The Clarion, Feb. 2025
Welcome
February is the month of love. Valentine’s Day is a great time for those who want to express their love for one another in a financial way by gifts, cards, and candy. It’s light, it’s fun, but love is a very serious thing. Today, so many people do not feel that they are loved, too many broken homes, broken marriages, broken lives.
John 13:34 tells us this, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”
We are supposed to love others like Yeshua loved us. So how did Yeshua love us?
John 15:12-17 says, “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that a person will lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, because all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you. This I command you, that you love one another.”
The first fruit of the Spirit is Love. 1 Corinthians 13:13 tells us this, “But now faith, hope, and love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
1 John 3:16-18 says, “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers and sisters. But whoever has worldly goods and sees his brother or sister in need, and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God remain in him? Little children, let’s not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.”
This year for Valentine’s Day why not give food to a food pantry or to a homeless shelter or even to a women’s shelter, maybe even to someone in your neighborhood, church, or to someone at work who may be going through difficult times, or those who are lonely who are shut-ins, or those who sit in a nursing home day after day with no one to visit them. Let’s love one another with true love by laying aside our lives for another.
Yeshua Our Example of a Life in the Spirit, Part 2
As we continue to look at Yeshua’s life in the Spirit, we want to first look at Galatians 5:22-23, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” So we saw Yeshua’s love, now we are going to look at joy. The definition of joy is a state of mind and an orientation of the heart. It is a settled state of contentment, confidence and hope. It is something or someone that provides a source of happiness. So let’s start with Psalm 45:7, “You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, our God, has anointed you with the oil of joy above your companions.”
We see here that the anointing, which was upon the kings and prophets and priests, was the anointing of the Holy Spirit. It was the oil of the Spirit, this same oil that the Psalmist calls “The oil of joy.” It is this same joy that the Psalmist writes of in Psalm 51:7-13, “Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, so that sinners will turn back to you.”
Joy is something that you give. Yes, you may have joy yourself, but that joy is meant to be shared. Yeshua brought joy even before He was born as we see in Luke 1:41-44, “When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed: ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear!’ But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.”’
The wisemen also felt this joy in Matthew 2:10-11, “When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And after they came into the house, they saw the Child with His mother Mary; and they fell down and worshiped Him.”
Yeshua told many parables about the kingdom and the joy that we will receive as good and faithful servants because the kingdom is joy. John 15:10-11 speaks of Yeshua’s joy which He gives us when we keep His commandments. “If you keep My commandments, you will remain in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and remain in His love. These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.”
Again He mentions giving His joy in John 17:13, “But now I am coming to You; and these things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves.” Joy is the result of the Holy Spirit. No matter what we encounter in life we are to receive it with all joy. James 1:2-4 says, “Consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”
2 Corinthians 8:1-4 says this, “And now, brothers and sisters, we want to tell you what God’s grace has done in the churches in Macedonia. These believers have been tested by great troubles, and they are very poor. But their great joy caused them to be very generous in their giving. I can tell you that they gave as much as they were able and even more than they could afford. No one told them to do this. It was their idea. But they asked us again and again—they begged us to let them share in this service for God’s people.”
1 Thessalonians 1:4-6 says, “Brothers and sisters, God loves you. And we know that He has chosen you to be His people. When we brought the Good News to you, we came with more than words. We brought that Good News with power, with the Holy Spirit, and with the sure knowledge that it was true. Also you know how we lived when we were with you. We lived that way to help you. And you became like us and like the Lord. You suffered much, but still you accepted the teaching with joy. The Holy Spirit gave you that joy.”
But Yeshua is our example, so let’s see what He did under His trials. Isaiah 53:1-7 says this, “Will anyone believe the news that we have to tell people? Will anyone understand how the Lord has used His great power? God’s servant grew up in front of Him, like a young, green plant, with its roots in dry ground. He was not handsome. He did not seem like a great king. We did not see Him as a special person. There was nothing to see that would make us want to be with Him.
People did not respect Him. They refused to accept Him. He was a man who received much pain. He knew what it felt like to be weak and ill. People did not even want to look at Him. They did not respect Him. We decided that He was worth nothing. But He took away all our weakness! He carried our pain for us.
We thought that He was receiving punishment for His own sins. We thought that God was causing Him to suffer. But it was our sins that caused His wounds.The bad things that we had done crushed Him. The punishment that He received has brought peace to us. The wounds that He received have made us well. We have all turned away, like sheep that take the wrong path. Each of us has turned to follow our own way. But the Lord has taken all our sins and put the punishment on Him. People were cruel to Him, and He received much pain. But He did not say anything to complain. He was like a lamb that people were leading away to kill.
He was like a sheep when they are cutting off its wool, but it makes no noise.
In the same way, He did not say anything.”
After all of this Yeshua brought joy to the hearts of those who heard His voice.
Isaiah tells us that the punishment that He received has brought peace to us. Peace is a fruit of the Spirit. Yeshua brought peace. Mark 4:35-39 tells this story.
“On that day, when evening had come, He said to them, ‘Let us go across to the other side.’ And leaving the crowd, they took Him with them in the boat, just as He was. And other boats were with Him. And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But He was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke Him and said to Him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’ And He awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea,’ Peace! Be still!”’ And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.”
Yeshua gives His disciples His peace in John 14:25-27, “These things I have spoken to you while remaining with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and remind you of all that I said to you. Peace I leave you, My peace I give you; not as the world gives, do I give to you.”
Like love and joy, peace is also given to others. Ephesians 2:14-18 says this,
“For He Himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in His flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that He might create in Himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And He came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through Him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.”
