Psalm 34:18

“The LORD is close to the brokenhearted 

       and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”

Two things: close and saves.  Let’s look at saves first. The LORD “saves those who are crushed in spirit.”  Saves is a great word.  The Lord no matter what is going on in our lives saves us as long as we keep our faith in Him.  Life brings about so many challenges, and more often than not we struggle and our spirit seems to be crushed.  Luckily we have a Savior who gave up everything to come to this world as true man, and do all the work for us, so that we can reap the benefits.  Just look at all the things that Christ endured in His life that could bring Him down and possibly give Him the idea to change his mind and not die on the cross for us.  Everything from people not believing in Him, to spending time being tempted by the devil.  The things that crush us in this life don’t really seem to even compare to me.

One more thing to look at.  “The LORD is close to the brokenhearted.”  I simply have a question and a confession to go with this one.  First off the question.  Does pretending you aren’t broken push you further away from God? My confession is that I do this entirely too often.  I hide behind my everyday life and say that everything is ok.  Life is just going swell and I have nothing on my mind.  But just like everyone else I have stuff going on, and I sometimes feel myself having an even harder time because of the way that things bottle up.  I like to look at it as a long run short run scenario.  The short run really seems to push me further away from God.  I’m not sure why, but it seems to.  I find my mind wandering more and having a harder time praying like I want to and should.  But in the long run I find myself looking at the whole situation and finding myself closer to God.  It really is rather interesting.

So I propose the same question to you.  Does pretending you aren’t broken push you further away from God?  What do you think?

2 Corinthians 12:7-9

⁷To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. ⁸Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. ⁹But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.

I would like to look at two parts of this passage. The first is verse 7b where it talks about thorns in flesh. Obviously times have changed and we don’t deal as much with physical abuse and problems when it comes to faith but they are still out there. Nor do we have the same temptations as prior history. Things have changed and the thorns are different but still given by the same individual (Satan). So what are some of the thorns in your life? What temptations do you have, and how do you deal with them?

Prayer is a big thing when working with these thorns in life. Something simple as being pressured into drinking or smoking, or doing something you don’t feel is right. Pray that God helps you with every decision and not just the big ones. To me it is just like saying “THY will be done.” The problem is more often than not I find myself saying “thy will be done.” By this I mean that I am really hoping that God’s will coincide with mine. This most likely is not the right idea, which initially pushes me further away from Him. This is where I like to look to Christ to remind me that my will is not the important one, but God’s is. Look at the book of Luke the 22^nd chapter. In verse 41 Jesus asks God to remove the cup from his hands, if it is his father’s will. Thankfully the cup was not removed, because if it were we would have no reason to be here on earth. Jesus obeyed the will of His father and because of this we have the gift of eternal life.

The other portion I would like to look at is that of grace. “My grace is sufficient for you.” Grace is enough, because of God’s grace through faith we are able to have eternal life. The verse continues saying “for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Looking back at the first portion regarding thorns, sometimes when we are at our weakest of times we are closest to God. Its crazy how that works, but it does. I pray that daily we work more to allow God’s will to be ours and that we ask for His every guidance in the decisions we make both big and small. “For it is by grace we have been saved, through faith, and not by works so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

Matthew 22:15-22

^"15Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words. ¹⁶They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. "Teacher," they said, "we know you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren't swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are. ¹⁷Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?"

¹⁸But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, "You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? ¹⁹Show me the coin used for paying the tax." They brought him a denarius, ²⁰and he asked them, "Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?"

²¹"Caesar's," they replied.
Then he said to them, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."

²²When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away."

Okay, lets look at the obviously most viewed portion of this passage in terms of sermons and commentaries. "Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's." Here Jesus was in a bind. If he said it was unlawful (according to the Jewish law) to pay taxes to Caesar then he could be arrested and even killed for being a revolutionary against the Roman rule. If he took the other stance that it was okay to pay taxes to Caesar he risked losing many of his Jewish followers because he would be taking a soft stance on the "evil" Roman rule and that he never had any intention of overcoming them. It would be like going into a big conservative rally in a red state and saying its okay to fund terrorists, except maybe even worse because the Jews (for the most part) hated the Roman rule.

Jesus came up with the perfect answer, "Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's." If your a politician, that is how you both dodge a question, but also answer the question! Not exactly the yes or no answer the Pharisees were looking for, but it was the right answer. So what exactly does it mean? The most common part that is examined is the "give unto Caesar" part. The meaning that is drawn from this is that it is good to pay taxes (regardless of... uh.... how much you may disagree with the system), and that we should all be good citizens, and that most of all, what is earthly is earthly, and we cannot put too much stock in it. In the end, God put Caesar in the position that he was in, and God put the leaders we have today in the positions they are in today. God gave us all the possessions that we are responsible for caring for, and he expects us to use them in certain ways, including the paying of taxes, and the giving of offerings back to God, which leads me to the final portion of this post....

Many times when looking at this passage, and the answer that Jesus give, the portion of "give unto God what is God's" is completely overlooked. As important as it is to give to Caesar what is his, it is even more important for us to give God what is God's! I submit to you for discussion that most of the time we do not give to God what is His. We seem to do the esseentials like paying taxes and obeying laws in terms of doing our earthly citizen duties (and praise God for those doing above and beyond and helping others to be good stewards and citizens too), but how often do we even do the basics in giving to God? I think everyone, including and especially myself fail miserably in this.

What exactly would be considered giving to God what is God's? In my opinion, and I welcome and agreements or disagreements on this, it would be giving offerings (monetary, time, talents, heart, mind, and soul) back to God since he gave all of those to begin with. I think its also giving him our worship, our praise, and obeying his commands. What do you think?

John 10:11-18

11"I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. 13The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.
14"I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— 15just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. 17The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. 18No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father."

The passage about being the good shepherd. I think it is important to realize the 1st century Judean context that this passage was written in. The area surrounding Jerusalem is a desert. It is dry the vast majority of the year except during the heavy rain season (which is also perilous for the sheep due to the massive flooding). There is very little if to no vegetation in most areas. The fact of the matter is, that in this landscape, without a shepherd, the flock of sheep will soon die. It isn't like American style shepherding (not that I am a shepherding expert) where there is generally a man made pond or other water source, and plenty of grass and other vegetation in which the herd just needs to be moved from time to time and cared for physically (which of course has to be done there as well).

Looking at the sheep and shepherding from this context (of which the Jesus' audience in this area would've been well aware of), we can see how much of a statement it is for Jesus to say that he is the Good Shepherd and we are his sheep. He cares for our every need, and when one of us goes lost, he longs for us and searches for us. We recognize the Christ's voice just as the sheep would recognize the voice of their shepherd calling for them.

Most of all, Christ lays down his life for his sheep. His laying down of his life for us is what saves us. In one of Peter's letters it talks about how satan prowls like a roaring lion (1 Peter 5:8), and yet we are deliverd from that prowling lion, delivered from death, and have eternal life because of our shepherd!