The Gospel of John
An Exposition by John Edmiston
Eternity Daily Bible
Study
©
Copyright, John Edmiston 2005
John 1:1-3
Jesus The Creative Word
John 1:1-3 MKJV In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was
God. (2) He was in the beginning with
God. (3) All things came into being
through Him, and without Him not even one thing came into being that has come
into being.
Colossians 2:9 MKJV For in Him (Jesus Christ) dwells
all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.
We know from Genesis
that all things were made through the word of God, what John reveals in this
chapter is that Jesus is that Word, He is the very Creative Word of God!
Through
Jesus Christ: “All things came into being through Him, and without Him not even
one thing came into being that has come into being.”
From
pineapples to porcupines they all came into being through Jesus.
John carefully rebuts various Gnostic teachings when he tells us that Jesus the Word did not come into existence after God - He was “in the beginning with God”, and that He was “with God” and He “was God”. Jesus is not am emanation, or an ascended master or an angel or a “creature” of any kind. Rather He is the very creative word of God in personal and bodily form. (Colossians 2:9)
The
scriptures emphasize that Jesus and God are identical in nature:
Hebrews 1:1-3 MKJV God, who at many times and in many
ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, (2)
has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed
heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds, (3) who being the shining
splendor of His glory, and the express image of His essence, and upholding all
things by the word of His power, through Himself cleansing of our sins, He sat
down on the right of the Majesty on high,
John 14:6-10 MKJV Jesus said to him, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father but by Me. (7) If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also. And from now on you know Him and have seen Him. (8) Philip said to Him, Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us. (9) Jesus said to him, have I been with you such a long time and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father. And how do you say, Show us the Father? (10) Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in Me? The Words that I speak to you I do not speak of Myself, but the Father who dwells in Me, He does the works.
Jesus
is God, and all things were made through Him and for Him, and He holds all
things together. He is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15-20) and
he helps us to know what God is like (John 1:14-18). When we see Jesus we see
the character of God revealed to us in a way we can understand.
[Now
the Trinity is a complex topic and I will not tackle it today but refer you out
to an article on my website: http://aibi.gospelcom.net/articles/trinity.htm]
A God who is exactly
like Jesus Christ rules reality. If you have seen Jesus you have seen the
Father. A grumpy old man does not run the world on a cloud (which is the image
of God I had as a child). A God full of mercy and compassion and grace and
truth runs the world.
Thus when you pray you are praying to a God who is like Jesus, to someone who loves you and accepts you and who wants to work all things together for your good.
This is not a split
world, a battle between light and darkness. There is only one Creator and one
creative process – and that is through Jesus Christ.
So when we are in
Christ, we are in the center of God’s creative process. We are in the Person
who brings all things into existence.
In the beginning of
God’s creative process everything was chaos, the Hebrew for ‘without form and
void” is “tohu w’ bohu” which is the exact equivalent of helter-skelter or
topsy-turvy or in Filipino “halo-halo”. That is a world without structure,
chaotic, primeval, and confused.
Into that confused mess
came the creative Word and He imposed an order on creation that was “good and
very good” (Genesis 1). Similarly Christ can come into the confused life of the
sinner and bring grace and salvation. Or He can come into the body of the leper
and bring wholeness and cleanness. Or He can speak over the grave of Lazarus
and bring life.
As God’s creative word
Jesus comes into the confusion and brings the Kingdom of God and love and peace
and joy and creates a Paradise, a Garden of Eden.
Jesus is not just an
ancient prophet wearing a beard and sandals He is the creative Word of God
through whom all things were made. If you are a Christian then you are “in Him”
and you are loved by Him and His immense power is available to you to bless
you.
John 1:4,5
Life Was In Him
John 1:4-5 HCSB Life was in Him, and that life
was the light of men. (5) That light
shines in the darkness, yet the darkness did not overcome it.
There are 39 references
to the word “life” in the gospel of John and most of them refer to Jesus being
“life” in some way. Here are just five of them:
JESUS IS LIFE
John 5:21 HCSB And just
as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son also gives life
to anyone He wants to.
John 5:26 HCSB
For just as the Father has life in Himself, so also He has granted to
the Son to have life in Himself.
John 8:12 HCSB Then Jesus
spoke to them again: "I am the light of the world. Anyone who follows Me
will never walk in the darkness but will have the light of life."
John 11:25 HCSB
Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. The one who
believes in Me, even if he dies, will live.
John 17:2 HCSB For You
gave Him authority over all flesh; so He may give eternal life to all You have
given Him.
Thus the Word is
a living Word, life is in Him, the Word of God is “living and active” (Hebrews
4:12), He is not dead and passive like a concept in Greek philosophy.
Jesus is the life of
Creation and He is the light of Creation. All true life proceeds from Him and
He has the power to give life. Jesus is
the resurrection and the life. He has life in Himself – the same sort of
self-existence that the Father has and He can give life to others, and those
who follow Him do not walk in darkness but rather are granted the “light of
life”.
What is this life? Life is the ability to maintain an integrated complex and functional existence and thus to have a continuity of being. Death is to disintegrate, to decay, to longer function, to not continue in an ordered state of being.
Thus Jesus is the source of life and light and progress and integrated complexity, beauty and order. In Genesis He commanded a formless, void and a chaotic world and brought forth that which is very good.
So Jesus is never on the side of darkness, death and decay. He is always on the side of peace, health, order, beauty, life and wisdom. When Jesus encountered leprosy He did not led the disorder and death win, instead Jesus brought about a clean and beautiful restoration.
Mark 1:40-42 MKJV And a leper came to Him, begging Him and kneeling down to Him, and saying to Him, If You will, You can make me clean. (41) And Jesus, moved with compassion, put out His hand and touched him, and said to him, I will; be clean! (42) And He having spoken, the leprosy instantly departed from him and he was cleansed.
Thus darkness, chaos and decay are enemies of God’s purposes on this planet. Jesus shines into this darkness and the darkness cannot comprehend it / overthrow it /seize /possess/overtake it. (The Greek word is “katelaben” and it has this range of meanings).
Whether it be political darkness, moral darkness, criminal darkness, spiritual darkness, or the darkness of ignorance lies and treachery – the light of Jesus is still more powerful.
The darkest place I have ever been in was a small village, in a very remote part of Papua New Guinea. The village was noted for witchcraft and was filled with disease and insanity. Yet for a few days we preached the gospel there and saw some response. There is no place so dark that the light of Jesus cannot shine there. As Corrie Ten Boom said after suffering through Auschwitz, no matter how deep the circumstances, the love of God is deeper still.
“In Him was life and that life was the light of men.” Jesus is not just a general life principle inherent in Creation, which would be close to pantheism; rather He is also a very special revelation to humanity. Jesus is the light that everyone is searching for.
“That life was the light of men” – the light of humankind is not a tremendously insightful concept it is a LIFE, a single human life, the life of Jesus. Just as a husband may say of his wife “she is the light of my life” so Jesus is the light of the life of all humanity.
Without Jesus our lives are gray and dull and dead and without deep meaning, or as the existentialists say: “life is absurd”.
Life becomes meaningful when a person enters it: a parent, a lover, a friend, a spouse, a mentor, or a teacher. Meaning always comes from relationship and ultimate meaning comes from a relationship with Jesus Christ.
Well what does this mean for us? It means that if we want a life that is full of light and life then we should live it by the commands of Jesus Christ, in close relationship with him. You will not get much meaning from achieving or possessing or having power and prestige. I grew up among that sort of stuff and I saw the outcome and the profound mid-life sadness of the very successful.
Secondly it means you should not let chaos rule in your life. You are born-again to new life, to beauty and order and grace, not to chaos and disorder and turmoil. Put Jesus in charge of your life, your business, your family, your finances and watch Him create peace and order and righteousness and light and life.
John
1:6-8
John
The Baptist
John
1:6-8 HCSB There was a man
named John who was sent from God. (7)
He came as a witness to testify about the light, so that all might believe
through him. (8) He was not the light,
but he came to testify about the light.
If you have been
watching the news about Iraq recently you may have heard about the persecution
of the Mandeans – modern-day followers of John the Baptist. In fact in the
first century John the Baptist got such a large following among Jews and other
folk in the Middle East that quite a bit of the New Testament is spent
explaining the connection between the two cousins – John and Jesus. In Acts 19
Paul has to explain the gospel more fully to a group of John’s disciples in
Ephesus as the changeover from following John to following Jesus was not as
automatic as we may think.
In Matthew 11:11-13
Jesus says that His cousin John was the culmination of the Law and the Prophets
and the “greatest of those born of women”. Yet John, despite his greatness “was
not the light”, but rather, like all the prophets of old, John ‘bore witness to
the Light”. John “prepared the way of
the Lord” by helping Jews take the necessary steps of faith so they could be
ready to hear the message of Jesus.
“There was a man named
John who was sent from God.” Those
“sent by God” are apostles (that is what the word apostle means). Apostles are
not sent from a nation as an ambassador, or from a company as a representative
but directly from God so as to speak on His behalf.
Those sent from God are
sent with a particular message to a particular people – just as Jonah was sent
to Nineveh with the commission to warn them of impending judgment. Thus John
the Baptist was sent to the desert of Judea with the message “repent for the
Kingdom of God is at hand” and a purpose “to be the voice crying in the
wilderness prepare ye the way of the Lord.”
John thus prepared the
way for Jesus by calling the Jewish people to repentance, so Jesus could call
them to faith in Him. The New Testament makes clear that we cannot have
biblical faith apart from moral regeneration. The faith of the positive
thinkers is not enough. New Testament faith has a direction and that direction
is into God, and into His nature.
We cannot remain in sin
and truly believe in Jesus, because if we truly believe what Jesus said we will
believe what He said about sin and righteousness and repentance.
Believing in Jesus is
not just believing that He exists, or that He is loving and nice, or even that
He is God, it is also believing what He said and thus obeying His commandments.
If Jesus says “do not lay up treasure on earth’ (Matthew 6:19) and we do so
then we are not believing what He said.
Believing in Jesus
requires stern moral commitment. It is more than a warmed heart; it is a
morally changed life. John came as a preacher of righteousness and moral
regeneration so that people could be convicted of their sin and turn to God for
mercy and a new life in Christ.
The modern debate on
grace is often misconstrued. Grace is not God excusing you from all sorts of
abhorrent moral behavior, nor is it a free pass into heaven for the
unrepentant. Grace is given to make us holy. Grace calls us from wickedness to
repentance, grace reveals the way from repentance to faith in Christ, grace
grows us from initial faith to deeper sanctification and grace frees and
transforms us along the path from sanctification to ultimate glorification.
Grace gives people the
chance to become like Jesus. Grace makes the highway of holiness one that is
free from condemnation so that we have the courage to travel along it. Grace is
not the same as freedom from condemnation, which is only part of the story. We
don’t sit down in the road saying: “Wow, I am free from condemnation.” The idea
is to keep moving toward Christ-likeness.
It is much easier to tell
a convicted and repentant sinner about Jesus, than a complacent and
self-satisfied person who is uncaring of the state of his or her soul. So John
came to stir people up so that they would care about their souls and seek God.
John came “so that all might
believe through him.” He was a prophet
who had as his objective - that others would believe in Jesus. Our ministries
should be the same – pointing always to the Savior.
“He was not the light,
but he came to testify about the light.” No
matter how great our intelligence or insight or calling we are not the Light.
Only Jesus is the light. Sometimes we make a preacher or teacher or founder of
an organization or denomination another “light”. That is wrong, they may give
witness to the light, but they are not the light. You can disagree with me and still be wonderfully saved, but you
cannot disagree with Jesus and be saved. Jesus is the Truth and I and all other
ministers of the gospel merely point to Him.
The Mandeans need Jesus.
They need the Light. No man born of woman can guide us. Only Jesus is the Light
of our lives.
John 1:9-13
Receiving
Jesus
John 1:9-13 HCSB The true light, who gives light to everyone, was coming into the
world. (10) He was in the world, and
the world was created through Him, yet the world did not recognize Him. (11) He came to His own, and His own people
did not receive Him. (12) But to all
who did receive Him, He gave them the right to be children of God, to those who
believe in His name, (13) who were
born, not of blood, or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of
God.
The fallen world order
does not acknowledge or receive Christ and the New Testament, and particularly
Paul gives us a variety of reasons such as:
own fleshly inclinations, wrong teaching, our fallen nature, the Devil’s
blinding of the heart, Jewish legalism, cultural and spiritual strongholds, and
human ignorance, pride and folly. I have listed some verses on this topic
below:
WHY PEOPLE REFUSE TO
RECEIVE CHRIST
Romans 8:7 HCSB
For the mind-set of the flesh is hostile to God because it does not
submit itself to God's law, for it is unable to do so.
1 Corinthians 1:18-25 HCSB (18) For to those who are perishing the message of the cross is foolishness, but to us who are being saved it is God's power.
1 Corinthians 2:14 HCSB (14) But the natural man does not welcome what comes from God's
Spirit, because it is foolishness to him; he is not able to know it since it is
evaluated spiritually.
2 Corinthians 3:14 HCSB (14) But their minds were closed. For to this day, at the reading
of the old covenant, the same veil remains; it is not lifted, because it is
set-aside only in Christ.
2 Corinthians 4:3-4 HCSB (3) But if, in fact, our gospel is veiled; it is veiled to those who are perishing. (4) Regarding them: the god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelievers so they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
2 Corinthians 10:4-5 HCSB (4) since the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly, but are
powerful through God for the demolition of strongholds. We demolish
arguments (5) and every high-minded
thing that is raised up against the knowledge of God, taking every thought
captive to the obedience of Christ.
Ephesians 2:1-3 HCSB And you were dead in your
trespasses and sins (2) in which you
previously walked according to this worldly age, according to the ruler of the
atmospheric domain, the spirit now working in the disobedient. (3) We too all previously lived among them
in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and
thoughts, and by nature we were children under wrath, as the others were also.
Ephesians 4:17-18 HCSB Therefore, I say this and testify in the
Lord: You should no longer walk as the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their
thoughts. (18) They are darkened in
their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance
that is in them and because of the hardness of their hearts.
Colossians 1:21 HCSB And you were once alienated and
hostile in mind because of your evil actions.
This is a convincing
enough lists of verses – some folks are perishing in stubborn unbelief and
spiritual blindness. Such people need a lot of patient prayer and witnessing if
they ever are to believe. I was an anti-Christian atheist prior to being saved
and many thought I could not be saved – but nevertheless God “got me”.
Yet we need to put an
end to Pollyanna views such as: “If we just preach the gospel everyone will
believe.” If Jesus Himself could not get everyone to believe, even with all the
miracles He performed and His wisdom, love and grace - then we need to accept
that this is “something fundamental” in humanity. In fact there are almost two
types of people “those who are perishing” and “those who are being saved” and
it is seems that it is with difficulty that many of those who are perishing
find Christ.
One reason that the
world does not acknowledge Christ because the “ruler of this world” is the
Devil (1 John 5:18,19) and he has absolutely zero intention of letting this
world be released into the freedom of the sons of God. (Romans 8:19-25)
Therefore intercession
and spiritual warfare must precede evangelism if the Devil’s grip on fallen
humanity is to be broken. Much prevailing prayer has preceded every great
revival – (see Dr. Stewart Robinson’s excellent review article Praying the
Price of Revival http://aibi.gospelcom.net/prayer/payprice.htm) and here is a link on Prayer Evangelism: http://aibi.gospelcom.net/articles/prayer_evangelism.htm
The natural human mind
is not a level playing field. It does not naturally think the thoughts that
accompany salvation. It rushes into folly and gossip and pornography and
tabloid rubbish and totally ignores, ridicules and dismisses the deep things of
God.
Humanism, which almost
deifies the natural human intellect, is without a good explanation for the
lust, cruelty, evil, folly, and madness of humanity. Humanism can never
properly explain Auschwitz or Rwanda or the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
The world did not
acknowledge Jesus, His own received Him not, yet some did believe and He gave
them the power to become sons of God. That is the power to be eternal beings of
great glory and authority.
The basis of this
sonship is being “born of God”, that is a spiritual birth that comes from God,
not a literal or physical birth from mankind or the human will (see John
3:1-18). In the new birth we are born as eternal spiritual beings, who are
citizens of Heaven (Ephesians 2:19, Philippians 3:20), and are seated with
Christ in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 2:6, 1:20).
The world can give us
all sorts of other powers – the power to earn money or the power to be famous
or the power to rule nations, but only Jesus Christ can give us the eternal and
holy power that will last forever, the power to become a son of God.
John 1:14-17
Jesus
Reveals Grace And Truth To Us
John 1:14-17 HCSB The Word became flesh and took up residence among us. We observed
His glory, the glory as the One and Only Son from the Father, full of grace and
truth. (15) (John testified concerning Him and exclaimed, "This was the
One of whom I said, 'The One coming after me has surpassed me, because He
existed before me.'") (16) Indeed,
we have all received grace after grace from His fullness, (17) for although the law was given through
Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
The eternal and
pre-existent Word took on flesh and dwelt among us, and when He did He was
revealed to be full of grace and truth.
When God walked among
men He did not swagger. Nor did He come like some outer-space alien full of
wizardry, fire and strange weaponry. God came among us as one full of grace and
truth. The Word did not come to dominate – but to serve.
The Word is not so
“gracious” - sentimental and forgiving that it lets go of the truth; nor is the
Word so “truthful” and blunt that it is unaccompanied by grace. The Word speaks
to both the sinner and the sin.
John the Baptist
declared: “The One coming after me has surpassed me, because He existed
before me.” – this conundrum is solved by his younger cousin Jesus, who started
ministry after John, being the incarnation of the eternal and pre-existent Word
of God. When we touch Jesus, we touch eternity.
This eternal,
pre-existent and glorious creative Word clothed Himself with lungs and arms and
flesh and blood. This body was not some “appearance of flesh” like a mystical
hologram, rather it was real flesh that was hungered and thirsted and was
scourged and crucified and which bled blood and water when pierced.
Jesus reveals what a man
looks like when He is fully the Word and what God looks like when He is fully a
man.
In our quest for
holiness and sanctification we must return to Jesus and to His character and to
being “full of grace and truth”. We can easily equate holiness with things
other than Christ, grace and truth; even with things such as knowledge, power,
eloquence, a winning personality, or time served. One of the less subtle traps
in the Christian life is to equate sanctification with moving up a church or
mission hierarchy. Instead Jesus teaches us that servanthood is holiness and
the greatest in the Kingdom is the person who is full of grace and truth and is
the servant of all.
A focus on grace and
truth will cause each of us to ask questions such as: Am I increasing in
graciousness, kindness and love? Am I increasing in the Truth? Am I honest and
above reproach? Do my words come from the Word?
The Law by contrast is
not from grace and truth; it simply brings the knowledge of sin and can do no
more. The Law cannot help you. The Law is like a man high on a cliff shouting
swimming instructions to drowning men and women. On the other hand Jesus is the
lifeguard plunging into the surf and dragging them out. What the Law says is
true – but everyone dies. What Jesus does in gracious – and is a far deeper
Truth.
Plunging into lost and
broken humanity is very frightening. It is easy to be scared by the poor, the
homeless, the diseased, the demonized, the wicked, and the violent. It is easy
to be repelled by the leper, to flee the prostitute, and to condemn the
heretical Samaritan.
Jesus took on flesh and
dwelt among us, and He did not run away from a single needy sinner. We need to
ask for the courage and boldness and grace to engage in incarnational ministry
in love.
“We have all
received grace after grace from His fullness.” - We do not just receive grace once, leading
to conversion, rather we receive grace after grace every step of the way to
glory.
Grace is
the power behind all spiritual growth, and grace proceeds from God through
Jesus Christ and is received by faith. Grace comes to those who want it enough
to believe in it.
Grace is
both God’s kind and forgiving disposition toward us, and the tangible effects
of that disposition – miracles, healing, changed lives, deliverance from
demons, breaking of curses, blessings abundant. Grace creates the conditions so
that peace can prosper – the very shalom of God.
Grace
descends to the needy, the humble, and the contrite. The poor in spirit receive
great grace, while the proud in spirit receive nothing.
All spiritual growth depends on our ability to receive grace by faith and to put it to work in our lives through faithful obedience. There is no shortage of grace and truth, that is never the problem, Jesus is inexhaustibly full of grace, it is up to us to humble ourselves, to believe, to receive and to obey.
John 1:18
Jesus Reveals God To Us
John 1:18 MKJV No one has seen God at any time; the Only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.
Jesus is a complete
declaration of what God is like. He is the “exact representation” of His being
(Hebrews 1:1-3) and the “fullness of Deity in bodily form” (Colossians 2:9) so
that it could be said that Jesus and the Father were one (John 10:30) and those
who have seen Jesus have also seen the Father. (John 14:9)
In practical
terms that means that God the Father is like Jesus. He is not the grumpy old
man sitting on a cloud throwing thunderbolts at sinners. He loves those
sinners, has compassion on them, wishes to show them mercy, sends His rain on
the just and the unjust, heals them, loves them and sent His Son to die for
them.
If God is like Jesus
then God is also kind and gracious and God also heals, and God also resurrects.
Is God really the
friends of drunkards and sinners? Would God supply wine at a wedding? Would God
touch a leper? Surely in Christ He did so.
Sometimes God and Jesus
are almost portrayed as opposites – good cop, bad cop style. That is false. If
Jesus is a prefect representation of God then there is no inconsistency between
the two. They are never opposites. God
is not harsh, while Jesus is merciful. Jesus is not kind while God is cruel.
Jesus shows us what God is really like – good, kind, accepting, patient and
compassionate.
God came in Christ to
achieve reconciliation with His Creation; here it is in two versions:
2 Corinthians 5:19 LITV
(19) as, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not
charging their deviations to them, and having put the Word of reconciliation in
us.
2 Corinthians 5:19 HCSB
(19) that is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not
counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed the message of
reconciliation to us.
Colossians
sees this as a reconciliation involving the whole cosmos:
Colossians 1:18-20 LITV (18) And He is the Head of the body, the assembly, who is the
Beginning, the First-born out of the dead, that He be preeminent in all
things; (19) because all the fullness
was pleased to dwell in Him, (20) and
through Him making peace by the blood of His cross, to reconcile all things to
Himself; through Him, whether the things on the earth, or the things in the
heavens.
So
God took on material form, human form, in Christ and reconciled the entire
Universe to Himself. Jesus Christ is God’s perfect statement about Himself and
His appeal to His Creation to be reconciled with Him. This is the King’s Son,
His only Son, in His exact image, His final appeal that we must not reject.
