Guest blogger, Stan Nussbaum, takes us on a journey through the messianic year calendar.



Welcome to the journey of our Messiah through the year with Dr. Hussbaum.

Dec. 26 - The glorious word, “Done!”

He also said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.” (Rev. 21:6, NET)

If you have ever reached the finish line of a multi-year project like earning a degree or paying off a mortgage, you know the joy of the word, “Done!” This is the joy we come to at the end of the Messianic Year, anticipating the day when the Messiah himself will proclaim, “It is done!” (Rev. 21:6)

He said that once before, of course—“It is finished!” (Jn. 19:30). It marked the completion of the work he came to do on his first visit to this world. He had spread the Declaration of Peace throughout the nation of Israel, as we saw last week. He had laid down his life as the perfect sacrifice for all time. That phase of his work was done, never to be repeated.

“Done” is a God-word. God created the world in six days and it was “done,” so well done, in fact, that he sat down and enjoyed it on the seventh day. God’s arch-enemy has no right to that word, “Done.” He never gets to carry any of his plans through to completion. Even if he gets tantalizingly close, as he did when he had the Messiah on the cross, the whole thing is suddenly un-done. He is the king of “almost,” which is to say, the king of nothing.

He bluffs, of course. “You are done for. It’s over.” And there is a lot of evidence implying he is still in power. Two thousand years after Jesus said, “Done,” earth still looks like a basket case, riddled with disease, war, drugs, oppression, loneliness, poverty, greed, AIDS, genocide, divorce, corruption, etc. That is a lot of unfinished business. The gracious approach to sin does not look very effective.

Can anybody seriously believe the Messiah did not think of that? Could he have gone to the cross and not realized that a lot of sinners would stay sinners anyway? Didn’t he foresee that billions of people, including hundreds of millions who think they are “Christians,” would regard him only as a religious teacher but not a king? He must have known.

Then why did he do it? Only to create the time and space for people like us to welcome him when we are not forced to. In that one free act of welcoming, we find our identity and fulfillment as human beings. We get to know what it means to live in him and have him living in us.

The window of opportunity will close, however. On the appointed day the Messiah’s Declaration of Peace will be replaced by his Declaration of Victory, “The whole world has now become the Kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever." (Rev. 11:15, NLT) He will return in glory and power, he will use force, he will eradicate evil, and he will do it all with only one weapon, “the sword of his mouth.” (Rev. 19:15, see the reading for July 25). He has the last word, and when he says it is over, it’s over.

Since he is the Alpha and Omega, who are we? His welcomers and his representatives. We welcome him by praying as he taught us, “May your reign begin. May your will be DONE on earth as it is in heaven!” We represent him by telling the world that the Declaration of Peace is still in effect, though we do not know for how long. 2011 could be the year he declares victory and permanently floods the world with all the blessings we have been celebrating. The Messianic Year will give way to the Messianic Age. “Yes, come Lord Jesus.” (Rev. 22:20)

Welcome: Jesus the Messiah, we can’t wait to welcome you back. May your reign begin. May your will be done in us today, and may it be done everywhere soon. Please come and say, “Done!”

Affirmation: This year we celebrate the Messianic Year here. Next year in the New Jerusalem, God willing.

Dec. 19 – The glorious Declaration of Peace

Guest blogger, Stan Nussbaum, takes us on a journey through the messianic year calendar.



Welcome to the journey of our Messiah through the year with Dr. Nussbaum.

"Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth to all whom God favors." Luke 2:14 (NLT)

“Peace on earth”—what a fitting way for the angels to declare the birth of the Messiah, issuing the “Declaration of Peace,” gift-wrapped in glory and grace. The glory terrified the shepherds but the angels calmed them with news of peace. Yes, the glory was approaching but no, it was not going to kill them. It was going to arrive in Bethlehem as a harmless newborn baby.

This baby would bring peace to earth. Neither the angels nor the shepherds were thinking this was a religious announcement about peace in some far-off future in heaven. The declaration was that the peace of heaven was coming to earth right then and there. To announce the baby is to announce the peace. In fact, the baby is the peace. The glorious future of the world was wrapped up in that one little child. It only takes one Messiah to change everything.

This messianic peace, like everything else in the Messianic Year, was God’s gracious initiative, not anything that humans had concocted, earned, or promoted. God by his own choice out of his own goodness made the Declaration of Peace in his way and his time.

As the Messiah and all his blessings are propelled by God’s grace, so they all lead to his peace. Grace and peace are like two parentheses bracketing the Messianic year. Grace and peace are the defining framework that all the other blessings come from and lead toward. They are the alpha and omega of blessings. The apostles knew what they were saying when they started out their letters, “Grace and peace to you.”

The “peace” we look forward to is much more than the end of a war. Peace, or “shalom” as the shepherds would have heard it, basically meant utopia. Peace meant life, plenty, fulfillment—perfect people in perfect circumstances and perfect harmony with God. At last everything becomes what God in his grace intended it to be when he made it in the beginning.

This comprehensive peace was what the Messiah was talking about when he himself re-issued the Declaration of Peace as an adult. Peace is what you get when God is in charge, and Jesus’ declaration was, “God is taking charge now” (“The reign of God is beginning,” or in King James English, “The kingdom of God is at hand.” Mark 1:15)

Jesus’ purpose in coming to earth was to issue the Declaration of Peace.

"I must preach the Good News of the Kingdom of God in other places, too, because that is why I was sent." (Luke 4:43, NLT)

We miss the centrality of this work of declaration because of the English word, “preach.” The root meaning is to herald or proclaim, not to give a sermon in a religious gathering. John the Baptist was a herald. Jesus was a herald. He sent his disciples out as heralds. They were all heralding the arrival of peace on earth, just like the angels outside Bethlehem.

Ironically it was his Declaration of Peace that almost got Jesus killed the first time he announced it in his home town (Lk. 4:16-30) and eventually did get him killed on the cross. Not just anybody can declare peace. Only kings do that. If you go all over the country declaring peace, if you send out seventy-two of your followers in pairs as an advance party to inform every town and village of your peace declaration before you get there (Lk. 10:1-6), if you follow up your peace declaration by calling people to follow you, you are acting like a king even if you mysteriously refuse to come right out and say it. People can connect the dots.

Jesus told the seventy-two to look for “people of peace” (Lk. 10:6), that is, people who would welcome the Declaration of Peace and welcome him as the Declarer. This is why every one of the weekly readings in the Messianic Year ends with a welcome message. We want to be those “people of peace” (peace-welcomers) today.

Not everybody wants to welcome Jesus and his messengers, as we saw throughout the past season. That explains Mt. 10:34,

"Don’t imagine that I came to bring peace to the earth! No, I came to bring a sword.”

The Declaration of Peace brings peace to those who welcome it, but it radically divides the welcomers from the refusers.

John 3 paints the picture clearly. God loves the world and sends his Son to bring life (v. 16) not to condemn anybody (v. 17). But when people refuse the Son and the light he brings, they are condemned (v. 18-19). Their negative reaction to the light shows that they prefer the darkness, and darkness is what they get (v. 19-20). They are not the people God “favors” (Lk. 2:14). His grace comes to them and they turn it down flat.

For the time being they continue their evil ways, pumping more death, lostness, oppression, helplessness, bitterness, fear, and shame into the world—the defiant opposites of all the Messiah’s blessings. It is as if they are trying to prove that peace has not arrived yet and Jesus’ declaration means nothing.

But the King of kings is coming to enforce the Declaration of Peace. Those who live by refusing him will die by refusing him (Rev. 19:11-21). And there will be peace on earth. Once that glorious baby arrived, the die was cast and things could not turn out any other way. Merry Christmas!

Welcome: Jesus, Messiah, we welcome your Declaration of Peace. Let it reign in our lives. Make us people of peace.

Affirmation: Peace has been declared by the Messiah. Peace is arriving. Peace will be enforced when he returns. I will do whatever it takes to spread the Declaration of Peace.

