told them to go without a change of shirt, with no money, no food, but they could wear sandals on their feet and had a staff (like a shepherd’s staff) that might be used as what we call a “walking stick.” They were to stay in the first house that invited them as guests and work out from it throughout the village(s) they entered. And, if people were unkind to them in the towns, as they left, they were to “shake the dust off their sandals” as a testimony against the people there who did not welcome them and receive their message. And what was their main message? “They went out and proclaimed that people should REPENT.” (Mark 6:12. ESV). They also were granted power by Jesus to heal and to cast out demons. But repent? What does it involve? To repent is to recognize sin in one’s life—the fall from God’s grace because of disobedience, wrong-doing, doing one’s own will instead of seeking God’s will. The second step of repentance is being sorry for breaking God’s law, falling from God’s original state of grace for each person. And then repentance further is accepting God’s provision for confession of one’s sins, and depending upon the sacrifice for sin offered by the Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross. In Old Testament times, a flawless lamb, or for poorer people, a dove or other offering was brought to atone for sin. After Jesus sacrifice, He became the bearer of GRACE by which a person is saved. A good way to describe God’s GRACE is: “God’s accepting our Repentance (regret for sin) at Christ’s Expense.” Recall the great revivals held in our youth at our churches when many repented and confessed Christ as Savior, I was one of 23 during revival week in July, 1939, who was saved by my repentance and faith, and baptized to show my burial and death to intentional sin, and rising from the water as a symbol of following Jesus and expecting everlasting life with Him! Selah! - Ethelene Jones. 03.31.2019

Sunday, March 24, 2019

A House in Order

A House in Order

“A good name is better than precious ointment,

and the day of death than the day of birth.”

-Ecclesiastes 7:1 (ESV)

If I could know my day of death,

The time when life’s curtain parts,

Would I be more apt for the journey,

Be ready in body and heart?

Or would I rue my days at their end,

No more sunrises, sunsets to see?

Would I want to cling to earth’s dark shore

Instead of crossing to celestial lea?

Have I built here to leave behind

A monument of sorts,

A good name better than costly ointment,

And good deeds of my life’s reports?

I’ll leave these judgments to others,

And especially to the Lord God of hosts

Who will meet me and journey with me

To my place in His heavenly post.

Knowing when to depart is not troublesome,

Nor is its uncertainty a cause for alarms.

For when the Lord is ready for me to go

He will bear me lovingly in His arms.

-Ethelene Dyer Jones

July 10, 2014

I wrote this poem July 10, 2014, over 4 and ½ years ago. We had a saying in the mountains where I grew up (beautiful Choestoe Valley, located on the Nottely River, “between Enotah Bald and Blood mountains, the two highest peaks in Georgia): “Get your house in order; because no one knows the day of his departure from this earth.” It sounds like a gruesome saying, one that makes one very aware of death and departing earthly life. But actually, this adage gives sound advice, because it helps to keep persons “on task.” Good housekeeping was an earmark of a godly woman, the “lady in charge of the household.” She kept the house in order, good food prepared three times a day and served attractively’; her children clean and well dressed and in school, and. To emphasize again: “her house in order.” This is good spiritual advice, too, for we ought also to keep “confessed up,” “jobs done up,” and ”attuned to the Lord God” who made us and who will call us to our heavenly home when our work on earth is finished. Is your house in order? Are you ready to “meet the Lord” in glory? Food for spiritual thought. - Ethelene Dyer Jones. March 24, 2019

Sunday, February 3, 2019

The Scriptures, Our Guide for Life

“All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” -II Timothy 3:16-17 (KJV)

The Bible, God’s Word, is a guide to teach us about our need for salvation; and once we know Jesus as Savior and Lord, the Bible becomes our life textbook teaching us how to learn about and live a Christian life. I became a Christian at age nine. I had already been going to Sunday School all of my life to that point. After my conversion in our summer revival at Choestoe Church, July, 1939, and my baptism in August of that same year, I became “hungry” for the Word of God, studying and reading it daily and depending upon its truths to lead me “in paths of righteousness.” In college, I received a minor in Biblical studies. This study prepared me to serve better as a minister’s wife and as a Sunday School teacher many years of my life.