(Luke 20:9-18)
In
Jesus Christ God walks among us in a human body and tells us all what He is
like. God is love. God is relational above all else. God wants us back with
Him; God has come to the lost to bring them home.
Since Jesus is the
perfect declaration of what God is like then we must takes Jesus with utmost
seriousness. He is not just a prophet, or a good teacher or a moral man rather
He is God revealed to us and we must study to know Him.
Once we realize that
Jesus is God revealed to us then all the “funny notions” of Jesus as a Jewish
revolutionary, or Jesus as a Essene, and countless others must be dismissed.
Jesus was a person of great personal authority (Matthew 7:29) who people
followed and obeyed and who could rightly give new commandments (John 13:34)
because Jesus Himself was God.
Jesus is the final word
about God. The law and the prophets were partial and fragmentary words, but
Jesus is the complete package.
Hebrews 1:1-2 MKJV
God, who at many times and in many ways spoke in time past to the
fathers by the prophets, (2) has in
these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all
things, by whom also He made the worlds,
What does Jesus tell us about God? That God
is a living, compassionate, truthful and gracious Being who is interested in us
and in our problems, who will heal a broken arm, rebuke a demon, provide bread,
make wine, still a storm, and answer our honest questions.
God is someone who will
go to a party and eat with you. He will even invite you to His wedding feast!
John 1:19-27
John the Baptist’s Confession
John 1:19-27 ISV
This was John's testimony when the Jews sent priests and Levites to
him from Jerusalem to ask him, "Who are you?" (20) He spoke openly and did not deny it,
but confessed, "I am not the Christ." (21) So they asked him, "Well then, are you Elijah?" He
said, "I am not." "Are you the Prophet?" He answered,
"No." (22) Then they said to
him, "Who are you? We must give an answer to those who sent us. What do
you say about yourself?" (23) He
replied, "I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, 'Make the
way of the Lord straight,'" as the prophet Isaiah said. (24) Now they had been sent from the
Pharisees. (25) They asked him,
"Why, then, are you baptizing if you are not the Christ or Elijah or the
Prophet?" (26) John answered them,
"I am baptizing with water, but among you stands a man whom you do not
know, (27) the one who is coming after
me, whose sandal straps I am not worthy to untie."
The Jews expected three major people – the Messiah, Elijah and the Prophet Jeremiah. The Messiah would bring military victory and liberation, Elijah would return from Heaven where he was translated and bring national revival, and apparently Jeremiah was expected to return with the Ark of the Covenant, the pot of manna, Aaron’s Rod that budded and the Ten Commandments that he had hidden so the Babylonians would not get them.
These notions came from
a very literal ideal of national restoration – back to the time of David and
Solomon. This is why John denied being “Elijah” because he was not the Elijah
that they expected.
However John was the
“Elijah” of God as the angel said to his father Zechariah:
Luke 1:15-17 ISV
For he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He will never drink wine
or any strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he
is born. (16) He will bring many of
Israel's descendants back to the Lord their God. (17) He is the one who will go before the Lord with the spirit
and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of parents to their children and the
disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, and to prepare the people to be
ready for the Lord."
And as Jesus said of John later on:
Matthew 11:7-14 ISV
As they were leaving, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John.
"What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the
wind? (8) Really, what did you go out
to see? A man dressed in fancy clothes? See, those who wear fancy clothes live
in kings' houses. (9) Really, what did
you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and even more than a prophet! (10) This is the man, about whom it is
written, 'See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your
way before you.' (11) Truly I tell you;
among those born of women no one has appeared who is greater than John the
Baptist. Yet even the least important person in the kingdom of heaven is greater
than he. (12) "From the days of John the Baptist until the present, the
kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and violent people have been
attacking it. (13) For the Law and all
the Prophets prophesied up to the time of John, (14) and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to
come.
John came “in the spirit and the power of Elijah” and brought national revival, but the revival did not take Israel back to the Golden Age of David and Solomon but forwards into grace and the power of the Holy Spirit, and when they refused it – to the judgment of 70 AD.
God is creative and tends always to move forward. We cannot go back to past Golden Ages – the age of chivalry, the age of missions, the Great Awakening, the Reformation, even the early Church. While each of these made very valuable contributions they are now in the past. However God works in the eternal now and brings us forward to His future.
There is no
static state of perfection to which we must aspire. The early Church was riddled
with racism and slavery. The Reformation saw a lot of Catholics and Anabaptists
being drowned or being burned at the stake. The Age of Chivalry was riddled
with disease, injustice and very rigid class distinction and the age of
Missions was often far too close to the Empires of the time. Good came, even
great good, but they were imperfect ages, and we must move on.
In this age
we await the completion of the Great Commission, the salvation of the Jews, and
the Return of Christ. Yet in some of these things we may be as wrong as the
priests were about the Christ, Elijah and the Prophet.
John said “none of the
above” – and then described himself as “the voice of one crying in the
wilderness” a reference to Isaiah 40:3
Isaiah 40:3 MKJV The voice of him who cries in the wilderness, Prepare the way of Jehovah, make straight a highway in the desert for our God.
In other
words John was a voice calling for moral change prior to God Himself coming
into their midst – in the form of Jesus Christ. John was pointing to one coming
after him who was far more worthy than the Baptizer.
Since John was held in very high regard, and all Israel came
out to him, then the notion of someone even more worthy was astonishing! It was
made even more astonishing by John’s statement: John answered them, "I
am baptizing with water, but among you stands a man whom you do not know, (27) the one who is coming after me, whose
sandal straps I am not worthy to untie."
Duties such as the
washing of feet and the untying of sandals were considered so low and demeaning
that the religious canons of the day said it could not be performed by a Hebrew
slave but only by a foreign born slave:
"If
thy brother is become poor, and is sold unto thee, thou shalt not make him do
the work of a servant; that is, - any
reproachful work; such as to buckle his shoes, or unloose them, or carry his
instruments (or necessaries) after him to the bath.''
(This says a lot about Jesus – and the foot washing in John 13 as the end
of all social distinction).
The Christ was so high and
lofty that even a great prophet like John the Baptist “the greatest of those
born of women” was unworthy to be even His most lowly servant. Which is why
Jesus can say: Luke 17:10 MKJV So
likewise you, when you shall have done all the things commanded you, say, We
are unprofitable servants, for we have done what we ought to do.
Jesus
stood among them but they did not “know” Him. God was unrecognized in the midst
of His people.
John
1:28-34
The One Who
Baptizes With The Holy Spirit
John 1:28-34 MKJV
These things were done in Bethabara beyond Jordan, where John was
baptizing. (29) The next day John sees
Jesus coming to him and says, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of
the world! (30) This is He of whom I
said, after me comes a Man who has been before me, for He preceded me. (31) And I did not know Him, but that He be
revealed to Israel, therefore I have come baptizing with water. (32) And John bore record, saying, I saw the
Spirit descending from Heaven like a dove, and He abode on Him. (33) And I did not know Him, but He who sent
me to baptize with water, that One said to me, Upon whom you shall see the
Spirit descending, and remaining upon Him, He is the One who baptizes with the
Holy Spirit. (34) And I saw and bore
record that this is the Son of God.
John speaks of Jesus in the most heavenly of terms:
1. The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. (John 1:29)
2. The One who has “been
before me”. (John 1:30)
3. The One on whom the
Spirit rested and abode. (John 1:32,33)
4. The One who baptizes
with the Holy Spirit. (John 1:33)
5. The Son of God. (John 1:34)
These are not terms that
can be applied to any normal person ore even to a prophet. The Baptist was a
great and mighty prophet, but yet he pointed to Christ as One who was
infinitely more worthy than himself. (John 1:27) The prophets could preach
repentance from sin – but Jesus would actually take away the sin of the world!
John the evangelist is
deliberately making the reader see Christ as both a man and as something far
greater than a man. In Hebrew thinking there was a spiritual hierarchy and it
probably went thus: Gentiles, Samaritans, women, male Jews, kings, priests,
prophets, angels, God. By being greater than the prophets, and obviously not an
angel then Jesus is another rank of being – that of the Son of God. [The
article “the” is important as some angels were “sons of God” (see Job 1&2
and Genesis 6) but Jesus is the unique “the” only-begotten Son of God]
The spiritual rank “the
Son of God” has the distinction of being one where the Spirit can rest and
abide, and which can baptize in the Spirit, whereas the prophet could only
baptize in water. The Spirit came upon the prophets and they spoke, but they
could not baptize in the Spirit, even Elijah said it was difficult to pass the
Spirit to Elisha (2 Kings 2:8-10). On the other hand Jesus could send the
Spirit, He could baptize with the Spirit, and make the Spirit come upon others.
Thus Jesus is greater than all the prophets and is of entirely another
spiritual order.
Jesus was also
pre-existent; he “came before” John, in fact even before Abraham! (John
8:56-58). Now Abraham is regarded as
the spiritual founder of both Judaism and Islam. But Jesus is the founder of
Christianity and existed far before Abraham, as the eternal creative Word of
God. It is Christianity that is the truly Ancient Faith!
Christianity is a
religion of the Spirit, not the law book. It is faith in one on whom the Spirit
abides, faith in One who is familiar with God and is His beloved Son. One who
can place the Spirit of God in us and upon us.
For us to be baptized in
the Spirit we must first have our sin taken away. Thus Jesus is the Lamb of God
who takes away the sin of the world. Jesus removes our sin so He can baptize us
with the Holy Spirit so we can dwell in fellowship with God and worship in
Spirit and in Truth!
Thus Jesus is both the
means of initial saving grace – in that He takes away our sin through His
substitutionary atonement; and the means of ongoing salvation and
sanctification as He sanctifies us and empowers us through baptism in the Holy
Spirit.
Twice John
says “I did not know Him”, John did not recognize Jesus as the Son of God except via
His relationship with the Holy Spirit: “And I did not know Him, but He who
sent me to baptize with water, that One said to me, Upon whom you shall see the
Spirit descending, and remaining upon Him, He is the One who baptizes with the
Holy Spirit.” When God spoke to John the Baptist telling him how to recognize the
Messiah – its was by His anointing that He would be known.
In a sense this applies
to all ministers of the gospel – it is by our anointing that we are recognized
in Heaven – not by our human qualifications. I can imagine the angels saying
something like: “He is the one who is compassionate, she is the one who teaches
with wisdom, he is the one who heals.”
Christ means anointed one – and “Christian” means “little anointed one”, we are to be Spirit-baptized, anointed, carriers of grace. This can only come about through an intimate relationship with Him who “gives the Spirit without measure” (John 3:34).
John
1:35-37
Directing
People To Christ
John 1:35-37 MKJV
Again, the next day afterward, John stood with two of his
disciples. (36) And looking upon Jesus
as He walked, he says, Behold the Lamb of God!
(37) And the two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus.
The disciples of John
were men who sought religious truth and who wanted to live authentic and
penitent lives. John pointed these keen learners to a greater truth, Christ the
Lamb of God, so they left John and followed Jesus. This was the right thing to
do. The first duty of the Christian disciple is to learn from God, which is
even a higher duty than personal loyalty to a great leader.
Every now and then we
find a human leader who inspires us, but we have to remember that such a person
is not the end of the story. We may have to move on, to discover new things of
our own, to learn things that they cannot teach us or will not teach us. Ultimately we are always following Jesus and
learning from God.
My bible college
principal Dr. Gibson was such a man, a very wise and great and learned man of
God for whom I am forever grateful. He taught me how to mine the Scriptures.
Yet he was not the end of my learning curve.
The theology I have now is a development, an unfolding, of what was
taught back then.
This can be difficult
for Christian movements that follow a clear defining leader. Necessary changes
can be resisted if they mean going against the historical precedent set by the
great one.
But all such leaders, if
they are any good, want you to follow Christ and learn from Him. They say,
“behold, the Lamb of God” and are happy when you go off to follow Jesus.
You must follow the Truth
wherever the Truth leads you.
The earnest disciple
hungers for the Kingdom of God far more than for the comfort of tradition or
the routines of the organization.
Sometimes the Truth we
find can put us at odds with those around us. We move to drink the new wine and
they prefer the old. Share your joy tactfully, create a hunger, and feed only
the hungry. Do not force-feed the rest.
What about those of us
who lead? They need to recognize that all Christian leaders are like John the
Baptist, pointing people to Christ. They need to let people move on in their
spiritual journey, and follow Christ in the way that He has called them to.
Leaders also need to be
hungry disciples and followers of truth themselves. The leader needs to be a
learner, and be constantly at the feet of Christ to learn new things about His
Kingdom and to receive grace from His throne.
No human leader “owns”
his flock, they are on loan from Jesus, and the leader is only an
under-shepherd. The sheep are followers of Christ that the leader is caring
for; the sheep are not the followers of the leader.
Sheep have feet and will
go where they feel they are fed. The
two disciples left John for Jesus because they were seeking spiritual food.
Therefore a great and high duty of the Christian leader is to provide the food
that leads to eternal life.
There comes a time in
the life of some pastors when they say “I cannot feed you any more, you need
another pastor, I must move on to another church.” And there comes a time for
the missionary when he says “You are now leaders and you have great men of God
among you, it is time I went away. Please go on and learn from God.” There
comes s time to hand over, to go, to let the sheep be led by someone else.
However such handovers
need to be in the Lord’s timing. If they are premature the church can collapse,
if they are delayed it can be split.
Look at your own life:
Are you hungry for the Truth? Are you so ruthless in your search for the
kingdom that you would walk away from a great prophet to find someone even
greater? Do you have a passionate desire to learn of God?
Look at your own
leadership: Are you pointing people to Jesus? Are you feeding the sheep? Are
you letting the sheep learn from God?
John 1:38-42
Andrew and
Simon Peter Meet Jesus
John 1:38-42 MKJV Then Jesus turned and
saw them following and said to them, What do you seek? They said to Him, Rabbi
(which is called, being translated, Teacher), where do you live? (39) He says to them, Come and see. They
came and saw where He lived, and stayed with Him that day, for it was about the
tenth hour. (40) One of the two who
heard John and followed Him was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. (41) He first found his own brother Simon
and said to him, we have found the Messiah (which is, being translated, the
Christ). (42) And he brought him to
Jesus. And when Jesus saw him, He said, you are Simon the son of Jonah; you
shall be called Cephas (which translated is, A stone).
[The readers of John's
gospel were obviously Greeks - hence the three "being translated'
references in the short passage above.]
Here we see networks of
faith in operation. John the Baptist's network starts intersecting with Jesus'
network, which in turn grows as people tell each other about the Messiah. One
of the keys to successful evangelism is to share the faith with people who are
active networkers or who belong to large networks of friends. It is often the
"bubbly" attractive student who comes to Christ that leads many
fellow students to the Lord! Andrew was such a networker - whenever we see him
in action he is introducing people to Jesus.
Another key is the
"recommendation". John the Baptist gives the strongest possible
recommendation to Jesus: "Behold the Lamb of God" and it is on the
basis of this recommendation that Andrew and his friend (probably John the
apostle) go to meet Jesus. A strong recommendation by a prominent personality
can lift a crusade or a church to success.
We also see
"hospitality" in action. Jesus accepts two keen young learners into
His house, and then meets their friend Simon - who he then names Peter. Jesus
eats with people, stays with people and allows them to know Him. He did not
just send tracts in the mail; he became personally available as the incarnate
Word. The gospel is something more than knowledge; it is a spiritual lifestyle
that can be lived out in front of people.
Note that the disciples
sought out Jesus, they were keen spiritual learners who had followed John the
Baptist out into the wilderness, who had repented of their sins, been baptized
and were awaiting the Kingdom of God. These were spiritually prepared for
becoming disciples of Jesus and were hungry for the teaching of the Christ.
These were
"other-worldly" people, who could go to a friend and say "we
have found the Messiah' and not be laughed away. They were not hard-headed
pragmatists looking for "the bottom line" or chasing political power,
they were heavenly-minded people seeking God - and so they found Jesus.
We need to be a lot more
heavenly-minded. We need to be really, really hungry for the things of God and
"crazy enough" to go out into the wilderness to hear a prophet - or
to go and stay overnight with someone that you think may be the Messiah.
Many want God on an
intravenous drip. They want to lie in bed and have spirituality injected into
them like Botox. They don't want to bother reading the book, give them the DVD
instead!
But God is after
seekers, after those who will suffer and pray and groan and travail to know
Him. God wants people who will drop their fishing nets, or leave their
tax-booths or climb a sycamore tree or yell out embarrassingly in a crowd just
to know Him.
There is a terrible,
terrible selfishness in much modern spirituality. God is expected to play to
market expectations and to "suit" the seeker, to accommodate to their
whims and play the music they enjoy and to be convenient about His demands.
This is NOT the spirituality of the prophets or of the disciples of Jesus who
sold all to pursue the Pearl of Great Price. After all it is us that need to be
saved, not God.
Jesus takes one look at
Simon and tells him that he will be called Peter - or a "stone". In
Matthew he adds "and upon this Rock will I build by Church". Peter
was by no means a Rock at this point and until Pentecost Peter would be rash
and impulsive, only afterwards finding his strength under the power of the
anointing. Jesus sees Peter, as he would be when he was filled with the Holy
Spirit, He saw Peter as someone who could be totally filled with God and do
amazing miracles and lead His Church.
This is the way God sees
people - in terms of their capacity for Himself.
Many pastors can preach
a "better sermon" (in technical terms) than Billy Graham but few if
any have a greater anointing. It is the anointing that makes the man or woman
of God, though the training is also useful and can be taken up by God as part
of the person. What matters is our capacity for God and our death to self and
our zeal for heavenly things.
Peter made many
mistakes, some serious, but he was a "big" person, soft, forgiving
and large of heart and knew how to bounce back and restore the relationship.
God can do more with a large person who makes a few mistakes than with a
small-minded person who never puts a foot wrong.
What is
your capacity for God? Are you seriously seeking Him?
John
1:43-51
Nathanael
John 1:43-51 MKJV
The day after, Jesus desired to go forth into Galilee. And He found
Philip and said to him, follow Me. (44)
Now Philip was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. (45) Philip found Nathanael and said to him,
We have found Him of whom Moses wrote in the Law and the Prophets, Jesus of
Nazareth, the son of Joseph. (46) And
Nathanael said to him, Can there be any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip
said to him, Come and see. (47) Jesus
saw Nathanael coming to Him and said of him, Behold an Israelite indeed in whom
is no guile! (48) Nathanael said to
Him, From where do You know me? Jesus answered and said to him, Before Philip
called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you. (49) Nathanael answered and said to Him,
Rabbi, You are the Son of God. You are the King of Israel! (50) Jesus answered and said to him, Because
I said to you, I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe? You shall see
greater things than these. (51) And He
said to him, Truly, truly, I say to you, Hereafter you shall see Heaven open,
and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.
What was going on under
the fig tree? It seems something was
happening in Nathanael’s life there that was deep and powerful and spiritual, a
private encounter between him and God so that whoever knew about it must be
“from above”.
Nathanael
said to Him, from where do You know me? Jesus answered and said to him, Before
Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.
One clue is that
Nathanael seems to have been a spiritual visionary: “Truly,
truly, I say to you, Hereafter you shall see Heaven open, and the angels of God
ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”
So without
stretching thing too far Nathanael was perhaps having a vision about the
Messiah. In this case Jesus met him “in the spirit” under the fig tree, and
later in person after Philip called him.
Visions of Christ are
not uncommon; apparently some 40% of conversions of Muslims involve a vision of
Jesus. My own conversion involved a vision of God as a gentle light filling the
chapel I was in and His voice speaking to me for about twenty minutes.
God reaches out to
spiritually sensitive and seeking souls in a huge variety of ways. People have
even been converted by a beautiful scent “like roses” suddenly filling the room
in a place where there were no flowers.
Spiritual experiences
are valuable and are to be treasured but are simply a means of grace, not a sign
of spiritual superiority. Some build on their encounter with God, and others do
not. King Saul seems to have benefited very little from his prophetic
experience. (1 Samuel 10;10,11)
Nathaniel was perhaps a
disappointed seeker after the Messiah and cynical about all the false “Messiahs” from Nazareth and Galilee just as
many Christians are disillusioned with modern end-time prophets. This is
indicated in his statement “can any good thing come out of Nazareth?”.
Nathanael was as they
say - “from Missouri” – the “show-me state” in the USA so Philip just said
“Come and see”. Jesus pokes fun at Nathanael’s bluntness by saying “Behold an
Israelite in whom there is no guile.” In other words, he was truthful and
tactless!
So what do we make of
Nathanael? He seems to have been an earnest seeker after the Kingdom, a
spiritual visionary - but a blunt, tactless and possibly disillusioned one. He
is like many today – wanting to believe but tired of the fakes and the
nonsense.
When
Nathanael does meet the “real thing” and does find the True Messiah his
reaction is like that of Thomas after the resurrection: John 1:49 MKJV Nathanael answered and said to Him, “Rabbi,
You are the Son of God. You are the King of Israel!”
This “one huge leap”
from deep cynicism to profound faith is precisely what also happened to Thomas.
There is a certain type of personality that has either/or faith – either zero
or 100% - and for safety sake, to protect their hopes; they tend to choose
“zero”, right up until the last minute. But when the evidence comes in, they go
all the way.
Nathanael is thus the
psychological opposite of Peter who seems almost doubt free. Peter jumps out of
the boat without a second thought. Nathanael checks the boat for leaks.
The Nathanael’s of this
world are very useful for tough assignments because once they are convinced
they stay convinced. Nathanael stayed the course and was one of the seven who
met Jesus on the shore of Galilee after the failed fishing expedition (John
21:2) after the resurrection.
And for those interested in refuting the Da Vinci Code nonsense it was Nathanael who was from Cana and was the most likely bridegroom at the wedding there – not Jesus!
John
2:1-5
Whatever He
Says To You…
John 2:1-5 MKJV And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee. And
the mother of Jesus was there. (2) And
Jesus and His disciples were both invited to the marriage. (3) And when they lacked wine, the mother of
Jesus said to Him, They have no wine.
(4) Jesus said to her, Woman, what do I have to do with you? My hour has
not yet come. (5) His mother said to
the servants, Whatever He says to you, do it.
