John 4:43-53
43After the two days he left for Galilee. 44(Now Jesus himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honor in his own country.) 45When he arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him. They had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, for they also had been there. 46Once more he visited Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son lay sick at Capernaum. 47When this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and begged him to come and heal his son, who was close to death. 48"Unless you people see miraculous signs and wonders," Jesus told him, "you will never believe." 49The royal official said, "Sir, come down before my child dies." 50Jesus replied, "You may go. Your son will live." The man took Jesus at his word and departed. 51While he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that his boy was living. 52When he inquired as to the time when his son got better, they said to him, "The fever left him yesterday at the seventh hour." 53Then the father realized that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, "Your son will live." So he and all his household believed.
Let’s begin today with a quotation from the venerable Eugene Peterson who begins by noting that this short section contains the second sign that Jesus performed and that in this section there is both an affirmation and a criticism of signs. After the man comes and requests Jesus to heal his son Jesus says, negatively, ‘Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.’ Now Peterson writes, "But the father, undeterred, persists, as if to say, ‘I don’t care about signs, I want you to heal my son!’ And then comes the interesting part: Jesus tells him, ‘Go; your son will live’; and ‘the man believed’ and left without any evidence of the healing, which is to say, quite apart from sign or wonder. The father responded believingly to Jesus without benefit of a sign, we might almost say without the distraction of a sign. Jesus’ word, not the sign, formed the man’s belief. It was not until the next day as he neared home—it was a twenty-mile hike between Capernaum and Cana—that he learned that his son got well at the very time of the day before that Jesus, in Cana, had said that he would." (Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, 95)
So, even before the sign was complete, the man believed. This is amazing! And it is contradictory. It is contradictory because, nowadays especially, people tell us and, have others convinced, that what is necessary for forming faith is not the preached word but the recounting of someone’s ‘story’ or the recounting of how ‘Jesus has touched me’ and made my life meaningful, or satisfying, or the recounting of some experience based this or that of how Jesus loved me so much that I got over everything I ever feared or some such jabberwocky. It’s not that those things are wrong. Oh, don’t misunderstand me; what they are is rather insufficient. What they are is incapable of being a platform upon which to build a life of faith in Christ. They will not stand the fires of the furnace of trial and temptation. They are simple insufficient for building a life as a disciple. Yet there are plenty who want to insist upon relegating the difficult, doctrinal, and biblical preaching of theology in favor of these rather faddish techniques. If we can, some think, just tug at the heartstrings enough then we should find a crowd out there ready for Jesus.
In my estimation, this simply will not do. This will not produced disciples with the courage and conviction to stand in the face of persecution and defend Christ. But the kind of faith displayed by this man says this: ‘The Word of Christ is sufficient; so I go and expect to find my son well.’ This man knew Jesus in what way? Reputation? Rumor? Had he met him before? Either way, all we can say about this is thus: He trusted the Word of Jesus implicitly. He needed no other confirmation from anyone except the Word of Jesus. Will this sort of faith be found on the earth now? Will this sort of faith do in the church today? Is it enough for those who call on the Name of Christ to be their Savior for His word to be sufficient? Bruce Milne is surely correct, "Faith based on signs and miracles must not be mistaken for true faith, however, which is why Jesus does not encourage it. It fails to honour God, since by it he serves us rather than the other way round" (John, BSP, 92).
Let’s insist then that this is true for today as well. Let’s insist then that our faith be built upon that which cannot be trumped, overturned, corrupted or defeated. Let’s insist that while miracles and signs may carry some weight that they do not, in fact, form a proper substitute for true Biblically defined faith; faith of substance. Let’s insist that in the church the word of God be properly proclaimed—all of it, too! Verse 50 says this: "The man believed in the Word Jesus spoke to him, so he left." Let’s insist that preachers preach the Word of Christ to us that instills such courage and faith that we, too, can and will believe the Word of Jesus the way this man did.
The irony here is that this man believed apart from seeing any sign from Jesus even after Jesus insisted that people would not believe unless they saw signs. I think Jesus said this to the man almost rhetorically. That is, Are you like everyone else who will not believe unless they see things like signs and wonders? And the man, judging by his response, insists that he believes regardless; he wants his son well again.
Some time ago I marked a note in the margin of my Bible in response to Jesus’ words, ‘You may go. Your son will live.’ I wrote: As if this is all the man needs: Your son will live. As if that’s all the man needs. As if that’s all the man needs. Do you get it?
I hope this 17th of 90 Days is Blessed for you in the Lord!
Soli Deo Gloria!
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Friday, June 15, 2007
90 Days With Jesus, Day 16: John 4:39-42: Preaching Jesus
John 4:39-42
39Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything I ever did." 40So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. 41And because of his words many more became believers. 42They said to the woman, "We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world."