Dec. 12 – Joy, the (super)natural response to glory

Guest blogger, Stan Nussbaum, takes us on a journey through the messianic year calendar.



Welcome to the journey of our Messiah through the year with Dr. Nussbaum.

”Though you do not see him, you trust him; and even now you are happy with a glorious, inexpressible joy.”
1 Peter 1:8 (NLT)

As we saw last week, the arriving glory of God is too much for humans as humans. No one could see God and live. No one could touch the Ark of the Covenant. We just are not built to be able to handle it any more than we can stare at the sun. Part of us may be attracted to God’s glory but it is the fatal attraction of the moth to the flame. We cannot afford to get too close.

God in his grace has made two adjustments that raise our glory tolerance and allow us to see him. First he toned down the intensity of his glory by becoming one of us. The shepherds and the wise men did not die when they approached the baby. Even Mary was not destroyed as she carried him and delivered him. As God in human form, the Messiah serves us like a welder’s helmet serves a welder, enabling us to look at the bright light and even work with it but not be blinded by it.

Secondly God put part of his glory in us through the Holy Spirit. This means we are now powerfully attracted to the Messiah’s glory instead of being repelled like we used to be when we were “looking out for number 1” and seeking our own glory. Now that the Spirit has flipped the switch of our personalities, we do not try to compete with the Messiah any more. We flip from fearing, ignoring, opposing, or envying the Messiah to welcoming him with open hearts and open arms. “Worthy is the Lamb!”

This is the heart of the Messianic Year, the reason for all seven seasons, all these weekly reflections, and every breath we take. It all adds up to this, “Worthy is the Lamb!” He is the key to God’s master plan for the world and the universe. He is the one who is returning to cap off the entire history of the world with a glorious victory. He is already bringing us life, identity, freedom, power, forgiveness, courage, and glory. How could we not have joy?

So let the Christmas bells ring. “Joy to the world!” “Glory to the newborn king!” Let’s join the children in their recitation, “J is for Jesus, Messiah and friend. He was here once and he’s coming again.” Let’s join the nations as they embrace the one they have been waiting for all these centuries, the one who is coming back soon.

And let our joy bring joy to Jesus. Of all people, isn’t he the one who most deserves a merry Christmas? What would make him merrier than seeing billions of us welcoming him as Messiah by our worship, our obedience, and the way we represent him to his world? We glorify him. He brings us joy. He is honored. We are fulfilled. It doesn’t get any better than that.

Well, yes it does, actually.

“Now we see things imperfectly as in a poor mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.” (1 Cor. 13:12, NLT)

We are heading for perfect joy, when he returns and changes our circumstances. The inner transformation already under way in us will be matched by an outer transformation as he destroys disease, death, evil, pain, corruption and anything else that cannot stand his glory. Then at last we will really know who the Messiah really is. And we are going to love it. Enjoy the anticipation!

Welcome: Glory to you, Jesus our Messiah. We cannot see you perfectly yet, but we can see that you are everything we need. Welcome!

Affirmation: Today is one day closer to the return of the King of glory.

Dec. 5 – What postpones the glory

Guest blogger, Stan Nussbaum, takes us on a journey through the messianic year calendar.



Welcome to the journey of our Messiah through the year with Dr. Nussbaum.

”The Lord isn’t really being slow about his promise to return, as some people think.” 2 Peter 3:9 (NLT)

Whenever we say that God has a plan to transform the world and he is working it out through the Messiah and the Holy Spirit, some people are bound to wonder what is taking him so long. If he is really serious about stopping evil and healing the world’s wounds and scars, why has it taken 2000 years and we don’t see much improvement? Does he lack the power to carry out his plan? Does he lack the will?

God’s apparent slowness or inaction makes perfect sense if we realize that the world is currently enjoying a grace period. The whole human race should have been destroyed by now. The Almighty God of heaven and earth sent his Son into the world to bring his light and life to everyone, and we treasonously rejected and killed him. God could justifiably vaporize us all and blow our remains off of this planet like specks of cosmic dust.

But our sentence has not been carried out yet, or I would not still be around to write this page and you would not be around to read it. Our crucifixion of Jesus, which should have got us all instantly obliterated, has instead bought us some extra time. God looked at our unspeakable crime through the lens of his love and decided to give us all a grace period, a very long second chance to welcome the Messiah who died for us.

Jesus’ own people, the Jews, missed their first chance partly because they had never expected the Messiah to have sacrificial love as his trademark. They thought the Messiah would bring the glory of God to earth by subduing evil with as much violence as required. He would destroy any evildoers who dared to oppose him, and he would intimidate the rest into submission. Problem solved. He would bring evil totally under control and make the glory of God totally visible.

But today the glory is hard to see and the evil is still running rampant. God is neither preventing it nor punishing most of it, and we are all in a world of hurt because of it. So back to our original question, what is taking God so long to step in and assert his control?

Ironically it is the grace period that allows the hurting and the hurt to continue. In other words, the only thing that is postponing the arrival of the glory of God on earth is his love and his patience. Of course he knows he could assert himself today. He could stop evil dead in its tracks right this minute, but if he did, the grace period would be over. It is so important to him to prolong the world’s second chance that he is willing to let the suffering continue.

As this week’s text says, “The Lord isn’t really being slow about his promise to return, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to perish, so he is giving more time for everyone to repent.” (1 Pt. 2:9)

As the Messiah’s people in a hurting world there is only one thing for us to do—seize the day. Let the glory arrive in us now. Let evil be defeated in us now. Let the love of our “God of the Second Chance” live in us now. And let us be done with the myth that God is a judgmental, vindictive, or angry person. That kind of God would have snuffed us out long ago. The real God sacrificed everything to give us a grace period.

Welcome: Welcome, King of glory! Let the fire of your glory burn all the evil out of my character and my life.

Affirmation: I will seize the day, the day of grace, so that when the grace period runs out neither I nor anyone within my loving reach will be destroyed by the glory of God.

Nov 28 -The Hope of Glory

Guest blogger, Stan Nussbaum, takes us on a journey through the messianic year calendar.



Welcome to the journey of our Messiah through the year with Dr. Nussbaum.

"For this is the secret: Christ lives in you, and this is your assurance that you will share in his glory."
Colossians. 1:27 (NLT)

Have you ever looked in the mirror in the morning and thought, “It’s me again”? Same old me. Same name. Same place. Same look. Same limitations. Same baggage. The only thing that isn’t the same is that the wrinkles are getting deeper.

If so, check the calendar. We are in the Season of Glory, and that has wonderful implications for the mirror at 7AM. Contemplating the Messiah’s glory is better than a shot of “Five-Hour Energy.” It touches the parts that Five-Hour Energy just can’t reach.

We have the hope of sharing the Messiah’s glory, and people who have hope look different than hopeless people. They live differently. They act differently. They initiate things. They stick with things. They take a long-term view of life, and they are not wrapped up in themselves or preoccupied with their aches, pains, or wrinkles. They are the best advertisements of the Messiah’s arrival.

As the Messiah’s people we resemble optimists but we are much more than mere positive thinkers, always “hoping for the best.” That is why the NLT (New Living Translation) of Col. 1:27 speaks of “assurance” instead of “hope,” as the older translations put it. The meaning of “hope” has eroded over the years. “I hope so” is now much too weak a statement to apply to us as we anticipate the glorious return of the Messiah. We hope the Messiah will come back? We hope we will share in his glory? Way too lame a way of saying it. We know he is coming back. We are dead certain of it.

How does current English speak of future things that are sure bets instead of mere “hopes”? We would say they are “guaranteed to happen.” This, of course, raises questions about who is guaranteeing the thing, whether they are able to get it to happen, and whether we missed anything in the fine print of the guarantee.