Paul, in writing to his “son in the gospel,” Timothy, gave several points we should notice in the two verses from II Timothy 3:16-17. (I gave it above in the King James version because that was the version I had, and memorized, when I was a new Christian). Let us look closely and prayerfully at Paul’s writing about God’s word:

“All scripture is given by inspiration of God.” Men wrote the 66 books of our Bible, but first, inspiration, or what to write, came from God’s revelation to the various writers. The men were as “scribes” writing down what the Holy Spirit of God revealed to them. The English Standard Version translates these verses from Timothy this way: “All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God my be competent, equipped for every good work.” Eugene Peterson in his version, The Message Bible, translates it thus: “Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another—showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God’s way. Through the Word we are put together and shaped up for the tasks God has for us.”

I accessed Dr. John MacArthur’s commentary on 2 Timothy 3:16-17. He notes: “Sometimes God told the Bible writers the exact words to say. He notes from Jeremiah 1:9-11 that prophet’s testimony as to how God inspired him to write: “Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth. And the Lord said to me, ‘Behold, I have put my words in your mouth. See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.’ And the word of the Lord came to me a second time, saying, ‘What do you see?’ And I said, ‘I see an almond branch. Then the Lord said to me, ‘You have seen well, for I am watching over my word to perform it.’ “

Many people in biblical times, from Moses, who is given credit for writing the first five books of the Old Testament, known as the Pentateuch, to David, King of Israel, who wrote many of the Psalms, to Isaiah and Jeremiah and the other prophets, each of which prophetic book bears the name of the prophet/writer, to the writers of the New Testament, beginning with the gospels, the story of Jesus on earth and His sacrificial death for us, the letters by Paul the Apostle and General Letters, bearing the names of those who wrote them, to the Revelation by John the Apostle, --we have our 66 books of our Bible, our textbook for the Christian life. It has been miraculous how the Scripture has been preserved through thousands of years to become our inspiration, our source of instruction, and our “textbook” for living a life pleasing to God. Dr Ray Van Neste who wrote the study guides for I and II Timothy in the ESV Study Bible (Wheaton, Il.: Crossway, 2008) states: “The divine origin of Scripture is the reason for its power to convert and its usefulness in training. Because Scripture comes from God himself, “all” of it is profitable in a wide range of ways, ultimately leading to righteousness.” (p. 1242. Study note.). Thank God for His inspired Word, our guide for the Christian life. -Ethelene Dyer Jones for Sunday, February 3, 2019.

Sunday, November 4, 2018

Faith and Works

“But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works…For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.” -James 2:18, 26 (ESV)

James was the pastor of the Jerusalem Church. He was the “half” brother of our Lord Jesus Christ. During James’s ministry at the early church, Christians were being dispersed abroad because persecution of Christians was sever. Persecution first came from the Jews who did not believe in “the new way” set up by Jesus and propounded by James and other Christian leaders of the church. A little later, the Roman government also waged severe persecution against Christian believers. Works were very vital to the early church’s ministry, because many lost jobs because of being Christians; men were stoned and killed (recall that Stephen was one of these (see Acts 7); and Paul, before his conversion, stood holding the cloaks of those Jews who stoned Stephen to death.) There were many widows and children starving, homeless and under grave danger of losing their own lives if Christians did not try to help them with getting food, clothing and shelter. Acts of compassion resulted from having faith and love.

James believed very strongly that Christians should “produce works worthy of repentance and belief.” We know that salvation is by grace through faith, not of works. Although the Judaizers were proponents of faith and still keeping the Law to the letter, They argued that Gentile (or non-Jewish persons) who became Christians and joined in the early church movement should still keep the Jewish law strictly. Many held that Gentile men believers should be circumcised. This was a great contention in the early church and a “Jerusalem Conference” was held in the early years of the spreading church’s ministry to try to make a decision on “faith plus works” for salvation, or “faith alone.”