Nathanael, who has just been introduced to Jesus in chapter 1 was from Cana (see John 21:2), so this wedding may have been his – or a friend of his, or even a friend of Mary the mother of Jesus because it is mentioned “the mother of Jesus was there.” Contrary to much modern speculation there is absolutely no evidence that this was the wedding of Jesus to Mary Magdalene. I think the way the narrative moves from introducing someone from Cana, to a wedding at Cana is a big hint that we are dealing with the same person or his family – Nathanael.
Putting such controversies aside, it was a big wedding and all and sundry, Jesus and the disciples were invited, the wine ran out and Mary asks Jesus to do a miracle – much to His exasperation. After Jesus’ mild rebuke Mary backs off and leaves it up to Jesus with the immortal words: “Whatever He says to you, do it.” Thus leaving it open for Jesus to do anything at all.
What did Jesus mean by “My time has not yet come” – probably that it was not yet time for His Messiah-ship to be made plain through signs and wonders. Miracles of provision such as that of the five thousand and here with the wine have a huge impact and can attract “rice Christians” that follow for an easy way to have a full stomach. Jesus did not want those sort of followers at this stage, when He was seeking out His core disciples.
Mary’s statement is good advice for all Christians: “Whatever Jesus says to you - do it.” Even if that is going to the mission field, or marrying a certain person, or taking a certain job – then do it.
As simple as this sound, doing what Jesus says raises a host of questions such as:
1. How do I know it was Jesus?
The voice is probably that of Jesus if it is loving and holy, if it lines up
with Scripture and with your previous experience of the voice of the Holy
Spirit. It is sometimes described as being “clean”, pure, light/positive and
specific. God’s voice is patient and never “hurries” or urges in a “compulsive”
fashion though it may indicate to do something straight away. The mind is left
open, and clear and in a highly aware state. There is often a “ring of truth”
about it.
2. How do I know it was not the Devil or my own flesh or
my own mind?
God protects us from spiritual deception (Luke 11:11-13) and we can soon learn
to tell when it is the Devil (lust, pride, accusation, snares), or the flesh
(sex, money, power, worldly desires) or our own minds (often concerned with our
own goals and importance). The Devil’s voice is often accusing, vague,
confusing, dark, urgent, hasty, impulsive and compulsive and demanding instant
irrational action. The mind is disabled and overpowered.
3. Does Jesus still tell people to do things today?
Yes Jesus still speaks to people today via the Holy Spirit who He has given to us as our Comforter and teacher (see John 14:26, 1 John 2:20,27, Acts chapters 8,10,13:1-3 etc).
If in doubt, TAKE TIME, think clearly, check the Scriptures, seek counsel from a wise spiritual leader – or even a few such people. Never hastily rush into something on the basis of an impression.
God’s leadings often lead to miracles – like the one in Cana or the Ethiopian eunuch. God’s holy nudges can have big consequences such as the time the Lord said to pack a certain black sweater when I went to camp – and it led to the conversion of five young people.
We need to wait in a state of “utter abandonment” on Him saying “Lord have your way, whenever, however.” This is very hard for the natural, logical impatient mind. Yet it is very necessary. We need to let God be God, just as Mary had to let Jesus be Jesus and stop trying to pressure Him. So on “major issues” take the matter to God in prayer then simply carry out your normal daily duties and wait for Jesus to speak.
Write
down your thoughts in a journal. Let
grace infuse you. Don’t harass God and hurry God and get stressed out and
impatient, Daniel had to wait 21 days in a fasting mode to get his answer (see
Daniel 10). Try and remain in that frame of mind that is obedient and supple
and open to grace. Don’t try and twist God’s arm or force Him into a
preconceived notion. Let Him speak – then do exactly what He says.
John 2:6-11
Water Into
Wine
John 2:6-11 MKJV
And there were six stone waterpots there, according to the
purification of the Jews, each containing two or three measures. (7) Jesus said to them, fill the waterpots
with water. And they filled them up to the brim. (8) And He said to them, now draw out and carry it to the master
of the feast. And they carried it. (9)
When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water which was made wine (and did
not know where it was from, but the servants who drew the water knew), the
master of the feast called the bridegroom.
(10) And he said to him, every man at the beginning sets forth good
wine, and when men have drunk well, then that which is worse. You have kept the
good wine until now. (11) This
beginning of miracles Jesus did in Cana of Galilee. And it revealed His glory.
And His disciples believed on Him.
In Australia we have a mournful bush ballad by Slim Dusty called “The Pub With No Beer” - which goes “there is nothing so lonesome and nothing so drear, as to stand at the bar of the pub with no beer” (or something like that). Running out of alcohol is a social disaster – especially on a festive occasion. It is not life threatening but it robs the joy from the occasion. Jesus enters into this wedding crisis simply to bring joy when everything was “lonesome and drear”.
This miracle is celebrated as part of the “Feast of Epiphany” (around January 6th) in the traditional church calendar and was in the news recently when some stone waterpots similar to these were discovered at one of the likely locations of Cana of Galilee.
The stone waterpots did
not absorb their contents like clay pots did so there was no chance of
contamination or mixing, thus they were ritually clean and used for
purification. Their actual volume is uncertain but was between 12-25 gallons
each. About the same as a “beer keg” I believe! So we can think of this as 6
beer kegs of wine. That is a LOT by anyone’s counting and to the wine steward
it was “good wine”, which should not be surprising for Jesus did ‘all things
well
The point of the miracle
at Cana is that Jesus began to exercise His powers and did so in beautiful and
good ways that caused people to believe. This is Jesus showing His glory!
(Verse 11)
Jesus did not show His
glory by arriving in a gold carriage with three hundred bodyguards. Rather He
showed His glory by providing the drinks at a poor man’s wedding and saving the
face and the honor of an average Galilean peasant. Jesus did not come to be
admired in pomp and circumstance, or to be served; rather He came to serve and
to give His life as a ransom for many.
Matthew 20:25-28 MKJV But Jesus called them and said, You know that the rulers of the nations exercise dominion over them, and they who are great exercise authority over them. (26) However, it shall not be so among you. But whoever desires to be great among you, let him be your servant. (27) And whoever desires to be chief among you, let him be your servant; (28) even as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.
If
Jesus is interested in the problems of a humble Galilean peasant wedding then
He is interested in our problems as well. If Jesus “bothers” with Samaritans
and lepers, then He will “bother” with us as well. If Jesus wants joy at a wedding
in Cana then He wants joy everywhere. Jesus is not a party-pooping Pharisee but
a giver of the good and abundant life!
The wedding at Cana puts the lie to the central notions of that grim and joyless and serious bondage that is religious conformity. Jesus did not declare His glory at the wedding by reciting the book of Jeremiah from memory or by delivering a sermon. He showed His glory by miraculously providing the drinks!
Christianity
that is strained, serious, bug-eyed and joyless is “off’. Something has gone
very wrong if joy and fun and peace and kindness and warmth are absent.
We
often see Jesus attending parties in the gospel, to the extent that He was even
accused of being a glutton and a drunkard.
Matthew 11:18-19 MKJV
For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He has a
demon. (19) The Son of Man came eating
and drinking, and they say, Behold a man who is a glutton and a winebibber, a
friend of tax collectors and sinners. But her children justified wisdom.
[In this context “eating” = eating meat, and “drinking” = drinking wine, thus Jesus was not a vegetarian or a teetotaler – though John the Baptist was, due to his Nazarite vow (Luke 1:15).]
Jesus miraculously brought joy into humble ordinary circumstances and thus declared His glory. In doing so He also declared the nature of His New Covenant and the end of strenuous, joyless, conformity to religious expectations.
There are many lessons and analogies here as well such as:
- John the Baptist came with the water
of repentance, but Jesus comes with New Wine of the Holy Spirit.
- To experience God’s grace we need to be obedient and “fill the waterpots” first.
- Jesus provides the best; God’s provisions partake of His excellence.
- Jesus is the giver of joy and our social situations are important to Him.
- Jesus does not just do “religious stuff” He can do very ordinary things as well that help people to live well.
John
2:12-17
The Cleansing
of the Temple
John 2:12-17 MKJV
After this He went down to Capernaum, He and His mother and His
brothers and His disciples. And they did not stay there many days. (13) And the Passover of the Jews was near,
and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. (14) And
He found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the moneychangers
sitting. (15) And when He had made a
scourge of small cords, He drove them all out of the temple, also the sheep and
the oxen. And He poured out the moneychangers' money and overthrew the tables. (16) And He said to those who sold doves,
Take these things away from here. Do not make My Father's house a house of
merchandise. (17) And His disciples
remembered that it was written, "The zeal of Your house has eaten Me
up."
“Take these things away from here. Do not make My Father's house a house of merchandise.” The New Testament makes clear that we cannot server both God and Mammon (Matt 6:24) and godliness is not a matter of “much gain” in the financial sense (1 Timothy 6:5-10).
The commands of Jesus are very anti-materialistic “Do not worry about what you shall eat or drink.” “Do not store up treasure on earth” “You cannot serve both God and Mammon” “Beware of all kinds of greed” and so on. No materialistic person can fully enjoy the Kingdom of God. In fact materialism is flat-out disobedience.
The traders in the Temple were opportunists, using the fact that people from out of town could not readily bring a bull or a sheep with them to worship, so they sold often diseased animals (see Malachi 1) at outrageous prices for sacrifices. The corruption it introduced defiled the priesthood and especially the High Priests whose greed was so rampant that they would send out armed gangs to collect tithes by force – especially from the Greek-speaking Jews.
The Temple had become the most greedy, dishonest and corrupt place in all of Israel – and Jesus had to cleanse it, but He did so gently but firmly, with a whip of small cords that did nothing more than sting. It was probably His moral force that really carried the day.
Christians are to be zealous for the things of God and should protect them from defilement and commercialization. And they are to act with scrupulous honesty when dealing with finances in the Kingdom of God. Unfortunately embezzlement by church officials is very common and according to one source exceeds $16 billion – (yes billion with a “b”) per year.
Not only does such embezzlement of church funds hinder the work of God, it also defiles those involved in it and brings disrepute on the name of the Lord. God’s view of Christian financial dishonesty and lying can be seen in the case of Ananias and Sapphira who were struck dead (Acts 5:1-11). Christians involved in such financial dishonesty should repent, confess and restore the funds.
On a deeper level the Temple can be taken as a symbol of the Inner Temple of the Christian – the spirit. Because God the Holy Spirit dwells in us and is one with the Christians spirit (1 Corinthians 6;17) we are not to defile our spirit through greed, which is idolatry (Ephesians 5:3-5) or through immorality (1 Corinthians 6:19).
God wants us to be a “house of prayer” inwardly and to honor God in our deepest thoughts. However materialism sets up a rival temple to Mammon and is idolatrous and Jesus will scourge and discipline you until you repent of it (Hebrews 12).
Materialism in the heart often appears as envy or as a questioning of the justice of God, which we expect to be delivered in material form e.g. “why is that pastor driving a brand new car while I drive an old bomb when my theology is better”. As the parable of the laborers makes clear we are not to envy another person because God has been generous to them. (Matthew 20:1-16)
Our spirit is not to be a “house of merchandise’, an inner world of wheeling and dealing and trading and unethical opportunism, rather it should be a holy place of love and purity where the things of God receive priority.
The key to this is the same as it was for Jesus “zeal for My Father’s house”. If we are passionate about God and His honor then we will readily remove these spiritual obstacles. Zeal is spiritual energy for spiritual things. It is not just for missionaries and new Christians but is to be a characteristic of all Christians (Galatians 4:18, Titus 2:14, 1 Corinthians 12:31, Revelation 3:19) In the Revelation reference zeal is the correct antidote to the Laodecian’s lukewarm and materialistic faith.
Progress in life is not
measured in cars and houses and lands and titles or by dollars in the bank.
Progress in life is simply progress in Christ.
For many of us there is
a need to repent, and to be holy and cleanse ourselves from all materialistic
greed, covetousness and envy and to develop a true zeal for the things of God
in that holy place, which is our spirit.
John
2:18-22
The True
Sanctuary
John 2:18-22 MKJV Then
the Jews answered and said to Him, What sign do you show us, since you do these
things? (19) Jesus answered and said to
them, Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up. (20) Then the Jews said, this temple was
forty-six years building, and will you rear it up in three days? (21) But He spoke of the temple of His
body. (22) Therefore when He had risen
from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this to them, and they
believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had said.
I have a sneaking
suspicion that when the Temple is rebuilt – it will be done in three days! That
aside, the clear reference of this passage is to the resurrection and to the
divinity of Christ and to His relationship to his body.
Jesus’ body was very
important to God. God made sure that Christ was conceived of a virgin, and that
no bone of His body was broken, and God raised Christ’s body from the dead and
also made Jesus ascend physically to Heaven to sit at the right hand of God.
Jesus body is also
important to our salvation - His blood was poured out for our sins and His rent
flesh opened the way to Heaven.
This tremendous
importance of the physical human flesh of Jesus is truly startling. It says the
body is redeemable, and resurrect-able and confirms what Genesis implies – that
our flesh was always made to be dwelling place of God. It is a huge slap in the
face to Gnosticism and to the idea of human flesh as evil and to the notion
that all true spirituality is wholly mental and ethereal.
Hebrews
gives us a big clue when it equates the flesh of Christ with the curtain of the
Temple: Hebrews 10:20 HCSB By the
new and living way that He has inaugurated for us, through the curtain (that
is, His flesh);
Hebrews
also tells us three more important things about the flesh of Christ:
The incarnation was necessary to defeat Satan:
Hebrews 2:14-15 HCSB Now since the
children have flesh and blood in common, He also shared in these, so that
through His death He might destroy the one holding the power of death--that is,
the Devil-- (15) and free those who were held in slavery all
their lives by the fear of death.
The body of Jesus was carefully prepared by God to do His will:
Hebrews 10:5-7 HCSB
Therefore, as He was coming into the world, He said: You did not want
sacrifice and offering, but You prepared a body for Me. (6) You did not delight
in whole burnt offerings and sin offerings. (7) Then I said, "See, I have
come--it is written about Me in the volume of the scroll--to do Your will, O
God!"
Christ’s
offering on the cross sanctifies believers once for all time (and does not need
to be repeated):
Hebrews 10:10 HCSB By this will, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all.
Thus the body of Christ is the summation and perfection of the Temple ceremonies, his flesh is the veil into the Holy of Holies and His body and blood satisfy for the atonement of sins and provide a way to God and entrance into newness of life and victorious Christian living.
The blood of Jesus Christ is also a cleaning agent for the human spirit and conscience:
Hebrews 9:13-14 HCSB For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who are defiled, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, (14) how much more will the blood of the Messiah, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse our consciences from dead works to serve the living God?
1 John 1:7 HCSB
But if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have
fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from
all sin.
Christ’s
body was the True Temple and the Temple is where God dwells.
Colossians 2:9 HCSB For
in Him the entire fullness of God's nature dwells bodily,
2 Corinthians 5:19 MKJV
(19) Whereas God was in Christ
reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and
putting the word of reconciliation in us.
Thus God, in His great
holiness, does not refuse to dwell in human flesh. Therefore your body,
cleansed by the blood of Jesus is acceptable as a dwelling place of God. Your
body is also a temple, a sacred site that must be treated reverently:
1 Corinthians 6:17-20 MKJV (17) But he being joined to the Lord is one spirit. (18) Flee fornication. Every sin that a man
does is outside the body, but he who commits fornication sins against his own
body. (19) Or do you not know that your
body is a temple of the Holy Spirit in you, whom you have of God? And you are
not your own, (20) for you are bought
with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are
God's.
So lets sum this up:
1. Christ’s body was a
temple – a place where God dwelt. In fact it was the True Temple.
2. Christ’s flesh was
equivalent to the Temple veil and when His body was pierced the Temple veil was
torn in two from top to bottom.
3. God dwelt in Christ’s
physical body, raised it from the dead and He physically ascended into Heaven
and the Son of God still dwells physically in a resurrected body as the
fullness of Godhead in bodily form (Colossians 2:9).
4. Thus the human body is
not intrinsically evil but can be redeemed, resurrected, transformed and
brought to heaven. In fact the human body is supposed to be the dwelling place
of God.
5. Your body is a temple of
the Holy Spirit, a sacred site, to be treated with reverence and not to be
defiled through sexual immorality.
John
2:23-25
The Aloofness
of Jesus
John 2:23-25 MKJV
And as He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, at the feast, many
believed in His name when they saw the miracles which He did. (24) But Jesus did not commit Himself to
them, because He knew all (25) and did
not need that anyone should testify of man. For He knew what was in man.
Jesus is aloof from the
mass of the people at the Passover, they believed in Jesus but Jesus did not
believe in them – because He knew they would crucify Him in the end. Thus Jesus
tells us not to trust in unregenerate human nature, it will always let us down.
Jesus knew what was in fallen humanity so fully and so completely that He did not need anyone to tell Him about human nature - because He “knew all”. And what did He say is inside us prior to Christ? It is not a pretty picture:
Mark 7:20-23 MKJV And He
said, That which comes out of the man is what defiles the man. (21) For from within, out of the heart of
men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, (22) thefts, covetousness, wickedness,
deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: (23) All these evil things pass out from
inside and defile the man.
Jeremiah 17:9 MKJV The heart is deceitful above all things, and
desperately wicked; who can know it?
Ecclesiastes 9:3 HCSB
This is an evil in all that is done under the sun: there is one fate for
everyone. In addition, the hearts of people are full of evil, and madness is in
their hearts while they live--after that they go to the dead.
The
average “Joe Smith” is thoroughly self-centered and runs their life inwardly
writing a story with themselves as the center of all things – with the selfish
trinity of “I myself and me” starring as mini-gods and super-heroes.
Now,
even in the Old Testament there is also an opposing picture – that of the
renewed heart, the faithful heart, the heart after God and so on, but it is a
much rarer picture.
Non-Christians
may do many good things and even approve of spiritual things, however it is
woven into their self-congratulating story. Repentance is giving up one’s
self-deceit and sin and madness and folly and becoming God-congratulating
instead.
What
goes on in our heads is not harmless. The fantasies of money, sex or power, the
plots of revenge, the desire to kill, the envy of the rich and famous, and the
scheming to attain that which is not rightfully ours, the love of comfort and
luxury and the careless disregard of others, elitism, pride, superiority,
covetousness, these all are things far from the truth of the gospel.
Our inner world is not serene and consistent – in fact it is
a right bird’s nest of beliefs we have picked up over the years, of desires and
plans and vows and opinions that the Bible calls “the thoughts and intents of
the heart”. Along with our good intentions are some bad intentions and angry
intentions and so forth. Most people can happily have one belief system on
Sunday and another at work on Monday morning.
The ability to operate in two contradictory belief systems
is what James calls “double-mindedness”. (James 1:5-8) This
double-mindedness is always rebuked by the prophets from Joshua's "choose
which day who you will serve" (Joshua 24:15) to Elijah's "how long
will you falter between two opinions" (1Kings 18:21) to Jesus and
"you cannot serve God and Mammon" (Matthew 6:21-24) to James and his
exhortations against double-mindedness and worldliness. (James 1:5-8; 4:1-7).
Jesus knew
all this and still loved us! Jesus knew about our most disgusting, vile, mean
and covetous and treacherous thoughts and still died for us! Jesus did not say
because you deserve I would be kind to you! No, he said because I know your
need of a Savior I will die for you!
Jesus knows
all your stuff! He knows the websites
you visit, the foolishness you think, the fantasies you have, and the dreams
that fill your mind. He still loves you just as you are but He sure wants to
clean up the junk that is in your head and in your heart. The article I out at
the start of today’s devotional can really help you with that as can the entire
Biblical EQ ebook you can download at http://www.aibi.ph/ebooks/ (it is free).
The Holy
Spirit wants to get into the closet and throw out the non-God belief system/s
that are there. He will throw out materialism, he will jettison all
pornography, and He will rewire your ambitions and rework your ideas of success
and of leadership to more biblical models.
If you want
God to trust you then you have to allow Him to clean up your inner world. Jesus
stood aloof from the unregenerate human heart but He is close to those whose
hearts are purified by the blood of Christ – for the pure in heart shall see
and behold God. (Matthew 5:8)
John
3:1-8
Born-Again Of The Spirit
John 3:1-8 HCSB There was a man from the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. (2) This man came to Him at night and said, "Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher, for no one could perform these signs You do unless God were with him." (3) Jesus replied, "I assure you: Unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." (4) "But how can anyone be born when he is old?" Nicodemus asked Him. "Can he enter his mother's womb a second time and be born?" (5) Jesus answered, "I assure you: Unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. (6) Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit. (7) Do not be amazed that I told you that you must be born again. (8) The wind blows where it pleases, and you hear its sound, but you don't know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."
Nicodemus, the “teacher
of all Israel” realized that he did not have what Jesus had and that the
spirituality of Jesus was of a kind totally other to all Nicodemus’ devotion,
to all his book learning, and to all his discipline and rigor. The miracles
were astonishing and the teaching was deep. This was clearly “something else”
and it was good. Nicodemus was a human being but Jesus was a human being who
was also a spiritual being.
Nicodemus wants some
deep personal teaching from Jesus. He comes humbly, though secretly, and admits
that He sees Jesus as being from God. Nicodemus is clearly there to learn and
not to argue. So Jesus immediately goes for a mind-stretching concept for his
talented but very literal (Pharisee) pupil – the idea of being “born-again”.
Nicodemus protests at
the concept and the Master-Pupil Socratic dialogue begins. Jesus makes it very
clear that flesh and spirit are entirely different levels of being: “Whatever
is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit.”
The Kingdom of God is
spiritual so to dwell in it Nicodemus needs to be born into the spiritual level
of existence: "I assure you:
Unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."
He even repeats it
turning it around and adding extra meaning: "I assure you: Unless someone
is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” The ‘water and Spirit addition indicating
that is not only water baptism as a ritual that saves, but it must be
accompanied by real spiritual transformation that comes from true repentance
and grace received through faith.
So we are not Christians
by joining a club or listening to Christian music or wearing a Christian
T-Shirt. You cannot join Christianity the same way you can join a golf club!
You have to actually experience a deep transformational inner moral and
spiritual change that makes you an eternal creature made in the image of Jesus
Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). The caterpillar must become a butterfly before it
can join the flying school!
Now being “born-again”’
has, in some circles been equated with “had a warm fuzzy spiritual experience”.
This notion does not square with Scripture. Being born-again is a moral and
spiritual experience, which may or may not be emotional. There is no mention of
Nicodemus doing handstands!
