05/04/2024
Simple Jesus for a Complicated World:
Despite how intricate, beautiful, and complex Creation is, Jesus had a profound way of keeping things simple. The religious people, the Pharisees and Sadducees, had built an empire around making religion so complicated, and having the appearance of being devout much more than everyone else. Jesus had to come to simplify it all!
But, don’t underestimate Christ’s simplicity, it was actually designed for Him to come and walk and live amongst His own creation and fly below the radar.
From His simple birth in a manger, to His profession as a carpenter, Jesus kept it simple.
Isn’t that just like human nature. We complicate everything. We try to force things. We try to muddy things up. We don’t mean to. But, if we can, we want to blend our version of Jesus, with the version of Jesus in the bible. We have an image of Him, but I wonder how closely that image of Jesus would resemble his true image, the simplified version.
The moment we get our hands on something is the moment we make it harder than what it has to be. This holds true for how we handle crisis, trouble, or general strife in our life.
Job, along with his comforters over complicated what was happening to him. They spent nearly 35 chapters explaining one or two chapters of dialogue between God and Satan.
The Israelites took forty years to make a 2-week long journey.
The woman with the issue of blood spent 12 years and her entire life’s savings trying to fix her condition before concluding, all she needed to do was touch the hem of Jesus' garment.
The man who had suffered 38 years at the Pool of Bethesda when all he would have needed was faith and Jesus could heal him!
Jesus marveled at people who simplified their faith in Him. The Centurion told him to just, “Say the word. You don’t even need to come to my house!”
The list goes on and on throughout the bible at how we complicate things!
In Closing
Jesus didn’t come to make things harder – He came to make them simpler for humanity. Faith is Christ is easy, He made it so, yet we have a 1000 different versions of who Jesus is, we have just as many different denominations, one believing this way the other believing that way. Jesus says I AM THE WAY.
Jesus states in Matthew 22:35-40, “Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, 36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law? 37 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. 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Jesus simplifies everything for us! So, why do we make things so difficult? We think we’re making things easier, but in reality, we’re working so hard at avoiding work, we’re creating more work and complexity for our lives.
How about you? Have you complicated what you’re going through by trying to take the long way?
