Jesus And: Christmas Heaven a New Life Suffering Forgiveness Truth

By James Earl Mead

If you are seeking to make better sense of your life and the world, with Jesus always at the center, you will be glad for this book. Inside, you will find nothing trivial or shallow. You will find things you are not likely to have read or heard anywhere else, and you’ll be glad about those things too. Even tough issues are dealt with head-on—boldly and courageously—through Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection. Jim’s writing is lively, engaging, and conversational but deep; he is passionate about the topics and compassionate toward his readers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Nov 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9781973642930

James Earl Mead

Jim is a pastor with a heart for Jesus and a longing to help people make sense of their faith, their lives and the world. He has a Bachelor’s in psychology, a Master of Divinity from Princeton Seminary, a Doctor of Ministry from Pittsburgh Seminary, and a lifetime of disciplined study across many fields. He addresses weighty things deeply and biblically, but warmly and with a pastor’s heart and voice. Jim treasures John 15:16: “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last.” He says, “Grace—it is all grace. Thanks be to God.”

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Copyright © 2018 James Earl Mead.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

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ISBN: 978-1-9736-4294-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-4295-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-4293-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018912421

WestBow Press rev. date: 11/2/2018

DEDICATION

Carolyn and I lovingly dedicate this book to our grandchildren:

Nathan and his fiancée Kiana, Courtney and Cody

Aidan, Alivia, Aeland and Audrey.

May you experience God’s love and love him back.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Jesus and Christmas:

What’s It All About?

What Was The Plan?

What The Stories Tell

Jesus and Heaven:

Getting Started

Where Will We Be After We Die?

What Will We Be Like In Heaven?

What Makes Heaven Heaven?

How Do We Get There?

Jesus and A New Life:

Nicodemus

The Woman At The Well

Jonah

Paul

The Man At The Pool Of Bethesda

Wrapping Up

Jesus and Suffering:

Getting Started

The God We Never Expected

What We Learn As Jesus Is On The Cross

When God Doesn’t Seem To Be With Us

What, Then, Shall We Say About Suffering?

Sharing The Suffering Of Others

Getting Through It

God’s Love And Presence

Jesus and Forgiveness:

Who Needs It?

Forgiven For What?

How To Receive It

Forgiving Ourselves

Forgiving Others

Wrapping Up

Jesus and Truth:

Understanding Ourselves And The World

Truth And Our Moment In Time

How Do We Know What We Know?

The Truth About God & About You And Me

Jesus Is Truth In Person

So What If He Is The Truth?

Wrapping Up

Aknowldegements

Sources

About the Author

Appendix

Forgiving Yourself

Forgiving Others

INTRODUCTION

My uncle, Harry MacDonald, was a remarkable man. He was funny, very smart and well-read, and he knew how to make friendly contact with people wherever he went. Uncle Harry used to tell people about Jesus in the briefest and most respectful way nearly everywhere: on the golf course, in restaurants, in other people’s homes and in his and my aunt’s home. He told family, friends and strangers. Simply. Without embarrassment. No hustle involved. One day my cousin Dan asked him why he did that. He said, People have a right to know God loves them.

This book is really the outcome of love. In a small kind of way, it’s the outcome of God’s persistent and faithful love for me across my lifetime. But in a vast and wonderful way, it is the outcome of God’s love for everyone else, including you. I’ve written it so people would know how much God loves them and to help them love God in return—to love God back as I sometimes like to think of it. As we love God more and more we begin to love others more and more, too. To love them the way we’ve been loved by God. When we do that it pleases God—and it’s good to please someone we love, isn’t it? So then, this book is the outcome of God’s love for you and me and all of us. The purpose of the book is really love, too: so we will know and love God with all we are and love others as he has loved us.