However we can expect born-again folk to be quite puzzling and a bit different: “The wind blows where it pleases, and you hear its sound, but you don't know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."
Spiritual people operate on another plane of existence. The apostles are good examples of this – traveling the Roman world and following God’s leadings, but always profitably and not haphazardly.
The apostle may seem quite bizarre when compared to the trader or the politician but they are working God’s plan with a keen vision for God’s glory. Sometimes spiritual folk ignore what seems like a “big opportunity” to focus on a single person such as the Ethiopian eunuch, or they stay with an outcast on the edge of town like Simon the Tanner. Or like Jesus they seem to wait until its too late and Lazarus has passed away – only to bring him up from the grave.
Born-again folk may be misunderstood, or even be accused of fanaticism; however being born-again is the only way into the Kingdom of God. To be born-again you must be willing to let go of living merely on the earthly human plane of your own will and ideas and notions and desire a moral and spiritual existence as a God-indwelt human. You must realize that no matter how smart and moral and spiritual you are - you “just don’t have it” in yourself, that you are missing something important and that you need whatever it is that Jesus has got. That is the point that Nicodemus came to – and that is the point you need to come to as well.
John 3:9-18
Everlasting
Life
John 3:9-18 MKJV
Nicodemus answered and said to Him, How can these things be? (10) Jesus answered and said to him, Are you
the teacher of Israel and do not know these things? (11) Truly, truly, I say to you, We speak what we know and
testify what we have seen. And you do not receive our witness. (12) If I have told you earthly things and
you do not believe, how shall you believe if I tell you heavenly things? (13) And no one has ascended up to Heaven
except He who came down from Heaven, the Son of Man who is in Heaven. (14) But even as Moses lifted up the serpent
in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, (15) so that whosoever believes in Him
should not perish, but have everlasting life.
(16) For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that
whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. (17) For God did not send His Son into the
world to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through
Him. (18) He who believes on Him is not
condemned, but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not
believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God.
Nicodemus
is perplexed by the new birth. So Jesus explains that Heaven and Earth are only
connected via the “Son of Man who is in Heaven” (verse 13). Jesus is the
connection because He can descend from Heaven, and He can ascend into Heaven,
and He is in fact always “in Heaven” and the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand
wherever Jesus is. So Jesus is the God-Man, who is at home both on earth and in
heaven.
Jesus
alone of all human beings possessed this dual quality so Jesus alone is able to
speak with authority about spiritual things and answer the question of
Nicodemus. Jesus is able to testify about Heavenly things because He has been
there and seen them: Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak what we know and
testify what we have seen. And you do not receive our witness. (12) If I have told you earthly things and
you do not believe, how shall you believe if I tell you heavenly things?
Jesus
is unique - there are no other “avatars” or “gurus” who have the same God-Man
quality: “And no one
has ascended up to Heaven except He who came down from Heaven, the Son of Man
who is in Heaven.”
Because Jesus is unique
in this way He is the sole source of salvation. Jesus is the way, the truth and
the life and no one can come to the Father except via Him (John 14:6) and there
is no other name under Heaven by which men must be saved. (Acts 4:12)
Since He is the only
God-Man, the only “begotten Son” of God, the only bridge between earth and
heaven then it is Jesus who must do the work of salvation: “But even
as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man
be lifted up, (15) so that whosoever
believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
On the
cross Jesus was literally “lifted up between Heaven and earth” to be an
intermediary, and to atone for sin. Jesus did this to open a way for believers
to possess eternal life. God sent Jesus into the world to help it to connect to Heaven, and
to bring believers into the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus is only mediator between
God and Man – Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:5) and He gives us eternal life through
faith in His Name.
The following verses are
among the best known in Scripture: (16) For God so loved the world that He
gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but
have everlasting life. (17) For God did
not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world
might be saved through Him.
That they may not perish - those outside of
Heaven perish, because only Heaven is truly eternal. Outside of Heaven
everything simply decays and perishes forever.
If you think about it
there are only two alternatives to eternal life. They are: a) something that is
eternal – but which is not “life”, that is eternal death or b) to be life but
not be eternal, that is to have a temporary life in some way. So the three
options are eternal life, eternal death, or temporary life. Both the latter
options can be classified as “perishing”.
They are truly dreadful alternatives.
God displays His love in
sending His only-begotten Son to die on the cross so that we might be spared
from these truly dreadful alternatives and be saved. God wants us with Him, in
Heaven, sharing His eternal life.
Because humanity is
naturally disconnected from Heaven it is “condemned already” – that is humanity
is naturally outside the realm where grace operates in eternal and beautiful
ways. If you are outside of grace - then you are in judgment; and given that we
are all sinners that means humanity is condemned already. Jesus put it this
way: He who believes on Him is not condemned, but he who does not believe is
condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only-begotten
Son of God.
Believing removes us from condemnation, connects
us to Heaven and we receive grace and enter into eternal life. In fact we
immediately become citizens of Heaven (Philippians 3:20) and are seated with
Christ in the heavenly places. Ephesians 2:6 HCSB He also raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the
heavens, in Christ Jesus,
“He who believes on
Him is not condemned, but he who does not believe is condemned already,” There is no condemnation for those that are in
Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1) so God is always benevolent and good toward you
though He may chastise you from time to time (Hebrews 12:5-13). But for those
who choose not to believe, the future is bleak.
John
3:19-21
Reactions To
The Light
John 3:19-21 HCSB "This,
then, is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved
darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. (20) For everyone
who practices wicked things hates the light and avoids it, so that his deeds
may not be exposed. (21) But anyone who lives by the truth comes to the light,
so that his works may be shown to be accomplished by God."
The light
has two possible reactions: fear and scurrying away like cockroaches, or
attraction to the light - like moths.
Evil people
run from the light of God, they dwell in moral darkness, extinguishing even the
light of conscience, and sometimes they even dwell in physical darkness as
well, in graveyards and dim back alleys. “For
everyone who practices wicked things hates the light and avoids it, so that his
deeds may not be exposed.”
Evil
reacts against exposure because exposure could bring judgment. Exposure could
face them up to themselves, to their shame and to their punishment and to what
they have done – which they hide even from themselves.
But quite
ordinary people also avoid God’s light as well because they do not want to
change. They do not want to be probed by God. They do not want certain matters
brought up or certain attitudes changed, and they fear pastors and counsellors
and all those who ask awkward questions about the state of their souls.
Living by
the truth is very hard. It takes real courage to come into the light and talk
face-to-face with the God who does not condemn us. There are two bible verses
that are very important in this regard:
Romans 8:1-2 HCSB
Therefore, no condemnation now exists for those in Christ Jesus, (2) because the Spirit's law of life in
Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.
1 John 4:16-18 HCSB
And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.
God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in
him. (17) In this, love is perfected
with us so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; for we are as He
is in this world. (18) There is no fear
in love; instead, perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves
punishment. So the one who fears has not reached perfection in love.
Romans 8:1,2 tells us that we are without condemnation if we are in Christ and 1 John 4;16-18 tells us that God is fundamentally love and that we do not need to be terrified that He will punish us on the day of judgment.
So when we face a
miniature “Day of Judgment’ and look into our life and actions we can do so
honestly, without fear of condemnation or punishment. We can look at our mess
dispassionately as a surgeon looks at an open wound. We can let God deal with
it, without feeling condemned, any more that we would by dealing with a medical
problem.
The ability to
confidently come into God’s light and let Him deal with our sin, and folly and
pride and waywardness is at the very heart of sanctification:
1 John 1:4-10 HCSB
We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. (5) Now this is the message we have heard
from Him and declare to you: God is light, and there is absolutely no darkness
in Him. (6) If we say, "We have
fellowship with Him," and walk in darkness, we are lying and are not
practicing the truth. (7) But if we
walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one
another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. (8) If we say, "We have no sin,"
we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. (9) If we confess our sins, He is faithful
and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness. (10) If we say,
"We have not sinned," we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.
Denial “makes God a
liar”, so covering up sin is a serious sin itself. We have to be open with God; we cannot have
fellowship with Him, and run away from being open and honest with Him about our
faults. We need to be honest with Him just as we would be honest with a good
psychiatrist who was trying to cure us. If we ‘fess up – that is confess our
sins, in an open and light-filled relationship with God, we do not condemned as
we feared, instead we get the forgiveness and cleansing we truly need.
As we do this it becomes
obvious that God is changing us. Our deeds are no longer our deeds - but become
the deeds of God working in us. Our ministry becomes “wrought by God”. We stop
battling to hold on to a crucified and dying old nature, instead we eagerly
embrace the new nature, and the indwelling Christ.
In the light we are
eager to say “these are not my works – they are the works of Jesus in me” and
“these are not my fruits, they are the fruits of the Holy Spirit in my life”.
We become connected to the vine and we abide in it and we bear much fruit.
Honesty before God keeps us in the light and connected to the vine so do not
fear little flock for God is gentle with the contrite in heart!
Psalms 34:18 MKJV Jehovah is near to the
broken-hearted; and saves those who are of a contrite spirit.
Psalms 51:17 MKJV The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.
Isaiah 57:15-18 MKJV For
so says the high and lofty One who inhabits eternity; whose name is Holy; I
dwell in the high and holy place, even with the contrite and humble spirit, to
revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite
ones. (16) For I will not contend
forever, nor will I be always angry; for the spirit should fail before Me, and
the souls I have made. (17) For the
iniquity of his covetousness I was angry and struck him; I hid Myself, and was
angry, and he went on turning away in the way of his heart. (18) I have seen his ways, and will heal
him. I will also lead him, and restore comforts to him and to his mourners.
Isaiah 66:2 MKJV
For all those My hand has made, and all those exist, says Jehovah. But
to this one I will look, to the afflicted and contrite spirit, and the one who
trembles at My Word.
John
3:22-30
He Must Increase, But I Must Decrease
John 3:22-30 MKJV After
these things Jesus and His disciples came into the land of Judea. And He stayed
there with them and baptized. (23) And
John was also baptizing in Enon near Salim, because there was much water there.
And they came and were baptized. (24)
For John had not yet been cast into prison.
(25) Then a question from John's disciples arose with the Jews about
purification. (26) And they came to
John and said to him, Rabbi, He who was with you beyond Jordan, to whom you
bore witness, behold, He baptizes, and all come to Him! (27) And John answered and said, A man can
receive nothing unless it is given to him from Heaven. (28) You yourselves bear witness to me that
I said, I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before Him. (29) He who has the bride is the bridegroom,
but the friend of the bridegroom who stands and hears him rejoices greatly
because of the bridegroom's voice. Then my joy is fulfilled. (30) He must increase, but I must decrease.
Ministry transition is
tough. When missionaries hand over to the new national church, or a pastor
retires and hands over to a successor or when the ministry moves to a new CEO –
it is tough. It is easy enough to say that Jesus must increase and I must
decrease – lets hope that resolution came at conversion or soon after! But its
tough to say Jim or Jane or Frederick must increase and I must decrease. It is
difficult to let your success and your disciples go to another. But it is a
sign of great maturity when it is done properly.
John the Baptist read
the anointing on Jesus and knew that Jesus was the greater man. In fact that he
was unworthy to untie the latch of Jesus’ sandal. He knew that the sheep would
follow the leader that most met their needs and Jesus could meet them in a far
deeper way than he could.
John the Baptist
mentally positioned himself correctly as “the friend of the bridegroom” – this
eased the transition, retained some significance and dignity, and allowed him
to let Jesus take His proper starring role as the Messiah.
John stands in complete
contrast to all-too-common ecclesiastical envy and jealousy. He does nor call
Jesus a “sheep-stealer’ but rejoices in His success. John actually had his joy
“fulfilled” by seeing Jesus’ success. John was more concerned about being a
good player on God’s Team than with his individual success.
Key
to this is a phrase tucked away in the middle of today’s passage: ”A man can
receive nothing unless it is given to him from Heaven.” This is a common gospel
thought and Jesus even says something like it to Pontius Pilate: John 19:11
MKJV Jesus answered, You could have no
authority against Me unless it were given to you from above. Therefore he who
delivered Me to you has the greater sin.
In other words Heaven determines the course of our lives
and our ministries, our level of success and our level of authority. Paul even
says that of the human authorities in Rome: Romans 13:1 MKJV Let every soul be subject to the higher
authorities. For there is no authority but of God; the authorities that exist
are ordained by God.
The
pastor down the road gets his ministry and power and authority and larger
congregation – from God. Therefore envy, jealousy and backbiting are utterly
fleshly and inappropriate.
Galatians 5:15 MKJV
But if you bite and devour one another, take heed that you are not
consumed by one another.
Our own
sense of fairness tells us that it is wrong for so-and-so to be better off than
I am. But underneath this sense of fairness lurk other thing such as
bitterness, envy and jealousy – sins that held Simon magus had when he tried to
buy the anointing of the apostles (Acts 8).
Freedom
from envy is a sign of spiritual greatness. In early 1997 my website Eternity
Online Magazine was doing well and I began to see 1 million readers a week –
online and offline, through article reprints in print publications and on radio
etc. When I (perhaps foolishly) shared this only one other pastor congratulated
me on this – the rest looked askance. That man who rejoiced and said “that is
the best thing I have heard in a long while” was a true Christian gentleman.
Let us be
team players on God’s team, lets work together and rejoice in one another’s
success as coming from God. Lets not envy what God in His goodness gives to
another.
Ministry
can seem insignificant. So we cling to status symbols – titles, church
attendance numbers, offerings, TV appearances, books, disciples and diplomas to
boost our feelings. When these are threatened what little fragile status we
have in this world seems to be taken away and carnal reactions may result.
The thing
is – if we survive the test, we may well be rewarded as a good and faithful
servant. Remember God wants to bless you!
John
3:31-36
He Who Comes From Above Is Above All
John 3:31-36 MKJV He who comes from above is
above all; he who is from the earth is earthly and speaks from the earth. He
who comes from Heaven is above all,
(32) and what He has seen and heard, that He testifies, and no one
receives His testimony. (33) He who has
received His testimony has set his seal to this, that God is true. (34) For He whom God has sent speaks the
Words of God, for God does not give the Spirit by measure. (35) The Father loves the Son and has given
all things into His hand. (36) He who
believes on the Son has everlasting life, and he who does not believe the Son
shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides upon him.
The
testimony of Jesus is the testimony of Heaven and when someone believes it they
are thereby testifying that God is true. We have to believe in the God that is revealed
in Christ.
One of the greatest of all questions is – do you really believe what God says? Do you really believe who God is? Do you trust God? Do you grasp the goodness of God and really believe that He is working all things together for your good? Do you really trust God, not just a god of your imagination but the God that is revealed in Christ?
Yesterday I was writing an article on faith and I ended up defining it thus: True saving faith involves entering into a trusting dialogue with the Creator God as revealed in the person, life and ministry of Jesus Christ so that the character and power and promises of God enter our daily lives and transform them in specific loving, good and hopeful ways including but not limited to, our eternal salvation.
By this I mean that we
need to trust Jesus for our salvation and also for our daily bread, for
spiritual growth, and also for help in time of trouble. The people who Jesus
commended for their faith often believed for something tangible and practical
such as a healed son (the centurion) or a delivered daughter (the
Syrophoenician woman). We have to grab hold of the testimony of Jesus and
really believe it in both its temporal and eternal meanings.
John says that this kind
of faith, the faith that really receives and believes the heavenly testimony of
Jesus, is quite rare: “and what He has seen and heard, that He testifies,
and no one receives His testimony.” Out of the whole Jewish nation of
around 3 million plus (perhaps as many as eight million if the Diaspora is
included) only 120 were gathered in the Upper Room at Pentecost and perhaps
20,000 were involved at the height of the Jerusalem revival. That is still much
less than one percent of the nation.
Jesus did not speak His
own “human” words, rather He spoke “the words of God” given by the Holy Spirit.
“For He whom God has sent speaks the Words of God, for God does not give the
Spirit by measure.”
This phrase “for God
does not give the Spirit by measure” is quite important. Pagans see the
Spirit as a sort of spiritual fluid they can have “more of” or “less of”
whereas Scripture tells us that He is a Divine Person who we relate to. Thus
any word from the Holy Spirit is a word from God.
Those who see Jesus, as simply a prophet must
have great difficulty with the next verse: “The Father loves the Son and has
given all things into His hand.” No prophet is ever portrayed in the same
terms or class as the beloved Son of God who has all Creation committed to His
trust ad care. If all things are given into the hands of Jesus then that
certainly includes the Church and all believers (Colossians 1:15-20) and so the
primary agency taking care of your life is not yourself, your family or even
the government or the angels – but Jesus Christ is your Saviour.
Since God has committed all things to Christ then for those things, their relationship with Christ is the most important thing possible. What we believe about Jesus is critical in the deepest most profound sense imaginable. Our attitude to Jesus – who is responsible for us, determines the attitude of God and His Universe to us. “He who believes on the Son has everlasting life, and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides upon him.”
Everything comes back to
faith, to what we believe. If what we believe is right we live, if what we
believe is wrong we die. If I believe I can fly and so jump off the Empire
State Building my wrong belief will have drastic consequences. If I believe
that I should drive on the left hand side of the road in the USA because that
is the side we drive on in Australia, then my wrong belief may have lethal
consequences. Even if I am just ignorant or mistaken in my wrong belief about
which side of the road to drive on, it doesn’t matter, my wrong belief could
still be deadly.
Everything depends on
what we believe. If we believe the truth we live and if we believe lies we
die – and even ignorant, mistaken or
well-intentioned spiritual beliefs that are incorrect can be deadly.
The thing we must get
right is to trust the God that is revealed in the life and ministry of Jesus
Christ and believing rightly about Him and His goodness, love and power. If we
believe on the Son – we have life and life abundantly. Thus our right belief
leads to a right state of being and to right action and to good consequences.
But if we not believe the Son, then we do not see life and the wrath of God
abides on us. We cannot afford to be ignorant or mistaken about God and about
eternal things because the stakes are so incredibly high.
John
4:1-6
A Weary
Saviour
John 4:1-6 MKJV Therefore when the Lord knew how the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John (2) (though Jesus Himself did not baptize, but His disciples), (3) He left Judea and went away again into Galilee. (4) And it was necessary for Him to go through Samaria, (5) Then He came to a city of Samaria, called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. (6) And Jacob's well was there. Jesus, therefore, being wearied with His journey, sat thus upon the well. It was about the sixth hour.
Jesus reacts to
his popularity (making and baptizing more disciples than John) and to his fame
with society in general (the Pharisees now knew this) by moving away from the
action in Judea and going back up into Galilee. Jesus thus avoids a
full-fledged confrontation with the religious powers of the day. He has more
ministries to do and more things to teach in the peace and quite of Galilee and
he did not want a storm of controversy distracting from His central message of
righteousness through repentance and faith being expressed in love in the
Kingdom of God.
Jesus moves away from
conflict with the Pharisees to a surprising acceptance by the Samaritans – even
though He was a Jew, He was now an outcast Jew, one who was also at war with
the Jerusalem religious establishment as the Samaritans had been for centuries.
Jesus had to travel north to Galilee and could have gone the ‘long way around” as most Jews did but instead chose to go directly through the Samaritan towns and villages that had once been so inhospitable. (Luke 9:52-56)
Luke 9:52-56 MKJV
And He sent messengers before His face. And they went and entered into a
village of the Samaritans to make ready for Him. (53) And they did not receive Him, because His face was going
toward Jerusalem. (54) And seeing, His
disciples James and John said, Lord, do You desire that we command fire to come
down from Heaven and consume them, even as Elijah did? (55) But He turned and rebuked them and
said, You do not know of what spirit you are.
(56) For the Son of Man has not come to destroy men's lives, but to
save. And they went to another village.
(However on this occasion Jesus was traveling away from Jerusalem and so got a much better reception.)
Jesus arrives at a
historically significant site that connects with the patriarchs Jacob and
Joseph and He is weary. Jesus, though God, was human. In fact He often seems to
be tired or to have the disciples taking care of Him. We find Jesus asleep in
the boat as the disciples row hard during the storm for instance. We variously
find Jesus being hungry, thirsty and weary during His ministry. Jesus was human, fully human.
The disciples served
Jesus while Jesus served the world. They were his “minders” going ahead to get
food, untie donkeys, arrange logistics and as advance parties into the Jewish
and Samaritan towns and villages. Thus Jesus relied on others and made Himself
vulnerable to their organizing ability. This is hard for some people to do who
wish to micro-manage every detail themselves. Yet most successful people become
successful because other people want them to be successful. A team of friend
sand supporters who will care for you, pray for you and arrange things for you
is an enormous asset in any ministry.
It is lunchtime (the
sixth hour) and they have probably been walking since early morning, when it is
coolest. It is now time to stop, eat and have a siesta and then start walking
again the late afternoon. As the old song goes “Only mad dogs and Englishmen go
out in the midday sun…” Yet Jesus still works – even though tired He shares His
faith with the Samaritan woman.
It is these ordinary
weary traveling moments when we are at our most human, and often that is when
we connect best with the world around us. Jesus was just a tired man exhausted
by the well, rejected by the Jews, on His way back to Galilee, thirsty, human,
easy for a sinner to relate to. As Paul said, “to the weak I became weak…”
1 Corinthians 9:20-23 MKJV (20) And to the Jews I became as a Jew, so that I might gain the
Jews. To those who are under the Law, I became as under the Law, so that I
might gain those who are under the Law.
(21) To those who are outside Law, I became as outside Law (not being
outside law to God, but under the Law to Christ), so that I might gain those
who are outside Law. (22) To the weak I
became as the weak, so that I might gain the weak. I am made all things to all
men, so that I might by all means save some.
(23) And this I do for the sake of the gospel, so that I might be
partaker of it with you.
When we pretend to be
made of “stainless steel” and hide our vulnerability and discount our humanity
and weakness we lose our connection to a hurting world. Jesus never pretended
to be aloof from humankind, He was real - a hungry, thirsty, tired and utterly
transparent Saviour.
John
4:7-15
Living Water
John 4:7-15 MKJV A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, Give me to drink. (8) (For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) (9) Then the woman of Samaria said to Him, How do you, being a Jew, ask a drink of me, who am a woman of Samaria? For the Jews do not associate with Samaritans. (10) Jesus answered and said to her, If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that says to you, Give Me to drink, you would have asked of Him, and He would have given you living water. (11) The woman said to Him, Sir, you have no vessel, and the well is deep. From where then do you have that living water? (12) Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself, and his children and his cattle? (13) Jesus answered and said to her, Whoever drinks of this water shall thirst again, (14) but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst, but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. (15) The woman said to Him, Sir, give me this water, so that I may not thirst nor come here to draw.
