November 2023 Revealing Light Newsletter

I can’t save myself. You can’t save yourself. God’s people couldn’t save themselves. Over and over again, His people would run toward God, run away, run back, and so on. God even called these people in different times an adulterous generation (this is repeated in Hosea), cheating on God with man-made gods around the nations.

Who brought these people out of Egypt? Who kept them fed? Who gave them their land back that was promised generations before? Who confronted the people to warn them of the path ahead they were traveling down? Who loved these people even when they would have been unlovable? God did! In his love, He was still “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth” (Ex 34:6).

Through Hosea, God tells the people that though they were no longer “my people”, I will call them my people; and though they were unloved, I will call them beloved (paraphrased Rom 9:25). Even after all that the people had done, God was not giving up on them. God was making the way.

God did not give up on them and He didn’t give up on us either. Though we could not save ourselves, bring in our own righteousness, God brings His righteousness to us through Jesus Christ - The Way.

“The righteousness of God is through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe... for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. They are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. God presented him as an atoning sacrifice in his blood, received through faith, to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his restraint God passed over the sins previously committed. God presented him to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so that he would be righteous and declare righteous the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom 3:22-26).

- Daryl Struemph

Read the scripture: Luke 13:21-32

Luke 13:31–32 Lament over Jerusalem
31 At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” 32 And he said to them, “Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course.

The entire chapter 13 of Luke’s gospel marks fatal or terminal events, not only in the life of Jesus, but also of the Hebrew people and the world. Jesus knew that the time to give his life for his people and for humanity had finally arrived. What he previously said in secret, so as not to rush things, he now said in public. If before he healed and said to those healed: “Don’t say it!”, now he said: “I am healing many”. If before he tried not to offend with the truth so as not to precipitate his apprehension and judgment, he now makes judgments of people and nations, which were fulfilled or will be fulfilled, whether they like it or not, believe them or not. The same for us who read them today, and we have doubts that those events and times occurred, these happened, whether we believe them or not, his trial and death began, although as he himself said he had his life in his hand and I would give it or lose it when the time was right, I also recovered it. He, personally, was setting the tone in which his judgment and death would occur, but also the final judgment of those and ours, that of “creation.”

Jesus started his last Journey to the city of Jerusalem and once there, or close to it, verse 31 says: Some Pharisees came to him to let him know that Herod wanted to kill him.

Romans and the Pharisees were at Jerusalem, the center of power, and they noticed that Jesus was getting close to it, so they felt in a way threated by him in “their dominions” Also, remember that the devil himself took Jesus there, and offered him the dominion of all the land as far as he could see from Jerusalem Temple? But now this roman puppet, installed by sword, felt that his dominion was threatened by “a prophet, a healer or good deeds doer,” and started to feel uncomfortable.

We also need to remember, (and Jesus already knew) that this king’s father (Herod the Great ) killed all the babies when he was a baby, and now his son, will not hesitate to send soldiers to come and arrest him to have him executed once and for all.

Herod, was also plotting with Jesus enemies, the Pharisees, some of whom now came to warn him of this plan to eliminate him. Maybe some of them felt friendly to Jesus and genuinely wanted to save him from death.

We see now the intricate political power alliances that are plotting against Jesus at this time. We also see a divine plan and an audacious decision to save or to redeem us without politics. Jesus’s answer was not the politically correct one. Because his aim was not, and never was politics or human convenience as a way of doing things. His enemies expected to see him on the run and to immediately go into hiding, change his discussion, ask for an apology, or make a public statement. Did he do that?

No, he didn’t do that. On the contrary, he said something that we could think of as suicidal and maybe disrespectful to Herod as an authority, even a bad precedent for us Christians that look for the politically correct answer according to circumstances.

Instead in verse 32:
1) Let that Fox know what I’m doing: 
Herod the Fox. (Could you imagine Jesus telling the president, P. minister.) “tell that opportunist, power thirsty ruler, that I don’t want his power seat or throne, don’t want his commodities, his ease of life.”
2) “By my deeds he can check me out. I’m doing what he can’t do; heal people spirituality and physically. If he wants to come and get me, I’m here today tomorrow and the day after.”

In a way he [Jesus] also says; “he [Herod] is never going to understand that I will finish what I was ordered to do by my father; that is salvation for human kind including him, and the stubborn and ungrateful Jewish people that always have killed prophets and God’s people. God and myself tried many times to protect them telling them in advance what they will suffer but they never listened to me.”

- Enrique Muruato