And here we arrive at one of the most amazing aspects of this totally amazing season—there is no fine print in the Messiah’s guarantee! The long-kept secret “is now as clear as daylight to those who love God.” He gives them “a vision of the full wonder and splendor of his secret plan. . . And the secret is simply this: Christ in you! Yes, Christ in you bringing with him the hope of all the glorious things to come.” (Col. 1:26-27, Phillips Trans., his italics)

Three words, “Christ in you.” Three words change wishful thinking to bedrock assurance. The Messiah is already in us. We talk of people who have “one foot in the grave.” The Messiah already has “one foot in our lives.” He is present with us through the Holy Spirit, who makes us look like him. And the other foot is coming soon! When he arrives in person, jumps into our lives with both feet, “We will be like him for we will see him as he is.” (1 Jn. 3:2) We will be like him completely because we will see him in all his glory.

So let’s look in the mirror again. Lo and behold, the body is aging but the person is aging in reverse! Our gnarly, sin-damaged, decrepit souls have found the Fountain of Youth, and they are getting younger and healthier by the day. And so the aging body somehow radiates an inner glory, a sign of the times that defies the signs of the body. The Messiah lives here! The messianic age has dawned within. (Luke 17:21)

Welcome: Jesus, Messiah, thank you for coming to the door of my life and putting one foot in. Come on in, all the way in. It will be wonderful to have you here.

Affirmation: I will share in the Messiah’s glory. It’s a hope and it’s a lock.

Nov. 21 – The Messianic banquet

Guest blogger, Stan Nussbaum, takes us on a journey through the messianic year calendar.



Welcome to the journey of our Messiah through the year with Dr. Nussbaum.

"I tell you, many will come from the east and west to share the banquet with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 8:11 (NLT)

One of the best things about the Season of Suffering is that all our suffering is so temporary. Today at last we enter the season where everything is permanent, the Season of Glory. The season is a crescendo of hope, love, joy, and peace leading up through Christmas to climax on New Year’s Eve with the celebration of the Messiah’s return.

What better way to launch the Season of Glory than with a huge Thanksgiving feast on November 25th! The Messiah, his Father, and his Spirit have carried us through the Season of Suffering and at this point in the Messianic Year we stare glory in the face.

Eat, drink, and be joyful, for tomorrow the Messiah is coming back! At the appointed time he will destroy all evil and strip all his enemies of their power. Forgiven, restored people of every nation, tribe, and language will sit down together to enjoy a feast with the Messiah himself at the head table. Fabulous! Glory, glory, hallelujah!

If we are celebrating the future on Thanksgiving Day, we could call it a feast of faith, but is any great faith required? The Messiah’s track record is perfect from creation through history up till now. Surely he will also bring the seventh and final blessing.

“He will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth. In his law the islands will put their hope.” (Isaiah 42:4)

It’s as good as done, so certain that we get to give thanks for it in advance.

We may not be thankful about all our present circumstances but who cares? The Messiah never promised to change our circumstances or bring us instant success, wealth, or comfort. That is why there is a “Season of Suffering” in the Messianic Year but no “Season of Wealth,” and the “Season of Glory” is mostly about the future.

Even though the Messiah’s glory party has not started yet, our banquet reservations have been made, our tickets have arrived and we are supposed to be gearing up for it. The Messiah is already bringing heaven into our inner lives because we have welcomed him and he reigns within us. In fact, we are already getting samples of the banquet food, foretastes of what it will be like. We are injected with his glory by the presence of the Holy Spirit.

No wonder we are a little bubbly sometimes. That hidden inner glory bubbles to the surface of our lives as hope, love, joy, and peace (themes of the next four weeks). We couldn’t keep it in if we wanted to.

Since we are so sure about what is coming but we live in a world that is not, we have some work to do. We don’t just live in the foreshadow of the Messiah’s party; we are the foreshadow. A profound but little known verse nails this point beautifully, “The testimony about Jesus is the spirit of prophecy,” or as the NLT puts it, “For the essence of prophecy is to give a clear witness for Jesus.” (Revelation 19:10)

The world around us can see what is, but we can see what is coming. It is already within us. Our glory injection changes our lives and gives the world a sneak peek at the way the whole world will look when Jesus the Messiah returns to reign everywhere. We are prophecy in action, the future in the present, witnesses and exhibits of what happens when he takes over. We testify that he is the Messiah, the arriving King, the transforming King, the hope of the world.

This will be a party too good to miss. Let’s thankfully predict it. Pass the turkey, please.

Welcome: “Yes, come Lord Jesus. The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come!’”

Affirmation: There is a place at the Messianic banquet table with my name on it, and I can’t wait!

Suffering with the persecuted

Guest blogger, Stan Nussbaum, takes us on a journey through the messianic year calendar.



Welcome to the journey of our Messiah through the year with Dr. Nussbaum.

“Don’t forget about those in prison. Suffer with them as though you were there yourself.”
Heb. 13:3 (NLT)

In the very last week of this season of the Messianic Year, I have finally realized what its name should really be, not the Season of Shelter or the Season of Endurance but the Season of Suffering. I missed it because I was assuming the seven seasons should be named for seven attractive blessings the Messiah brings—life, freedom, power, etc. Suffering obviously does not fit the pattern.

We understand that the Messiah himself had to suffer. He was our substitute. He suffered so we do not have to. That is partly true, of course, but it leaves a huge question: why did the Messiah talk about suffering as the new “normal” for his followers?

How could the great, long-awaited Messiah, the Desire of the Nations, bring suffering to those who welcome him? If he were raising an army, we could understand it. Some soldiers would have to suffer and die in order to bring him to power. This is normal human thinking about suffering.

Jesus was not normal. He was a man on a unique dual mission—to bring the reign of God to earth and to show people what that reign would look like. He could have established God’s reign without suffering but that display of power would not have accomplished the second half of his mission. He suffered to reveal what power alone could never reveal—the depth of the love of God for us all.

If we welcome him, he sends us to continue both halves of his mission. He reigns in us (first half), and we show the world what his reign looks like, that is, what kind of people he turns us into as he takes over by his Spirit (second half).

By sending us to carry on his mission in a world that is still sinful, he sends us into harm’s way. Those who are busy with their own kingdoms, authority, and rights do not want him to take over their turf. They will fight us as they fought him, and we are to defeat them by responding as he responded.

His cross was the climax of his victory over Satan, and as we carry our crosses, the same victory dynamics are in play. There are three kinds of people—those who welcome the Messiah, those who oppose him, and the undecideds. When the undecideds see the resilience and love with which the welcomers respond to persecution by their opponents, they know whose side they want to join. The enemies lose all credibility, the undecideds welcome the Messiah, and victory is ours.

This has been happening for centuries and it continues to this day, especially in China. Today (Nov. 14th) is the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church (see www.persecutedchurch.org). As our thoughts turn to the brutal forms of persecution, let us not forget the many lesser forms that afflict millions of our brothers and sisters every day. Families disown them, classmates bully them, bosses deny them promotion, universities exclude them, intellectuals mock them, businessmen cheat them, communities refuse them burial.

Whether the persecution is life-threatening or not, unbelievers expect normal responses like fear, submission, bitterness, and revenge. When they see a messianic response, it demands an explanation. They ask, “How could you respond like that?” which being interpreted means, “Tell me about your Messiah and what he is doing to you on the inside.”

Let us pray on this special day that our persecuted brothers and sisters will be hearing that request a lot. Let’s read as much as we need to read or watch as much as we need to watch in order to start to feel what the persecuted feel.

Welcome: Suffering Servant of God, welcome to our lives. Tie us to all others who welcome you, and especially those who are persecuted for it.

Affirmation: I am the brother or sister of persecuted followers of the Messiah worldwide. I will take an interest in them. I will stop, think, feel, and pray.

Enjoying A Lack Of Shelter

Guest blogger, Stan Nussbaum, takes us on a journey through the messianic year calendar.



Welcome to the journey of our Messiah through the year with Dr. Nussbaum.

Oct. 31 – Enjoying a lack of shelter

"Dear brothers and sisters, whenever trouble comes your way, let it be an opportunity for joy." James. 1:2 (NLT)

This is one of the most counter-intuitive and profound verses in all of Scripture. It goes against all conventional wisdom and all earthly desires. It goes against the grain of every religion except the one that has a crucified Messiah at its heart.