The woman of Samaria
strikes me as being “sassy” – strong-headed, and probably attractive, the sort
that could have five husbands that wanted her to start with - and still be so
fiery that they could not put up with her in the end. She does not meekly give
Jesus a drink but answers Him back saying in a backhanded way “you Jews only
talk to us when you want something”.
Yet Jesus, this Jew who talks to her in puzzling ways, soon intrigues
her.
First of all Jesus calls
Himself “the gift of God”. What a term for mortal man to use – but in this case
it was true! Jesus is the gift of God to the world, His gift of Himself, the
fullness of deity in bodily form (Colossians 2:9) and the Son given to Israel
with the government on His shoulder (Isaiah 9:6). The gift of God asks for a
gift of water. Does He ever get it? There is no sign of it! The woman leaves
her waterpot (verse 28) and goes into the city to tell others with no
indication that she ever filled it and gave the Saviour a drink!
Jesus is the gift of God
and from Him we get the gift of living water – the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Mythological speaking Jesus is the true Aquarius – the one who carries the
waterpot and pours out the Spirit on mankind. In John 13 Jesus pours water into
a basin to wash the disciples feet, and in Luke sign of the Passover feast is
to follow a man carrying a pitcher of water – the symbol of Aquarius. Now I am
not advocating Greek mythology but rather saying that Jesus fulfilled a common
cultural motif of His day by being the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.
The gospel fulfills many aspects of culture and God seems to create in every
culture “redemptive analogies” that link to the gospel as Don Richardson shows
in his well-known missions book “Peace Child”.
From Greek culture Jesus moves to Hebrew culture (the Samaritans were a mixture of both with temples to both Zeus and Yahweh) and proves that He is greater than the patriarch Jacob after whom Israel was named:
John 4:12-14 MKJV Are you greater than our father
Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself, and his children and his
cattle? (13) Jesus answered and said to
her, Whoever drinks of this water shall thirst again, (14) but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall
never thirst, but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of
water springing up into everlasting life.
Thus Jesus is the fulfillment of both the Gentile religion and the Jewish religion. He is the solution to having a true and deep spirituality that is both Living water” alive and blessed, and everlasting and eternal. Man ancient stories tell of the tensions between being eternal and being fully alive and the quest not just for eternal life but eternal youth. Jesus is BOTH eternal life and living water. Jesus pours out the Spirit and inaugurates an internal, self-renewing and abundant spiritual life.
The woman says impatiently “give me this water.” taking the whole thing very literally. But we should say the same thing to Jesus “give me this water” in other words “be filled with the Holy Spirit” and with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs (Ephesians 5; 18-20)! We need to daily ask the Lord to fill us with His living water and to bless us with the Holy Spirit in wisdom, love and power.
It is easy to muddle along – or rather “puddle along” in the same small pool of spiritual experience. But we need the overflowing, the streams of living water, the grace of God and the abundant filling of the Holy Spirit. If Jesus is willing to give this living water to the disreputable and sassy Samaritan woman then He may also be willing to give it to you! You see such grace is never earned by personal piety (of which she had little) but rather is poured out on the receptive, the seeking, those who knock and ask and receive by faith! The Samaritan woman was a seeker, full of desire, desire that had taken her into many wrong places but had finally found the right Man and the right desire – living water. This would change her and her whole community,
God wants true worshippers, who are full of desire, yet an ardent desire that is rightly directed towards Him and to spiritual things.
John
4:16-24
In Spirit And
In Truth
John 4:16-24 MKJV
Jesus said to her, Go, call your husband and come here. (17) The woman answered and said, I have no
husband. Jesus said to her, You have well said, I have no husband (18) for you have had five husbands, and he
whom you now have is not your husband. In that you spoke truly. (19) The woman said to Him, Sir, I perceive
that you are a prophet. (20) Our
fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you say that in Jerusalem is the place
where men ought to worship. (21) Jesus
said to her, Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you shall neither
worship the Father in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem. (22) You worship what you do not know; we
know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. (23) But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers
shall worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such to
worship Him. (24) God is a spirit, and
they who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth.
John’s gospel was
written after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD hence Jesus saying: “believe
Me, the hour is coming when you shall neither worship the Father in this
mountain nor yet at Jerusalem” was fulfilled because worship at Jerusalem was
now impossible. Christianity is unlike any other religion in that there is no
special “sacred location” for worship. Christians can worship anywhere, as
Abraham did, as long as they worship “in spirit and in truth”. The Samaritan
vs. Jewish question -about which mountain to worship on, is thus rendered null
and void by the cross.
But what
does it mean to worship “in spirit and in truth” and why does God seek these
kinds of people to worship Him?
Jesus
explains the first part by saying “God is Spirit”, the Greek is quite ambiguous
at this point and is literally “Spirit the God” (pneuma o Theos) which can be
translated as “Spirit is God” or “God is Spirit”, “God is a spirit” is a poor
but common translation. The construction is the same as that used in the
sayings God is light, and God is love. (1 John 1:5 and 1 John 4:8). In other
words, God’s essence is that of a spiritual being and so worship must be “in
the Spirit”.
Firstly,
the spirit is the core part of our humanity that connects with eternity. To
worship in the Spirit is to worship with the core part of our being, not just
with our mind, our body or our emotions those these may be also included. It is
also to worship in the Holy Spirit, empowered by the Spirit who is given to us
in Christ Jesus. Paul goes so far as to say that Christians are “one spirit”
with God. (1 Corinthians 6:17) This is not necessarily an extreme experience or
an ecstatic experience but it is a deep and true experience. True worship has
spiritual depth to it.
Secondly,
true worshippers worship in truth. This means that there is content, truth
content, and theological content, to their worship. All the main NT prayers,
and especially from Pentecost onwards, are profoundly theological. There is an
adoration of God as Father; there is a sense of the coming Kingdom and deep and
profound motifs about the nature of the church, the Holy Spirit and believers.
Here is one of the earliest NT prayers:
Acts 4:24-31 MKJV
And having heard, they lifted up their voice to God with one accord and
said, Lord, You are the God who made the heaven and earth, and the sea, and all
that is in them; (25) who by the mouth
of Your servant David has said, "Why did the nations rage and the people
imagine vain things? (26) The kings of
the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and
against His Christ." (27) For
truly, against Your holy child Jesus, whom You have anointed, both Herod and
Pontius Pilate, with the nations, and the people of Israel, were gathered
together (28) in order to do whatever
Your hand and Your counsel determined before to be done. (29) And now, Lord, behold their threatening,
and grant to Your servants that with all boldness they may speak Your
Word, (30) by stretching forth of Your
hand for healing, and miracles, and wonders may be done by the name of Your
holy child Jesus. (31) And when they
had prayed, the place where they were assembled was shaken. And they were all
filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the Word of God with boldness.
Note the God-centered use of Scripture and the concern for the Kingdom and the lack of concern for themselves despite persecution. In fact despite the fiery trials of the early church there are a complete lack of prayers for deliverance from these trials. The prayers of the NT are God-ward and for His glory and their perfection in Christ.
Thus true worship is
neither glib, nor self-centered but is profound, deep, spiritual and
God-centered. The center of worship is God, not man, which is why
seeker-sensitive worship is a contradiction in terms. Yes we should have some
seeker-sensitive church activities - but worship is sensitivity to God, not to
man.
Worship is not about the
music, or about us having a good time or having our needs met for
entertainment. Worship is about giving great glory to God, about entering into
the Spirit and connecting with the profound eternal realities and expressing
them in deep truthful prayers and acts of worship. At Pentecost the Spirit fell
and people heard the 120 “speaking the great things of God” – that is giving
voice to great and worthy statements about God.
While God still accepts
the naïve worship of new Christians we should rapidly progress beyond this to
praying the deep and great things of God and to giving glory to God in the
Spirit. God is seeking people who know and glorify Him, not self-centered and
immature believers who simply want to enjoy themselves on Sunday mornings! Try
this test – ask the average Christian to describe God and see how long or how
deep the answer is. Few Christians possess much in the way of eternal truth
that they can speak about, or glorify God for.
Most of today’s worship
is thoroughly carnal and man-centered. Much thought is given to what people
want and very little thought is given to what God wants. Deep teaching or
profound prayers are eschewed, and in some cases even banned, in case such
“heavy material” turns some off. Yet look at the worship as recorded in the NT
and it is all “heavy” particularly Paul’s prayers. There are no “Prayers of
Jabez” in the NT! The prayers are for the glory of God and the maturation of
believers in Christ. “Hallowed be they name, thy kingdom come, they will be
done..”. God is the chief concern of prayer, not man. Even prayers for the
Church often end with a doxology e.g. Ephesians 3:14-21.
Truth has vanished from
many pulpits and been replaced by man pleasing. In most Christian bookstores it
is even hard to find half a dozen books with an emphasis on requiring
Christians to obey the commands of Christ. The emphasis has gone from producing
saints to producing happy and satisfied church attendees who tithe regularly.
We are close to a great apostasy - and may be even in the midst of one.
God is Spirit and we
must come to the Rock of Ages in spirit and in truth, and we must deal with
eternal, abiding, truth-filled spiritual things. We must worship with our gaze
upon the Throne. We must glory in the great things of God. Does this mean that
we should go back to the Anglican Prayer Book of 1611 or to the more
theological traditions? Not really, but we can learn much from them. It is not
the place (here or Jerusalem) or the form, but the truth-content and the
presence of the Holy Spirit moving deeply amongst us. We do not need to be
stuffy, but we do need to have both depth and truth in our worship.
John
4:25-26
Jesus The
Messiah
John 4:25-26 MKJV
The woman said to Him, I know that Messiah is coming, who is called
Christ. When He has come, He will tell us all things. (26) Jesus said to her, I AM, the One speaking to you.
John 4:25-26 ISV The woman said to him, "I know that the Messiah is
coming" (who is called Christ). "When he comes, he will tell us
everything." (26) Jesus said to
her, "I am he, the one who is speaking to you."
Here Jesus identifies
Himself as the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Saviour of Israel and the Son of
God. Jesus normally was reticent to do so, but with this woman He opens up and
plainly says that He was the Messiah. God frequently grants His most powerful
revelations to the “most unlikely” people.
But what did this
Messiah do? Did He make the woman’s’ life instantly prosperous? Did He wave a
magic wand and take away her shameful domestic situation? In fact the Messiah
came and went and nothing much changed on an external level.
Jesus the Messiah does
not do the things we want a Messiah to do – that is fix all our problems.
In one sense Jesus is a
very disappointing Messiah and we are often left with messy lives even after we
are converted and even after we serve Him faithfully.
I would very much like a
Messiah who would burst into my life and set it straight and make it very
prosperous. I would like to own my own house and have a car and some nice
furniture and be well paid for my ministry, however that has not happened at
any time in my 25 years of living by faith. Jesus has chosen to not be that
sort of a Messiah for me.
Jesus however has been a
Messiah of grace and wisdom and spiritual growth and emotional and at times
physical healing. Jesus has done a deep interior work in my life and
re-constructed things of eternal value.
We tend to see our
problems as being in this world and we want a political and material Messiah.
For a person without a heavenly perspective “money is the answer to everything”
as it says in Ecclesiastes 10:19 (which is deliberately written ironically,
from a perspective that is “under the Sun”, that is without God factored in.)
So we want a financial Messiah and a prosperity gospel because money seems the
answer to all earthly problems.
Unfortunately Jesus
never gave away bars of gold nor did He turn the water wells into oil wells.
So what sort of a
Messiah should we expect? We should expect a Messiah that gives the Living
Water of eternal life; a Messiah that lets us be at odds with this world while
He prepares us for a better world in eternity.
This world cannot
satisfy an eternal being because it is passing away, and we are eternal beings
if we have accepted Christ. A true Messiah will not try to satisfy eternal
beings with temporary trinkets. As much as I think I would be satisfied with a
house and a car and a good salary I must acknowledge that is simply not the case.
A true Messiah will
solve the true problems – problems such as death, resurrection, eternal
meaning, calling, eternal reward and personal significance. He will solve the
problem of being loved and accepted for who we are – and he certainly did that
for the woman at the well.
Preeminently Jesus
solves the problem of true knowledge. “When He has come, He will tell us
all things.” Jesus tells us all things because He tells us everything about
what God is like. Once we know that, then all other knowledge, both spiritual
and temporal falls into place.
Jesus is
more than a rescuer; rather He indicates that we have been rescued by the
Father’s love. “We love because He first loved us”. There is only a Messiah
because the Father willed it so. Therefore God wants us rescued, and is not
willing that any should perish.
Neither is
the Messiah a spirit, or a concept or an ideology. Jesus tells the woman that
the Messiah had flesh and blood when He said,
“ I who speak to you am He.” There He was, sitting by the well,
unassuming, unpretentious, yet obviously someone different, someone who was
able to change her life.
When Jesus
turns up He generally does so in these quiet ways, as an eternal presence in
the midst of the daily routine of drawing water. The woman did nothing
extraordinary to meet the Messiah. He just arrived and met her as she was, as a
sinner in need of a Saviour.
John
4:27-34
True Food
John 4:27-34 MKJV
And upon this His disciples came and marveled that He talked with the
woman. However, no one said, What do You seek, or why do You talk with
her? (28) The woman then left her
waterpot and went into the city and said to the men, (29) Come see a man who told me all things that I ever did. Is
this One not the Christ? (30) And they
went out of the city and came to Him.
(31) In the meantime His disciples were asking Him, saying, Master,
eat. (32) But He said to them, I have
food to eat which you do not know. (33)
Therefore the disciples said to one another, No one brought Him anything to eat? (34) Jesus said to them, My food is to do
the will of Him who sent Me and to finish His work.
The
disciples see everything with human eyes – a disreputable woman, a questionable
situation, and a lack of food. But Jesus sees with divine eyes – a new believer,
a spiritual harvest and the food of doing God’s will.
Spiritual
opportunities can sometimes look like social catastrophes. Sharing the gospel
with a drunk or with a conspicuous sinner can seem inappropriate, yet it can
lead to many others following suit. The Samaritan woman became the evangelist
for her whole village.
There are
two parts to Jesus’ final comment here (a) to do the will of Him who sent Me
and (b) to finish His work. This sustained Jesus because he lived for the
Father’s approval. It is easy to rush out to ‘do God’s will” but much harder to
“finish” it. It is easy to go for a few weeks to the mission field but much
harder to do twenty or more years there. But if we really want to please God
then we have to finish the job that He has given us to do.
Ephesians 2:10 MKJV
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to good works, which
God has before ordained that we should walk in them.
God has “before
ordained” certain good works that we are to walk in as new creations in Christ
Jesus and when we do these good works we will know the true satisfaction that
is “true food” for the soul.
Often these works appear
to be “just common sense” like being honest, or putting up with relatives or
loving one’s husband or caring for one’s wife. Good works are often the least
spectacular things – like Dorcas who made garments for the widows (Acts
9:36-41). Good works are seldom “on stage” things, done down the front of a
large auditorium (though they can be) more commonly they are humble works of
grace.
Whatever good works God
has assigned to us we should complete them and not leave them half done.
Children should be fully and properly raised in the fear of the Lord, people
should be “prayed through”, even the church lawn should be mown in a holy and
fitting manner.
Some of us get tasks of
great sacrifice and tedium – missionary work in hard places, looking after aged
relatives, bearing with an impatient husband, or caring for a sick child. All
these good works have to be completed and done “as unto the Lord” despite many
discouragements.
Now indeed there may
come a time to “dust off one’s feet” and move on from the unresponsive area, or
to give up a job that is trying and find another, but only if it is accompanied
by the peace of God and not as a result of defeatism and discouragement.
Jesus looked past how
own social needs (respectability) and physical needs (tiredness, thirst and
hunger) to do the Father’s will and to reap a spiritual harvest. We need to be
hungry to do God’s will even if it seems in appropriate and inconvenient. The
greater desire should be to see spiritual results for God, so when the phone
rings late at night with an “inconvenient person” in dire distress we need to
give that our full attention (but not if it is just an attention-seeking
neurotic who can wait till morning).
Our needs can wait when
an urgent Kingdom opportunity presents itself. However we cannot sacrifice
others in the same way. We need to be careful if we disappoint children in
order to meet an urgent Kingdom opportunity. I once turned down a very
prestigious conference in order not to disappoint my wife, who I had been away
from for some time and needed me at home. We have to strike a balance.
The Samaritans were
ready to believe, the fields were “white unto harvest” and Jesus made the most
of it. We need to have a sense that tells us “this is a divine appointment, pay
attention, drop everything, God is at work here and is inviting you to join
in.”
Your true food, your
true-life satisfaction will come when you do God’s will and complete the good
works He has fore ordained for you to do.
John
4:35-38
The Harvest
John 4:35-38 MKJV
Do you not say, It is yet four months, and the harvest comes? Behold,
I say to you, Lift up your eyes and look on the fields, for they are white to
harvest already. (36) And he who reaps
receives wages and gathers fruit to life eternal, so that both he who sows and
he who reaps may rejoice together. (37)
And in this is the saying true, One sows and another reaps. (38) I sent you to reap that on which you
bestowed no labor. Other men labored, and you have entered into their labor.
The Samaritans are
flocking out to see Jesus, an “easy” revival as the woman’s testimony
crystallizes a growing realization that the time for their Messiah had come.
Two illustrations from my studies in Chemistry may help here. The first is a
super-saturated solution in which a single speck of the crystal can precipitate
a shower of crystals. The second is an acid-base titration (where you add acid
to a beaker containing alkali and litmus indicator) when after many drops a
point of sudden change is reached and a single drop turns the solution from
basic to acidic, and the litmus from blue to red. That single bit of crystal
added that causes the crystals to form is just a speck of dust and the single
drop of acid that causes the change is just another drop of acid. Even though
they “cause” great changes they are quite insignificant in themselves. They are
no different to the previous crystals or the previous drops of acid that went
in from the burette.
So it is with evangelism, many laborers add their “drop of acid” to the solution and bit-by-bit they accumulate and change things until one last “drop” of prayer or witness is added and the revival comes. In such cases “One sows and another reaps”.
We labor in fields where many have labored before. Beside me I have Leon Morris’s excellent commentary on John, and a Greek New Testament and Reinecke’s Linguistic Key to the Greek NT and other such books. People much smarter that I have done the hard work and I just turn the pages and read the footnotes. I am a midget standing on the shoulders of giants.
We should
not neglect the great work of the Reformers or the Church Fathers or the great
theologians who have mined God’s Word as best they could and presented us with
much truth for us to then build on.
Jesus built on Moses and
the prophets, Peter built on Christ, as did Paul, Augustine built on Paul,
Luther and Calvin built on Augustine; Wesley built on the Reformers and so on
until today. So when you pick up a work such as Millard Erickson’s Christian
theology is a compilation and condensation of tens of thousands of great minds
prayerfully thinking about God for over two thousand years. But the foundation
for all is Christ.
Thus, with the exception
of pioneer missionaries, it is almost impossible for anyone to point and say
“these are my fruit alone, the result of my labors”. For instance I cannot say
that your spiritual growth is solely the result of reading Eternity-DBS, you
have pastors and friends and disciplers and prayer partners and family members
who may have all had a very significant impact on you. If a particular
devotional ministers to you powerfully it is just “another drop of grace” that
fell at the right time.
We are all co-laborers
for your growth – me, your pastor, your prayer partners and so forth, we all
serve you and want to see you become like Christ, we are yours and you are
Christ’s and Christ is God’s. One plants, another waters, and yet another gets
the harvest. Together we all contribute to the glory of God and we can all
rejoice together in your edification.
Thus there should be no
rivalry in the Kingdom for we are all contributors to the one great process.
One convicts of sin, the other leads to Christ, yet another follows up yet all
should rejoice in the salvation of the sinner. Paul said, “I did not come to
baptize” – yet many think that baptism is where the most glory is. Paul
preached the gospel but let others do the baptizing. He knew his place in the
process of the Harvest.
We are all part of the
grand process of Christ being revealed in His Church to the glory of God. If
God has you pastoring a small church in a remote area, you are still as much a
part of the glorious process as an evangelist such as Billy Graham. Simply be
faithful to your calling, which is all the Lord asks.
There are some places on
earth that are truly white unto harvest – such as Mozambique, and others that
are stony ground – such as Georgia. We should deploy the most laborers where
the harvest is greatest. Too many laborers are working in the diminished
harvest of Europe and North America and few in the great harvest fields of Asia
and Africa.
It is always good to keep the process of the Harvest in mind, it keeps us humble and it helps us to persist when the going is tough, knowing that we shall reap if we do not grow weary.
John
4:39-42
The Christ,
the Saviour Of The World
John 4:39-42 MKJV And many of the Samaritans of that city believed upon Him
because of the saying of the woman, who testified, He told me all that I ever
did. (40) Then as the Samaritans had
come to Him, they begged Him that He would stay with them. And He stayed there
two days. (41) And many more believed because
of His own word. (42) And they said to
the woman, Now we believe, not because of your saying, for we have heard Him
ourselves and know that this is truly the Christ, the Savior of the world.
The Samaritans, in just
a few days came to the amazing conclusion that Jesus was the Christ, the savior
of the world, and they seem to have arrived at this conclusion as an entire
community.
[Now Jesus could have
stayed there and set up home, for this was the first community to truly believe
in Him, but instead, as we shall see, He went to where He was not honored (in
Galilee, see the next few verses).]
Now in order to
understand what the Samaritans meant, and what john recorded we need to look at
the terms “Christ”, “Saviour” and
“World” and we will start with this last term first..
According to Leon Morris
the term kosmos or world originally meant “decoration’ or ‘bauble” from which
we still get the term “cosmetic”. Thus the universe came to be seen as the
ultimate decoration, a ordered system of beauty.
The term is mainly used
by Paul and John and has a few different shades of meaning.
The first is the realm
under the control of Satan and the astrological powers of the Greco-Roman
world, which was governed by elaborate religious taboos called “stoichea” or
the “elemental principles of the world”.