"Christianity is not up for sale. Its price has already been fixed and that price is the complete and ongoing surrender to Christ of those who embrace him by faith. It can only be had on his own terms. It can be had only as a whole. It refuses to offer only selections of its teachings. Furthermore, the Church is not its retailing outlet. Its preachers are not its peddlers and those who are Christians are not its consumers. It cannot legitimately be had as a bargain though the marketplace is full of bargain hunters…No. Let us think instead of the Church as its voice of proclamation, not its sales agent, its practitioner, not its marketing firm. And in that proclamation there is inevitable cultural confrontation. More precisely, there is confrontation between Christ, in and through the biblical Word, and the rebellion of the human heart. This is confrontation of those whose face is that of a particular culture but whose heart is that of the fallen world. We cannot forget that."—David F. Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs, 308-309
First, the Samaritans came out from the town because of the woman’s testimony and as a result of this coming out many believed in him. Well this was certainly the intended result. Her testimony was compelling whatever ‘He told me everything I ever did’ might actually mean. I disagree that she ‘shared her experience’ with the town folk. Instead, she went and shared Jesus’ words, ‘he told me everything I ever did.’ It was not her experience that persuaded people, but Jesus’ words. Even so their faith did not end there. Jesus stayed with them for two more days. Then verse 41.
Second, ‘And because of his words many more became believers.’ So this woman’s testimony did not stand on its own. Jesus’ testimony confirmed what she had been saying and also had the effect of causing many more to become believers. Again, the intended result—producing believers—was accomplished. But it was not mere experience that persuaded the first group and an additional group. No, again, it was the words of Jesus. They heard for themselves what Jesus was saying. They heard for themselves his testimony. Because of his ‘words’ many more became believers.’
Here’s the part that is most important to consider in today’s meditation: We know that this man is really the Savior of the World. They believed something about Jesus because of something Jesus said. It had something to do with what he told them, something we are not privy to. What did he say over the course of two days that so convinced them? Better, how did all these people give up their day jobs for two whole days to do nothing but sit and listen to what He had to say? (Did they take breaks for volleyball or shuffleboard? Did they sit in a circle like a sort of ‘Sermon in Samaria’? What was the content of his instruction to them?
I hate to harp on this, but here’s the simple truth. There were no gimmicks, no tricks, not nonsense, no fliers, no banners, and certainly no side-show. These people went out and listened to what Jesus had to say. On the other hand, there’s this: Jesus had something to say. I suspect that the content of his message is found in part in the words he spoke to the woman. I suspect he discoursed about freedom of worship, His identity as Messiah, eternal life, Living Water, springs of water that well up inside, the reaper gathering wages for eternal life and all such things. But whatever it was, it was surely the Gospel. The fact remains, the people went out to listen and Jesus had something to say.
Churches need to get a grip on this. People come to worship, they come from cities, they come from the country, they come from here and there; we meet them by wells, water-coolers, at ball games, at the soccer field, and all such places as this and more. So, when they come out, when we meet them, do we in fact have something to say? I don’t mean fluffy nonsense that has nothing to do with pointing to Jesus, the Messiah. I mean precisely that: Do we persuade them about Jesus the Messiah? I suspect that is the real content of Jesus’ message that day. They believed precisely because he took the time to explain things about himself. This is also our job: If we expect people to believe, then we must tell them about Jesus. Jesus must be the content of our message, our testimony, our proclamation. If we don’t tell them about Jesus how can they ever announce, "We know that He really is the Savior of the World"? And isn’t that quite the point of Gospel proclamation?
All I’m saying is that churches would do better from the pulpit if churches had preachers who stood up and pointed to Jesus and not to anything else. I’m steadfast on this belief. There are other venues for learning about good sex, managing finances, raising children and the like. But the only place people will hear the Gospel is from the church. The Church, in my judgment, must be about the business of proclaiming Jesus: Every time, All the Time, and At Every Opportunity. It is Jesus people need; it is Jesus people must hear about.
Jesus is the One, the only One, Who is the Savior of the World. That we must not forget.
I hope your 16th Day of 90 is Blessed in the Lord!
Soli Deo Gloria!
39Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything I ever did." 40So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. 41And because of his words many more became believers. 42They said to the woman, "We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world."
"Christianity is not up for sale. Its price has already been fixed and that price is the complete and ongoing surrender to Christ of those who embrace him by faith. It can only be had on his own terms. It can be had only as a whole. It refuses to offer only selections of its teachings. Furthermore, the Church is not its retailing outlet. Its preachers are not its peddlers and those who are Christians are not its consumers. It cannot legitimately be had as a bargain though the marketplace is full of bargain hunters…No. Let us think instead of the Church as its voice of proclamation, not its sales agent, its practitioner, not its marketing firm. And in that proclamation there is inevitable cultural confrontation. More precisely, there is confrontation between Christ, in and through the biblical Word, and the rebellion of the human heart. This is confrontation of those whose face is that of a particular culture but whose heart is that of the fallen world. We cannot forget that."—David F. Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs, 308-309
First, the Samaritans came out from the town because of the woman’s testimony and as a result of this coming out many believed in him. Well this was certainly the intended result. Her testimony was compelling whatever ‘He told me everything I ever did’ might actually mean. I disagree that she ‘shared her experience’ with the town folk. Instead, she went and shared Jesus’ words, ‘he told me everything I ever did.’ It was not her experience that persuaded people, but Jesus’ words. Even so their faith did not end there. Jesus stayed with them for two more days. Then verse 41.
Second, ‘And because of his words many more became believers.’ So this woman’s testimony did not stand on its own. Jesus’ testimony confirmed what she had been saying and also had the effect of causing many more to become believers. Again, the intended result—producing believers—was accomplished. But it was not mere experience that persuaded the first group and an additional group. No, again, it was the words of Jesus. They heard for themselves what Jesus was saying. They heard for themselves his testimony. Because of his ‘words’ many more became believers.’