Ordinary humans can understand “Look on the bright side,” “The glass is half full not half empty,” or, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” but James is stretching us far beyond naïve optimism or toughness. He is talking about every trouble as an opportunity for joy. He is talking about shelter as something we can joyfully live without!

The normal human assumption is that trouble threatens life and shelter protects it, but James tells us just the opposite. When our shelter breaks down and trouble strikes us, the trouble promotes our life instead of taking it away. In other words things are not what they seem. This may be the most fundamental truth of the Season of Shelter.

The cross was not what it seemed. No one watching the Messiah die that afternoon could see what was really going on. They were totally preoccupied with what they thought the crucifixion meant—that Jesus had lost his shelter, his life, and his future as the Messiah. In reality something else was happening. As we saw two weeks ago, he was laying down his life rather than losing it. As we see now from James, laying down our shelter opens a great joyful future rather than prevents it.

James lets us in on the secret of how this works and why people miss it. Trouble does not seem to promote life. It is not the “parent” of life. However, it is the grandparent. Trouble is the parent of endurance, and endurance is the parent of life. “For when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow,” (Jas. 1:3), and, “God blesses the people who patiently endure testing. Afterward they will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.” (v. 12) The sequence is trouble, endurance, (crown of) life.

The difference between reality and appearances becomes even clearer when we look at James’ other trio of grandparent, parent, and child in the same chapter. “Then when desire conceives, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is full grown, it gives birth to death.” (v. 15, NET). Desire, sin, and death.

How different this reality is than what seems to be true to most people! Human desires are usually seen as natural, healthy, even God-given. Indulging or fulfilling a desire seems to be the way to a good life. Stifling or repressing a desire seems to be a bad idea.

James assumes that some human desires are evil. He explains that the evil ones only seem to lead to life because of the time lag between indulging the desire and reaping death as a consequence. An evil desire is not the parent of death. It is the grandparent. In between is sin, and it takes a while for sin to become “full grown” (v. 15). A tiny tumor or a lion cub may not seem to be a danger, but a full grown one is a killer.

These are literally matters of life and death. In both cases what seems to be true is an illusion. Let our Season of Shelter not be a quest for an illusion of shelter but for real shelter that leads to real life.

Welcome: Welcome, Jesus, scarred Savior of the world! Stay with us and shelter us not from scars but from confusing what is real with what seems to be real.

Affirmation: I will treat James 1:2 as if the Lord meant me to live by it. My troubles are not mysteries but opportunities.

Shelter for some but not others

Guest blogger, Stan Nussbaum, takes us on a journey through the messianic year calendar.



Welcome to the journey of our Messiah through the year with Dr. Nussbaum.

Oct. 24 – Shelter for some but not others

”By faith these people overthrew kingdoms, ruled with justice, and received what God had promised them. . . Some died by stoning, and some were sawed in half; others were killed with the sword."
Hebrews 11:33, 39 (NLT)

We are approaching one of the two ancient Christian festivals that has become twisted and corrupted beyond all recognition—Halloween. (The other is Mardi Gras, the day before Lent begins.) Halloween (Oct. 31) should be a night of remembrance of the lives, witness, and deaths of millions of Christians martyrs. Instead it is demon, ghost, and zombie night. Its signature phrase, “Trick or treat,” is a bully’s threat, if we think about it. Why build that into a celebration?

Many churches now sponsor alternative fun nights to help families distance themselves from the ghoulish trappings of the day. That may be good, but let’s go one better. Let’s reclaim Halloween and put it back where it belongs in the big picture of the Messianic Year. Wouldn’t our society try to reclaim Veterans Day if it became perverted into a day of candy and spook-houses?

It is well known that Halloween (Holy Eve) is the night before All Saints Day. It is not so well known, at least by evangelicals, that All Saints Day did not begin as a celebration for all the lesser “saints,” those not important enough to warrant a personal festival day. The origins are far more serious.

In the earliest centuries the church celebrated a memorial day on each anniversary of the martyrdom of a prominent believer. As martyrdom increased, the calendar got too full. Not wanting all these martyrs to be totally forgotten, the Church added a new holy day for all of them together. In English we know this as All Saints Day but the label, “All Martyrs Day,” would give us a clearer picture of the original meaning.

The eve before such a day would naturally be a holy time (Hallow-eve), a somber time of remembrance and reflection on the courage and sacrifice of so many. It would also be a natural time for one of the mysteries in the Season of Shelter to come into our minds. Why do some heroes of the faith find shelter and others die as martyrs?

This is the question posed by the two verses quoted from Hebrews 11 above, and in fact by that whole chapter. Up to the middle of verse 35, nearly everything is a success story. People like Noah, Abraham, and Moses went through incredible trials but emerged with their faith rewarded and their lives intact. From the middle of verse 35 through verse 40 (the end of the chapter), everything is persecution and martyrdom. It is ghastly. If it were a movie, it would be X-rated due to violence.

The mystery in Hebrews 11 is that the victims at the end of the chapter are not described as having any less faith than the successful people earlier in the chapter. The point is just the opposite. They had the same faith, just not the same shelter. The first group already received what God promised them (v. 33); the second group has yet to receive it (v. 39). But God puts equal value on the faith of both groups.

Faith is something we must have without knowing which group we are in—those rewarded soon or those rewarded later. But we know what we need to know—sooner or later, our faith will be rewarded. And we know that meanwhile we belong to the Messiah’s movement along with all the sheltered people and all the martyrs. Surely one evening a year is not too much to spend respectfully remembering them.

Welcome: Lord Jesus, you are the Messiah worth dying for. We will welcome you here every day until you welcome us there.

Affirmation: I will never trivialize the day of memory of those who left their shelter in order to die for the Messiah. For me, Halloween will be Holy Eve.

Shelter as something to give up

Guest blogger, Stan Nussbaum, takes us on a journey through the messianic year calendar.



Welcome to the journey of our Messiah through the year with Dr. Nussbaum.

Oct. 17 – Shelter as something to give up

”No one can take my life from me. I lay down my life voluntarily.“
John 10:18 (NLT)

Shelter is something people naturally seek. Even animals are smart enough to do that. But shelter is also something that under certain circumstances can and should be given up.

The Messiah did not end up on the cross because his shelter broke down and he became a helpless victim, overpowered by his enemies. He ended up there because at Gethsemane he voluntarily gave up his shelter. Staggering as it sounds, he went to the cross by choice, a willing sacrifice. No one “took his life,” and no one could have.

We see a similar thing in some careers today. If shelter did not take second place when duty called, firefighters would remain in their nice safe stations and just let the phone ring. We would have to start calling them “fire-avoiders” instead of “fire-fighters,” and their employment would be short-lived.

So it is with us as God’s “firefighters,” followers of the crucified Messiah. Shelter and comfort cannot be our dominant concerns. We have to be ready to abandon our natural desire for shelter, get moving, and take the necessary risks when our calls come in.

The leader of the early church, Peter, is the one who shows us how not to do this. On the Mount of Transfiguration he volunteered to throw together three “shelters” (like those that Jews build for the “Feast of Shelters”) so Jesus, Moses, and Elijah would get comfortable and stay a while. He made no such suggestion in Gethsemane. He did not understand Jesus’ agony, he could not stick with him for even an hour of prayer, and he certainly did not want to prolong this eerie situation. He wanted to get it over with.

Then when he least expected it, his call came. Judas arrived with the armed officials to take the Messiah into custody. Peter’s reactions were classic human reactions, and all too often our reactions when our calls come.

First, incredulity—“This can’t be happening. Where is God’s shelter for us?”
Second, confrontation—trying anything to stop what is happening (slashing at the head of the high priest’s servant, Jn. 18:10).
Third, self-protection—running away from Jesus into the night, seeking shelter somewhere else.