It was the realm that served “luck’ and had sacrifices and libations and
worried about curses and propitious times. It was entirely hostile to Christ
(John 7:7, 15;18). Thus friendship with the world was enmity towards God (James
4) and one could not enter into this system without arousing the jealousy of
the Holy Spirit. A modern equivalent
would be trying to be a Mason and a Christian, or believing in Lady Luck and
going to casinos and being Christ’s. It was a vast realm entirely in bondage to
superstition, human philosophy and religion and the worship of angels and
demons. In this sense Satan is the prince of this world (John 12:31, 14:30,
16:11, 1 John 5:18,19) and the world does not know Jesus or the Father (John
1:10, 17:25) nor can it receive or know the Spirit (John 14:17). Paul makes it
clear that Christians must exit this system being crucified to it (Galatians
6:14,15) and thus needing to be separated from it (Colossians 2:8-23, 2
Corinthians 6:14-18). The world (kosmos) is never the place of blessing in
Scripture; we must leave it in order to b blessed.
The second main meaning
is fallen; tragic humanity enslaved to the above system which God loves and
rescues e.g., John 3:16 and 4:42. Christ speaks to the world the things He has
heard from God (John 8:26), takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), is the
Saviour of the world (John 4:42) and gives it life (John 6:33) even giving his
flesh for the life of the world (John 6:51)
because He came to save it and not to judge it (John 3:17, 12:47) and
overthrow Satan its prince (John 12:31, 14:30, 15;11) and thus victory over the
world system remains with Christ (John 16:33). To fallen humanity Christ is the
light of the world (John 8:12; 9:5). When John says that Christ is sent “into
the world” (John 3:17, 11:27 etc) he may mean sent into the Universe as a whole
or more specifically into the hostile world of cosmic powers governed by Satan
in order to overthrow it.
The third main meaning,
used less often is simply ‘everyone, or everything” and is used as loosely and
generically as we use the term “the world” today e.g. when the Pharisees say of
Christ ‘the whole world has gone after Him” or “the world was made through Him” (John 12:19, John 1:3, Hebrews 1:1-3)
Thus as the Christ the
Savior of the world Jesus is the Christ that is the Chosen One, the Messiah
with the Holy Spirit anointing, that breaks all the bondages of the evil
spiritual realm led by the prince of darkness. Jesus as the anointed Christ,
rescues humanity from the oppression and possession of spiritual powers and
from enslavement to rituals, superstitions and the fear and dread of ghosts and
taboos. Jesus rescues us also from what they do to our bodies, minds, emotions
and spirits and takes us out from their destructive power to a place of
abundant life.
John
only used the term savior twice – here and in 1 John 4:14 and in both cases he
uses it in the phrase “the Saviour of the World”. 1 John 4:14 MKJV “And we
have seen and testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the
world.” In other words, John sees Jesus as being sent by God to save us
from the powers and principalities that dominated life in the Graeco-Roman
world and which still dominate our various cultures, both Western and
non-Western today.
Jesus
is not just the Saviour of individual people who walk the sawdust trail at a
revival meeting, rather He is the Saviour of all those fallen human beings,
trapped by Satan and caught up in darkness, and in the throes of evil and
addiction, if they repent and believe in Him. Thus Jesus is the way out from
all our bondages.
John
4:43-45
A Prophet
Without Honour
John 4:43-45 MKJV
And after two days He departed from there and went into Galilee. (44) For Jesus Himself testified that a
prophet has no honor in his own native-place.
(45) Then when He had come into Galilee, the Galileans received Him,
having seen all the things that He did at Jerusalem at the feast; for they also
went to the feast.
Jesus was originally unrecognized by how own family and His won hometown, in fact Matthew tells us that the people of Nazareth initially refused to believe:
Matthew 13:54-58 MKJV
And when He had come into His own country, He taught them in their
synagogue, so much so that they were astonished and said, From where does this
man have this wisdom and these mighty works?
(55) Is not this, the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary?
And his brothers, James and Joses and Simon and Judas, (56) and his sisters, are they not all with
us? Then from where does this man have all these things? (57) And they were offended in Him. But
Jesus said to them, A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country
and in his own house. (58) And He did
not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief.
John picks
up on this using his literary technique of “juxtaposition” – that is putting
tow highly contrasting things next to each other to bring out the contrast and
the meaning of each. So the Samaritan harvest and belief in Jesus as the
Messiah and Savior of the world is quickly contrasted with the unbelief of the
Galileans. It is as if John is saying “the heretical Samaritans believed in Him
after a few days but Jesus’ own family and friends did not believe, even for a
very long while”.
In fact
this unbelief was so strong that Jesus passed judgment upon the cities of
Galilee: Matthew 11:20-22 MKJV Then He began to upbraid the cities in
which most of His mighty works were done, because they did not repent. (21) Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you,
Bethsaida! For if the powerful acts, which were done in you had been done in
Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes! (22) But I say to you, It shall be more tolerable
for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you.
Thus it is often most difficult to convert our own families and own neighborhood, while we get to speak to large crowds elsewhere. In fact it is often only after we have received acclaim away from home that they even start to believe in us. This certainly was the case with Jesus – it was only after they saw Jesus doing miracles at the feast in the “big city” of Jerusalem that they started to believe in Him at Galilee. “Then when He had come into Galilee, the Galileans received Him, having seen all the things that He did at Jerusalem at the feast; for they also went to the feast.”
Any
paradigm-changing ministry will meet much resistance and “unbelief” at first
and most ministries take about twenty years or more to become “mainstream” – e.g.,
youth ministry, the charismatic movement, media ministry and short-term
missions each of which faced considerable opposition at first (and still some
opposition today). My own area of ministry – Internet evangelism and
Cybermissions, is beginning to take off – after fourteen years of personal
involvement and being thought of as quite strange. This is to be expected, it
happened to Jesus and will happen to us also.
Generally
speaking there are a small percentage of “visionaries” (less than 5%) followed
by 10-15% of “early adopters”, then about 40% are “late adopters” and the rest
are apathetic to the new movement or even hostile. Pareto’s principle of the
20% who do 80% of the work and 80% who do 20% of the work applies here as well.
In
our work for the Lord we can become very hurt if we expect everyone to be as
enthusiastic as we are, or if we demand that they to go along with the vision
that God has given us. If Jesus could not get all His friends and family and
nation to follow Him, even with his love, wisdom and miracle working powers,
then we cannot expect to do any better.
Jesus
simply led those who chose to follow Him. He moved with the movers, and taught
the teachable and discipled the believers. This is a valuable principle. In
every group there will be those that “get it” – work first with those,
patiently explain yourself to the rest and let those who vehemently disagree go
elsewhere – with your blessing. Someone said that: “Even the simplest thing
needs to be explained at least six times before it registers with a group of
people.” and I have found this to be very true in ministry. Complex truths –
such as justification by faith take much more explaining than that!
Here is some good advice
Paul gave to Timothy about pastoring under adverse conditions:
2 Timothy 2:23-26 But avoid foolish discussions with ignorant men,
knowing--as you do--that these lead to quarrels; (24) and a bondservant of the Lord must not quarrel, but must be
inoffensive towards all men, a skilful teacher, and patient under wrongs. (25) He must speak in a gentle tone when
correcting the errors of opponents, in the hope that God will at last give them
repentance, for them to come to a full knowledge of the truth (26) and recover sober-mindedness and
freedom from the Devil's snare, though they are now entrapped by him to do his
will.
John
4:46-54
The
Nobleman’s Son
John 4:46-54 MKJV Then Jesus came again to Cana of Galilee, where He made the
water wine. And there was a certain nobleman whose son was sick at Capernaum. (47) When He heard that Jesus had come out
of Judea into Galilee, he went to Him and begged Him that He would come down
and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. (48) Then Jesus said to him, Unless you see signs and wonders you
will not believe. (49) The nobleman
said to Him, Sir, come down before my child dies. (50) Jesus said to him, Go, your son lives. And the man believed
the word that Jesus had spoken to him, and he went away. (51) And as he was now going down, his
servants met him and told him, saying, Your son lives. (52) Then he asked of them the hour when he
began to get better. And they said to him, yesterday at the seventh hour the
fever left him. (53) So the father knew
that it was at the same hour in which Jesus said to him, Your son lives. And he
himself believed, and his whole house.
(54) This is the second miracle Jesus did, when He had come out of Judea
into Galilee.
Tackling last things
first – this is not the second miracle of Jesus but the second major Galilean
ministry, which occurred after coming a trip from Jerusalem (the first being
the wedding at Cana) as John mentions the many miracles done at the feats in
Jerusalem. This miracle is a “sign” in that it points to God and to the nature
of Jesus and elicits faith from many people involved.
Miracles are not just
God’s power at work for our convenience. They are always for the glory of God
and are meant to increase faith –which is why the sometimes seem to happen most
often to new Christians and to non-believers just before they are converted.
Many of the Muslims who believe in Jesus come to faith as the result of a
decisive miracle such as a healing in the family. Thus before we ask for a
miracle we need to also ask – who will believe, and what glory shall the Lord get
from all of this?
Jesus says, and it seems
with a sign of some sort, that “Unless you see signs and wonders
you will not believe.” This was His reaction to the crowds – and He performed
the miracle so they might believe. They should have been like the Samaritan
woman – open, curious about God and able to sense the truth in their spirit,
from a brief conversation, and believe. The Holy Spirit anointing on Jesus
should have been enough to convince them that here was a holy man of God, a
Messiah. But they were “stiff-necked and stubborn” or as they say in the
Philippines “hard-headed”. The “fragrance of grace upon the soul” did not move
them – rather they wanted tangible visible proof.
Jesus
initial reply to the nobleman (Unless you see signs and wonders you will not
believe) seems harsh but Jesus often tested people to see how real
their desire was, and how truly desperate they were for God to act. The
Syrophoenician woman, the father of the epileptic and the case of some blind
beggars are cases when people had to publicly demonstrate their sincere desire
for God to act. Jesus tests us, how much do we really want his grace? Will we
suffer an apparent rebuke, or being ignored? Will we wait? Will we persist and press in? God most often
answers the persistent and the desperate.
The
nobleman (probably an official in Herod’s court) accepts the rebuke and simply
asks for his son to be healed, and for Jesus to travel the twenty miles from
Cana down to the lakeside at Capernaum. Jesus refuses to do this and simply
says “your son lives”. If Jesus had gone then it would have looked like Jesus
was at the beck and call of high officials. He could not go such a distance
with a royal official without compromising His gospel of social equality (see
James 2). So Jesus simply issues the word – and the nobleman believes and goes
his way to find his servants coming to him with news of the son’s healing.
Something
about the way Jesus said “Your son lives” brought the nobleman’s faith
to maturity and he did believe – and later his whole household. This sort of
faith in the “rhema word of God” (the
word God speaks into life’s situations) is the faith of the saints and the
prophets. God said it, I believe it.
What does
this sign tell us about Jesus? Firstly that He is a compassionate healer whose
word is authoritative and can heal at a distance. Secondly that He is the
victor over death and disease and the giver of life. The phrase “your son
lives” is repeated three times in this short paragraph. This was the
healing phrase – the word from God in the situation and it is spoken about and
celebrated. The word for lives is from the “zoe” Greek word family and while it
has normal uses it is often also used of eternal life, resurrection life or
powerful life, life that is life back from the dead (Galatians 2:20, Revelation
1:18, 4:9-10) and especially so in John (John 4:10-11, 5:25, 6:51, 57,69, 11:26
as well as here)
In this chapter Jesus
has proclaimed that he gives living water, and now that He gives life. Since
life comes first of all from the Creator that is tantamount to saying that he
is linked to the Creator God and shares many of his powers. While medicine may
heal it cannot give life, only God can do that, and if Jesus Christ can also do
that, then He is God. And Jesus does not just give normal life, he gives
resurrection life, eternal life, the life that cannot die and which is living
water in our innermost beings.
John
5:1-6
The Man With
An Infirmity
John 5:1-6 MKJV After this there was a feast of
the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
(2) Now there is a pool at the Sheep Gate at Jerusalem, which is called
in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porches.
(3) In these lay a great multitude of those who were sick, of blind,
lame, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. (4) For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and
troubled the water. Then whoever first stepped in after the troubling of the
water was made whole of whatever disease he had. (5) And a certain man was there, who had an infirmity thirty-eight
years. (6) When Jesus saw him lying,
and knowing that he had spent much time, He said to him, Do you desire to be
made whole?
There is an old joke
that goes: “How many social workers
does it take to change a light-bulb?”
The answer is: “One, but the light bulb has to want to
change!”
On the whole people do
not change unless they are first open to the idea of change. Even positive
change, such as success, can threaten people who are used to “comfortable
failure”. Some people become dependent and indigent, they identify so totally
with their affliction that to remove the affliction (the drug dependency, the
back pain, the emotional disability) is almost to remove their entire identity.
They are frequently the people who describe their condition with the permanent
identifier- “I am a…” rather than with
the less permanent “I have a.”
When Jesus walks among
this mass of afflicted humanity He goes to the “hardest case”, the one who had
been there a “long time”, the “lifer”, with a thirty-eight year disability.
Jesus asks him just one question “Do you desire to be made whole?” This question has application at every level
of humanity:
Does the sinner want the
wholeness of salvation?
Does the sick person
want the responsibility of full health?
Does the lifelong
failure want the lifestyle changes that come with success?
Does the emotionally
damaged person want wholeness enough to forgive the person that hurt them?
Does the confused person
really want the wholeness that mental clarity (perhaps with medication) will
bring?
Does the heretic really
want the Truth?
Does a corrupt
government really want a properly functioning nation?
Does a small local
church really want to be alive and growing and full of new converts?
God tends to give us the
desire of our hearts and if the desire of our heart is to remain just as we
are, in our affliction, unhealed and unchanged, He will even grant us that.
As a bible college
lecturer I am continually amazed at how lengthy and arduous and full of stops
and starts the process of disciple making is. It probably took Jesus the Son of
God just 3 seconds to raise Lazarus - but it took Him 3 years to make a small
group of effective disciples! That is because personal change is slow and takes
place at the pace of the will of the learner. Which is why love is so important
in teaching. People learn much more willingly when they are loved.
Learned helplessness
takes a huge toll – and this man was full of it, and also full of excuses about
being unable to get into the water. Opportunity always passed him by. Well now
Opportunity was standing right there talking to him!
Satan spends much of his
evil energy discouraging us and binding us up with an oppressive feeling of
helplessness in vital areas of life and ministry. Helplessness and hopelessness
are never from God, they are truly demonic fortresses of the soul. They must be
resisted and cast down. (2 Corinthians 10:3-5) The frequent teaching of
Scripture is that God is a God of empowerment, not discouragement and that
nothing is impossible to them that believe.
God is a God of
empowerment and He wants you healed and whole and powerful and able. God’s
destiny for you is as eternally alive son/daughter of God, glowing in spiritual
power, ruling this world on his behalf. Therefore He wants you to be a loving,
holy, wise, capable, and competent and powerful ruler in His kingdom and is
always building you up with that destiny in mind.
Do you desire to be made whole? Are you prepared to let go of your excuses and your blaming of others and your desire to remain as you are, and take on the responsibility and the joy of a new life as a whole person?
If this is the case, then come before God and ask Jesus to make you whole for His glory and for His Name’s sake.
John 5:7-15
Take Up Your
Bed And Walk
John 5:7-15 MKJV The
infirm man answered Him, Sir, when the water is troubled, I have no one to put
me into the pool. But while I am coming, another steps down before me. (8) Jesus says to him, Rise, take up your
bed and walk. (9) And immediately the
man was made whole and took up his bed and walked. And it was a Sabbath on that
day. (10) Therefore the Jews said to
him who had been healed, It is the Sabbath. It is not lawful for you to take up
the bed. (11) He answered them, He who
made me whole said to me, Take up your bed and walk. (12) Then they asked him, Who is the man who said to you, Take up
your bed and walk? (13) And he did not
know Him who had cured him, for Jesus had moved away, a crowd being in the
place. (14) Afterward Jesus found him
in the temple and said to him, Behold, you are made whole. Sin no more lest a
worse thing come to you. (15) The man
departed and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him whole.
There
are three main characters here: Jesus who makes the man whole, the Pharisees
who see the “sin” (carrying his bed) and miss the miracle (that he was able to
carry his bed), and the man who was once infirm who now ends up telling on
Jesus.
The crucial
information is in verses 8 and 9 above: “Jesus says
to him, Rise, take up your bed and walk.
(9) And immediately the man was made whole and took up his bed and
walked. And it was a Sabbath on that day.” Jesus speaks into the man’s life and makes
him whole and able to pick up his bed (probably a straw mat of some sort) and
walk, throughout the passage this is referred to as “being made whole”.
This is true holistic ministry, Jesus addresses the man’s physical need first (verses 8 and 9) and his moral need second (verse 14) – saving grace always precedes moral reformation. God often does His greatest miracles ‘while we were yet sinners’ (Romans 5:8).
Those
observing it, miss the miracle and just see a man carrying his bed on the
Sabbath in clear violation of the religious codes of the day. The answer the
man gave is a classic: “He who made me whole said to me, Take up your bed
and walk.” Clearly pointing out that Jesus (grace) could do what the
Pharisees (Law) could not – that is making a man whole. But again the Pharisees
miss the miracle and in their reply instead of saying, “Who made you whole?”
indicating an interest in grace, they merely say “Who is the man who said to
you, Take up your bed and walk?” Thus ignoring God’s great saving work in
favor of locating a supposed “criminal”.
Jesus
moves away and disappears into the crowd, doing another anonymous miracle. So
much of God’s work is like that – anonymous. So often God heals, provides and
saves and then leaves the scene with just a fragrance of grace lingering in the
air.
Jesus did not just leave
the man physically healed; He also sought to care for his soul. “Afterward
Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, Behold, you are made whole. Sin
no more lest a worse thing come to you.”
Jesus knew that this man had been morally compromised by his 38 years of
dependency, desperation and alienation.
Such long-term poverty often reduces people to a survival mentality in
which higher values like loyalty and morality are discarded in favor of the
prospect of immediate monetary gain. Jesus was trying to lift him up a notch to
a higher spiritual and moral level.
However, Jesus’ exhortation seems to have offended the man, who immediately left to tell the Jews about Jesus, knowing full well that this would get Jesus into trouble. In direct contrast to the blind man in John 9 this fellow is an ungrateful wretch.
His reaction is the
short-term survival mentality at work: The man had got what he wanted from
Jesus – healing, now he might get some money from the Jews by telling on Him.
This is the ultimate extension of the “hand-out mentality”.
So we have two sets of
people who missed the point of the miracle entirely. The first is the man who
received the miracle who saw it as “just another handout”, this time from God
and who at no point “praises God” – in complete contrast to the lame man at the
Gate Beautiful who went “walking and leaping and praising God”. The miracle was
simply another thing that happened to him in life and seems to have wrought no
perceptible moral or spiritual change. This is what is known as a defiled
conscience, one that has been degraded by life until only immediate
self-interest is left as a personal value.
The second are the
Pharisees who see the miracle as an illegal act. Their spiritual senses are
overwhelmed by a desire to control people and to wield power over others via
the enforcing of various rules. The Jews, as John calls them, are blind to
grace because they only see Law. This is like many cults and schismatic
churches today. This is known as an overly scrupulous conscience, one that is
overly concerned with religious laws and fine-points and strangely seared
towards human compassion and quite unable to apprehend grace. The diametric
opposite of the defiled conscience it is like an over-dose of conscience. But
it is just as blind to God.
Those who worship in
Spirit and in truth, on the other hand, would see a miracle, a mighty miracle,
and smell the fragrance of grace and have an intact sense of wonder and a
conscience alive to basic spiritual realities. Let us pray that God will enable
us to have such a sense of spiritual wonder that we always behold His works.
John
5:16-18
Equal With
God
John 5:16-18 MKJV
And therefore the Jews persecuted Jesus and sought to kill Him,
because He had done these things on the Sabbath day. (17) But Jesus answered them, My Father works until now, and I
work. (18) Then, because of this, the
Jews sought the more to kill Him, because He not only had broken the Sabbath,
but also said that God was His father, making Himself equal with God.
Jesus is “breaking out
of the box” of Jewish religious tradition. He does good works on the Sabbath (a
healing miracle), and He called God His Father “thus making Himself equal
with God”.
The Jewish spiritual
world was stratified and the basic levels were: the Pit (where demons were
confined), the lower and upper realms of Sheol (where the human dead dwelt),
Earth, first heaven (where birds fly), second heaven (angelic realm) third
heaven (throne) and above the heavens (God).
In this structure mankind
was clearly divided into two, Jews who were under the Law which was
administered by the good angels (Acts 7:25, Hebrews 2:2) and the Gentiles who
worshipped fallen angels that is – demons (1 Corinthians 10:20).
Thus all men were less
than the angelic realm and far, far less than God. Humanity was so far below
God that any sort of ‘family relationship’ was thought to be utterly
impossible. No mere human could call God his Father. God was said to be ‘the
father of Israel’ as a nation but that implied nothing more than tender care
and provision.
Jesus thus astonished
everyone by calling God His Father. Fatherhood implies “having the same nature
as”. Dogs only father dogs, cats only
father cats, donkeys only father donkeys. If the father is a monkey, then we
know that any child logically must also be a monkey. So if I say, “My father is
God” then I am logically saying, “I have a divine nature”.
Thus by the Jewish logic
of levels and natures anyone saying “My father is God” is saying “I am on the
same general spiritual level as God and my make-up and nature is of the same
kind as His.”
Now the OT says clearly
that there is only one God, and now this person (Jesus) claims to be of the
same spiritual level and make-up and nature as the one and only God, therefore
they are claiming to be that God, or at least equal to Him.
Furthermore Jesus
demonstrates powers that no normal human had at that time by giving prophecies
about the end of the world and performing healings, exorcisms and mighty
miracles. He was also going around seemingly “changing the rules” about things
like the Sabbath and divorce. And only God can change the very rules that God
had made.
So Jesus is clearly
making Himself equal with God, and when the Jews accuse Him of this (saying He
was equal with God) He does not flat-out deny it, even though such a denial
would have got Him out of trouble – in that they wished to kill Him.
The epistles make very clear that Jesus was indeed God in human form:
Colossians 2:9 MKJV For in
Him (Jesus Christ) dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.
Philippians 2:5-7 MKJV For let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, (6) who, being in the form of God, thought
it not robbery to be equal with God,
(7) but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Himself the form of
a servant, and was made in the likeness of men.
John 1:1-3, 14 MKJV
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word
was God. (2) He was in the beginning
with God. (3) All things came into being
through Him, and without Him not even one thing came into being that has come
into being. …(14) And the Word became
flesh, and tabernacled among us. And we beheld His glory, the glory as of the
only begotten of the Father, full of grace and of truth.