I’ve named this book of love Jesus And. Here’s why: it’s through Jesus that we know the things that matter most—about some of things that matter most—to most of us. And that’s not all. We also learn from Jesus what matters most about some of the knottiest, toughest, and most significant things about life in the real world. Personal things about us, the people we love and even strangers—as well as things more vast and more real than the universe itself. Not everything we’d like to know, of course. But the things that matter most. Of course, there are other very useful sources of information to help us about these things, including philosophy, theology, the sciences and arts, and the rest of the Bible itself. But there are some things we only know, or know most fully, from Jesus of Nazareth, the Only Son of God. Each of us gets to decide whether that is enough for us or not.

Here is where we are going in the sections and chapters to come. We begin with Christmas and why it matters that Jesus became a human being. That will get us ready to grapple with five big issues, beginning with heaven and what happens after we die. Then comes a section of chapters called Jesus and A New Life about how we get right with God, ourselves and the world, how we learn to live Jesus’s way in his world, and what the goal of the Christian life is. The next section is a tough one because the topic is tough: Jesus and Suffering. We’ll explore what we learn from Jesus about our own suffering and the suffering of others, especially as he died on the cross. Then come several chapters about forgiveness: what makes it so hard to do, how we can receive it from God and how to forgive ourselves and others. The last section is called Jesus and Truth, and we’ll dig deeply into Jesus and the two major competing claims for truth in our time: those who say there is no such thing as truth and those who say that science is the only way to know what is true; then we’ll deal with Jesus as Truth in his own Person.

The Lord who loves you is with you as you read. Grace, peace and wisdom to you in Christ Jesus by the Holy Spirit as you think, and maybe pray, about what you’ll read in the coming chapters.

Pastor Jim Mead

April 27, 2018

Port Orchard, Washington

JESUS AND CHRISTMAS:

WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?

We hear lots of very pleasant assertions about the true meaning of Christmas, helpfully trying to keep our attention on something more substantial than giving and getting gifts (which we rightfully enjoy, actually). It’s about sharing, we hear. Or Family. Making memories. Love. Each of those has a special kind of appeal, and who could quarrel with the attractiveness and goodness of any of them? I think that last one, though, is close.

Of course, lots of Christians will tell you that Christmas is really about Jesus. There are even T-shirts that remind us that Jesus is the Reason for the Season.

To get at what it means to say that Christmas is about Jesus, and why that matters, takes some time and some deep, but precious, reflections on what the New Testament says. A useful place to begin is with this question: Where was Jesus before he was born in Bethlehem?

Well, of course, he was in Mary’s tummy, as my four-year-old grandson whose mommy is expecting would tell you. But before that? Where does the baby Jesus start? The answer is not in Bethlehem where he was born, nor even in Nazareth where he was conceived. The answer is that he was in heaven.

Jesus is called the Son of God, and God the Only Begotten, in the Bible. Here’s why. The Son is part of the Godhead, what we call the second person of the Trinity (which means there is one God in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit). Not easy stuff, I know, especially if this is new to you. (It’s not so easy for long time believers either, for that matter.) Before Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the Son (the second person of the Trinity) was in heaven.

The Eternal Son is the Creator, with the Father and the Spirit. John says that all things came into existence through the Son, and nothing came into existence without the Son (John 1:1-3). Because God loved the world God gave the Son to the world (John 3:16).

So, how do we get from God the Eternal Son in heaven to baby Jesus being born in Bethlehem and lying in a manger? The answer is in the stories of Mary (in Luke 1:26-38) and Joseph (in Matthew 1:18-25). Here’s a summary of their stories—though, actually, it’s really God’s story, as you’ll see:

God sent an angel to Mary who told her that she would become pregnant by the Holy Spirit. That’s the virgin birth: no husband involved, her pregnancy was the act of God. The angel said that the baby in her womb would be the Son of God. Her baby would be God’s own Eternal Son born of her—a human woman. Jesus would be called the Son of God because God was the Father. And, Jesus often called himself the Son of Man partly because his mother was a human, and partly because of what he would do to redeem us.