Here’s the part that is most important to consider in today’s meditation: We know that this man is really the Savior of the World. They believed something about Jesus because of something Jesus said. It had something to do with what he told them, something we are not privy to. What did he say over the course of two days that so convinced them? Better, how did all these people give up their day jobs for two whole days to do nothing but sit and listen to what He had to say? (Did they take breaks for volleyball or shuffleboard? Did they sit in a circle like a sort of ‘Sermon in Samaria’? What was the content of his instruction to them?
I hate to harp on this, but here’s the simple truth. There were no gimmicks, no tricks, not nonsense, no fliers, no banners, and certainly no side-show. These people went out and listened to what Jesus had to say. On the other hand, there’s this: Jesus had something to say. I suspect that the content of his message is found in part in the words he spoke to the woman. I suspect he discoursed about freedom of worship, His identity as Messiah, eternal life, Living Water, springs of water that well up inside, the reaper gathering wages for eternal life and all such things. But whatever it was, it was surely the Gospel. The fact remains, the people went out to listen and Jesus had something to say.
Churches need to get a grip on this. People come to worship, they come from cities, they come from the country, they come from here and there; we meet them by wells, water-coolers, at ball games, at the soccer field, and all such places as this and more. So, when they come out, when we meet them, do we in fact have something to say? I don’t mean fluffy nonsense that has nothing to do with pointing to Jesus, the Messiah. I mean precisely that: Do we persuade them about Jesus the Messiah? I suspect that is the real content of Jesus’ message that day. They believed precisely because he took the time to explain things about himself. This is also our job: If we expect people to believe, then we must tell them about Jesus. Jesus must be the content of our message, our testimony, our proclamation. If we don’t tell them about Jesus how can they ever announce, "We know that He really is the Savior of the World"? And isn’t that quite the point of Gospel proclamation?
All I’m saying is that churches would do better from the pulpit if churches had preachers who stood up and pointed to Jesus and not to anything else. I’m steadfast on this belief. There are other venues for learning about good sex, managing finances, raising children and the like. But the only place people will hear the Gospel is from the church. The Church, in my judgment, must be about the business of proclaiming Jesus: Every time, All the Time, and At Every Opportunity. It is Jesus people need; it is Jesus people must hear about.
Jesus is the One, the only One, Who is the Savior of the World. That we must not forget.
I hope your 16th Day of 90 is Blessed in the Lord!
Soli Deo Gloria!
90 Days With Jesus, Day 15: John 4:27-38: The Food of God
John 4:27-38
27Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, "What do you want?" or "Why are you talking with her?" 28Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29"Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?" 30They came out of the town and made their way toward him. 31Meanwhile his disciples urged him, "Rabbi, eat something." 32But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about." 33Then his disciples said to each other, "Could someone have brought him food?" 34"My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 35Do you not say, 'Four months more and then the harvest'? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. 37Thus the saying 'One sows and another reaps' is true. 38I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor."
“Jesus came to the fountain as a hunter…He threw a grain before one pigeon that he might catch the whole flock…At the beginning of the conversation he did not make himself known to her, but first she caught sight of a thirsty man, then a Jew, then a Rabbi, afterwards a prophet, last of all the Messiah. She tried to get the better of the thirsty man, she showed dislike of the Jew, she heckled the Rabbi, she was swept off her feet by the prophet, and she adored the Christ.”—JA Findlay, as quoted by George Beasley-Murray, John, (Word Biblical Commentary), 66
There are two stories going on at the same time in these verses. The woman is busy running back to her community to announce that she has met someone who could be the Messiah. While she is doing that, Jesus is giving his disciples another lesson in theology. Really the lessons in the verses for today are not terribly complicated, so I would like to make but a couple of observations as we prepare to close out this chapter and our week together, as we prepare to worship together on Sunday.
First, as I have noted, the most striking feature of this entire chapter, the most enduring image, the most profound observation is found in verse 28: ‘Then, leaving her water jar…’ I could get stuck on this verse all day. It is so full of meaning and grace. It is so full of redemption and salvation. It hits me the way Jesus using those ceremonial watering jars filled with water to perform his first sign: Water into wine. There we learned Jesus was better. It strikes me like Jesus telling Nicodemus that he needed a new birth of water and Spirit because his physical birth (i.e., being an Israelite) was not sufficient. It smacks me like the woman’s first question to Jesus: “Are you greater than our Father Jacob.” It clobbers me like Jesus’ statement, “A time is coming, and how now come, when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.” Or, “You will see greater things than this.” It is a parable, this leaving behind her water jar, whether she intended it to be or not. It speaks volumes about the progress she has made from ‘will you give me a drink’ to ‘I who speak to you am he.’
She left behind that which satisfied her only for a moment and returned to the people, the people who evidently shunned her daily, and announced to them: Could this be? It is reminiscent of what Philip said to Nathanel, what Andrew said to Peter, what John the Baptizer said to his disciples: We have found the Messiah! This woman, this unnamed, Samaritan woman with a jaded, checkered past, and questionable character, and suspect lifestyle is one of the fist evangelists to announce the arrival of Messiah. In a very similar way we see Jesus refusing food when his disciples return. She forgot about, or purposely disdained, her water jar in her hurry to get back and announce to the people of Sychar that she had found Messiah. (On a slightly side note which I may pursue later, some commentators note the similarities and contrasts between the story of Jesus and Nicodemus (3) and Jesus and this Samaritan woman. I would note one outstanding difference: She had no fear of going and announcing Jesus to people. We have no such information about Nicodemus.)
