Life Lessons with Dr. Steve Schell

79 - The New Covenant

ave you ever wondered why so many individuals who claim to be Christians behave so badly? In some cases, large numbers of so-called Christians have behaved worse than unbelievers and some even at a level of evil explainable only by demonic influence. Have you ever been reading a history book or watching a documentary only to suddenly realize that the horror being described was perpetrated by people who called themselves Christians? Or, have you noticed that with sad regularity a Christian leader will be caught doing something awful? It’s unnerving. It’s discouraging. It leaves a person wondering if Christianity is true. If it does what it says it does, then why isn’t it making its followers more like its Founder? Where’s the change? Where’s God? Where’s the miracle?

In my opinion, this is the most serious charge against Christianity. These glaring failures make it appear that our faith is just one more set of religious teachings, one more philosophy among all the other teachings and philosophies in the world. Yet, to be fair, we have to point out that while some Christians and so-called Christian societies have behaved badly, there have been individuals and communities of believers who have loved and served their Lord with amazing sincerity and selflessness. Most of us know someone whose life reveals miraculous change. No one can deny that something really happened to that person.

So the question is: Why are some people who call themselves Christians becoming so much like Jesus, while others who also call themselves Christians behave no differently, or even worse, than unbelievers? As we read through John’s report of the disciples’ final evening with Jesus, we can hear in the Lord’s voice great expectation for the future. He clearly expected those disciples to change and become like Him. He knew that change hadn’t happened yet, but He was sure a miracle would happen to them after His cross and resurrection, one that would leave them different, empowered and, above all, obedient to God. As He served them the bread and cup from the Passover table that evening, He gave a name to that miracle. He called it the “new covenant.” He said it would transform rebellious, selfish, independent people into obedient, loving, humble disciples. That miracle was something God had promised as far back as Moses. The prophets said it was a gift that the Messiah would bring to all who would truly repent and believe.

I think this miracle, or miracles, that Jesus called the “new covenant” is what causes some people to become real Christians and others to be Christians in name only. The lack of it helps explain the hypocrisy we read about in history and the absence of a conscience in certain individuals. Actually, the Christianity Jesus envisioned that night can’t exist apart from it. Everything He and His apostles taught was designed only for people who had entered this new covenant, for people to whom God had given a new heart.

78 - What Jesus Saw

God knew how weak we were when He called us. Yet He wanted us anyway. He knows us far better than we know ourselves. Nothing we do surprises Him. In one of the psalms David says, “He knows our frame, He knows we are but dust” (Ps 103:14). Clearly He’s not impressed with our natural capacities. How silly our well-intended promises must sound to Him when we try to assure Him that we will never fail that way again. Yes, it pleases Him that we want to please Him, but He knows only too well that our willpower is hopelessly weak in the face of severe temptation. That doesn’t mean we can’t be victorious. It doesn’t mean we won’t be victorious, but it does mean we won’t until the Holy Spirit indwells us and we learn to lay hold of His power, until we truly discover that “greater is He who is in [us] than he who is in the world” (1Jn 4:4), until we’ve learned how to “put to death the deeds of the flesh by the Spirit” (Ro 8:13).

Peter meant every word he said when he vowed to the Lord, “I will lay down my life for You” (Jn 13:37). But Jesus saw his weakness and replied, “Will you? Actually you will deny Me three times before morning” (paraphrase). Peter would have been wise not to take that discussion further. But he felt he knew his heart, he knew he really meant it, so he argued with Jesus. He said, “Even if I have to die with You, I will not deny You,” and all the other disciples said the same thing (Mt 26:35). Yet as you and I know, because we’ve read ahead, they all failed just as He said they would, not at first (Jn 18:10), but later after Jesus was arrested. That bold resolve collapsed, and they fled. As He died on the cross they watched fearfully from a safe distance. In the days before His resurrection they met in secret behind locked doors.

But the amazing part is that even though Jesus knew they would fail to keep those promises, He went on to tell them how much He loved them and what wonderful apostles they were going to be in the future. He looked past their failure and saw their glory. He looked past the broken promises and saw men full of the power of the Holy Spirit. What did He see that evening? Whatever it was we need to see it too.