Jesus was
able to call God Father, because He was the Word, the second person of the
Trinity, the Son of God, the fullness of deity in bodily form.
We can call
God Father, because we are in Christ, are made citizens of Heaven, and are born
of God with an eternal nature. Because of the work of Christ we will rule and
reign with Him and He is not ashamed to call us “brothers” (Hebrews 2:11). He
is the Son of God, the Elder Brother, and we are the “sons of God”, His
brethren.
Let me be
clear, we are not God, or even gods with a small g. We are sons of God, and we
are seated in the heavenly realms with Christ (Ephesians 2:6,7) promoted into
glorious realms by the ascension of Jesus.
Jesus had God as His
Father from all eternity; He is the only-begotten Son, while we are adopted
children of God. Thus we can call God our Father without making ourselves equal
with God. Yet we are to call Him “Abba”, Daddy in the spirit of our adoption as
sons (Romans 8:15, Galatians 4:6).
Jesus shook the Jewish
world by calling the Creator God “Father” – something that is so common today
because of the Lord’s Prayer. It still makes Muslims furious when Christians
dare to call God “Father”. It is an
awesome privilege that has been bestowed upon us because we are new creations in
Christ Jesus.
John
5:19-23
The Father
And The Son
John 5:19-23 MKJV
Then Jesus answered and said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, The
Son can do nothing of Himself but what He sees the Father do. For whatever
things He does, these also the Son does likewise. (20) For the Father loves the Son and shows Him all the things
that He Himself does. And He will show Him greater works than these, so that
you may marvel. (21) For as the Father
raises the dead and makes alive, even so the Son of Man makes alive whomever He
wills. (22) For the Father judges no
man, but has committed all judgment to the Son, (23) so that all should honor the Son, even as they honor the
Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him.
Jesus says four
astonishing things about Himself (remember yesterday He said he was God’s Son,
“thus making Himself equal with God”):
1. For whatever things He
(God the Father does, the also the Son (Jesus) does likewise. That is Jesus is
claiming to do the same activities as God.
2. The Son of Man (Jesus)
makes alive whomever He wills. In other words Jesus is claiming that He has the
god-like power to impart life, even eternal life.
3. The Father judges no
man, but has committed all judgment to the Son (Jesus). In other words Jesus is
claiming to be the judge of the souls of all men and women on planet earth.
4. “That all should honor
the Son, even as they honor the Father” and that not honoring the Son is to
dishonor the Father. In other words Jesus is claiming that people should honor
Him, even as they also honor God and that to not honor Him is to also not honor
God.
These are astonishing
claims! If they are true then Jesus does the works of God, can give life to the
dead, judges the souls of all men, and is to be honored by all people
everywhere. In other words if these claims are true, then Jesus is the Son of
God and is also God. If these claims are true then Jesus is Lord and we must
honor and worship Him.
On the other hand they
could be false. If they are false then we have two alternatives. Either Jesus
knew they were false and was a liar and was crucified for His deception. Or
Jesus did not know these outrageous claims were false and thus was a raving
lunatic in the same category as someone who maintains that they are a boiled
egg! Jesus cannot be “just a good man”
and claim to be the judge of all human souls. Such a claim is so grand that
either He is what He says He is, or He is a demonic religious charlatan, or He
is a deluded lunatic. He is either a liar, a lunatic or He is Lord. There are
just no other alternatives.
But the transparent,
sacrificial, honest quality of His life and teaching and the good that has
flowed from them and the coherence and beauty of His thought tell us that He is
not a liar and certainly no raving lunatic. So we are left with the third
alternative – Jesus is who He says He is, the Son of God.
Jesus sees and does the
works of God. So if I want God to work in my life, then I should ask Jesus to
do that work. Christ in me is God at work within me. God heals through the name
of Jesus, God does mighty miracles through the name of Jesus, and God even
sends His Holy Spirit – through and in the name of Jesus. Faith in Jesus leads
us into the realm of the might, miracle-working power of God.
Jesus has the power to
give life to the dead. He makes alive whomever He wills. A dead person cannot
will anything much, and we are dead in our sins until Christ makes us alive
with the life that is from God. Beyond that we can come to Christ for a deeper experience
of His eternal life within us. Christ makes us alive – in the midst of
disappointment, disillusionment, despair and hopelessness God’s hope and life
can break through and bring defeated souls into life and faith and hope and
love.
All judgment has been
committed to the Son. He is the Judge we will face on Judgment Day. Those who
do not believe are condemned already but those who believe have passed out of
death into life (see John 5:24,25, the next two verses after today’s passage). Jesus is not just a sentimental figure in a
robe and with a beard and sandals; He is the living resurrected one, the Judge
of all our souls. So it is very important that we obey His commandments.
So all should honor the
Son, even as they honor the Father. Jesus is worthy of worship and honor as the
Son of God. He is not just a worthy example, a good man, or a prophet; He is
the One through whom all things were made and for whom all things were made
(John 1:1-3, Colossians 1:15-20, Hebrews 1:1-3). Jesus is the Lamb of God, seated upon the throne (Revelation 5)
before whom we all should bow and worship and sing praises.
Thus the Christian life
is not just about life principles, morality or spiritual keys to success. The
Christian life is about giving appropriate honor and glory to the Son of God,
believing in Him, worshipping Him, and obeying His commandments.
The focus of our life
has to be on God. Our personal success
is a secondary by-product, and one that is negotiable. The non-negotiable
aspect is faith in Jesus Christ the Son of God. Now this faith is not a
momentary thing “I once prayed a prayer..”
but an abiding life-directing and controlling reality. Peter did not
become a great apostle by bowing his head by the lake of Galilee and uttering a
one-minute prayer then going back to fishing as before. When Peter believed it
was for good, and it took over and directed his whole life. That is the sort of
faith we must have in Jesus the Son of God.
John
5:24-29
The
Resurrection Of The Dead
John 5:24-29 MKJV
Truly, truly, I say to you, He who hears My Word and believes on Him
who sent Me has everlasting life and shall not come into condemnation, but has
passed from death to life. (25) Truly,
truly, I say to you, the hour is coming and now is, when the dead shall hear
the voice of the Son of God, and they who hear shall live. (26) For as the Father has life in Himself,
so He has given to the Son to have life within Himself, (27) and has given Him authority to execute
judgment also, because He is the Son of Man.
(28) Do not marvel at this, for the hour is coming in which all who are
in the graves shall hear His voice,
(29) and shall come forth, those who have done good to the resurrection
of life, and those who have practiced evil to the resurrection of condemnation.
This passage is both inspiring, and difficult. It seems, at first glance, to be contradictory on the question of salvation by faith & salvation by works. Verse 24 is a classic salvation by faith statement – “He who hears My Word and believes on Him who sent Me has everlasting life and shall not come into condemnation, but has passed from death to life.” While verse 29 seems to speak of salvation by works: “ and shall come forth, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have practiced evil to the resurrection of condemnation.”
There are two possible explanations. Firstly that faith must issue in works or it is dead, the works are merely evidence of the faith, which is to say that no one will be resurrected unless their faith was real and operative in their life. The other explanation is that Christians are saved by faith, but “those who have not heard” receive the judgment of the Gentiles (by works, justifying the good man, but apart from the Law) alluded to in Romans 2:5-12.
Whatever your take on this, the Christian life involves both living faith and good deeds. We are not just to be a people full of theological notions; instead we are to maintain strong righteous beliefs in God that guide all aspects of our life and action. With the exception of deathbed conversions, the rest of us must demonstrate our faith - in good works that God has planned for us to do.
Ephesians 2:8-10 MKJV
For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it
is the gift of God, (9) not of works,
lest anyone should boast. (10) For we
are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to good works, which God has
before ordained that we should walk in them.
Thus while we are saved by faith we should walk “worthy of the
resurrection”:
Luke 20:35-36 MKJV
But they who shall be counted worthy to obtain that world, and the
resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage. (36) Nor can they die any more, for they are
equal to the angels, and are the sons of God, being the sons of the
resurrection.
Philippians 3:10-11 MKJV (10) that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and
the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable to His death; (11) if by any means I might attain to the
resurrection of the dead.
So a Christian should aim to live a worthy and holy and godly life - which is what all the apostles’ record, and which Jesus commands. This is accompanied by the strong belief that this life of holiness would be amply rewarded in the resurrection.
All life comes from God, including the power to live a holy life. Indeed the life we live in the resurrection will not be our own life, in our own strength, rather it will be a life given to us by Christ and it is clear that we enter into this gift of life by faith:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, He who hears My Word and
believes on Him who sent Me has everlasting life and shall not come into
condemnation, but has passed from death to life. (25) Truly, truly, I say to you, the hour is coming and now is,
when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they who hear shall
live. (26) For as the Father has life
in Himself, so He has given to the Son to have life within Himself.”
Upon conversion we are
moved from death to life and taken out of condemnation, so there is now no
condemnation for them who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1,2).
This gift of life from
Christ will even apply to the dead, in the graves, who shall hear his voice and
live at the resurrection. (John 5:28) It also applies to the spiritually dead,
who, when they “hear” by faith (spiritually, in themselves) the word of Christ
are born-again (Romans 10:9-17).
So the Father has given
to Jesus the power of eternal life as the Son of God (John 5:25), and the
authority to judge the dead - as the Son of Man (John 5:27).
When we truly believe in
Christ Jesus we relate to Him as the Son of God (John 1:12) and become His
brethren (Hebrews 2:11), and as His brethren we should so what He did – good
works and live as He lived – a holy and worthy life.
John 1:12-13 MKJV
But as many as received Him, He gave to them authority to become the
children of God, to those who believe on His name, (13) who were born, not
of bloods, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but were born
of God.
John
5:30-37
The Father
Witnesses To The Son
John 5:30-37 MKJV
I can do nothing of My own self. As I hear, I judge, and My judgment
is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of the Father who has
sent Me. (31) If I bear witness of
Myself, My witness is not true. (32)
There is another who bears witness of Me, and I know that the witness which He
witnesses of Me is true. (33) You sent
to John, and he bore witness to the truth.
(34) But I do not receive testimony from man, but these things I say so
that you might be saved. (35) He was a
burning and shining light, and you were willing for a time to rejoice in his
light. (36) But I have greater witness
than that of John, for the works which the Father has given Me that I should
finish them, the works which I do themselves witness of Me, that the Father has
sent Me. (37) And He sending Me, the
Father Himself, has borne witness of Me. Neither have you heard His voice at
any time nor seen His shape.
Jesus says that three things
bore clear witness to Him – John the Baptist (John 5:33-35), His miracles (John
5:36) and the Father (John 5:37) so there was no need for Jesus to bear witness
to Himself, which would have seemed to be invalid (John 5:30-32). Yet even with
a great prophet testifying to Jesus, and great miracles showing plainly that He
was different, and the Father’s testimony at His baptism (as well as in nature
and the Scriptures) they did not believe.
Jesus also says some
fascinating things about His relationship with the Father:
1. That He can do nothing
by Himself. (v. 30)
2. That He does not seek
His own will but the will of the Father. (v. 30)
3. That the Father has
given works to Jesus to perform and He wishes to finish them. (v. 36)
4. That the Father sent
Jesus. (v. 36,37)
5. That the Father has
borne witness of Jesus. (v. 37)
These five things apply
to all of us in ministry. We can do nothing without Christ but must abide in
Him (John 15), we are not to seek our own will and interests but the interests
of Christ Jesus (Philippians 2:21), we have good works given us to do
(Ephesians 2:10) and we should finish them (2 Corinthians 8:11, 2 Timothy 4:7,
James 2:22) and we are sent by God into the harvest (Matthew 9:37,38) and so He
will validate us and our ministry (Matthew 10:19,20; Luke 21:12-15; Isaiah
54:17).
Each of these five
points has profound consequences for the Christian life. In total they mean
that as we subsume our will to the will of the Father, then we do the works He
wants us to do, and which He sent us to do, and then He bears witness to us and
through us.
Thus we must start by
“doing nothing” – except that which we see in Christ. Christ is the template
and we are to follow the author and perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12:2) and
by abiding in Him bear much fruit (John 15).
It is the surrender of
our will to God’s will that bears much fruit. That is not to say that we become
passive, the apostles were active, vigorous strong and definite. But it was an
activity that flowed from abiding in Christ.
We are not on Earth to
become great, climb the social ladder or even change the world. Rather we are
here to do the works that God has given us to do – which may well be looking
after a disabled child. God sets the agenda; in fact, God has already set the
agenda.
Ephesians 2:10 MKJV For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them.
Therefore submitting to
God’s will, means taking on God’s agenda and doing those good works that He has
drawn up for us to do.
John the Baptist
fulfilled the good works that God had planned for him, as a burning and shining
light, and a national revival of joy ensued (John 5:35) but still the religious
establishment did not believe his witness, and so with Christ. We are to do our
works, even if they do not get the anticipated result. If we preach the truth
and others do not listen, it is not our fault.
In the case of the
Pharisees the fault lay in the heart of the hearers, which was dull and unable
to perceive God (John 5:37).
God was giving clear
testimony to Jesus – through John the Baptist, through the powerful works, and
directly from Himself. Any person with even basic spiritual perception would
have picked up that Jesus was the Messiah. But they were niggling about
legalities and “witnesses” and ecclesiastical recognition. Jesus was not
recognized by them and their system of giving honor to man (John 5:44)
therefore, they thought He was not “valid”.
But it is not man that
ultimately validates a ministry but God and God was doing so with signs and
wonders and the presence and power of the Holy Spirit and the lame man, healed
by the pool, was evidence of that (see the beginning of John 5).
John
5:38-47
The Unbelief
Of The Jews
John 5:38-47 MKJV
And you do not have His Word
abiding in you, for you do not believe Him whom He has sent. (39) You search the Scriptures, for in them
you think you have eternal life. And they are the ones witnessing of Me, (40) and you will not come to Me that you
might have life. (41) I do not receive
honor from men. (42) But I know you,
that you do not have the love of God in you.
(43) I have come in My Father's name, and you do not receive Me. If
another shall come in his own name, him you will receive. (44) How can you believe, you who receive
honor from one another and do not seek the honor that comes from God only? (45) Do not think that I will accuse you to
the Father; there is one who accuses you, Moses, in whom you trust. (46) For if you had believed Moses, you
would have believed Me, for he wrote of Me.
(47) But if you do not believe his writings, how shall you believe My
Words?
There are two causes
listed here for their unbelief:
a) Not listening to the
Scriptures (v. 39,40, 45-47)
b) Receiving honor from one
another. (v. 41, 43,44)
These results in two
spiritual conditions:
1) You do not have His Word
abiding in you. (v. 38)
2) You do not have the love
of God in you. (v. 42)
How to make you church go dead: Firstly, stop teaching the Bible, or teach only the bits you like. Secondly, create human honor systems of self-promotion and glorying in man. Have a Christianity-Life, not-too-heavy-on-the-bible, 3-ring circus of stages, entertainment, celebrities and honoring one another.
What
is so wrong with honor systems? Honor systems create competition among
believers, and result in politics, envy, strife and selfish ambition. As James
says: James 3:16 MKJV For where
envying and strife are, there is confusion and every foul deed.
Honor
systems also tend to reward only either the dull orthodoxy of the
establishment, the so-called innovative theology of heresy, or the powerful
personalities of religious hucksters. Few faith-filled missionaries or humble
servants of God get much in the way pf human applause.
Jesus
actually goes as far as to say: Luke 6:26 MKJV Woe to you when all men shall speak well of you! For so their
fathers did to the false prophets.
And in today’s passage: “I do not receive honor from men.” (v. 41)
Ministering to people in order to receive human approval is one of the oldest traps in the ministry. Little by little they are told “don’t preach on money” or “we like the Psalms” and the pastor complies for fear of losing his or her position. Whole books of the Bible are ignored, and difficult passages skipped over, and less than the full counsel of God is taught. Yet I think Martin Luther once said: He who preaches the gospel in all points except where it applies to the present age, has not preached the gospel at all.”
So receiving honor and neglecting the message of the Scriptures are intertwined evils that lead surely to unbelief. The Jews refused to believe Moses’ testimony concerning Christ and the testimony of other Scriptures such as Isaiah 9 that were clearly being fulfilled in Jesus. They read the Scriptures according to human convention rather than according to the Spirit and they read them that way because that led to human honor from their peers. The erroneous conventional interpretation had become socially reinforced.
Today we are in a similar position on doctrines such as inerrancy, homosexuality, hell and the uniqueness of Jesus for salvation - all of which are now very unpopular. Non-one receives honor for saying homosexuality is wrong and the passages on it are neglected in many pulpits.
As Jesus said earlier in John - John 4:24 MKJV God is a spirit, and they who worship Him
must worship in spirit and in truth. Truth is a basic requirement for true fellowship with God
and love of God.
Thus, the
neglect of inner spiritual message of the Bible and the raising up of human
systems of honor may lead to a shriveling of fellowship with God. The Word is
not in them, and the love of God is not in them. And in the end they refuse to
believe in the Messiah and thus fail to enter into salvation.
They did
“search the Scriptures” thinking that salvation was in a book, rather than in
God. We should study the Bible but we must do so looking to God for approval
and listening to the Holy Spirit as its interpreter. For the letter on its own
kills, but the Spirit gives life. 2 Corinthians
3:6 MKJV Who also has made us able
ministers of the new covenant; not of the letter, but of the
spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit makes alive.
Ultimately,
our doctrine must emerge from the sensitive conscience, informed by the Word,
and quickened by the Spirit - and not from any human system of approval.
John 6:1-14
The Feeding Of The Five Thousand
John 6:1-14 MKJV
After these things Jesus went over the Sea of Galilee, the Sea of
Tiberias. (2) And a great multitude
followed Him, because they saw His miracles, which He did on the sick
ones. (3) And Jesus went up into a
mountain and sat there with His disciples.
(4) And the Passover was near, a feast of the Jews. (5) Then Jesus lifted up His eyes and saw a
great crowd come to Him. He said to Philip, Where shall we buy loaves so that
these may eat? (6) And He said this to
test him, for He Himself knew what He would do. (7) Philip answered Him, Loaves for two hundred denarii are not
enough for them, that every one may take a little. (8) One of His disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to
Him, (9) There is a boy here who has
five barley loaves and two small fish, but what are these among so many? (10) And Jesus said, Make the men recline.
And there was much grass in the place. So the men reclined, about five thousand
in number. (11) And Jesus took the
loaves, and when He had given thanks, He distributed to the disciples, and the
disciples to those who had reclined; and likewise of the fish, as much as they
wanted. (12) And when they were filled,
He said to His disciples, gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing is
lost. (13) Therefore they gathered and
filled twelve hand baskets with fragments of the five barley loaves that were
left over to those who had eaten. (14)
Then seeing the miracle that Jesus did, those men said, this is truly the
Prophet, the One coming into the world.
This
miracle is in all four gospels in almost identical form, except Luke adds the
seating arrangements - by fifties (Luke 9:14). It marks a turning point in the
ministry of Jesus after which He seems to become much more Messianic and a
political threat. It is after this that the Galileans want to take Him and make
Him King by force (incidentally reinforcing the fact He was of the royal
bloodline.)
A similar
thing happens to priests and missionaries who move from a preaching ministry to
also meeting human needs in a holistic fashion, suddenly life becomes
political.
Let’s look
at the miracle in some depth. It is a miracle that meets the obvious physical
needs of his hearers, the popular peasants of Galilee, with their staple food –
bread and fish. It is an economic miracle of supply.
I once had
a similar miracle with a large yam I was given when I was a missionary in Papua
New Guinea. I had been moved to a very expensive urban area and my support was
insufficient so a church elder gave me a large purple-black yam which I put on
the kitchen bench and cut off a chunk each, day, boiled it and ate. It was
delicious. After a while I noticed the yam was not getting any smaller, until
the last week I was in PNG when it seemed to shrink and vanish. The yam lasted
about four months.
My wife
tells similar stories about cooking for large Christian university student
functions in Manila, and how no matter how little they started with, there was
always more than enough by the end.
God’s
blessing enables a small amount to go a long way and I am continually surprised
at how much can be done with little or no cash, but just with the blessing of
God (e.g. parting the Red Sea, healing lepers etc.) Many a large church has
started in a garage with little funds. If you start with just what you have,
then somehow it ends up being enough.
Money is still needed,
wages and the electricity bill still have to be paid, but money is not the
over-riding factor – the blessing of God is. Some of my most effective Internet
ministry was done in 1996-1998, out of a dusty 8ft by 6ft breezeblock office in
the Australian tropics with an old computer and a 33K modem. Eternity Online
magazine peaked with one million readers plus per month. These days’
administration and paperwork and writing grant applications seem to take up way
too much time.
Jesus has a creative
powerful solution to even very large-scale problems – like 5000 hungry people.
The scale is not a problem to Him. God
made everything we know out of a “handful of nothing”; He can also make bread
for five thousand out of a few barley loaves.
I tend to stress out
over large-scale problems instead of handing my five loaves and two small fish
to Jesus. We need to stop, and “be still” and ask Jesus for the creative
solution that He has in mind.
Just a note, the miracle
did not happen because of the disciple’s faith, but because of their obedience.
The power was with Jesus, not with man. They just got to see that power at work
in a spectacular way because they obeyed.
John 6:15-21
Jesus Walks On The Water
John 6:15-21 YLT
Jesus, therefore, having known that they are about to come, and to
take him by force that they may make him king, retired again to the mountain
himself alone. (16) And when evening
came, his disciples went down to the sea,
(17) and having entered into the boat, they were going over the sea to
Capernaum, and darkness had already come, and Jesus had not come unto
them, (18) the sea also--a great wind
blowing--was being raised, (19) having
pushed onwards, therefore, about twenty-five or thirty furlongs, they behold
Jesus walking on the sea, and coming nigh to the boat, and they were
afraid; (20) and he saith to them, `I
am he, be not afraid;' (21) they were
willing then to receive him into the boat, and immediately the boat came unto
the land to which they were going.
Jesus
runs away from earthly glory. Just a few verses before (John 5:41) He had said
that He refused to receive glory from men, now He demonstrates what He meant by
heading away from the crowd that wanted Him to be King and entering into
solitude and prayer – he “retired again to the mountain himself
alone.”