Second, there are the disciples who had just returned to find Jesus talking with the woman. Evidently they thought something was amiss, but they kept quiet about it. They were, as usual, very concerned about food. What they prove about themselves is that they are still stuck back in verse 15: “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” They, unlike the woman, had not progressed along very far at all. Their minds are still on earthy things; they had yet to let go of their water jars: “Could someone have brought him food?” They are stood in stark contrast to this Samaritan woman who left behind her water jar and went back to town, not to buy food as the disciples had done, but to announce the Messiah.
There is probably something to be said about this without obscuring the theological point. But have you ever seen someone who all of the sudden has an awakening to the identity of Jesus? And how do they compare with those insiders who have been walking with him for some time? Well, this woman, left her jar for Jesus; the disciples left Jesus for food. I don’t want to abuse the text of Scripture, but that much is obvious, isn’t it? And what I wonder about are those who have walked a long time or even a short time compared with the Newly Awakened and have lost their zeal. In other words what Jesus says, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.” I think that was a crushing blow to those disciples who had gone to get food. Remember those at the beginning: Andrew went and found Peter. Here’s what it says, “The First Thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, ‘We have Found the Messiah.’ And he brought him to Jesus.” We might readily assume that the first thing Philip did was find Nathanael.
Well, here are the twelve. They arrive in fertile territory, where barely any seeds had been planted, and they are first concerned with food, second concerned with why Jesus is talking to this woman, and third concerned with why Jesus won’t eat. The woman starts off the same: Concerned about water. But as it slowly dawned on her who Jesus was her priorities shifted: Her job was to tell. Maybe I’m making too big a deal out of it. But why does it seem to be the exact opposite for those who have followed Christ for a short or long time? That is, why with new people does the awareness of who Jesus is dawn, and for those who have followed Him, the awareness sets? New disciples enthuse; older disciples grow, well, complacent?
So when Jesus says, “I sent you to reap what you have not worked for, Others have don done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor,” I think he is talking about that crowd of people from Sychar who are walking out at the heals, beck and call, of the unnamed Samaritan woman. I sense in her statement, “He told me everything I ever did,’ something more than just ‘he told me about my 5 husbands,’ because, if in fact she was shunned by the community because of her reputation…well, everyone would have known ‘everything she had ever done.’ She went and proclaimed Christ. There was something in her testimony that provoked more than a passing interest. This crowd of Samaritans were the harvest Jesus was speaking of. Nevertheless, Jesus says, all have a share in the harvest; all have a share in the joy. All receive the same day’s denarius.
In conclusion I have this to say. Open your eyes. Look around. There is a harvest waiting to be reaped. Seeds have been planted, I can’t imagine any less now than then, and are bursting through the soil. And what Jesus says is this: These seeds do not take a long time to produce fruit. You say, ‘Four more months and then the harvest.’ Jesus says, “Open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life.’ There’s no time like the present. Eternal life has already begun for those who can accept it. It’s time for you and me to get our minds on the business at hand. It’s time for you and me to get our minds off of water, food, water jars, and eating and get our hands, heads, hearts busy with doing the will of God. Dare I say that when we do we shall find joy, satisfaction, and plenty beyond what this earth can provide, beyond what the culture promises?
I hope this 15th Day of 90 is Blessed For you in the Lord.
Soli Deo Gloria!
27Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, "What do you want?" or "Why are you talking with her?" 28Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29"Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?" 30They came out of the town and made their way toward him. 31Meanwhile his disciples urged him, "Rabbi, eat something." 32But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about." 33Then his disciples said to each other, "Could someone have brought him food?" 34"My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 35Do you not say, 'Four months more and then the harvest'? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. 37Thus the saying 'One sows and another reaps' is true. 38I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor."
“Jesus came to the fountain as a hunter…He threw a grain before one pigeon that he might catch the whole flock…At the beginning of the conversation he did not make himself known to her, but first she caught sight of a thirsty man, then a Jew, then a Rabbi, afterwards a prophet, last of all the Messiah. She tried to get the better of the thirsty man, she showed dislike of the Jew, she heckled the Rabbi, she was swept off her feet by the prophet, and she adored the Christ.”—JA Findlay, as quoted by George Beasley-Murray, John, (Word Biblical Commentary), 66
There are two stories going on at the same time in these verses. The woman is busy running back to her community to announce that she has met someone who could be the Messiah. While she is doing that, Jesus is giving his disciples another lesson in theology. Really the lessons in the verses for today are not terribly complicated, so I would like to make but a couple of observations as we prepare to close out this chapter and our week together, as we prepare to worship together on Sunday.
First, as I have noted, the most striking feature of this entire chapter, the most enduring image, the most profound observation is found in verse 28: ‘Then, leaving her water jar…’ I could get stuck on this verse all day. It is so full of meaning and grace. It is so full of redemption and salvation. It hits me the way Jesus using those ceremonial watering jars filled with water to perform his first sign: Water into wine. There we learned Jesus was better. It strikes me like Jesus telling Nicodemus that he needed a new birth of water and Spirit because his physical birth (i.e., being an Israelite) was not sufficient. It smacks me like the woman’s first question to Jesus: “Are you greater than our Father Jacob.” It clobbers me like Jesus’ statement, “A time is coming, and how now come, when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.” Or, “You will see greater things than this.” It is a parable, this leaving behind her water jar, whether she intended it to be or not. It speaks volumes about the progress she has made from ‘will you give me a drink’ to ‘I who speak to you am he.’
