Life Lessons with Dr. Steve Schell

53 - Loyalty

It's not easy to define “loyalty.” Try it. Nor is it easy to explain why some people are loyal and some are not. In fact that's one of the most puzzling aspects about loyalty. Sometimes it's those to whom we give the most who abandon us the quickest. People we had every right to expect would be loyal to us, weren't. But then there are those who turn out to be loyal from whom we would never have anticipated such a gift. Loyalty seems to rise up from some place deep inside a person, and I doubt that most people could explain why they were loyal if asked. Something inside the heart decides to stay, to stand, to love, to protect, regardless of the cost. 

Loyalty isn't a quality that can stand alone. It requires courage; it requires love, and it requires humility. Without courage it won't last; without love it won't start, and without humility it would never find anyone worthy of such commitment. It's thankfulness at a very deep level. We become so thankful to a person or a family or a community or a nation that a strong bond is formed; a silent vow is taken. We decide that we are one with that person or family or community or nation. 

That's why loyalty is the key virtue in marriage. Without it love can't exist. Love, real love, doesn't come first; loyalty does. Then in the safety of loyalty we learn to love. In the Bible God compares His relationship with us to a marriage and disloyalty to Him as adultery. Above all else, He asks us to be loyal to Him, just as He has been loyal to us. We are to have no other gods before Him. It's heartbreaking to watch when people come to God, receive His help and then dispose of Him when they feel they no longer need Him. 

Staying loyal requires many decisions, not one, because there is something in this world that hates loyalty. It repeatedly attacks it wherever it finds it. But to those who resist those attacks, to those who choose to stay, to stand, to love, to protect, it provides the foundation upon which true, lasting relationship can be built. In the passage we'll study today, we'll see loyalty rise up in a man who encountered Jesus. 

52 - Don’t Ask Why

I think we all ask the question. Our need to ask is automatic; it's instinctive; it comes uninvited. When serious illness strikes, or when we or those close to us are hit by tragedy, particularly if something happens to a child, we ask: “God, what did I do wrong? Why did You let this happen?” We assume it happened because someone sinned. Even those of us who feel very confident that God is a loving God are likely to struggle with guilt when a crisis comes to us or our immediate family. Everything inside us asks: “Why? Did I do something? Did I say something? Do I lack faith?” And then our minds go searching for an answer, and the pressure inside is so great, sooner or later we always come up with one and believe it deeply, whether or not there is any truth in it. This process of seeking to place blame on ourselves or others is the source of much human misery. Many of us can carry a burden of shame or hatred for the rest of our lives. 

But we aren't the only ones who ask the question “Why?” when we experience a tragedy. Others watch us in fear and ask the same question. They too want to know who to blame so that they can avoid doing whatever it was that brought that suffering into our family. They don't want it to arrive at their door. So their minds try to solve the puzzle as well, and they too, just like you and I come up with wrong answers. One would hope that the religious community would be immune from this process, but it is not. In fact religious answers to the terrible question “Why?” can be the cruelest of all. 

This is the situation Jesus passed by on His way out of the temple. He saw a beggar who had been born blind; He saw a man with a disability so sad that everyone was determined to find out who was to blame for it. And that day He taught us to stop trying to answer that question. 

51 - Who Am I

For a human being to live in such a way that life has purpose, in order for someone to come to the end of their life and feel satisfied that they lived it well, he or she must have discovered the answer to these two questions: 1) Who is God? and 2) Who am I? Without knowing the answer to the first question it is impossible to answer the second, but just knowing the answer to the first does not mean a person automatically knows the answer to the second. In fact many people spend most or all of their life with far too little understanding about themselves. Historically the church has provided little help except to say that people are sinners and possibly some statements about being members of the Body of Christ. 

One of the most outstanding qualities about Jesus is that He really knew who He was. There was no doubt in His mind, and when He preached He typically answered both questions. He would tell people who God is, but He would also tell them who He was. And it was the information He revealed about Himself that became the center of the controversy which surrounded Him. Some of His listeners believed what He said about Himself; others didn't and wanted to kill Him. 

From chapter one onward the apostle John has been telling us who Jesus is. In fact clarifying the identity of Jesus is the main goal of this gospel. John said he wrote it, 
“So that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name” (Jn 20:31). 

John wrote to remove all doubt about the unique nature of Jesus. He wanted us to believe that He is both God's eternal Son, and the human son promised to David whom God said would sit on David's throne and rule forever. 