77 - The Greatest Miracle

They were in their final hours together. He would be arrested soon, and by nine o’clock in the morning He would be on the cross. So, Jesus devoted the time they had left to preparing His disciples for the future. Here were truths to which they would need to cling. Here were promises that would carry them through the trials they would face in the years ahead. He spoke of heaven, love, prayer, the Holy Spirit, obedience, persecution, and, of course, His return to set up the kingdom of God. And then He let them listen as He interceded for them before the Father. None of the topics He taught that evening is a surprise. All are foundational to discipleship. But what is surprising is the topic that He chose first. No sooner had He announced that He would be leaving them than He issued what He called a “new commandment,” and said that their obedience to that command would be the single most important miracle that would cause people to believe in Him. Nothing they could do would be more effective. Indeed, He would empower them to do supernatural works that were even greater than those He had done (Jn 14:12), but those miracles wouldn’t have the greatest impact, they wouldn’t be the most important way of convincing the world that He was the Savior or that they were His disciples. That powerful witness would happen only when they obeyed the new commandment, only when they chose to love each other as deeply as He had loved them. Today, let’s try to understand what that means, so we too can release the greatest miracle of all.

76 - Escaping Betrayal

It’s one thing to be wounded by an enemy, but it’s another to be betrayed by a friend. We expect enemies to hate us, and usually know why they do. There’s been an offense or profound disagreement and we haven’t been able to repair it. And it seems that no matter how nice we try to be to people we all end up with a certain number of enemies. It’s just a sad fact of life. But betrayal happens very differently. It comes as a shock, a complete surprise, from someone we trusted and thought loved us. We discover that this friend to whom we opened up our heart, and became vulnerable, now hates us, and may have hated us for a long time. The damage that revelation does to our self-esteem is profound. We are injured at a much deeper level. It causes us to question ourselves. If someone who knows us so well has decided we aren’t worth loving, we aren’t worth protecting, then maybe our own assessment of ourselves is wrong; maybe they’re right. Maybe we aren’t worth loving; maybe we aren’t worth protecting.

Enemies can bruise us, but only people we trust can betray us, and when they do, they injure us in a way that without God’s help, may never be healed. These are the wounds that can leave lasting depression, that are the hardest to forgive, that isolate us from others, and that leave us afraid to ever trust again. So, the apostle John has given us a precious gift. He has described, in intimate detail, the horrible moment when Jesus confronted His betrayer. It’s almost impossible to believe that anyone who knew Jesus so well could decide to betray Him. Why would you betray someone who is so completely good? Yet Judas did betray Him which proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that betrayal isn’t caused by a flaw in the victim, but by a flaw in the heart of the betrayer. It exposes the character of the disloyal, not the worth of the forsaken.

None of us is as good as Jesus, but none of us deserves to be betrayed. Yet it seems that sooner or later all of us are, which is why we need to study this passage. It shows us betrayal, but more importantly it shows us how Jesus responded to it. John lets us watch Him escape its grip, and that’s a lesson we all need to learn so that we can do the same.

75 - The Secret To Happiness

 It’s counterintuitive. It doesn’t make sense. You would think that the way to happiness would be by serving ourselves, but a self-centered life ends up being very depressing. At first it might seem to work, but as time goes on it produces anger. Life never seems to give us all we feel that we deserve and people seldom love us the way they should, so resentments build, leaving us angry. And that anger invariably drives people and happiness farther away, until, at some point, we realize that life will never give us the satisfaction we longed for. When that moment arrives there is a real danger that hopelessness may set in, and if it does we will look at the rest of our life and wish we didn’t have to live it.

But there is a solution. We don’t have to end up angry and depressed. Jesus says there is a way to find true happiness, the kind of happiness that only God can give. On that final evening, in the upper room, He showed His disciples the secret and then said, “If you’ve watched what I’ve done and understood what it means and then actually put that truth into practice you will find true happiness” (paraphrase). And what they had just watched Him do was to humbly serve them. So that’s the secret: A life of humble service produces true happiness. But how? It just doesn’t make sense

74 - Dusty Feet

It’s not enough to start out clean, we must arrive clean. When we place our faith in Jesus Christ our sins are forgiven, but on a day-to-day basis sins keep happening, and those sins, if left unattended, have the power to erode the very faith that saved us. That’s why our life with Jesus must be a daily walk, not a transaction that took place because of a prayer we once prayed or a doctrine we affirmed. Jesus is inviting us into a relationship with Him in which He will teach us how to avoid sin and draw us close to Himself and wash us when we do sin. If we refuse to walk in that relationship and allow our sins to accumulate, unconfessed, we expose ourselves to forces which harden our hearts and quench our faith. Which is why, Jesus, during that final evening with His disciples taught them a lesson they would never forget. He took a long, linen cloth, wrapped it around His waist so that He looked like a household servant, picked up the foot-washing basin found in every home, filled it with water, knelt down at the feet of each disciple, washed the dust off his feet, and dried them on the cloth He was wearing.