She left behind that which satisfied her only for a moment and returned to the people, the people who evidently shunned her daily, and announced to them: Could this be? It is reminiscent of what Philip said to Nathanel, what Andrew said to Peter, what John the Baptizer said to his disciples: We have found the Messiah! This woman, this unnamed, Samaritan woman with a jaded, checkered past, and questionable character, and suspect lifestyle is one of the fist evangelists to announce the arrival of Messiah. In a very similar way we see Jesus refusing food when his disciples return. She forgot about, or purposely disdained, her water jar in her hurry to get back and announce to the people of Sychar that she had found Messiah. (On a slightly side note which I may pursue later, some commentators note the similarities and contrasts between the story of Jesus and Nicodemus (3) and Jesus and this Samaritan woman. I would note one outstanding difference: She had no fear of going and announcing Jesus to people. We have no such information about Nicodemus.)
Second, there are the disciples who had just returned to find Jesus talking with the woman. Evidently they thought something was amiss, but they kept quiet about it. They were, as usual, very concerned about food. What they prove about themselves is that they are still stuck back in verse 15: “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” They, unlike the woman, had not progressed along very far at all. Their minds are still on earthy things; they had yet to let go of their water jars: “Could someone have brought him food?” They are stood in stark contrast to this Samaritan woman who left behind her water jar and went back to town, not to buy food as the disciples had done, but to announce the Messiah.
There is probably something to be said about this without obscuring the theological point. But have you ever seen someone who all of the sudden has an awakening to the identity of Jesus? And how do they compare with those insiders who have been walking with him for some time? Well, this woman, left her jar for Jesus; the disciples left Jesus for food. I don’t want to abuse the text of Scripture, but that much is obvious, isn’t it? And what I wonder about are those who have walked a long time or even a short time compared with the Newly Awakened and have lost their zeal. In other words what Jesus says, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.” I think that was a crushing blow to those disciples who had gone to get food. Remember those at the beginning: Andrew went and found Peter. Here’s what it says, “The First Thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, ‘We have Found the Messiah.’ And he brought him to Jesus.” We might readily assume that the first thing Philip did was find Nathanael.
Well, here are the twelve. They arrive in fertile territory, where barely any seeds had been planted, and they are first concerned with food, second concerned with why Jesus is talking to this woman, and third concerned with why Jesus won’t eat. The woman starts off the same: Concerned about water. But as it slowly dawned on her who Jesus was her priorities shifted: Her job was to tell. Maybe I’m making too big a deal out of it. But why does it seem to be the exact opposite for those who have followed Christ for a short or long time? That is, why with new people does the awareness of who Jesus is dawn, and for those who have followed Him, the awareness sets? New disciples enthuse; older disciples grow, well, complacent?
So when Jesus says, “I sent you to reap what you have not worked for, Others have don done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor,” I think he is talking about that crowd of people from Sychar who are walking out at the heals, beck and call, of the unnamed Samaritan woman. I sense in her statement, “He told me everything I ever did,’ something more than just ‘he told me about my 5 husbands,’ because, if in fact she was shunned by the community because of her reputation…well, everyone would have known ‘everything she had ever done.’ She went and proclaimed Christ. There was something in her testimony that provoked more than a passing interest. This crowd of Samaritans were the harvest Jesus was speaking of. Nevertheless, Jesus says, all have a share in the harvest; all have a share in the joy. All receive the same day’s denarius.
In conclusion I have this to say. Open your eyes. Look around. There is a harvest waiting to be reaped. Seeds have been planted, I can’t imagine any less now than then, and are bursting through the soil. And what Jesus says is this: These seeds do not take a long time to produce fruit. You say, ‘Four more months and then the harvest.’ Jesus says, “Open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life.’ There’s no time like the present. Eternal life has already begun for those who can accept it. It’s time for you and me to get our minds on the business at hand. It’s time for you and me to get our minds off of water, food, water jars, and eating and get our hands, heads, hearts busy with doing the will of God. Dare I say that when we do we shall find joy, satisfaction, and plenty beyond what this earth can provide, beyond what the culture promises?
I hope this 15th Day of 90 is Blessed For you in the Lord.
Soli Deo Gloria!
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Malcom Muggeridge & Living Water
Friends,
I came across this quote too late to include it in yesterday’s meditation, but I thought it was pertinent enough to give it its own place here.
I may, I suppose, regard myself, or pass for being, a relatively successful man. People occasionally start at me in the streets-that’s fame. I can fairly easily earn enough to qualify for admission to the higher slopes of the Inland Revenue–that’s success. Furnished with money and a little fame even the elderly, if they care to, may partake of trendy diversions-that’s pleasure. It might happen once in a while that something I said or wrote was sufficiently heeded for me to persuade myself that it represented a serious impact on our time-that’s fulfillment. Yet I say to you, and beg you to believe me, multiply these tiny triumphs by a million, add them all together, and they are nothing-less than nothing, a positive impediment-measured against one draught of that living water Christ offers to the spiritually thirsty, irrespective of who or what they are. (As quoted by Bruce Milne, John, in the Bible Speaks Today commentary series, p 84, 1993)
What beautiful words from Jesus: “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” Can we give anything to Jesus in such sufficient quantities that it will outweigh what He gives to us? Can we give him a drink who is our drink? Oh, Praise Him! O, Praise Him!