Jesus
was battling for His soul. This study is late because this evening I went and
saw the movie Kingdom of Heaven, which is about a Crusade and also about
keeping our souls in the midst of severe temptations and struggles. In it the hero
has to choose again and again to be honorable. There is a great line in it
“Allah says submit, but Jesus says choose”. (BTW it is much better than the
critics have said).
And
here Jesus Himself had to choose. He knew he could have claimed the Kingship,
which was rightfully His, bypassed the cross and used twelve legions of angels
to overthrow Rome. He was seeing great miracles, healing the sick, feeding the
five thousand and walking on water - His powers must have been intoxicating. He
was popular and He was anointed. He could easily have been King.
But
instead He goes to prayer and then heads into a storm. This is a picture of
much Christian ministry. We strain and struggle and nearly sink and row
“twenty-five to thirty furlongs” (3 to 4 miles) through big waves until our
muscles ache, and then just at the point of weariness and panic Jesus turns up
and we are at land. That happened to me last week with a project that has been
going in circles for a year, seemingly going nowhere and which had worn me to a
frantic frazzle. Now suddenly it looks like actually happening. What happened?
Jesus got in the boat!
Now
it is up to Jesus to decide when He will turn up – and meanwhile we have no
choice but to row hard! It is not a
lack of faith to do the hard work, but it is sheer grace and blessing and
relief when the Lord turns up!
“And
darkness had already come, and Jesus had not come unto them,” Darkness in
John’s gospel always has a spiritual meaning “ and Judas went out – and it was
night” being the most famous. The darkness is the evil that opposes the good
and struggles against the light but cannot overthrow it (John 1:5).
The
darkness had come and was all around the disciples - they were in the midst of
a storm and were wet and cold and weary and frustrated and in the midst of
their abandonment and anxiety they began to see a terrible apparition, someone
walking on the water towards them, perhaps a ghost come to take their souls!
They were doomed - and where was Jesus! Right in the midst of their fears!
Jesus
often seems to turn up at the worst of moments when my mind is thinking weird
frightened thoughts. And He often steps out of the blackest night with a
cheery: `I am he, be not afraid;’ and when He arrives His presence changes
everything.
Why does
God put us through such things? Why are we left to row our boat in the storm?
To test us, grow us, and teach us. If everything was miraculously
“snap-of-the-fingers” convenient we would still be infants in our faith.
At the end
of the Kingdom of Heaven one of the Saracens (Muslims) says to the spiritually
perplexed hero: “God must love you or you could not have done such things”.
When we look back and see our almost sinking boat touching dry land, in an
instant, then we know that God is with us. Suddenly the impossible becomes
possible and when that happens, after we have done all we can and got nowhere,
then we know it is God’s love.
Jesus
never deserts His friends but neither does He pander to them like little
children. He always treated the disciples as very capable grown men. We need
the dignity of the human struggle in the darkness and the storm, and we also
need the miracle.
Jesus
walked on the water. Just like that, as if the elements were His to command –
and they were. The chaos that disturbs rocks and us and our boat is under the
feet of Jesus.
Romans 16:20 MKJV And the
God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. May the grace of our
Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.
Ephesians 1:22 MKJV And He has put all things under His feet and gave Him to be Head over all things to the church,
All our
problems are under the feet of Jesus! Praise the Lord!
John 6:22-27
Seeking Jesus Aright
John 6:22-27 MKJV The following day, the crowd standing on the other side of the sea had seen that there was no other little boat there except that one into which His disciples had entered, and when they saw that Jesus did not go with His disciples into the little boat, but that His disciples had gone away alone, (23) (however, other boats from Tiberias came near the place where they ate the loaves, the Lord having given thanks), (24) therefore, when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor His disciples, they themselves also entered into the boats and came to Capernaum seeking Jesus. (25) And when they had found Him on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, Rabbi, when did you come here? (26) Jesus answered them and said, Truly, truly, I say to you, You seek Me not because you saw the miracles, but because you ate the loaves and were filled. (27) Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for that food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you. For God the Father sealed Him.
The crowd is now seeking
Jesus – for all the wrong reasons and so Jesus is playing the spiritual
equivalent of hide and seek. In fact in the remainder of John 6 He says such
hard things that almost all (except the disciples) turn away and stop following
Him.
Jesus wanted true
believers not adoring followers. Jesus did not receive glory from men, or seek
their praise or want them to follow Him in order to make Him feel important or
successful.
In fact Jesus was not
very ‘seeker sensitive’. He made people go out into the wilderness to find Him,
he told incomprehensible parables and made it clear that it was tough to be a
true believer e.g. “take up your cross and follow me”.
Jesus intrigues the
crowd when He got to the other side of the lake so they ask: “Rabbi,
when did you come here?” To which Jesus does not
give an answer. Instead He tells them they were seeking Him for all the wrong
reasons: Truly, truly, I say to you, You seek Me not because you saw the
miracles, but because you ate the loaves and were filled.
He then corrects their priorities in the next verse: “Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for that food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you. For God the Father sealed Him.”
These verses alone should be enough to sink the so-called prosperity gospel. Personal satisfaction, especially material satisfaction, is not the aim of life nor is it the purpose of Christ’s mission here on earth.
We are not to put our life’s energy into materialism but into the pursuit of eternal reward.
Matthew 6:19-21 MKJV
Do not lay up treasures on earth for yourselves, where moth and rust
corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. (20) But lay up treasures in Heaven for yourselves, where neither
moth nor rust corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. (21) For where your treasure is, there will
your heart be also.
Luke 12:22-23 MKJV
And He said to His disciples, Therefore I say to you, Be not anxious as
to your life, what you shall eat; nor for the body, what you shall put on. (23) Life is more than food, and the body is
more than clothing.
Indeed the bread of life is Christ Himself and
the doing of His will. John 4:34 MKJV Jesus said
to them, My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to finish His work.
Later in this chapter Jesus will graphically describe such spiritual food as
“eating His flesh and drinking His blood”.
We often get God wrong, we want Him to be our “Heavenly Jeeves”, a convenient butler who thinks of our every comfort and who is brought into service with just a simple prayer. But God is no man’s servant!
God is not
convenient. He wants true sincere
spiritual worshippers who worship Him in spirit and in truth and who seek
eternal life – not just bread and fish. As we shall see later Peter left all
and followed Jesus for His words – which were words of eternal life. In the end
that is all we get – words. But what words! Words that impart eternal life!
Many of us in ministry
take stock in mid-life and see our contemporaries zooming ahead of us in
financial and social position while we struggle on. Then we wonder: “if it was
worth it all”. We look at our bookshelves and our Greek lectionaries and wonder
if our pursuit of truth has got us anywhere. But we have Christ and we have the
words of eternal life. And we will have no idea how much that will be worth
until we get to Heaven.
In the end the whole
Christian life is a wager – that pursuing eternal life and the “food that does
not perish” is worth it.
One thing is sure – that
if you just pursue material things you end with nothing at the end of the game.
Naked you come into the world and naked you leave it (1 Timothy 6:7). All that
work is for stuff that perishes, which means it is for nothing in the long
haul.
What we gamble on is
that we can take our wisdom and faith and sanctification and grace and holiness
and love with us beyond the grave. These things, our souls tell us, will last.
So they are the things that we should work for.
John 6:27
For God The Father Sealed
Him…
John 6:27 Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for that food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you. For God the Father sealed Him.
We will focus for today
on the final phrase in John 6:27 “For God the Father sealed Him”. Anything that happens to Christ is of great
importance to those who are in Christ so we need to enquire into what is meant
by the sealing of Jesus.
John
only uses the word “seal” on one other occasion in his gospel: John 3:31-33
MKJV He who comes from above is above
all; he who is from the earth is earthly and speaks from the earth. He who
comes from Heaven is above all, (32)
and what He has seen and heard, that He testifies, and no one receives His
testimony. (33) He who has received His
testimony has set his seal to this, that God is true.
There the “seal” could
be to do with verifying that the witness of Jesus is true and that God is true.
So here “seal” may have to do with ‘authenticating” the testimony of Jesus –
firstly, at His baptism “this is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” and
then through the testimony of John the Baptist, and through the miracles and
the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. In this case we could also read, “For God
the Father has authenticated Him” – indeed God the Father is always
authenticating His Son – most notably through the resurrection from the dead.
(Romans 1:4)
Secondly, there is a
spiritual sense to the “seal”. The seal
says that we belong to God as one of His servants: Revelation 7:2-3 MKJV And I saw another angel ascending from
the east, having the seal of the living God. And he cried with a loud voice to
the four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea, (3) saying, Do not hurt the earth or the sea
or the trees until we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads.
The seal of
the Living God marks those who are spiritually alive – the true servants of God
in Christ. Thus Jesus had the “stamp of God” upon His life. He was a marked man, marked out as belonging
to the Father and set aside for His work.
This
sealing is an inner work of God through the Holy Spirit.
2 Corinthians 1:22 MKJV (22) And He has
sealed us and having given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts.
Ephesians 1:13-14 MKJV in whom also you, hearing the Word of
Truth, the gospel of our salvation, in whom also believing, you were sealed
with the Holy Spirit of promise, (14)
who is the earnest of our inheritance, to the redemption of the purchased
possession, to the praise of His glory.
Ephesians 4:30 MKJV And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by
whom you are sealed until the day of redemption.
The way that God knows
those who are truly His, and discerns the true believers from the “fakes” is by
checking the “seal” – the imprint of the Holy Spirit in their lives. Those with
the Holy Spirit are His, and those who merely imitate the faith without this
interior reality are not.
When we get to Heaven we
will probably not be given a test on our theology or correct denominational
affiliation, rather God will check for faith in Christ and for the presence of
His seal – the Holy Spirit.
THE NECESSITY OF THE SPIRIT
Romans 2:29 MKJV but he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision
is of the heart; in spirit and not in letter; whose praise is not from men, but
from God.
Romans 8:9 MKJV But you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone has not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.
Romans 8:14 MKJV For as many as are led by the
Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.
1 John 3:24 MKJV And he who keeps His commandment
dwells in Him, and He in him. And by this we know that He abides in us, by the
Spirit, which He gave to us.
1 John 4:13 MKJV By this we know that we dwell
in Him, and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.
Romans 8:29 (above) tells us that we
are not validated as true Christians by:
a) an outward mark or ceremony such as
circumcision.
b) By “letter”, that is by observing
spiritual rules or laws.
c) By human approval and recognition that is “the praise of men”.
Romans 8:9 tells us that without
the Spirit dwelling in us we are “none of His”.
Romans 8:14 tells us that the
essential characteristic of the sons of God is that they are led by the Spirit
of God.
1
John 3;24 tells us that we know that God dwells in us by the Spirit which
He gave us.
1 John 4:13 says that we know we dwell in God – is because He has given us of His Spirit.
Thus, true Christianity
is a God-wrought interior work of the indwelling Holy Spirit. Church membership
rolls may have their uses but they are no register of the saved. The saved are
registered by being sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.
Thus, Christ was sealed with the Holy Spirit as a servant of God and this then brought about His authentication as a Servant of God and the consequent miracles that authenticated Him. It was His anointing, not any human diploma or ordination that marked and sealed the ministry of Jesus Christ.
John 6:28-35
The Bread Of Life
John 6:28-35 MKJV Then they said to Him, What shall we do
that we might work the works of God?
(29) Jesus answered and said to them, This is the work of God, that you
believe on Him whom He has sent. (30)
Therefore they said to Him, What sign do you show then, so that we may see and
believe you? What do you work? (31) Our
fathers ate the manna in the desert, as it is written, "He gave them bread
from Heaven to eat." (32) Then
Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, Moses did not give you that
bread from Heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from Heaven. (33) For the bread of God is He who comes
down from Heaven and gives life to the world.
(34) Then they said to him, Lord, evermore give us this bread. (35) And Jesus said to them, I am the bread
of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes on Me shall
never thirst.
The crowd are always
trying to turn the conversation back to “give us bread” (v.31 & v.34) they
are focused on having God meet their physical needs. But Jesus is trying to
point them to the meeting of their spiritual needs.
The crowd starts off
with a polite question to the Rabbi “What shall we do that
we might work the works of God?” I think this was meant to impress Jesus with
their piety, flatter Him a little, and put Him in a good mood so they would get
what they wanted – which was bread. As a missionary I have sometimes been asked
to preach in a church and later found out this was just “buttering me up” in
the (vain) hope that they would get funding from Australia or America. This
question to Jesus is quite similar.
Jesus
replies with the quite curt: “This is the work of God, that you believe on Him whom
He has sent.” Faith is Jesus as the Son
of God enables us to “work the works of God”, indeed without such faith we “can
do nothing” (John 15:5). The true work of God is faith, and all other works
flow from that one main work of trust in God.
For
instance as a missionary I must first trust the Lord and step out in faith, as
I step out in faith and trust God, then from the work of faith flow the other
works of teaching, mercy and compassion. The work of faith begins and under
girds the whole enterprise- and if that faith should flag, then I end up with a
bureaucracy not a ministry.
The next
two verses boil down to them trying to strike a bargain with Jesus around the
proposition: “Give us bread and we will believe in You”.
(30) Therefore they
said to Him, What sign do you show then, so that we may see and believe you?
What do you work? (31) Our fathers ate
the manna in the desert, as it is written, "He gave them bread from Heaven
to eat."
Jesus then decides to
use this as a jumping off point to preach the gospel:
(32) Then Jesus said
to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, Moses did not give you that bread from
Heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from Heaven. (33) For the bread of God is He who comes
down from Heaven and gives life to the world.
This is very similar to
the same “hook” Jesus used with the woman at the well except that “living
water” is replaced with “bread from Heaven” and later “bread of life”. Jesus of
course is referring to Himself as the true Bread from Heaven (thus making this
a good passage for Communion.) Jesus is the One who came down from heaven to
give spiritual life and nourishment to all who believe.
The “manna in the
wilderness” was simply a type of the true Bread from Heaven, which is Christ.
Thus is the Old is fulfilled in the New.
“and gives
life to the world” – Christ gives life to the world, to all who will receive it
in this world, and without Christ the world is life-less. Without Him we are
utterly dead in our trespasses and sins - but by grace He has given us new life
and raised us with Him to sit in heavenly realms (Ephesians 4:1-7).
1 John 5:11-12 MKJV And this is the record, that God has given to us everlasting
life, and this life is in His Son. (12)
He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have
life.
Totally missing the point the crowd asks: “Lord, evermore give us this bread.” And Jesus responds: “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes on Me shall never thirst.”
The spiritual hunger of mankind is met in Christ and finds more than enough to satisfy even the most ravenous spiritual appetites. There is so much to Christ that we can never devour it all.
There is a
dearth of preaching about Jesus, His attributes and character and miracles and
nature – and the people are hungry and thirsty while some pastors share ideas
and stories and notions and talk about good things but not God things. Paul preached
nothing but “Christ and Him crucified” and I try to make sure every sermon of
mine has Christ at the center.
Jesus is
the food and drink of the Christian soul and if we are to feed our sheep we
must feed them Jesus. Let’s focus our sermons and bible studies on Jesus Christ
and His salvation and we shall see true church growth in both grace and number.
John 6:35-40
The One Who Comes To Me…
John 6:35-40 MKJV And Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. He who comes to
Me shall never hunger, and he who believes on Me shall never thirst. (36) But I said to you that you also have
seen Me and do not believe. (37) All
that the Father gives Me shall come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will
in no way cast out. (38) For I came
down from Heaven, not to do My own will but the will of Him who sent Me. (39) And this is the will of the Father who
sent Me, that of all which He has given Me I should lose nothing but should
raise it up again at the last day. (40)
And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and
believes on Him should have everlasting life. And I will raise him up at the
last day.
Today we will pick up the last verse from yesterday (v.35) and go on to look at some of the Bible’s most interesting verses about our common salvation.
Eternal life requires an
infinite resource to sustain it and faith in Christ will give us the
spiritual resources (bread of life) that will sustain us for eternity. All
other sources of power will fade away or be limited in some way. All complexity
requires maintenance, or it falls into decay – and life is complex! So God
sustains the believer through Christ who works in us for our good.
In verse
36, Jesus then accuses the crowd of unbelief, of being cynical spectators in
the salvation story wanting “one more sign” before they will believe – and thus
never believing! They actually saw Jesus do the miracles – and yet still did
not believe!
Verse 37
says: “All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me, and the one who comes to
Me I will in no way cast out.”
Salvation is like a train to Heaven.
Anyone who wants to can get on the train, and no one who gets on the
Salvation Train will ever be thrown off. And everyone who the Father wants on
the Salvation Train will be aboard. The Salvation Train is Christ and all who
are “in Him” (through grace, by faith) are on the path to salvation – and will
arrive, for the train is safe.
Verse 38 tells us that Jesus came not to do His own will – which is also in line with the
prayer in Gethsemane: Matthew 26:39 MKJV And He went a little further and fell on His face, and prayed,
saying, O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me. Yet not as I
will, but as You will.
Some
create great problems for the doctrine of the Trinity in this supposed conflict
between the will of Jesus Christ and the will of the Father. They ask: “How can
one God have three separate wills, that is a will for each of the Father, Son
and Holy Spirit?” An analogy might be a perfect marriage, which does not stifle
individuality, but still makes the two people into one. It is in the nature of
personality to want to unite with another, and it is also the nature of
personality to exercise free will. Jesus Christ would not be a full person if
He did not possess a free will – and neither would the Father! But the will of
Jesus Christ is a freely surrendered will. God is complicated and in His
complexity He is a Trinity of three eternal persons in one essential and
unified Being. Each person has utterly and totally free will, but that free
will is exercised in harmony and grace and perfect unity.
The last two verses tell us about the sureness of our
resurrection glorification: (39) And this is the will of the Father who sent
Me, that of all which He has given Me I should lose nothing but should raise it
up again at the last day. (40) And this
is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes on
Him should have everlasting life. And I will raise him up at the last day.
Not all who thought they
followed Jesus were those “which He has
given Me I should lose nothing.” Those
who followed for bread, or to make Jesus a political Messiah or for personal
profit like Judas – these fell away. They were followers but not true
believers. What then are the characteristics of true believers who will be
raised on the last day? “That everyone who sees the Son and believes on Him
should have everlasting life.” They see
(Literally behold, gaze continually at) Christ and believe in Him. Jesus’ words
are taken with utmost seriousness by true believers - they obey His
commandments and love His righteousness.
False followers have a
strong personal agenda that is primary and which God must fit into – bread,
political power, money, and various personal desires. When God offends their
personal agenda, and asks for Isaac to be put on the altar, they turn back from
the faith. On the other hand true believers can sing “All to Jesus I surrender,
all to Him I freely give” and truly mean it.
We need to spend much
time beholding Jesus and believing Him. The verbs are present participles “who
is seeing the Son and who is believing on Him” – and this implies continuous
action, it is not a one off spiritual experience but a daily habit of faith in
Jesus the Son of God.
In the end it must be
God’s will, not our will and God’s ambitions and interests, not our ambitions
and interests, and to such folk, the true believers salvation is safe and sure
and guaranteed.
Jesus Christ the Son of God will come in glory
and power and will raise true believers on the Last Day. We will have both
eternal life and a glorious, eternal and immortal resurrection body (1
Corinthians 15:35-58) and become like the angels in Heaven. Luke 20:35-36 CEV But in the future world no one who is
worthy to rise from death will either marry or die. They will be like the
angels and will be God's children, because they have been raised to life.
That is worth
sacrificing our personal desires for!
John 6:41-47
Unless The Father
John 6:41-47 MKJV Then the Jews murmured about Him, because He said, I am the
bread which came down from Heaven. (42)
And they said, Is this not Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we
know? How now does this One say, I have come down from Heaven? (43) Jesus therefore answered and said to
them, Do not murmur with one another.
(44) No one can come to Me unless the Father who has sent Me draw him,
and I will raise him up at the last day.
(45) It is written in the Prophets, "And they shall all be taught
of God." Therefore everyone who hears and learns from the Father comes to
Me. (46) Not that anyone has seen the
Father, except He who is from God, He has seen the Father. (47) Truly, truly, I say to you, He who
believes on Me has everlasting life.
The Jews did not believe
but made comments about His earthly origins. Instead of addressing their
question Jesus goes to the root source of their unbelief – not being taught of
God.
Some people have zero
spiritual intuition. Literal to the last they “just don’t get” even the most
obvious of the parables and entirely miss the signs of times. Other people are
spiritually sensitive and attuned and pick things up very quickly; they have a
life-long curiosity about meaning, spirituality and deeper religious matters.
These are learners in spiritual things are “being taught by God”.
That is why Jesus says
things such as:
Matthew 11:15 MKJV He who
has ears to hear, let him hear and
Matthew 13:12 MKJV For
whoever has, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance. But
whoever does not have, from him shall be taken away even that which he has.
There are those who are
being drawn by God to Christ, and those who are oblivious to spiritual matters.
From an early age I was interested in Greek and Roman myths and spirituality in
general, then in existentialism, then in astrology, the New Age, Zen and
finally Christianity. I was always very sensitive as a young person and
spiritually curious. This I believe was God at work in me slowly drawing me to
Himself.
Each of us, who are in
Christ – and reading this, are being taught by God (v. 45 above) and this devotional is just one small part of His
instructing you. As I used to say to my bible college students in Australia –
unless God teaches you, you will learn nothing.
I noticed that
about one-third of bible college students really “get it” and grow while
two-thirds are hardly changed at all by two years in the Scriptures. This is
largely independent of the lecturer’s style. Those who are spiritually hungry
will learn even from a poor lecturer. But those who are self-satisfied would
hardly learn even from John Stott himself. (That is not to say we should
lecture badly).
All spiritual
growth is a divine miracle. It took Jesus 3 seconds to raise Lazarus but three
YEARS to get His disciples to learn the truth and to truly believe in Him!
Coming to Christ is God’s work in us: “No one can come to Me unless the Father who has sent Me draw him, and I will raise him up at the last day. (45) It is written in the Prophets, "And they shall all be taught of God." Therefore everyone who hears and learns from the Father comes to Me.”
God communicates with our spirit to teach us the
things of Christ:
1
Corinthians 2:9-10 MKJV (But as it is
written, "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard," nor has it entered into
the heart of man, "the things which God has prepared for those who love
Him." But God has revealed them to
us by His Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, yea, the deep things of
God.
God reveals to us, the deep things of God, things
that eye has not seen, nor ear heard! He does this through the Holy Spirit so
that we might know the things of God. (1 Corinthians 2:9-16)
“Therefore everyone who hears and learns from the Father comes