An angel also appeared to Joseph in a dream to tell him to wed Mary even though she was pregnant out of wedlock (they were engaged, but not married yet). She was still a virgin, but she was going to have a baby, and Joseph wouldn’t be the baby’s father. Yikes!

Here is the true meaning of Christmas according to the Bible: Christmas is about God the Eternal Son leaving heaven to become a human being who was born in Bethlehem to reconcile the lost world to God.

The theological, and very useful, word for that is, incarnation. The word literally means enfleshment, or taking on flesh. If you took Spanish or Latin, you’ll be able to see most of the word carne in incarnation. It means meat, to be a little bit too graphic. But then, the Bible is often very explicit and uses the clearest possible language sometimes, just so we don’t miss the point. Was Jesus, the Eternal Son of God, really a person with flesh and bones and blood and guts like us? Yes, that is exactly the point. Jesus is God with skin on—our skin. John tells us (chapter 1 verse 14) that the Eternal Son of God became flesh and made his dwelling among us. The Eternal Son became a human being. Jesus was still God the Son, but he was God with us—fully God and fully human.

I know this is not easy to grasp. The thing is this: to grasp the true meaning of Christmas, we have to get what God did in becoming a human. Maybe seeing it in a chart will be helpful.

Do you see? Heaven to earth and back to heaven. God in heaven, to God with us, to God back in heaven.

There is one thing to add to that. A dear friend from my first years in ministry, whose name was Ben, used to put it like this: God is the ‘with us’ God. How right Ben was. God is always with us, has always been with us, and will always be with us. It’s really the most basic promise of scripture: I am with you. God said it to Moses when he was worried about going to pharaoh to tell him to set God’s enslaved people free (Genesis 3:12). David said it about God in Psalm 23 (and elsewhere): I will fear no evil for you are with me. And Jesus promised it to his disciples after he was raised from the dead and before going back to heaven: Surely I am with you always, even to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20). In every age, all the time and everywhere, God is with us. But for about thirty-three years, God was with us as one of us—with us as a real human being.

A useful question to understand why God sent the Only Son to be born in Bethlehem is this one: What wouldn’t we know about God and ourselves without Christmas? The list is a bit long, but it’s important! We wouldn’t know these things as fully:

• who God is and what God is like,

• that God gets it about us because God the Son has been one of us in Jesus,

• whether God knows my name and loves me personally,

• who I am and who I am meant to be,

• what God longs to give us and to receive from us,

• that God loves and longs for everyone, not only those who love him back,

• that what is lost and wounded and broken about us can be redeemed by Jesus because he shared everything about us,

• that God suffers—for us and with us in our own suffering,

• that we can be saved from sin and death by believing in Jesus, the Son,

• whether there is really life after death, and

• whether life fundamentally makes sense or whether everything is up to everybody to figure out on their own.

In this book we’ll explore each of the things on that list in one chapter or another.

So, why? Why did God become a human? A crucial reason is the one we read in John 1:18: No one has ever seen God, but God the Only Begotten (Jesus), who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known. (NIV, with a bit of my own translation added)

Something even conservative Christians tend to forget, and seldom hear sermons about, is that Jesus came to reveal the Father—that is, to make sure we know who God is.

Listen, dear reader, Jesus came to do more than die for our sins. We sometimes even hear pastors say something like this, Jesus came to die. There is no question at all that when God became a human in Jesus it would necessarily include sharing in our death. We certainly don’t want to take anything away from the major work of God to pay for our sin by Jesus’s death on the cross. But it’s simply not biblical to limit the incarnation to God’s work to forgive our sin because that leaves out what the Bible says about Jesus coming to reveal the Father.

Again, but why? Why does God want to be known by us?