In Peter’s three denials of Jesus a few hours later, he was continuing to try to shelter himself by distancing himself from Jesus. In other words, he got it just exactly wrong. Our true shelter depends on how close we can get to Jesus and his mission, not how far we can distance ourselves from him. Self-protection is no protection at all. Self-denial is the ticket to the “shelter” we really need and want.

Self-denial is not a matter of self-flagellation or self-deprecation. Jesus did none of that in Gethsemane. Far from focusing on ourselves, true self-denial works by forgetting about ourselves, especially our natural desire for shelter. We can easily forget ourselves when we become preoccupied with something more important—what our Father wants us to do. (Mk. 14:36)

Peter indulged his natural desire for shelter. Jesus denied his. It was agonizing preparation but when the call came, Jesus was ready and Peter was not.

What an unbelievable comfort it must have been to Peter later when Jesus gave the Great Commission in a way that directly counteracted his mistake. “I am with you always.” (Mt. 28:20) Peter had not stuck with Jesus in his hour of need but Jesus would stick with Peter in all his hours of need, and with us in all of ours.

“I am with you always.” What other “shelter” do we need?

Welcome: Thank you, Jesus, that we will never have to face anything without you. We are so glad you are here.

Affirmation: My shelter is not my highest priority because my life is not my highest value.

Shelter so we can endure

Guest blogger, Stan Nussbaum, takes us on a journey through the messianic year calendar.



Welcome to the journey of our Messiah through the year with Dr. Nussbaum.

Oct. 10 – Shelter so we can endure

”Don’t be intimidated by your enemies. This will be a sign to them that they are going to be destroyed, but that you are going to be saved, even by God himself.” Phil. 1:28 (NLT)

Though we mentioned last week that we are with the Messiah on a mission to “destroy the works of the devil” (1 Jn. 3:8) and this week we also see “destroyed” in the verse above, we have to realize how rarely we find the language of attack and destruction in the New Testament. The Messiah used three main activities in his mission himself and told us to use the same three when we represent him—proclaiming, healing, and enduring. None of these are destructive and even if combined they hardly amount to an “attack” in the normal sense of the word.

The whole emphasis of the New Testament is not on how to attack or counter-attack but how to endure the attacks that come because we are proclaiming the Messiah’s reign and healing in his name. The Messiah’s orders and training are not aimed to help us conquer or destroy our attackers. Instead we are equipped to endure and outlast them. As the Messiah’s representatives we are not going to conquer the world; we are going to inherit it. (Mt. 5:5) "Therefore we are not God’s aggressive soldiers but his meek sons and daughters, sent out like sheep among wolves." (Mt. 10:16)

From a human perspective this is an utterly ridiculous and hopeless strategy to take over the world. As sheep we have no shelter from the wolves. We will be ripped to shreds. Yes, we will, but that is not the end of us. We can afford to risk becoming dead sheep because we worship a dead sheep, or almost. “The Lamb that appeared to have been killed” is now standing at the throne of the universe, very much alive and in charge. (Rev. 5:6)

With the risen Lamb in our line of sight, we make our proclamation that the Messiah is taking charge now, calling the whole world to follow him. When the wolves tell us to shut up, we keep proclaiming. When the wolves tell us to quit healing in his name, we ask them whether we should obey them rather than God. (Acts 4:19)

Eventually the wolves quit growling and start biting. This really hurts us but it cannot stop us. The Messiah’s enemies were able to inflict pain on him but they could not defeat him. They can inflict pain on us too but they do not have what it takes to defeat the Messiah in us.

We, however, do have what it takes to endure anything and everything his enemies throw at us. We know the risen Lamb! We know what happened to him and how it turned out. His victory cannot be undone, so our faith cannot be shaken. We also have the impenetrable armor of the soul, the Holy Spirit. When we are attacked, our joyful resilience and our refusal to be intimidated show that we will win and our opponents will lose. (Phil. 1:28)

Perhaps the whole Season of Shelter should be called the Season of Endurance instead. Shelter is what is outside us and around us, done for us by God. Endurance is what God gives us on the inside and what he enables us to do (endure) even when our shelter seems to be gone. On the other hand, the Messiah is also the Good Shepherd, our shelter, and the season opens with the Festival of Shelters. (Comments are welcome on the possible change of name for the season. Currently I am leaning toward changing it but not quite sure.)

Welcome: Jesus, Messiah, thank you so much for coming. With you here, we are sure to be attacked but we cannot lose.

Affirmation: The cross of Jesus the Messiah can get us through any difficulty it gets us into.

Oct. 3 – Shelter that should never be needed

Guest blogger, Stan Nussbaum, takes us on a journey through the messianic year calendar.



Welcome to the journey of our Messiah through the year with Dr. Hussbaum.

”This has fulfilled what the Scriptures said: ‘They hated me without cause.’” Jn. 15:25 (NLT)

If Jesus was so full of love, goodness, mercy, and blessing and if we are full of the same things when we represent him, why doesn’t everybody welcome him and us with open arms? As the bearers of Life, Belonging (Identity), Freedom, Power, Forgiveness, Shelter, and Glory, why do we need a “Season of Shelter” at all? The driver of the ice cream truck never needs shelter from mobs of rock-throwing kids. Why should we need it?

Our problem is that the world has a love-hate relationship with this Messiah we keep pointing to. They love what he stands for as a teacher. They hate what he requires as a Messiah. He comes with the same totalitarian bargain that all would-be messiahs want to drive with their followers, “Trust me. Join me. Give me control over your life. I’ll make the world better. In fact, give me enough control, and I can solve everything.”

The world hates being put into this messianic bind. They keep looking for wiggle room, some way to get what the Messiah stands for without doing what he requires, but none is to be found. Jesus wants them to join his movement. They want him (or his teaching) to support theirs.

The world’s frustration with Jesus naturally spills over to us. The problem is that when we get in step with the Messiah, we automatically get out of step with all groups that balk at joining him. We just do not belong any more. We become (as many did during the Rwandan genocide) the ones who are willing to be killed because we are unwilling to perpetuate the ethnic hatred that has been part of our ethnic identity for centuries.

Look at the folly of sin! We are hated because we refuse to participate in hating! And that is just the beginning. We are hated because we are participating in Jesus’ mission “to destroy these works of the Devil.” (1 Jn. 3:8) Instead of seeing us as representatives of the Savior of the human race, the world regards us as part of his wrecking crew, commissioned and empowered to destroy what the Devil has built.

It is easy to see how our goodness can look destructive from some perspectives. Every time we set a prostitute or an addict free, we threaten the vested interests of a pimp or a drug dealer. But we must remember that it was not the pimps and drug dealers who put Jesus on the cross. It was the establishments of two highly respectable peoples—the political establishment of the Roman empire and the religious establishment of Jews.

The two establishments agreed that Jesus, though he may have been a good man with noble intentions, had to be stopped. He was very charismatic. He was incredibly good with words—profound, clever, quick, and plain. He had no weaknesses of character, no dirty laundry. Because he had all this going for him, he had been able to gain a huge popular following ready to do whatever he said. What was he going to do next?

The cross was a pre-emptive strike by respectable people against a brilliant, honorable person only because he was fearless and unpredictable. In other words, they had no case against him. They hated the Messiah without cause (Jn. 15:25) and they executed him simply to prevent what they feared he was on the verge of doing.

Still today the religious, political, ethnic and social establishments of the world often hate and persecute Christians not for what they have done but for what they might do. Much persecution is pre-emptive and fear-driven. It is the cross all over again, and we have to shoulder it. But there is no shelter like the shadow of the cross.

Welcome: Welcome Jesus, crucified and risen Messiah. Please stay close. Let us live in your shadow and the shadow of your cross.

Affirmation: I will give people no cause to persecute me, but on behalf of the Messiah I will never be surprised by persecution without cause.

Sept: 26th-Shelter but not as we know it

Guest blogger, Stan Nussbaum, takes us on a journey through the messianic year calendar.



Welcome to the journey of our Messiah through the year with Dr. Hussbaum.