Our purpose for this study today is not to revisit the facts of who Jesus is but to try to understand how He learned those facts about Himself. We want to answer the question: How did Jesus know who He was? One possible answer is that He brought all that knowledge with Him from heaven, but John, along with all the other gospels, shows us Jesus' humanity as well as His divinity. Jesus truly and completely became a man, and Paul tells us that in the process He laid aside His divine privileges in order to become one of us (Php 2:6-7). No one knows how much of His divine knowledge He laid aside, or at least refused to use, but it appears that to some degree Jesus had to re-learn who He was after He was born. That means He too, like us, had to walk in faith; He too, like us, had to refuse to doubt; He too, like us, had to choose to believe the amazing things God said about Him. If so, then His example shows us how to answer that question for ourselves. As we watch the man, Jesus, discover who He is, we discover where to turn for information about who we are. 

Before we start on this journey we should note that there was one avenue of discovery available to Jesus that will never be available to us, and that was His memory of heaven. He existed before He was born. We don't. We begin at conception in our mother's womb. But the other avenues of discovery are available to us, so let's let Jesus teach us how to answer the second question: Who am I? It may be the hardest question for us to answer. 

50 - Making Room for Truth

Human hearts are not all the same. They vary widely. Some are so full of desires for the things of this world there is little or no room left to desire God. When truth comes and knocks on the door of that heart it finds no place to lodge; there is no interest, no welcome, no sense of need for that truth. That heart is already full; it's full of longing for other things but not for more of God. 

Other hearts are not as full of desires for the things of this world. There is still an interest to find answers to the important questions. There is a sense of need, an honest awareness of feeling empty, of being “poor in spirit,” of sensing that there must be more to life than this. When truth comes to that heart it finds room; there is interest; there is a welcome; there is enough humility to investigate a new idea, to listen to a challenge, to consider something that will require change. 

This is what Jesus was trying to explain to people who wanted to kill Him. He was showing them why His words made no sense to them. He said the problem was that He was speaking truth. Had He lied about God and told them things they wanted to hear, they would have believed, but because He told them the truth about God, they didn't believe.

What Jesus teaches in this passage helps us understand why some hearts are hard and some are soft, but His words contain a warning even to those of us who are already believers. We too need to guard our heart. Wrong desires push out the desire for truth. But thankfully the desire for truth can also push out wrong desires, so each of us has a choice. If we want more truth, we have to make room for it. Let's learn how. 

49 - Truth That Frees

Forgiveness is a wonderful gift. Who among us is not grateful that God mercifully forgives our sins? Forgiveness means He will not punish us when we sin, though our sin may have set in motion forces that will bring much misery. It means He does not withdraw His presence from us, though from our side of the relationship our hearts may grow harder, and God may seem more distant. It means Jesus will not hold that sin against us when we stand before Him on that day when He evaluates our lives. It means in spite of the sins we have committed we will be resurrected when Jesus returns to set up His kingdom on earth. 

That's good news, but it's not the best news. The best news is that Jesus has made it possible for us to stop sinning. His death and resurrection have not only released forgiveness, they have released the power which can set us free from doing things that need to be forgiven; it can break the terrible grip sin has had on us. And that is the best news because obedience to God is the key to success and happiness. 

The Bible says sin produces death (Ro 6:23). It always does, in one form or another. Every time I sin I damage something or someone. I release “death” into that situation, and the damage it causes usually can't be undone by forgiveness. I've released a destructive force that must play itself out, though thankfully, because of forgiveness God is still with me to help me deal with it as constructively as possible. So forgiveness is a wonderful gift, but the freedom to stop sinning is an even better gift. And that's the gift Jesus promised to a group of brand new disciples. He said to them, “You will know the truth and the truth will free you” (v32). Now let's discover what those words mean, because every one of us desperately needs freedom from sin. 

48 - Louder Than Words

When people speak about “witnessing for God,” they usually mean talking about Him. We think of a “witness” as someone who boldly declares their faith. And telling others what we believe is certainly an important element in witnessing, but words alone are never enough. People watch what we do far more closely than they listen to what we say, and there is one quality, above all, that they observe. It's not how confident we are, or how successful we are, or even how healthy we are. It's how selfless we are. Do we put ourselves or others first? Each of us answers that question everyday by the choices we make. From big decisions down to the smallest, most subtle decisions, we all make choices that expose the deepest, most foundational attitude in our heart: Who do I love the most? It shows in how I drive my car. It shows in how I spend my free time. It shows in how I dress. It shows in the way I listen and in the way I speak. It shows in how I treat children, or the elderly, or the disabled, or the poor. In fact, it shows in almost everything I do. 

The problem many of us face is that it is very difficult to admit to ourselves that a choice we made was selfish. So we defend it by explaining to ourselves and others that circumstances forced us to choose the way we did. We didn't want to make that choice. In another situation we would have made the selfless choice, but in this case we had no option. In fact, we really did what we did to benefit someone else. 

The problem is, we may fool ourselves with such talk, but we don't fool those who watch us. They simply observe our choices, especially those little decisions we're not even aware we make, and over time they can't help but notice that a pattern emerges. Either I tend to put me first or you first. And that habit can't be hidden. 