Here’s why. God wants, we might even say longs for, us to love him. The thing is, you can’t love someone you don’t know! Jesus came to reveal the Father to us. When we read the Old Testament stories, but especially when we read all the stories about Jesus, we are getting to know God and his story. We get a feel for what makes God tick. What fills God with joy and what breaks God’s heart. What God longs for with us and for all the rest of what he made. We begin to understand what God is willing to do for us—what he longs to do for us if we’ll only receive it. How God knows, loves and cares for us. How God provides for us.

Once we get to know God, then we can decide whether we like God or not. Or maybe even love him. God is hoping for, at work for, our love. God loved us first! And wants our love in return—to love him back. Everyone who is a parent ought to get that: just as parents love their children and want to be loved in return, God loves us and wants us to love him back. Everyone who is a friend or lover ought to get it, too, don’t you think?

Jesus said that the greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. (Matthew 22:37) God wants us to love him with all we’ve got. The real meaning of Christmas begins with this: Jesus was born to make sure we know who God is so that we would love him. It doesn’t end there, but that is where it begins. This is a love thing with God!

A second crucial reason the Eternal Son became a human being is so we would know that God understands what it’s like to be a human being. Understands not as though he’d read a book about us or watched us. Understands more deeply even than having been the One who made us. Do you know what I mean when I say that I want to know that my wife and my best friends get it about me? I want to know that God gets it about me, about all of us. Just as we can only really love someone we know, we are pretty sure that anyone who says they love us ought to really know us.

So, how do we know that God knows what it’s like to be us? To be creatures that are limited in space and time—who can be here or there but not in both places at once, and not ever everywhere at the same time. Who live 70, maybe 90 or 100 years. Who have bodies. Bodies that need food and rest and that can bleed and die. Bodies that are a joy and wonder to use and put to the test in both play and work. Bodies that express our excitement and sorrow—that can shout and jump up and down for joy and also cry watery tears. Bodies that aren’t merely a part of us, but that in some sense are us as much as our spirits, our sense of consciousness, our purposes, our thoughts and our feelings are. Bodies that express on the outside who we are on the inside. How do we know God gets it about how tempted we are to do things that we are absolutely sure no one ought to do? How can we know that God gets it about suffering and dying? Not only what it’s like to suffer and die, but to know as I know without any doubt that I’m going to die one day?

Here’s how we can know. God the Eternal Son became one of us, a real human being. Jesus of Nazareth was a human, the way we are human. He took on everything that makes us us. He experienced life pretty much as we experience it:

• Joys and sorrows, jumping for joy and salty tears.

• His father Joseph died while he was young and after he was grown up his second cousin John the Baptist was beheaded by a king.

• When his friend Lazarus died, Jesus wept even though he knew he was going to bring him back to life right then and there in a town called Bethany.

• Jesus was loved, and that’s a real part of being human.

• But he was also despised and rejected, and that’s part of being human, too, alas.

• He had friends and family—and they were no less complicated than our families and buddies are.

• He experienced injustice and mocking, and he had friends who abandoned him.

• He had lots of prayers answered, but in a very dark hour with his life at stake the Father’s answer to his prayer was no.

• His trial was rigged, and he was beaten and abused verbally and physically, and then he was put to death in a terrible way.

• He lived and died by faith in the Father, but even Jesus experienced the absence of the Father while on the cross.

• And, very precious to me, he was tempted in every way that we are, though without sinning.

• God has even in a very real way experienced our sin, because Jesus, his Only Son, took our sin on himself on the cross.

How could anyone get it about me and my life without experiencing all of that? You could say to me, Yeah, of course I get it about you. But why would I believe you unless you had been there like me? Sometimes people make the mistake of telling a grieving mom that they know just how she feels about the loss of her child. But she knows they don’t know because they’ve never been there themselves. They can imagine. But she knows. God knows. Because of Jesus.