“You didn’t choose me. I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce fruit that will last . . .” Jn. 16:15 (NLT)

Next to forgiveness, shelter is probably the seasonal theme in the Messianic Year that is most commonly talked about. When cancer strikes, when layoffs come, when death takes those we love, we turn for shelter to Jesus as the Good Shepherd and the Holy Spirit as the Comforter, and well we should. We also encourage others in difficulty to choose Jesus as their best option for dealing with whatever life has thrown at them. Sound familiar? Sound right?

Perhaps, but we have to reconcile this emphasis on shelter-seeking (Mt. 11:28) with Jn. 16:15, “You didn’t choose me. I chose you.” It is oh so easy to get those two choices turned around. If we choose Jesus as “Mr. Shelter,” the one who can best shelter us from hardship in the present and hell in the future, our focus will be on why we chose him (to provide shelter for us) instead of why he chose us (to go on his mission with him).

Isn’t that what we see all too often in our churches today, people who have a very strong sense of their need for shelter and a very weak sense of their mission? It’s as if our shelter is the main reason for a relationship with Jesus while our mission is an add-on that we may eventually get around to. Shelter is for baby Christians. Mission is for the mature.

This is a colossal mix-up. The Messiah says in this same verse, “I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce fruit that will last . . .” This means mission is for everybody he chose, and it starts on day one. Jesus’ choice of us, like everything else he did or said, revolved around his messianic mission of bringing all the blessings of the Messianic Year into the world. When he moves into our lives, he therefore does not sit down within us to make us as cozy as he can. He calls us to get up and join him in a fruit-bearing mission.

As soon as we do, we start drawing flak. We need shelter that we didn’t need before, and this is the kind of “shelter” we are talking about during the Season of Shelter. It is shelter from the difficulties of the messianic pilgrimage, following the Messiah through life to Life. It is the same kind of shelter the Israelites needed only because they too were on the move as God led.

The Season of Shelter is about “shouldering our cross.” (Mt. 16:24, NLT) Like our Messiah we are not sheltered from the cross but during the cross, that is, while we are shouldering it. More than any other trait but love, endurance became the trademark of the Messiah’s followers, symbolized in the cross. The Messiah wins by faithfully enduring, then being given the victory by God. (Heb. 12:2)

The world’s opposition to us is the cross re-enacted in miniature in our personal worlds. The world is only picking up where it left off at Calvary, but the world cannot win. It does not have the tools either to defeat the Messiah in us or knock the Messiah out of us. All the world can do is beat on us, and beat it will. We are going to need the Messiah’s strength and shelter. In the next seven weeks we will see what messianic shelter means and how it works.

Welcome: Thank you, Jesus, for choosing to move into my life and to take me along as part of your movement. Welcome! Let’s go!

Affirmation: Where Jesus is, safety is. I can never really be unsheltered when I am with him on his mission, and I can never really be sheltered when I am not.

Sept. 19 – The survival festival

Guest blogger, Stan Nussbaum, takes us on a journey through the messianic year calendar.



Welcome to the journey of our Messiah through the year with Dr. Hussbaum.

“You must live in temporary shelters for seven days . . . so that your future generations may know that I made the Israelites live in temporary shelters when I brought them out from the land of Egypt.” Lev. 23:42-43 (NLT)

As the Jewish year transitions from the Day of Atonement to the Feast of Tabernacles (or Feast of Booths or Shelters), we transition from the Season of Forgiveness to the Season of Shelter. The focus of the season is on the Messiah as the one who gives shelter and provision so his people can survive the journey he is leading them on.

The Jewish festival, Sept. 22-29 this year, involves living for a week in makeshift booths, huts, or shelters as reminders of the journey from Egypt to the Promised Land. The roofs have to be made from branches cut from trees, and the sky has to be visible through the roof somewhere.

The point of a flimsy shelter is clear. “We should not have survived that journey under those awful conditions, but by the grace of God we did! Praise him!” The God of Israel wants to be remembered and honored as the God who takes his people places and who gets them there even if the journey is impossible.

The theme of shelter was associated with the theme of provision, since the Feast of Shelters occurred at the end of the summer fruit harvest. The experience of remembering the journey by roughing it for a week was supposed to counteract the temptation to take God’s gifts for granted once the people got settled in the Promised Land.

How well we know that temptation! Our American culture today has gone a step beyond taking God’s shelter and provision for granted. Though we would not say it this way (because then the blasphemy would be obvious even to us), we often react to life’s difficulties as if we somehow have a human right to be exempt from them. Are we assuming God owes us at least 80 years of life? He owes us decent health, as well as our children? He owes us accident protection? He owes us reliable employment with a good retirement plan? He owes us the air we breathe? Or at least he owes us as much of all these things as the people around us have?

When he provides for us, is he is just doing his job? And if he does not do it as well as we expect, do our heads quickly fill with questions like, Why is he not giving us our rights? How could he shortchange us? How could he let that calamity hit us? Why is he so unfair?

There is a sinful tendency in all of us to start down this presumptuous road. Gratitude prevents it. The more grateful we are for what God gives us, the less upset we will be about what he does not give. The more we shout, “Thank God!” the less we shout, “Unfair.”

So let our whole Season of Shelter be a gradual crescendo leading up to the climax on Thanksgiving Day. Find some creative ways to counter your tendency to take things for granted. Camp out, fast or simplify your diet, switch off the computer or the hot water heater for a while. This is not persecuting yourself. It is persecuting your presumptuousness so your gratitude can thrive.

There is nothing glum about the Feast of Shelters. In fact, to this day Jews celebrate it as a feast of unbelievable joy. Their focus is not on how uncomfortable life is in a temporary shelter. It is on how reliable God is to help us survive and how much he blesses us once the journey is over.

Welcome: Jesus, reliable Son of the reliable Father, you are welcome to lead us out of our comfort zones because you are our comfort zone.

Affirmation: On the journey we are taking with the Messiah to his new world, I can survive anything. He will personally see to it.

The Day Of Atonement

Guest blogger, Stan Nussbaum, takes us on a journey through the messianic year calendar.



Welcome to the journey of our Messiah through the year with Dr. Hussbaum.

”And the curtain in the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.” Mk. 15:38 (NLT)

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, was and is the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, the 10th day of the 7th month (10 and 7 both symbolizing completeness). On our calendars this year Yom Kippur is from sundown on Sept. 17th to sundown on the 18th. Just another Friday night and Saturday to most of us, but there is plenty to celebrate if we recognize this day as the pinnacle and the final day of the Season of Forgiveness.

Nothing distinguishes the world’s religions as sharply as forgivenenss. Some say you must earn it; others say you can’t. Some say it involves a sacrifice and a priest; others say it does not. Some say it is crucial; others say it is unimportant or even unnecessary. But as far as I know, only one says it is handled exclusively by someone who is sitting down.

“But our High Priest offered himself to God as one sacrifice for sins, good for all time. Then he sat down at the place of highest honor at God’s right hand.” (Heb. 10:12) Our High Priest is seated because he does not make sacrifices any more. He made atonement for us once, got it absolutely right, and it lasts forever. The value of his sacrifice, the blood of a perfect person, more than offsets the staggering total weight of all the sins of all the billions of imperfect people who have ever lived and ever will.

The day he made the perfect sacrifice in heaven God dramatically proved on earth that the sacrifice was accepted. (The actual day was a Passover day, not Yom Kippur—see March 28th reading.) Just when Jesus died, the thick heavy curtain separating the Holy of Holies from the rest of the Temple was ripped from top to bottom. (Mk. 15:38) By tearing the curtain, God was in effect “ripping his clothing,” a sign of grief according to Jewish custom. He was incredibly grieved that his chosen people kept up their sacrifices in the Temple as if to please him while at the same time they were accomplices in the Messiah’s crucifixion.

Multipliers of Forgiveness

Guest blogger, Stan Nussbaum, takes us on a journey through the messianic year calendar.



Welcome to the journey of our Messiah through the year with Dr. Nussbaum.