Soli Deo Gloria!
I came across this quote too late to include it in yesterday’s meditation, but I thought it was pertinent enough to give it its own place here.
I may, I suppose, regard myself, or pass for being, a relatively successful man. People occasionally start at me in the streets-that’s fame. I can fairly easily earn enough to qualify for admission to the higher slopes of the Inland Revenue–that’s success. Furnished with money and a little fame even the elderly, if they care to, may partake of trendy diversions-that’s pleasure. It might happen once in a while that something I said or wrote was sufficiently heeded for me to persuade myself that it represented a serious impact on our time-that’s fulfillment. Yet I say to you, and beg you to believe me, multiply these tiny triumphs by a million, add them all together, and they are nothing-less than nothing, a positive impediment-measured against one draught of that living water Christ offers to the spiritually thirsty, irrespective of who or what they are. (As quoted by Bruce Milne, John, in the Bible Speaks Today commentary series, p 84, 1993)
What beautiful words from Jesus: “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” Can we give anything to Jesus in such sufficient quantities that it will outweigh what He gives to us? Can we give him a drink who is our drink? Oh, Praise Him! O, Praise Him!
Soli Deo Gloria!
90 Days With Jesus, Day 14: John 4:11-26: No Excuses
Friends, these verses are tough. I hope I have done well by them and not obscured the meaning. I have checked my understanding against a couple of commentaries and found that I am not un-orthodox in my interpretation. Nevertheless, I apologize if I have made this more difficult than it needs to be.–Jerry
John 4:11-26
11″Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?” 13Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 15The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” 16He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.” 17″I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.” 19″Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.” 21Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” 25The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” 26Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am he.”
I have read this story a hundred times (that is, a lot). Tonight, for the first time, I noticed something I have never noticed. Jesus said, “Go, call your husband and come back.” Why did Jesus say this to her? Was it a simple social courtesy? What was it for? Was he rude? Was he trying to make her feel bad because he knew the answer to the question? What was he hoping to accomplish with such an in-your-face demand?
She wanted the water, I think. But she also, at the outset, thoroughly misunderstood what Jesus was talking about. When she asks, “Are you greater than our father Jacob,” I wonder if she would have believed the answer. But Jesus was not talking about the sort of water that is comprised of two hydrogen and one oxygen atoms. Clearly this sort of water was in no way able to supply this woman with what Jesus was talking about; nevertheless, she was eager to have it. She did want it; at least she seems eager enough for something. Jesus clears matters up for her essentially saying, “I’m not talking about this water which could never satisfy you as completely as the water I am offering.” Everyone who drinks that water will indeed be thirsty again. The water Jesus offers is different in every way, “The water I give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” It satisfies more than the thirst; better than water; beyond this earth.
It is ‘living water’. It is ‘water that springs up to eternal life’. Still she did not quite get it: “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” Translation? “I’m tired of making this daily trip. I’m tired of this work. I’m tired of all the complications of daily, redundant, life. Make it easier on me by filling my jars with water that never run empty.” Sometimes it’s true that this is the approach people take to Jesus. You know those ones who are convinced that Jesus’ goal is to make life easier, to eliminate all the stumbling blocks, to take out all the hurdles, to lower mountains and raise valleys. Well, who doesn’t want that sort of Jesus? “Peace, peace in our time.” That’s a nice, domesticated Jesus—at our beck and call, ready to serve when we ring our little bells. Maybe it’s the sort of Jesus who eliminates all the redundancy of life so that we can spend our time on our pursuits that certainly will not involve the everyday hard work of everyday hard work, and most likely will not include the demands of holiness.
If the woman had no idea what sort of water Jesus was talking about then I suspect that neither did she have any idea the sort of man she was speaking to. “I can see that you are a prophet.” Jesus will tell her that this is not enough that he is a prophet. Forsyth says that Jesus was here as more than a mere prophet, but in fact as the Creative King of the Kingdom. “And Christ went to His death in His function as King, not to become King” (Forsyth, The Justification of God, 176). She did not yet realize that Jesus was unfolding before her the identity of the God of the universe. So when he says to her, ‘Go, call your husband and come back…’ I don’t think Jesus was merely showing off his ability to know things about her that she had not told him—no, Jesus is more than Prophet; Prophet though He may be. I think he is sitting (he had sat down by the well, v 6) there by the well, talking with this woman, as King, Judge. His demand for her husband to be present was his demand that she confess her sin. I think it was his demand for her to acknowledge her un-holiness, an un-holiness that was more important to her than worship. Forsyth again, “We are all standing before the judgment-seat of Christ. And one day we shall know it. We end where we began—in Him” (The Justification of God, 187).
She did not want to talk about this aspect of her life. I agree with the NIV study note here, “His presence exposes sin and makes people squirm…” But squirming is not an end in itself. People can squirm, be very uncomfortable and never actually get to God. Jesus is getter her to God. That is, he has other designs for her confession. Bruce Milne notes, “The deeper point is that Jesus brought to her awareness the relational desert in which she was living” (John, BST, 84-85). And not just with men, but with God.
