cannyben

In the beginning, God established a world of wholeness and peace. Once that world was shattered by Adam and Eve’s disobedience, God chose to re-establish the state of shalom through his chosen nation, Israel. If Israel had obeyed God’s law of compassion, life in Israel for both men and women would have been the happiest place. The Hebrew word for peace, “Shalom”, is so rich that its almost untranslatable. Thus the society envisioned by the psalmist in Psalm 85:10, as a society of shalom, is an order of life characterized by joy and justice, piety and plenty, kindness and caring. But God’s people failed to achieve God’s loving ideal. Isaiah graphically depicted the moral   and spiritual sickness of that disobedient nation (Isaiah 1:5-7). Divine punishment, administered in sorrowful grace, again and again overwhelmed Israel. Although the nation lasted more than 450 years, eventually Israel was overtaken by invading empires. Thousands of God’s people were taken   captive and ...

Jesus came with his revolutionary message of God’s kingdom – a kingdom accessible only by faith. It required loving obedience to the King and Father, as well as loving service to brothers and sisters in God’s family and to every member of the human family. Love was its one all-inclusive law, a love that Jesus spelled out in his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5), and a love that fulfilled the Ten Commandments (Romans 13:10). The controlling attitude and behaviour in this born-again society was to be compassionate, demonstrate love in action, and to provide caring concern for others – all of which was modelled by Jesus himself. As God incarnate, Christ flawlessly reflected his Father’s nature, not only the divine holiness but the divine heart. Because he was sinless and most acutely sensitive to sin, Jesus sympathised with sinful people who were suffering the consequences of inherited depravity and personal sinfulness. He was aware that the multitudes he ministered to were made up of sin...

The people of Israel were a society that prized their children. Abortion and child exposure – leaving children outside to die – which were practised by the pagan nations surrounding the Holy Land, were sinfully abhorrent to God’s elect people. They hailed every birth with joy and gratitude. Growing up with brothers and sisters, Jesus , no doubt, had opportunity and responsibility to help care for his younger siblings. He thus acquired realistic insight into the characteristics and needs of children (Mark 3:31-32; 6:3). While the Gospels give no specific information about the family relationships in the home of Mary and Joseph, we have good reason to believe they were sensitive, caring, and God-fearing parents. As His own attitudes were influenced by the attitudes of his parents, Jesus became a lover of children. During his ministry, he was delighted to welcome them whenever they clustered around Him. He had an acute understanding of their need for warm acceptance and adult help. So...

Jesus was concerned about hunger, disease, and injustice, but he was more concerned about people’s relationship with God and their destiny in the world. When He read Isaiah 61 from the Synagogue at Nazareth, he quoted, “ The spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed, free to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour” (Luke 4:18-19). By quoting this passage from Isaiah, Jesus announced his twofold mission. First, He would literally help restore sight, give comfort, and liberate those in bondage to destructive habits and addictive behaviour. Second, He would bring spiritual renewal, enlightening the spiritually blind (John 6), liberating the spiritual shackled, comforting the spiritually guilt-ridden and distressed. While His pity took in the whole gamut of human affliction and His healing miracles provided relief, His concern was ...

As Jesus was compassionate towards women and children, so He was towards those on the edges of society. In first century Israel, tax collectors and publicans were understandably despised and hated. They were Jews who acted as agents of the Roman government. Their task was to gather a specified amount of money from fellow Israelites with no exceptions. If they could extort anything beyond what was due, they pocketed the extra for themselves. So when Jesus wanted to stress the seriousness of sin in the church, he taught His disciples to treat the person as they would a tax collector if they didn’t repent (Matthew 18:17). People must have been scandalized when Jesus ate They must have been furious when Jesus invited Zacchaeus, a notorious publican to receive God’s redeeming, forgiving mercy (Luke 19:1-10). While telling a parable, Jesus must have perplexed His audience when a tax collector rather than a Pharisee received God’s grace (Luke 18: 9-14). The crowd must have been furious when J...

Israel was a patriarchal society in which women occupied a subordinate position and in many ways were treated as social and spiritual inferiors to men. It’s difficult to generalize, because rabbis differed among themselves on this issue, and fathers differed in the upbringing of their daughters. Husbands also differed in how controlling and restrictive they were with their wives. Love and personality differences of the Hebrew men in the lives of women created a wide variety of experiences. Yet it is undeniable that generally a woman’s lot in that patriarchal society was difficult. In their younger years, daughters were often treated with suspicion. They were closely supervised in order to prevent anything that might be viewed as unchaste. When she began her menstrual cycle, a woman was unclean and needed purification (Leviticus 15:19-30). To touch a menstruating woman was to undergo defilement that required ritual purification. Incidentally, a man was not to touch any woman except ...