Multipliers of forgiveness

"You are a kingdom of priests, God’s holy nation, his very own possession. This is so you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light." 1 Peter 2:9 (NLT)

Last week we saw that forgiveness is required of us. This week we see why. The Messiah wants his forgiveness multiplied to the ends of the earth and he wants to do it through us. As our King and High Priest, he has made us a “kingdom of priests.”

What a pity that we so rarely think of ourselves as priests! We may not even be able to remember the last time we did anything priestly. What would that even mean?

We probably have not thought much about it because we have short-circuited that cherished idea of the Reformation, “the priesthood of all believers,” To us it means, “We are each our own priest. None of us needs a mediator or priest between us and Christ.” This is true but it is only the negative part of the meaning of “the priesthood of all believers.” The positive side that should jump out at us is that we all have a share in the priestly work of the Priest-King Jesus, so let’s think about what our share is.

A priest is a divinely appointed and authorized connector, a person specially assigned to represent the ordinary people to God and God to the ordinary people. If all believers in the Messiah are priests, who are the “ordinary people,” the “non-priests”? They must be the unbelievers, the unforgiven.

If that is true, then the “priesthood of all believers” is not merely a statement about the laity and the clergy. It is one of the strongest, clearest missionary commands imaginable! As priests we are to carry on the mission of the Messiah who died for unbelievers. We touch people with his liberating, cleansing blood and they are forgiven, transformed from ordinary people into priests like us.

Of course, we do not announce ourselves to our unbelieving relatives and friends as their “priests” and they may not be ready for any talk of Jesus’ forgiveness, but the Lord already thought of that. He did not tell us we had to approach people that way. He made us priests so we could “show others the goodness of God” (1 Pt. 2:9) that is, show them how wonderful it is to live as a daily beneficiary of his goodness and forgiveness. So much fear vanishes. So much bitterness is discarded. The black cloud lifts.

This new kind of life as forgiven, forgiving people is so healthy for our souls and minds that it even spills over into our bodies. There is much less to keep us awake at night or give us ulcers in the daytime. Our peace ought to attract others to the light. We have the kind of life they are dreaming of.

One final touch of our Priest-King’s mercy to us is that we do not have to represent him as kings, bringing his judgment by force on all. If we had to do that before he personally returns as King, our blood pressure would shoot back up and a lot of new headaches would plague us. We are blessed to represent him only as priests, bringing his forgiveness by grace to those who are willing. We will reign with him eventually, but that is “step two” of his plan (see Aug. 22). Our priestly work is part of step one.

Welcome: Great High Priest Jesus, one of a kind, magnificent yet approachable, we welcome you. We can hardly believe you could forgive people like us but you have. Welcome!

Affirmation: Since under Christ our High Priest I am also part of the priesthood, I will start acting like a priest, taking his goodness and his forgiveness into my world.

Forgiveness As A Non-negotiable Requirement

Guest blogger, Stan Nussbaum, takes us on a journey through the messianic year calendar.



Welcome to the journey of our Messiah through the year with Dr. Nussbaum.

“That’s what my heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters in your heart." Mt. 18:35 (NLT)

I believe we evangelicals have drifted into serious abuse of the doctrine of forgiveness, which is strange because we have defended it so well for so long. In the 16th century it divided us from Catholics and in the early 20th century it divided us from liberals. The doctrine of forgiveness is not our problem today. Our problem is the unbiblical way we have split the doctrine of forgiveness from the practice of forgiveness.

It is very widely believed among evangelicals that our forgiveness is guaranteed if we believe the right things (Jesus is the Son of God, the Bible is true, etc.) and “accept” Jesus into our lives. If we taught that we had to do anything else to get or keep forgiveness, we think we would be teaching a doctrine of salvation by works and denying that forgiveness is a free gift through Christ.

It is also believed by many that forgiveness, once granted to us, is eternal and irreversible. If we taught that it might be canceled somehow, we think we would be insecure in our relationship with God and we would be insulting his character, implying that he is fickle or even that he might double-cross us. Unthinkable!

Matthew would be very surprised to hear us reasoning like this. Have we never read the parable of the unforgiving servant? (Mt. 18:23-35) Consider how this parable of Jesus avoids the traps we think we will fall into if we teach that Jesus requires forgiven people to forgive others.

In the parable the servant whose massive debt is forgiven by his master refuses to forgive another servant who owes him a pittance. The master is furious that the forgiveness of the huge debt had no effect on the servant’s heart so he cancels the forgiveness and throws him into debtors’ prison. The conclusion:

“That’s what my heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters in your heart.”

(Mt. 18:35) We find the identical point once in the Lord’s Prayer and two more times right afterward. (Mt. 6:12, 14, 15)

This parable skips right over the three traps we are so worried about. First, would the forgiven servant have been able to boast about “earning” his own forgiveness if he had forgiven his fellow servant? How ridiculous! The master forgave him out of mercy before he had done anything.

Second, when he got his forgiveness, should the servant have been insecure, wondering whether the master might withdraw it? No. It was a gift, a done deal.

Third, was the master fickle? Did he double-cross the servant? Not at all. He assumed that his great mercy would engender mercy in the servant and he was shocked when it did not. Since the debt was simply between the two of them, the master was just as much within his rights to cancel the forgiveness as he had been to cancel the debt.

Through this parable our Messiah was teaching that forgiveness is not a right, even after it is granted. It is a gift of mercy. If such a staggering gift does not turn the forgiven ones into merciful people, it shows that they are refusing to enter the Messiah’s kingdom of transformation even though they are clutching the forgiveness they think will guarantee them a place in the Messiah’s kingdom of heaven. They are in for a let down. They repudiate their forgiveness by refusing to let it go to work inside them. It will be revoked, forfeited, just like the forgiveness of the servant in the parable.

Welcome: Jesus our Messiah, we welcome your gift of forgiveness, given at incredible cost to us when we deserved nothing at all. May the gift do its transforming work in us.

Affirmation: If I do not forgive people who sin against me, the Father does not forgive me for my sin no matter what creed I believe in. (see Mt. 6:14-15)

Aug. 22 Forgiveness as step one

Guest blogger, Stan Nussbaum, takes us on a journey through the messianic year calendar.



Welcome to the journey of our Messiah through the year with Dr. Nussbaum.

Forgiveness as step one

“But the Son of God came to destroy these works of the Devil.” 1 Jn. 3:8 (NLT)

Last week we saw that Jesus is taking control of the world not by force but by forgiveness. He is the all-powerful King yet he presents himself to the world as the High Priest. Cynics will not respect Jesus’ strategy, but only because they fail to see that the Father’s plan is absolutely brilliant on this point, as it is everywhere else.

Imagine the balls on a pool table at the start of a game. The original sin of Adam and Eve was the cue ball that made the original break. The impact sent balls flying in all directions, each with some sin momentum. Now the balls (as if on some friction-less surface) continue to bounce off the cushions and collide with each other endlessly. In each collision some of the sin momentum of each ball is transferred to the other and some of the momentum of the other ball is absorbed, but the total amount of momentum does not change.

There are two ways to stop the chaos. One is to pick up the balls and put them into the pockets, which is the “kingly” approach of applying force. The other is to put very soft pads on the cushions, which is the “priestly” approach of absorbing force. The pads “forgive” the impact by changing their shape, and their ability to do so deadens the sin momentum of the balls. The vicious cycle of collision and ricochet is broken. The balls settle down and share the table.

The pads are a picture of forgiveness, step one of the Father’s two-step strategy for bringing sin under control. When forgiveness is granted to any of us because of the blood of Christ, it deadens the momentum of the sin that is already in the world, that is, it prevents sin from triggering more sin as a reaction and thus perpetuating itself.

To change the image, we could say that if a sinful action does not give birth to a sinful reaction, sin is sterilized. It is not reproducing. It is under control in the sense that a disease like cancer may be said to be “under control” if its growth is arrested. The patient’s condition is stable though cancer is still present. That type of control is step one of the Father’s plan, and forgiveness establishes control of sin to that extent.

