Money Trap!

For Thursday, October 9, 2025:

Luke 20:21-22 NLT, question asked of Jesus: “Teacher,” they said, “we know that you speak and teach what is right and are not influenced by what others think. You teach the way of God truthfully. Now tell us—is it right for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”

This whole incident was a trap. The religious leaders were upset that people were leaving the Temple to follow Jesus. Their tithes went with them! So now we know the real reason! This was about power and money. If you want to get to the bottom of a situation, just follow the money! Those religious leaders hoped to trick Jesus into dissing Caesar. Then the Romans would kill him, and they wouldn’t need to do the nasty deed themselves.

God and Jesus had for years taught that killing was wrong, was a sin. And arranging for someone’s death was as bad as killing them yourself. The Messiah came to earth through the Hebrew people, who should have loved him. But now their religious leaders felt a need to eliminate Jesus. The love of money can cause people to do strange things. The bad guys’ actions violated their own value system.

As you might expect, Jesus came up with the perfect answer. There’s plenty of money to go around. It takes money to set up governments and maintain cities and protect them, so Caesar needs some money. God already has thousands of cattle on thousands of hills, so he’s OK, but he wants us to be a part of things. He wants us to have some skin in the game. Jesus simply answered, “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give to God what belongs to God.”

That’s what we all should do, remembering that the first portion already belongs to God!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

Temple Chaos!

For Thursday, September 25, 2025:

Luke 19:45-46 NLT: Jesus entered the Temple and began to drive out the people selling animals for sacrifices. He said to them, “The Scriptures declare, ‘My Temple will be a house of prayer,’ but you have turned it into a den of thieves.

Some bad people just can’t resist the temptation to make money from religion. At the time, Jews were required to offer animal sacrifices to God. Only the best animals were allowed for this purpose. As it happened, no matter how good an animal was, it seems it was never good enough. Conveniently, the Temple leaders had animals for sale (at inflated prices!) Good people trying to be obedient were taken to the cleaners! Furthermore, they often paid with money from their homeland, but “Jerusalem money” was required, and the exchange rate was ripping them off!

Jesus wasn’t having any of it! He tossed out all the vendors and money-changers. The animals were scattered. It appears that Jesus kind of lost it for a minute! He basically went berserk, but in a good way, until the problems had been resolved. The Temple was, after all, His Father’s House!

These actions added to resentment against Jesus by the Temple teachers, leaders and Pharisees. Against all their religious upbringing, they plotted to kill Jesus, but they were in the minority. Jesus had the general population in the palm of his hand. They hung on his every word, as should we! Jesus stood for truth and harmony with the Father, and those traits are always best!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

Instinctively Right!

For Tuesday, September 23, 2025:

Hebrews 10:16 NLT: “This is the new covenant I will make with my people on that day, says the Lord: I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.”

The New Covenant represents a better deal for mankind. God’s desire is that none would be lost and that all would repent and return. So instead of having to read God’s Laws and try to memorize them, his commands have been permanently placed within us as instinct. No longer can we say, I didn’t know about that rule or I don‘t understand that policy. Now we intuitively know right from wrong. Thank you, Jesus!

This applies regardless of whether the person is a believer. For example, we have civil laws saying that murder is wrong, but we don’t need those laws to teach us. The Bible teaches us! Everyone from the priest to the prisoner in solitary already knows that we shouldn’t murder one another. It’s written on our hearts. We should love God, be kind to our parents; we shouldn’t steal, lie or covet what isn’t ours. Everyone already knows. Our minds have been pre-programmed to do the right thing!

God wisely put every inhabitant of Earth on the same page, giving us a uniform code of conduct. We all have the same rules, the same behavior standards. If a behavior is wrong in Washington, D.C., it’s wrong in Los Angeles. If a sin is wrong in Kansas City, It’s wrong in Moscow too. God has codified His value system and written it on mankind’s hearts. So we already know the right way to live our lives – God’s way!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

Value System!

For Tuesday, August 26, 2025:

Mark 14:1b NLT: “The leading priests and the teachers of religious law were still looking for an opportunity to capture Jesus secretly and kill him.”

It was two days before Pasach, the Passover, the Festival of Unleavened Bread. The men behind the conspiracy against Jesus were priests and Jewish teachers of religious law. They should have known better.

