The invitation

Imagine if Bill Gates walked into a public square one day and said, “Anyone who wants to come to my house, follow me.”

Now imagine that a homeless man is passing by with all his worldly possessions in a shopping cart.

He immediately lets go of the shopping cart—which rolls a bit further—and rushes towards Bill Gates.

Bill Gates doesn’t look upset or horrified.  Instead, he just nods and begins walking back to his jet with the homeless man, and all the others who want to see Bill Gates’ home, following him.  Can you imagine that happening?

But this is nothing compared to what Jesus did!  The Son of God, with infinite majesty, power, and resources, invites the homeless, the working class, and the wealthy, to come to Him for salvation, and even the rabble of His day!

I don’t think you or I should hold your breath for Bill Gates to fly his jet to our city and invite us to come to his island for dinner.

But in the middle of a great big feast, Jesus really, actually stands up and makes an invitation for anyone who wants to be fulfilled to come to Him.  He invites you and I, all of us–the ‘winners’ and the ‘losers’, the wardens and the prisoners, the stockbrokers and the bankrupt–to His house!

Wow!

On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified. (John 7:37-39, NIV)

“Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am. And you know the way to where I am going.”

“No, we don’t know, Lord,” Thomas said. “We have no idea where you are going, so how can we know the way?”

Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. If you had really known me, you would know who my Father is. From now on, you do know him and have seen him!” (John 14:1-7, NLT)

His Specialty

“We have a God who specializes in resurrection.”

–Heard on 88.1, Word FM (Harrisburg, PA)

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.(Philippians 3:7-12, ESV)

Isaiah 53:4a

Surely he took up our infirmities

(Isaiah 53:4a, NIV)

In the song No Matter What, Kerrie Roberts sings,

Before a heartache ever touches my life

It has to go through Your hands.

Not only does it go through His hands, but He took it up.

My father was diagnosed with ALS in December of 2002, but he wasn’t the first to carry his own disease.  Almost two thousand years earlier, Christ personally carried my father’s illness.  Not just the generic disease, but the personal manifestation in Don Kohler’s life.  Jesus knew my father’s suffering.  It isn’t just that He allowed my father to go through that disease, but that He intimately knew what my father experienced, because He experienced it, too.

The diagnosis of a terminal illness or failing organs feels like an uncarryable burden.  But the burden is always given to us secondhand.

We are not hiking up a mountain with a scout leader who divides among his team the heavy burdens.  Rather, we are hiking up a mountain with a scout leader who carries all our burdens–every backpack, every tent, every water bottle–up the hill, and only gives us our individual burdens to carry once we are up top.

It’s one thing for someone to load on my back an illness I feel I cannot bear and let me suffer with it alone.  It’s another thing to have Someone load on my back an illness I have already watched Him carry at the cross, and for Him to intimately accompany me through my short turn of carrying it.

Surely he took up our infirmities

(Isaiah 53:4a, NIV)