Step two means finishing the job, eradicating the cancer that was previously brought “under control.” That is the kind of control the Messiah now exerts gradually in us through the Holy Spirit. He will impose it totally on the whole world when he comes again as the King and Judge. Those who will not have the sin cut out of them will themselves be cut off from the Messiah’s kingdom.

If we understand the two steps, it becomes clear why Jesus made forgiveness of others a non-negotiable demand on us, absolutely essential from the start. Forgiving other people is not just one more item in a long list of good things a Christian should try to do, such as love, pray, be truthful, etc. It is in a category all its own, the one thing we must do.

If we do not forgive others, we are rejecting step one of God’s two-step master plan. We are not getting with the Messiah’s program at all. “The Son of God came to destroy these works of the Devil,” (1 Jn. 3:8), but if we hold things against the people who wrong us, we are letting sin against us continue to breed new sin within us. The sin cycle is not broken. The imperative of forgiveness is so crucial that the whole reading next week will focus on it.

Welcome: Jesus, our High Priest, our sin-deadener, we love you so much. Come and cut the sin out of us so we will never be cut off from you.

Affirmation: The shock-absorbing capacity of Jesus’ sacrifice has deadened my inner impulsion to sin. I am forgiven. I can forgive. I do forgive.

Guest blogger, Stan Nussbaum, takes us on a journey through the messianic year calendar.



Welcome to the journey of our Messiah through the year with Dr. Nussbaum.

Aug. 15 – The complete Messiah

“Through the suffering of Jesus, God made him a perfect leader, one fit to bring them into their salvation.” Heb. 2:10 (NLT)

The entire Messianic Year is designed to help us appreciate Jesus as the complete Messiah. He is for all nations and all times. He brings a complete salvation package—life, belonging (identity), freedom, power, forgiveness, shelter and glory.

The complete Messiah cannot be put into a box defined by a single role like other leaders can. He is so much more than a religious teacher. Neither is he just a king. Our Messiah is also our High Priest, and the Season of Forgiveness is our golden opportunity to appreciate him from that angle.

The idea of the Messiah as our High Priest making the sacrifice that brings us forgiveness and salvation is so routine to us that we may fail to realize how odd it seemed in Jesus’ day. The Jews expected (and still expect) an “incomplete” Messiah, that is, a king who is not a priest. All kings had to come from the tribe of Judah. All priests had to come from the tribe of Levi. No overlap. Forgiveness was a matter for priests, and as king the Messiah would have nothing to do with it.

How could he? How could the Messiah execute his kingly role of enforcing God’s justice if he went around forgiving people? It would never work. Powerful wicked people would laugh in his face and keep right on with their sin unless he brought the flaming judgment of God on them. Even John the Baptist held this view. (Mt. 3:12)

As the complete Messiah, Jesus exceeded everyone’s expectations. In fact he exceeded them so drastically that many of his fellow Jews did not recognize him as Messiah at all. They were like people who had been promised a ride and were expecting to be picked up in an oxcart. When a Ferrari stopped for them, they did not recognize it as their “ride” and they would not get in.

Jesus the Messiah did not enforce the Law of Moses in the way they expected but neither did he set it aside, suspend it, or rewrite it. He trumped it. He rendered its statements about priesthood, sacrifice, and forgiveness indecisive by playing a higher, decisive card, and that trump card was called “The Order of Melchizedek.” The entire book of Hebrews explains the amazing details of how this trump card worked but here we can go only to the bottom line: “Through the suffering of Jesus, God made him a perfect leader, one fit to bring them into their salvation.” (Heb. 2:10)

Of course, this does not mean Jesus was imperfect or unfit before he suffered, but he was incomplete in at least two ways. He had no personal experience of the devastating effects of sin, and he had no sacrifice to carry into the heavenly Temple as our High Priest. After the cross he had both. He was complete. No wonder his last words as he died were, “It is finished!” Completed. Done.

The Messiah’s work is still incomplete but the Messiah is not. He sits on his kingly throne as the perfect (complete) High Priest. He is able to forgive and still exercise effective power to bring salvation and rid the world of evil. Because of his suffering, he has what earthly kings never have—the ability to empathize at the deepest level with the struggles of ordinary people, the perfect sacrifice for their sins, and the power to win their absolute allegiance because they love, admire and appreciate him so much. Sign me up! Let’s sign the whole world up. There is no one like Jesus, the complete Messiah.

Welcome: Hail to you Jesus, Messiah, Priest and King! You are all we have. You are all we want, and you are completely welcome here.

Affirmation: I will not live this day as if my sins are still hanging over me. They are completely forgiven through the completed sacrifice of the complete High Priest and King. Done!

Guest blogger, Stan Nussbaum, takes us on a journey through the messianic year calendar.



Welcome to the journey of our Messiah through the year with Dr. Nussbaum.

Aug. 8 – Transfiguration and Disfiguration

Verse: Many were amazed when they saw him—beaten and bloodied, so disfigured one would scarcely know he was a person. Is. 52:14 (NLT)

The Season of Power ended with the most intense of all the paradoxes about the Messiah— how could the awesome person on the Mount of Transfiguration ever become the person disfigured beyond belief on the Mount of Calvary? Why would he not reveal his glory and true identity to the whole world or at least allow Peter, James, and John to report what they had seen? Why would anyone violently reject him, and why would God allow it?

The pat answer, of course, is that it had to happen so Jesus could die on the cross and pay the penalty for our sins. We quote Mark 10:45, “He came to give his life as a ransom for many,” and that settles it. The cross, which made no sense to Peter beforehand, makes perfect sense to us with hindsight. We are completely ready to enter the Season of Forgiveness, which begins this week and culminates on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

We would, however, appreciate the forgiveness and the Messiah a lot more if we saw the Transfiguration more clearly as the backdrop for the cross. This will be a recurring theme during the Season of Forgiveness—seeing forgiveness in perspective as one of the seven main blessings the Messiah brought, not in isolation from them. May we begin by imagining ourselves back in Peter’s shoes watching the story unfold instead of reflecting on it after it is over?

Peter expected what the Jews all expected about the Messiah’s arrival—it would come with sudden, irresistible force, wiping evil and evildoers from the face of the earth. (See Jan. 17.) Jesus countered this idea with his parables about the gentle, gradual arrival of the reign of God. According to Jesus, the real Messiah would not destroy his enemies the day he took power. He was going to allow a grace or amnesty period, when everyone would be allowed to decide whether to welcome him as Messiah or not. Even his enemies would be given time to lay down their weapons, renounce their mistaken rejection of him, and be welcomed into his kingdom as forgiven people.

Even more amazingly, the Messiah himself would go to incredible lengths to persuade everyone to welcome him. The amnesty would not just be a write-off of the consequences of people’s past mistakes. It would be him, the Messiah, bearing the brunt of those consequences on their behalf! He would set aside his power, lay down his life as a sacrifice for them, and offer them forgiveness through his blood.

Imposing his messianic power on people would have been easy, but everyone would have had to acquiesce, never having a choice, never knowing whether he had genuinely won their hearts or not. Paying the price of forgiveness was hard, disfiguringly hard, but one thing was sure. Once the price was paid in the way the Messiah paid it on the cross, no one anywhere who heard the story could ever miss the point. He absolutely wanted them to say “Yes” to him.

That is why Jesus told Peter, James, and John not to tell about the Transfiguration until he had risen from the dead. If they had, it would have been misinterpreted as a fulfillment of people’s misconceptions about the Messiah. Those misconceptions died when Jesus did. In their place came the recognition of a forgiving Messiah. During the grace period he is establishing his kingdom using only the power of a suitor winning his bride’s heart not the power of a dictator intimidating a nation. This is an open secret to be shouted from the housetops. What a gift this groom has brought!

Welcome: Jesus, God-sent Messiah, we get it. We are stunned at the way you won us over with only the power of your sacrificial love. Welcome to the throne of our lives.

Affirmation: My sin crushed Jesus and his disfigurement and death crushed my sin. My heart has no defense against such a Messiah. I am his.