Walk With Me For A While

The above is detail from a photograph on a site I visit off and on. Click on the graphic and you will see the full picture. It’s just about my favorite on Journeys With The Messiah, but each photograph there shows Jesus interacting with people, in person, face to face, as He did with others. We know this because several of those interactions were written by men who followed Him and strove to be the example to others that He was to them.

Too many people see Him as a rebel that failed to change the world. Yet they, too, want to lead a group to rebel without understanding who He is and why He lived. Take time to do as He asked:

Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:29-30 KJV)

To do that means to read what Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Paul, and Jude wrote about Him – compiled in what we call the New Testament. Of course, that’s assuming Paul wrote the book of Hebrews, which I accept and some scholars don’t. In fact, there are intellectual theologists who to this day question whether or not Jesus lived. If you want controversy, it exists in studying Christianity.

So does great peace. It is described as passing our understanding. One man called it the opiate of the masses. I regret that he never found peace and often took it from others. However, back to the rebellious Jesus so many would like for us to see.

Those who see Jesus as rebellious wish to rebel against religion, too, but He didn’t. They will point to His driving money-changers from the temple:

And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves, And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves. (Matthew 21:12-13 KJV)

Some might like John’s description better where He:

. . .  made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables; . . . (John 2:15)

Instead of rebelling against religious, Jesus confirmed what God said in what we call the Old Testament, God’s call for Jews to carry His word and obey His commandments. Jesus confirmed this in what I see as my favorite verses regarding God’s commandments to men:

Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Matthew 22:35-40 KJV)

Everything Jesus said and everything that He did hinges on these two commandments. My challenge to you is to read the Bible and verify that He lived what He called us to do. That He did so without being rebellious to mankind or to God. That can be verified with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Then read the books about His followers after His death and see if the men who chose to live by His words not only did so, but carried out His final request:

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen. (Matthew 28:19-20 KJV)