God gets what it’s like to be a human being, because God has been there in Jesus, his Only Son. God gets it about you. About me, too. God made sure we’d have good reasons to believe he knows us, understands us, by becoming one of us. He not only knows us, he loves us. Sometimes when I think about that, I can’t help but add to myself, God knows me, and loves me … anyway. Whew. Thank you, God. And, thank you Jesus for becoming one of us so I could believe I’m both known and loved. That’s also part of the true meaning of Christmas.

Here’s another thing about the Eternal Son becoming a human: Jesus redeems everything about you and me—the good, the nearly good, and the bad—by taking it upon himself. He redeems death by dying and rising from the dead. He redeems sin by taking my sin, and yours, on himself on the cross and dying and rising. He redeems suffering and victimization by sharing it and having the last, good, word about it. He redeems our imperfect love by loving completely, even when it means it will be a suffering kind of love for him. Our relationships, our work, our passions, our joys and victories are all caught up in and shared in the Son’s humanity. And they are all redeemed—and made good, right and beautiful—in his goodness, righteousness, beauty and love.

There is a profound connection between redemption and taking on someone else’s joys and sorrows, you know. In fact, there is no redemption without taking on risk and suffering that doesn’t belong to you but to someone else. Here’s an example of that.

Perhaps you’ve seen the movie Hacksaw Ridge. It tells the story of Desmond Doss, a Seventh Day Adventist who was a conscientious objector in World War II. He served without a weapon as a medic. He entered battle in the Pacific on Okinawa Island on top of a 400-foot cliff. During the battle the Japanese soldiers overran the American troops, who were ordered to retreat back down the cliff. Most of the G.I.’s got over the precipice and down the long ropes to safety at the bottom. Unable to follow that order, however were more than a hundred wounded men.

Doss found that he couldn’t bring himself to leave those men behind to be killed the next day by the enemy. So, he didn’t retreat to safety. He stayed where all those wounded men were. All night long he ran or crept into the line of fire to find and drag wounded G.I.’s to the edge of the cliff. One by one he lowered them by hand down a long, long rope to medical treatment. Among those he rescued from certain slaughter was a man who had made himself Doss’s tormentor during training, beating him up mercilessly. He also lowered two wounded Japanese soldiers over the cliff for medical treatment. That night, his hands bleeding from handling the rope so many times, he rescued between 75 and 100 men. Men who would have died for certain had they remained on the ridge until daylight. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions.

Here’s the point. When the enemy overran the American positions, Doss was still alive and safe. All he had to do to stay safe was go over the cliff with the rest of the men. Instead, he took onto himself the dangers being faced by the wounded men left behind. Including a man who had made himself his enemy. For their sake, he risked enemy fire, land mines, and snipers. The thing to be clear about is that he didn’t have to do any of that. No one expects a medic to stay in a battle zone while all the able-bodied soldiers retreat. He did it because of who he was, including who he was in Christ, more even than who those wounded soldiers were. If he hadn’t taken their exposure to death onto himself, they would all have been killed. Doss redeemed those men from suffering and death by taking their danger, their risks and their suffering onto himself.

Redemption is, literally, buying back. Desmond Doss bought wounded men their safety at the price of his own safety. He rescued their wounded bodies with his bruised and bloody hands. There is no redemption without sharing in someone else’s life and suffering.

Something like that is what God has done for us in sending the Only Begotten Son to a lost and rebellious—and a wonderful and precious—world. He took on everything about us in order to redeem us. He redeemed our suffering by sharing it. Redeemed death by dying and rising from the dead. Redeemed our sin by taking it on himself and paying the punishment we had earned and deserved. Paul the apostle said, You are not your own. You were bought with a price. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20.) Yes, that’s exactly the way it is. We have been bought back from sin and death by Jesus who took it all onto himself and redeemed our sin and overcame death by rising from the dead.