That moment was filled with meaning. Jesus was certainly modeling the attitude of humble service. He told His disciples that He was giving them an example. He wanted them to serve each other that same way. But there was a deeper meaning than that. He was teaching them the importance of regularly confessing their sins and coming to Him for cleansing. He was explaining that becoming a disciple isn’t the end of a person’s struggle with sin. Walking through life as a disciple is like walking the dusty roads of Israel. Just as a person’s sandaled feet naturally become covered with dirt and sweat, so a believer’s heart becomes affected by the sins we commit. It’s impossible to walk through this world and not be soiled by it. There are temptations of the flesh, spiritual assaults and constant pressure from the culture around us. So sins occur, mistakes happen and bad choices are made, and those sins need to be dealt with, not ignored. All sin has a spiritual power attached to it. It’s not a neutral force. It always produces “death,” which means it always brings some measure of separation from God. Just because a person believes in Jesus Christ does not mean that person is automatically protected from that damage. It wounds believers and unbelievers alike. When a believer sins it affects our relationship with God; it affects our relationship with others; it sours our mood and strips away our confidence before God just as it would an unbeliever, which is why a believer must not allow sins to accumulate. We must bring them to Jesus and let Him wash them away, and we must do that as often as the Word shows us our sin or the Holy Spirit convicts our heart, for as long as we live. Conviction, confession, repentance and freshly laying hold of the cross and resurrection is meant to be a normal part of a believer’s life. We become righteous the moment we place our faith in Jesus Christ and surrender to His lordship, but that doesn’t mean unattended sin won’t damage us. It will, and if left unattended long enough it can erode the faith that saved us. That’s why Jesus “…rose up from the meal and put His outer cloak [aside]; and taking a linen cloth He wrapped it tightly around Himself… and began to wash the disciples’ feet” (literal) (Jn 13:4-5).

73 - Washing Feet

On that final evening in the upper room, Jesus did something that turned our world upside down. Normally, humans think that the more important a person is the more that person should be served and honored. We think important people are too dignified to do lowly tasks. We look for ways to give them special care. We give them the best seat, the best portion, the best of everything. They become the focus of our attention and adulation. So it’s no wonder humans strive to become important. In countless ways, in countless areas of life, people everywhere maneuver, compete, and even battle for position. They want to become important and enjoy the rewards that come with it.

But on that final evening, in the upper room, Jesus did something that turned all of that upside down. He, the Lord and Teacher, picked up a towel and washbasin, and washed His disciples’ feet. The most important person in the room, the most important person in the world, did the lowliest act of service. He did what a household servant would normally have done in most homes: He washed their dusty feet. His humility was shocking; it felt inappropriate; it made everyone uncomfortable; it was awkward. The man many in Israel believed was the promised Messiah, the man with such power He could still a storm and raise dead people to life, the man so skilled in His knowledge of the Scriptures He could silence the nation’s most senior religious leaders, the man who couldn’t step into a public place without thousands rushing to hear Him and trying to touch His cloak, knelt down and, one by one, with His hands washed the dust and sweat off His disciples’ feet.

There can be little doubt that they watched Him in stunned silence. Each disciple must have glanced at the other with that questioning look which asks, “What’s He doing?” Peter, of course, broke the silence and tried to resist, but was quickly corrected. Then, when He had finished, Jesus returned to His place at the table and said this: 
“Do you know what I have done to you? You call Me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for [so] I am. If I then, the Lord and Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I gave you an example (a pattern to be copied) that you should also do as I did to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a slave is not greater than his master, nor [is] one who is sent greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things you are blessed if you do them.” (Jn 13:12-17)

On that final evening, in the upper room, He modeled the attitude which must be in every true disciple: a love for God and others that is so strong it causes us to cast aside our desire for honor and gladly take up the lowliest place of service. He said if He could do such humble service, then surely we, His disciples, could do the same. Since we love Him and desire to obey Him, let’s try to discover what it means to wash one another’s feet.

72 - Christ’s Victory

On Sunday, five days before He was crucified, Jesus said this: “Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out” (Jn 12:31).

This world is under God’s judgment because of sin, and the “ruler of this world” is the devil. So on that day Jesus was announcing that His death on the cross and His resurrection would potentially release all humans from these two forms of bondage: the judgment of God and the control of the devil. He was announcing that He had come, like a warrior, to set us free from condemnation and bondage.