Yes she changes the subject and starts talking about Jesus’ status as a ‘prophet.’ Then she changes the subject again: “So, you are a prophet. Well, perhaps then you can tell me why you Jews say that the only place where anyone can worship is in Jerusalem.” Remember the garden of Eden? “Uh, it was the serpent. He made me eat it.” “Uh, it was the woman, she gave it to me and I ate it.” “Uh, it’s everyone else’s fault.” “Uh, it’s you Jews that prevent me from worshiping.” Jesus had cut to the heart of the matter: This woman had no relationship with God whatsoever. “She…had been furtive and unwilling to open her heart to God” (Tenney, John, 56). The evidence of her unfaithfulness to God is found in her continued unfaithfulness in marriage (regardless of the reasons why the marriages hadn’t worked). Oh, I’m sure not all those husbands were gems. But five, plus one more?! Was she Liz Taylor? Here was a woman, for all her better qualities, who was simply an unfaithful person (and not merely in an allegorical sense). Jesus brings all this out and then says, “There is no excuse for you not to be worshiping the One True God. There is no reason, certainly not the Jews, for you to be flitting around from place to place, person to person, god to god.” She was blaming someone else’s argument about the place to worship for her pathetic attitude towards worship altogether; toward God. Jesus has opened up the entire history of this woman and confronted her with her real need: It is God she is lacking. It wasn’t water. It wasn’t good marriage. It wasn’t friendship with the other ladies in town (why was she at this well, at that time of day, alone if not because she was somewhat ostracized because of her lifestyle?). Jesus was pointing out to her that her life reflects a surprising lack of God-interestedness. That was her real problem in life.
It is in this context that Jesus makes his most startling announcement yet: “I who speak to you am he.”
This is the great need of our day too. People are flitting about, like bees going from flower to flower. They gofrom person to person, relationship to relationship, god to god trying in vain to find something or someone that satisfies them, trying to find some place to perch. In the process of doing so, they alienate all those around them and they end up alone by a well in the heat of the day. They end up godless, submitted to no god, irreverent towards any god; unfaithful in all cases. They end up blaming everyone on the planet for their problems and accusing everyone else for their lack of worship and reverence for God. You’ve heard them: “Well, I don’t go to church because I can’t stand hypocrite Christians. It’s their fault I don’t worship.” And are they sinless? I think not. (There’s even a new movement going around of churches being planted with this slogan: “A church for people who hate church.” This is a rather impolite way of condemning existing churches and the people who comprise them. And, in my judgment, blaming them for other people’s lack of God-interestedness.) They’ve been hurt, burned, tricked, manipulated and angered and they take it out on God. Jesus comes along, takes all that blame and says, “I am the One who changes all that.” Jesus says, “In me, there are no more excuses. In me, there are no acceptable excuses for not worshiping God.”
But of all these verses teach us I’m settling on this: Jesus does not accept our excuses for not worshiping God. He points out that if this woman blamed Jews for their insistence on the place of worship, she herself is no less guilty of excluding herself because of her sin and flitty, flirty unfaithfulness. In other words, no one has a right to be in God’s presence, and all should be uncomfortable before Him; all are judged in Christ. Slowly, but surely, this awakening is dawning on this unnamed Samaritan woman with whom Jesus spoke that day. So if all are judged in Christ, all are also welcomed in Christ. If freedom to worship is what one looks for we have no excuses; instead, we have Jesus.
I hope this 14th Day is Blessed for you in the Lord.
Soli Deo Gloria!
John 4:11-26
11″Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?” 13Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 15The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” 16He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.” 17″I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.” 19″Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.” 21Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” 25The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” 26Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am he.”
I have read this story a hundred times (that is, a lot). Tonight, for the first time, I noticed something I have never noticed. Jesus said, “Go, call your husband and come back.” Why did Jesus say this to her? Was it a simple social courtesy? What was it for? Was he rude? Was he trying to make her feel bad because he knew the answer to the question? What was he hoping to accomplish with such an in-your-face demand?
She wanted the water, I think. But she also, at the outset, thoroughly misunderstood what Jesus was talking about. When she asks, “Are you greater than our father Jacob,” I wonder if she would have believed the answer. But Jesus was not talking about the sort of water that is comprised of two hydrogen and one oxygen atoms. Clearly this sort of water was in no way able to supply this woman with what Jesus was talking about; nevertheless, she was eager to have it. She did want it; at least she seems eager enough for something. Jesus clears matters up for her essentially saying, “I’m not talking about this water which could never satisfy you as completely as the water I am offering.” Everyone who drinks that water will indeed be thirsty again. The water Jesus offers is different in every way, “The water I give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” It satisfies more than the thirst; better than water; beyond this earth.
It is ‘living water’. It is ‘water that springs up to eternal life’. Still she did not quite get it: “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” Translation? “I’m tired of making this daily trip. I’m tired of this work. I’m tired of all the complications of daily, redundant, life. Make it easier on me by filling my jars with water that never run empty.” Sometimes it’s true that this is the approach people take to Jesus. You know those ones who are convinced that Jesus’ goal is to make life easier, to eliminate all the stumbling blocks, to take out all the hurdles, to lower mountains and raise valleys. Well, who doesn’t want that sort of Jesus? “Peace, peace in our time.” That’s a nice, domesticated Jesus—at our beck and call, ready to serve when we ring our little bells. Maybe it’s the sort of Jesus who eliminates all the redundancy of life so that we can spend our time on our pursuits that certainly will not involve the everyday hard work of everyday hard work, and most likely will not include the demands of holiness.