On one hand, their religious beliefs taught that murder is wrong. Their parents and schools taught that murder is wrong. They teach others their deep-rooted moral belief that murder is wrong. And here they all are, plotting a murder, in direct conflict with their own value system, their own beliefs. Listen to this: Anyone who is doing what they would counsel others to NOT do is caught up in a big mental mess. In this case, perpetuating their religion had taken precedence over the religion’s fundamental principles, and that’s backwards. The priests believed Jesus was threatening their religion, and suddenly, plotting a murder became acceptable to them. They were wrong.

The priests and religious teachers didn’t want this event to happen on a holy day. The people might rebel! This tells us that, deep down, they knew the whole affair was wrong. If this secret were exposed, people could lose confidence in their religion.

With Jesus, God gave us the New Covenant. Believers have God’s Laws written on their hearts. In other words, God gave us a conscience. We should instinctively know right from wrong. So when a question arises, we should ask ourselves, “Is this good, is this right, is it fair, is it honest – should we be doing this thing?” With our God-inspired internal value system, we already know the right answer!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

Obedience!

For Saturday, December 14, 2024:

Deuteronomy 5:17 NKJV, God’s words: “You shall not murder.”

It’s nice that we have God’s Commandments written down. But it’s kind of unnecessary. We already know, don’t we? Jesus left us with the New Covenant, whereby God’s Laws are written on our hearts. So we already know right from wrong. God’s value system lives inside each of us!

Murder is the intentional taking of another’s life, and the key is intentional, as in plotting to kill someone. But we’re certainly allowed to defend ourselves if someone is trying to kill us! And we’re allowed to defend our country should another entity attack us. Workplace and recreational accidents can occur, wherein nobody had bad intentions, and yet someone died. Accidents happen.

But Christians do not murder. It’s against the rules, it’s against our nature and it’s disobedience toward our God.

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

Belief in Jesus!

For Saturday, May 6, 2023:

John 12:9-11 NKJV: “Now a great many of the Jews knew that Jesus was there; and they came, not for his sake only, but that they might also see Lazarus, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. So the chief priests plotted to put Lazarus to death also, because on account of him, many of the Jews went away and believed in Jesus.”

The good thing Jesus did – raising Lazarus from the dead – was a threat to the religious status quo. Bringing a dead man back to life is too significant a miracle to be ignored. In three verses, John sums up the problem. Note that it wasn’t about God or prophesy or a fine point of theology. It’s about power, influence and ultimately money. If crowds of people were leaving the Synagogues to follow Jesus, their tithes were moving too!

The religious leader’s answer to this problem was a double murder, Jesus and now Lazarus. Their solution flew in the face of God’s commandments. Simply put, they were wrong.

We know now that Jesus dying, paying the price for the sins of the world, was all a part of God’s rescue plan to save mankind. How ironic that the Pharisee’s plot to murder the Son of God would put our salvation in motion! God is truly good!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus in the City Fellowship

Killing vs. Murder

February 25, 2013 Monday Message:

We’ve been studying the 10 Commandments, and this week it’s #6 - "Do not murder." Ex. 20

There’s not much commentary available on this. It’s a God-thing, one of those things that everyone already knows. Even if there were no Ten Commandments, we would  know that we shouldn’t murder, we shouldn’t steal, and we should stay away from our neighbor’s spouse. Paul says that God has written these things on our hearts.

Some older Bible versions read, “Thou shalt not kill,” while most of our modern translations refer to the prohibition as “murder.” There’s a huge difference between the two words, which we can sort out by understanding the character of God.

We have been commanded to “love our neighbors” so much that we would give our lives for them. That’s what Jesus did for us. Sometimes we may have to defend our neighbors, our families, our property, or ourselves, or we may find our country at war. Unfortunately, these scenarios may involve killing. God’s people need to protect themselves, and while I don’t believe God ever really likes killing, he has called us to mount an appropriate response to whatever sort of evil is coming our way.

What is prohibited in this commandment is the capital crime, maliciously taking the life of another. Murder is what is prohibited.

Next week: Family Values – God’s Master-plan.

Norton Lawellin

We’ll worship this Sunday, March 3, 10:30am, Jesus in the City Fellowship (JICF), in the North end of the Oliver Ministry Building, 27^th Street & Bloomington Avenue, Minneapolis. Jesus lights a lamp, calms a storm, and describes his true family as we continue in Luke Ch. 8.

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