Yeshua was our peace offering, which was an offering done with joy. Peace is also a blessing. Matthew 10:13, “If the house is worthy, see that your blessing of peace comes upon it. But if it is not worthy, take back your blessing of peace.”
Yeshua would welcome people using the blessing of “Peace be with you” as we see in John 20 19-22, “Now when it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and when the doors were shut where the disciples were together due to fear of the Jews, Yeshua came and stood in their midst, and said to them, ‘Peace be to you.’ And when He had said this, He showed them both His hands and His side. The disciples then rejoiced (joy) when they saw the Lord. So Yeshua said to them again, ‘Peace be to you; just as the Father has sent Me, I also send you.’ And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.”’
We have seen that love, joy, and peace were for giving as it was with the Holy Spirit. Act 2:1-4, “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly a noise like a violent rushing wind came from heaven, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And tongues that looked like fire appeared to them, distributing themselves, and a tongue rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with different tongues, as the Spirit was giving them the ability to speak out.”
Safetyzoneforteens.com Getting Nowhere Fast
Do you feel like you are going around in circles, or as they used to say, “chasing your tail”? Irving Berlin wrote this song for a movie called “Blue Skies” in 1946 and it speaks to just that. “A greyhound who had lots of speed was surely bound to fail for morning, noon and evening, he’d be chasing his own tail. A squirrel in a treadmill cage, around and ’round he’d go you’d think that he’d be in a rage, but seems he didn’t know he was running around in circles. The man who runs a carousel is often heavy-hearted he rides all day, but sad to say, he winds up where he started. So, concentrate and clear your mind of schemes that never last or you’ll wake up someday and find your chances all have passed. You’ve been running around in circles. Running around in circles getting nowhere. Getting nowhere very fast.”
This is a great song and it should speak to us about those things that we think are so important, but are not. They are things we do in life that will never give us the result that we want. They never will satisfy us or improve us in any way, and yet, we think that what we are doing is so great. We spend all our time or even our money, just to find out in the end that we are no better off today than we were yesterday. This is how it is when we follow the crowd or we think the world’s ways are the answer. But we quickly find out one day that we too, have been chasing our tails, just running around in circles getting nowhere. You see the things of the world are temporary, no matter who you are or when you may have lived. We all pass away, and those things that we think were so great also will pass away, and in the end you are left holding an empty bag. Only the things of God will remain in the end, because God is eternal, and God is the Creator of all things. It’s easy not to believe in a Creator. It is easy to deny, but in the end we all will find out that denying was easy, but reality is hard. Things just don’t come about on their own. We only know that things must have a beginning and one day everything will have an end. Why? Because everything was created by the Creator, a Supreme Being, who had no beginning nor will have no end. Everything in life has an explanation, if we know the answer or not. Things don’t just happen. Today, if you are one of those people who just don’t seem like you’re going anywhere, then stop the merry-go- round and get off. You will find your answers in God, your Creator and Father, who is waiting to reach out to you and put you on the path of life that will give you purpose and value. He will stop you from chasing after the wind. Today, purpose in your heart and pray, yes, just speak to your Father and He will hear you and grab hold of you, and help you to stop following the crowd, and stop doing what you know has not been working in your life. Seek Him, seek help and begin walking in a new direction, walking toward the God who loves you. Get on the path that leads to Him, because it does not go in circles.
Hebrew Corner: The Evangelist Luke
It is believed that Luke was born and lived in Antioch. Luke is one of the four evangelists or as we would say, a writer of the gospel. The Early Church Fathers ascribed to him authorship of both the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. The New Testament mentions Luke briefly a few times, and the Epistle to the Colossians refers to him as a physician, (Colossians 4:14), thus he is thought to have been both a physician and a disciple of Paul.
(Philemon 23, 2 Timothy 4:11).
Luke was one of the most highly educated of the authors of the New Testament. Luke also is credited as being a historian. Based on his accurate description of towns, cities and islands, as well as correctly naming various official titles, make his statements as trustworthy facts. Some people call Luke an apostle because he was one of the seventy sent to seek and pray. Luke 10:21-2 says, “Now after this the Lord appointed seventy-two others, and sent them in pairs ahead of Him to every city and place where He Himself was going to come. And He was saying to them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore plead with the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.’
Luke joined Paul at Troas in the year 51, accompanying him from Macedonia to Philippi. It is very possible that Luke provided medical assistance to Paul when he had been beaten, stoned or nearly drowned while evangelizing to the Western Roman Empire. Before Paul was martyred, he wrote in 2 Timothy 4:11 “Only Luke is with me.” 2 Timothy 4:7 says , “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.” Luke was with Paul to the end.
Luke’s Christian ministry can be followed in the Book of Acts. Up until the sixteenth chapter the story of Acts is written in the third person, much like an historian recording facts. The voice of the narrator then changes to first person and scholars believe this is done at the time Luke first joined Paul at Troas in the year 51. The Book of Acts switches back to third person and scholars believe that this reflects a period in time when Luke was not present during the events that are recorded. In the third Gospel, Luke emphasizes Messiah’s compassion for sinners and for those who suffer. The Gospel of Luke focuses on the poor and oppressed, encouraging tenderness and compassion for the less fortunate. The story of Lazarus and the Rich Man who ignored him is told in Luke’s gospel, as is the parable of the Good Samaritan. Luke proclaimed Messiah in Greece and Rome, later even journeying to Egypt. As to Luke the evangelist’s death, the tradition gives a clue as to how the apostle might have died. He was crucified on the branches of an olive tree by pagans. He died in Boeotia in the year 84. There was a circular structure in Ephesus considered to be his grave because of the carving of a bull on the door.
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