Revealing the Father and redeeming lost people is the true meaning of Christmas. It’s all about love: God’s love for us and his longing to be loved back by us. Which is kind of like what people like to say, Christmas is about love. They also say that Christmas is about making memories. And that, too, is something God did for us: in Jesus, he gave us memories to cherish, hold onto and talk about all through our lives. God gave us someone who loves us, someone who has redeemed us, to remember and love.

In the incarnation of Jesus, as the well-worn illustration has it, we glimpse the height of God’s love for us and all humanity: The Son in the height of heaven came down to earth for our sake. On the cross we can see how wide God’s love is in Jesus’s outstretched hands—so wide it includes even me. In the grave, we see how deep God is willing to stoop for us. And in the resurrection, we see that the last word about us is not sin or suffering or death. The last word is not injustice or abandonment or victimhood. The last word about us is not even this world and all the good and bad it offers. The last word about us is love and life—now and for eternity. It’s a word that God speaks over us through the Son. Life now, and life forever, with the One who loved us so much that he left heaven to share our humanity and to redeem what is lost about us.

This would be a good time to hum a favorite Christmas carol, don’t you think? How about this verse from Away in a Manger?

Be near me, Lord Jesus; I ask Thee to stay

Close by me forever and love me I pray.

Bless all the dear children in Thy tender care,

And fit us for heaven to live with Thee there.

Amen to that.

Well, we could reasonably end talking about Christmas on a high note right here. But we haven’t really begun to look at the stories of Christmas yet. We’ll explore the stories in the next two chapters. We’ll begin about two thousand years before Jesus’s birth so that we get the story of Jesus’s birth in the context of God’s plan to redeem lost humanity.

JESUS AND CHRISTMAS:

WHAT WAS THE PLAN?

Let’s go back before Christmas, before the eternal Son became a human in Jesus. What are the Old Testament and historical roots for God sending the Only Begotten? Or did everything about what God was doing in sending the Son begin in Bethlehem when Jesus was born—kind of as though he made it up on the spot one heavenly day?

Here are some questions that get us ready for digging into what God had in mind—into what God was doing by sending the Son. What would God do to reach out to, to rescue, sinful people that didn’t know him, didn’t love him and lived any way they wanted instead of the way he had made them to live? What would God do about human sin and wickedness? Would he punish all those sinners? Maybe wipe them off the face of the earth? Or would he begin to woo them back somehow? To do that, he’d have to make himself known to them. But how would the Creator make himself known to the creature? How would they learn that he not only existed but that he loved them? How would God bring them back to himself and back to each other?

God started with two people who lived about 2,000 years before Jesus was born. Their names were Abraham and Sarah. Abraham stood in the line of Adam and Eve’s good third son, Seth. The descendants of Seth form a chain of people who were faithful to God, though they weren’t perfect, of course. Noah is in that chain of descendants along with Abraham. So is Moses who led God’s people out of slavery in Egypt. King David is in that chain, and ultimately so is the Lord Jesus. Paul tells us in the New Testament that you and I are in that chain, too, if we have believed in Jesus. Here’s how that came about.

God told Abraham to leave the land where he was living—to leave his people and his father’s household—and travel hundreds of miles to a land I will show you. Wow. The leaving part is very specific, but the destination is up for grabs. It would be a big act of faith to leave everything and travel a long way to somewhere-yet-to-be-named. Abraham put his faith in God and did what God directed. And God reckoned it to him as righteousness. He is the model for everyone who ever took the leap of faith to trust God and do what God said to do. The land God sent him to is what we tend to call the promised land today—where Jerusalem is.

God made a series of seven promises to Abraham:

I will make you a great nation

and I will bless you;

I will make your name great

and you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you,

and whoever curses you I will curse;

and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

(Genesis 12:2-3)

Abraham believed God’s promises. He believed even though the promise of many descendants was seriously improbable given that his wife Sarah had been unable to bear children and was now past the age of doing so. Believing God’s hard-to-believe promise was an act of faith, and so was leaving his father’s household to go an unspecified place I will show you. We have to be sure we notice