James was not advocating that salvation came through faith plus works. Rather, in this letter to the scattered, persecuted Christians, he said if people did not do good works, such as missions, teaching the word, caring for orphans and widows and others in need, and loving and helping each other, their faith was “dead.” Faith should motivate a Christian to do the works Christ told us to do when he lived, taught and ministered to people’s needs. With love and compassion, one who is saved by God’s grace should be motivated by his/her faith to work faithfully in the Kingdom of God. Even one’s every-day work, whatever the occupation one follows, whether teaching, farming, being a clerk in a store, a doctor, a road builder, a seamstress—whatever the work that occupies one’s time and brings in money for the family to live on—should be done to the glory of God. Persons with faith should ask: “Lord, what will You have me do today?” And that job should be done with sincerity, dedication and a sincere thought of helping one’s fellow man. This seems to be what James’s doctrine of “Faith plus Works” means. Works do not bring us salvation from sin. But works benefit the doers of the works and lends needed aid to recipients of the kindness and graciousness of the workers.

Prayer: Holy God, thank your for my salvation: I learn in Ephesians 2:8-9: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God; Not of works, lest any man should boast.” But as James stated in his letter “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.” -James 2:26 (KJV) Help me to seek and do Your will, Father, and may I engage sincerely in good works to help my fellowman. In Jesus’ name. Amen. November 04, 2018.

Sunday, September 2, 2018

Paul States the Case for Faith in Christ to the Galatian Churches

“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.” -Galatians 1:6-10 (ESV).

In Baptist adult Sunday School classes for the fall semester beginning Sunday, September 2, using the Explore the Bible quarterly from LifeWay, Nashville, the studies are in Galatians and James. We move from a semester in 2 Samuel when we studied biblical history, the reigns of King Saul and King David, to doctrinal studies as given to us in the New Testament books of Galatians and James.

As Paul opens Galatians, he addresses a serious condition existing in the Galatian churches he wants to discuss in his letter circulating to the churches he established in Galatia on his first missionary journey (read about his first missionary tour in Acts 13:1-14:28). After he and his fellow missionaries had established churches, instructed them as much as they could while there, and then gone on to further work, some trouble arose in the congregations. A group called the “Judaizers” began to teach the church members that not only were they to become Christians through faith in Jesus Christ, but because the new belief, based on the sacrificial death of Christ, His resurrection from the dead, His commissioning the disciples and other believers to tell the story of salvation “into all the world,” there was still something needed besides forgiveness of sins and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. The men needed to go through circumcision if they had not already had that rite performed. Also, obedience to the Jewish canon of laws was necessary to salvation, so the Judaizers taught. Paul wrote the letter to the Galatian churches, scholars believe, before the Jerusalem Council was held in AD 48/49. It would have been most helpful to Paul could he have mentioned the decision of the Jerusalem Council—that believers did not have to go through the rite of circumcision to become members of the Christian faith/church. But no mention of the Council is made in the letter to the Galatians. Paul conducted his first missionary journey and established churches there in AD 47/48. Therefore, it seems plausible that AD 48 is the probable time that Paul composed and sent the letter to the Galatian churches addressing the serious problem there.

Paul wanted to make it clear that faith alone saves a person, not fulfilling the law to the letter, not “becoming a Jew” first, not works—faith alone in the Lord Jesus Christ, and accepting God’s grace for forgiveness of sins and Christ’s sacrifice to restore the broken fellowship between a person and God. “Through Jesus Christ, salvation and justification come to both Jew and Gentile, fulfilling the promise to Abraham of blessing to the nations (Galatians 3:8; Genesis 12:3).” (p. 2242, Dr. Simon J. Gathercole, Univ. of Cambridge. In The Study Bible, ESV. Wheaton, IL, Crossway. 2008. P. 2242, note).

Even though Galatians follows the general New Testament form of letters, with a salutation, a body, a paraenesis (set of moral exhortations), greetings, and a benediction, there is no general thanksgiving. Paul gets directly into the problem: the serious theological questions the Galatians must become aware of and settle: Salvation is by faith, not by faith and circumcision; not by faith and works. Paul defends both himself and the gospel in chapter 1. He was recognized by the apostles in Jerusalem (especially by James, half-brother of Jesus Christ Himself.) In strong language, Paul states that even if an angel came from Heaven and preached a gospel contrary to what Paul himself preached to the Galatians, that angel would be accursed. What we believe is important. One of my favorite passages succinctly explaining salvation by faith is Ephesians 2:8-9. Please read those two verses, examine your own faith, and if you are seeking God’s grace by any other means that faith in the Lord Christ, confess, repent, and believe! Today is the day to seek Christ! -Ethelene Dyer Jones 09.02.2018