On this “resurrection day,” as we celebrate Jesus’ victory over death, we need to realize that His victory means our victory. Through His cross and resurrection a great spiritual transaction took place: The barrier of sin that prevented God from helping us was removed, so that He could be merciful to us and give us an entirely new dimension of God’s Spirit so that the devil’s control over us would be broken. The cross removed our condemnation, and the resurrection released God’s power. When we put our full trust in Jesus Christ; when we completely surrender our will to Him and let Him become our Lord; when we receive the indwelling of the Holy Spirit whom the Father has freely given to us in Christ, everything changes. The forces that tried to ruin us in the past don’t cease to exist, but they have been defeated. As we learn to lay hold of Christ’s victory we discover that we are, at least, able to begin walking on the path God planned for us before we were born. We discover who we really are. An entirely new person emerges who makes very different choices and pursues very different goals. Finally we are able to act like the son or daughter whom God saw when He fearfully and wonderfully formed us in our mother’s womb (Ps 139:13-16). Until a person has been set free from the condemnation that their sin has brought upon them; until a person has been set free from the deception and oppression hurled at us by “the ruler of this world”; until a person has been set free from the cravings, passions and confused thinking that arise from these dying bodies we live in; and until a person has been set free from the anxiety and depression that haunts us because of our fear of death (Heb 2:15), a person is unable to experience what it means to be “His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (Eph 2:10). But once Christ’s victory is released in that person’s life, once those forces that held us have lost their grip, God immediately goes to work healing, restoring, guiding, training, correcting, disciplining, teaching, comforting and strengthening until we become who we were meant to become.

There are no exceptions to this process of restoration. No one is too old or too young. No one has sinned so badly that God cannot rescue the design He placed in that heart. Yes, we might end up being who we were called to be in jail, or in the midst of a family that our past behavior devastated, or in a body that’s been damaged by neglect or terrible choices, but the gifts and calling of God are not changed by our circumstances (Ro 11:29). Like seed planted in good soil they instinctively begin to emerge, and we learn to express them in whatever opportunities we have left, that is until we ourselves are resurrected into the new bodies that Christ’s victory has made possible. Then someday we will step into a whole new season of ministry as His representatives in the new kingdom of God (Rev 20:6).

71 - Unchangeable Truth

Truth doesn’t change, especially spiritual truth. The spiritual world is not a myth. There are lots of myths and fairy tales, invented stories about gods, goddesses and how the world was created. But that doesn’t change spiritual truth; it only makes it harder to find. The fact that there are people who say wrong things doesn’t mean right things don’t exist. And the truth is: There is a God who made us; He’s holy, and He’s going to hold us accountable for our words, thoughts and actions, unless we choose His path to salvation, whether we believe those facts or not.

What took place between Jesus and the crowd on that Palm Sunday afternoon was a battle of wills. Most of them were willing to believe in Him so long as He let them decide what kind of Savior He would be. They wanted to mold Him like clay into the person they felt they needed. If He would let them do that, then they would follow Him passionately, but if He continued to talk about sin and insist that He was going to die violently, they would move on and find someone else. And in time, they did and the result was catastrophic.

Yet in spite of the pressure, Jesus refused to change His message. Every time they argued with Him He simply repeated the same truths. Why? Why didn’t He compromise with them? Why didn’t He, at least, emphasize those truths they like and de-emphasize the ones they didn’t? Any skilled communicator understands the mood of their audience and quickly recognizes which elements in the message “work” and which don’t. But Jesus refused to do that. He wouldn’t even debate with them. Instead He warned them that they would be sorry if they didn’t listen. Let’s revisit that Palm Sunday afternoon and hear Jesus proclaim those unchangeable truths. And let’s not react the way many in that crowd did. Let’s identify those spiritual realities and believe them with all our heart. While we have the “Light,” let’s believe in the Light so that we may become “children of Light.”

70 - Dealing With Danger

Fear is very lonely. It seems to place a barrier between us and others, and between us and God. It feels like we’ve walked into a chamber and closed the door. There, alone, trapped with our terrible thoughts, our emotions churn and our body grows weary. In fact the suffering that fear brings is often worse than the problem itself. We can suffer through the same event over and over again in our mind, long before we actually encounter whatever it is we fear.

I wish there were a way we could do away with fear forever, but that blessing awaits the return of Jesus Christ. Until then you and I live in bodies that are vulnerable to fear. But when God gave us the Holy Spirit, He placed inside us a power greater than fear, a power strong enough to bring our rebellious emotions into submission. Here’s how the apostle Paul described that power: “But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal (dying) bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you” (Ro 8:11).

That means that the Holy Spirit who lives inside the physical body of every believer is stronger than the forces, impulses, temptations or attitudes that arise from that body. This means you and I have been given access to a power greater than fear. And that means you and I are not slaves of fear; we can break its grip and live free of its control. There is no promise in the Bible that says fear will never trouble a believer, but there are many promises that say we can have victory over it when it arrives.

The apostle John gives us a remarkable gift in the passage we’re studying today. He records Jesus talking about how He dealt with the fear of the cross. If Jesus had to deal with fear, then so do we. But as we’ll see, when fear attacked Him He didn’t allow it to control Him. He knew how to gain victory over it. So let’s listen to Him carefully and learn to do what He did.