But why would it matter if I'm selfish or selfless? Why would someone study my choices before they listen to what I say? I think every human being intuitively knows the answer. We often say it this way: “Actions speak louder than words.”

47 - Rules

It's getting confusing: Many Christians seem headed in opposite directions. One group is becoming more and more legalistic, pointing to all the rules in the Old Testament and insisting that they are eternal which means they must be obeyed forever. Another group is becoming more and more lawless, pointing to the fact that when Jesus died for our sins He died for all of them, so it doesn't matter if a believer continues to sin. They say everything is under grace. Both groups quote from the Bible to support their positions, but they say very different things and present a very different picture of God. One group is rediscovering the “Law.” The other is abandoning it altogether. 

So who's right, and who's wrong? And what if both are wrong, then how would we discover the right way? Are we supposed to obey all those rules or not? And the most important question of all is, how will we know for sure that we're right? Thankfully there is an answer, a rock-solid answer. And it's not an answer that comes from someone's opinion or a clever argument. It's an answer that comes from God Himself. But He doesn't tell us this answer; He shows us the answer. He lets us watch as He applies His own rules to someone who has broken the rules. And what we discover is that He is neither legalistic nor lawless. He's exactly like Jesus. 

46 - Escaping Unbelief

Jesus was gentle with common people and sinners, but He became quite confrontational when He dealt with people who were very religious. In the passage we’re reading today it’s obvious He was very frustrated with the unbelief in this group of Pharisees who were confronting Him. We know from statements He made elsewhere (Mt 23:1-36) that He felt the Pharisees were damaging people, not helping them. But He was also angry about what they were doing to themselves. They had ended up in a condition in which they could no longer see what God was doing, even when He was powerfully at work in front of their own eyes. In fact, they had become so spiritually blind it was almost miraculous. How could people who were very religious have so little faith? As we listen to their dialogue with Jesus, He makes several observations that reveal the sources of their unbelief. One by one He points to the real reasons they were rejecting Him, and as we’ll soon discover, those reasons had nothing to do with the arguments they were using to try to discredit Him. Their unbelief didn’t come from a disagreement over certain passages in the Bible; it came from much more human sources. 

Today we’ll examine the three sources of unbelief to which Jesus pointed in the hearts of His opponents. And as we consider each one we’ll discover that they are just as common today as they were then, and just as dangerous. If we recognize any one of them in our own hearts, it must go, but if, as we listen to Jesus, we find none, then seeing them for what they are, enemies of faith, will help us refuse those impulses when they come to tempt us, because all of us have to deal with the flesh, the world and the devil.

45 - The Light of Life

Soon after our family arrived here, nearly 25 years ago, someone shared with us a prophetic word that had been given to this church. The word was this, “You’ve been called to be a river, not a lake.” To be honest with you, my heart sank a bit when I heard that statement because I knew what it meant. It meant we were going to send people out about as fast as we took them in, which is a fine way to build the Kingdom of God, but pretty hard on the heart when you have to keep saying goodbye to people you love. And that has indeed been the case. Sure, some people have left for sad reasons, but most have left for good ones. We sent people off to school, we’ve planted churches, we sent missionaries to the other side of town and the far side of the earth. Some people even moved back home in order to win their unbelieving family to the Lord. Others followed job offers to distant cities and became part of what God is doing there. And some left us by stepping from this world into the arms of Jesus. 

Thankfully, at least as many people have come in the door as have gone out, so there is still a strong community of believers here. But if we had somehow managed to keep all those people over all those years, we would have become a big lake, but that wasn’t God’s plan. His plan was for us to give away, not just receive; to bless at least as much as we’ve been blessed; to be a river, not a lake. This is a deep theme in the heart of God: He gives us something, so we can give it away. And that’s the way it is with His light. 

44 - Saving Guilty People

To the priests, Jesus was a political problem. They just wanted Him out of the way. But to the Pharisees, Jesus was a biblical problem. He kept putting the needs of people ahead of the rules in the Law of Moses. Yet the God who wrote those rules didn’t seem to be angry with Him. Jesus was performing miracles that were very hard to ignore. If God was angry with Him, it didn’t show. But up until now most of their complaints were about the way He interpreted the ceremonial portions of the Law: things that had to do with what was “clean” or “unclean” or what it meant to “rest” on the sabbath. They were upset because He ate with sinners, touched lepers and dead bodies and ministered on the wrong day. But would He ignore the moral portions of the Law as well? What would He do if He were confronted with someone who had unquestionably violated another of the Ten Commandments, besides keeping the sabbath day holy? If He publicly rejected one of those holy standards, people would turn against Him, and they, the Pharisees, would have grounds and witnesses to accuse Him of being a false prophet (Dt 13:1-5). So on a day when all Jerusalem was celebrating the giving of the Law, they placed a woman caught in the act of committing adultery in front of Him and dared Him to ignore that rule.