If the woman had no idea what sort of water Jesus was talking about then I suspect that neither did she have any idea the sort of man she was speaking to. “I can see that you are a prophet.” Jesus will tell her that this is not enough that he is a prophet. Forsyth says that Jesus was here as more than a mere prophet, but in fact as the Creative King of the Kingdom. “And Christ went to His death in His function as King, not to become King” (Forsyth, The Justification of God, 176). She did not yet realize that Jesus was unfolding before her the identity of the God of the universe. So when he says to her, ‘Go, call your husband and come back…’ I don’t think Jesus was merely showing off his ability to know things about her that she had not told him—no, Jesus is more than Prophet; Prophet though He may be. I think he is sitting (he had sat down by the well, v 6) there by the well, talking with this woman, as King, Judge. His demand for her husband to be present was his demand that she confess her sin. I think it was his demand for her to acknowledge her un-holiness, an un-holiness that was more important to her than worship. Forsyth again, “We are all standing before the judgment-seat of Christ. And one day we shall know it. We end where we began—in Him” (The Justification of God, 187).
She did not want to talk about this aspect of her life. I agree with the NIV study note here, “His presence exposes sin and makes people squirm…” But squirming is not an end in itself. People can squirm, be very uncomfortable and never actually get to God. Jesus is getter her to God. That is, he has other designs for her confession. Bruce Milne notes, “The deeper point is that Jesus brought to her awareness the relational desert in which she was living” (John, BST, 84-85). And not just with men, but with God.
Yes she changes the subject and starts talking about Jesus’ status as a ‘prophet.’ Then she changes the subject again: “So, you are a prophet. Well, perhaps then you can tell me why you Jews say that the only place where anyone can worship is in Jerusalem.” Remember the garden of Eden? “Uh, it was the serpent. He made me eat it.” “Uh, it was the woman, she gave it to me and I ate it.” “Uh, it’s everyone else’s fault.” “Uh, it’s you Jews that prevent me from worshiping.” Jesus had cut to the heart of the matter: This woman had no relationship with God whatsoever. “She…had been furtive and unwilling to open her heart to God” (Tenney, John, 56). The evidence of her unfaithfulness to God is found in her continued unfaithfulness in marriage (regardless of the reasons why the marriages hadn’t worked). Oh, I’m sure not all those husbands were gems. But five, plus one more?! Was she Liz Taylor? Here was a woman, for all her better qualities, who was simply an unfaithful person (and not merely in an allegorical sense). Jesus brings all this out and then says, “There is no excuse for you not to be worshiping the One True God. There is no reason, certainly not the Jews, for you to be flitting around from place to place, person to person, god to god.” She was blaming someone else’s argument about the place to worship for her pathetic attitude towards worship altogether; toward God. Jesus has opened up the entire history of this woman and confronted her with her real need: It is God she is lacking. It wasn’t water. It wasn’t good marriage. It wasn’t friendship with the other ladies in town (why was she at this well, at that time of day, alone if not because she was somewhat ostracized because of her lifestyle?). Jesus was pointing out to her that her life reflects a surprising lack of God-interestedness. That was her real problem in life.
It is in this context that Jesus makes his most startling announcement yet: “I who speak to you am he.”
This is the great need of our day too. People are flitting about, like bees going from flower to flower. They gofrom person to person, relationship to relationship, god to god trying in vain to find something or someone that satisfies them, trying to find some place to perch. In the process of doing so, they alienate all those around them and they end up alone by a well in the heat of the day. They end up godless, submitted to no god, irreverent towards any god; unfaithful in all cases. They end up blaming everyone on the planet for their problems and accusing everyone else for their lack of worship and reverence for God. You’ve heard them: “Well, I don’t go to church because I can’t stand hypocrite Christians. It’s their fault I don’t worship.” And are they sinless? I think not. (There’s even a new movement going around of churches being planted with this slogan: “A church for people who hate church.” This is a rather impolite way of condemning existing churches and the people who comprise them. And, in my judgment, blaming them for other people’s lack of God-interestedness.) They’ve been hurt, burned, tricked, manipulated and angered and they take it out on God. Jesus comes along, takes all that blame and says, “I am the One who changes all that.” Jesus says, “In me, there are no more excuses. In me, there are no acceptable excuses for not worshiping God.”
But of all these verses teach us I’m settling on this: Jesus does not accept our excuses for not worshiping God. He points out that if this woman blamed Jews for their insistence on the place of worship, she herself is no less guilty of excluding herself because of her sin and flitty, flirty unfaithfulness. In other words, no one has a right to be in God’s presence, and all should be uncomfortable before Him; all are judged in Christ. Slowly, but surely, this awakening is dawning on this unnamed Samaritan woman with whom Jesus spoke that day. So if all are judged in Christ, all are also welcomed in Christ. If freedom to worship is what one looks for we have no excuses; instead, we have Jesus.
I hope this 14th Day is Blessed for you in the Lord.
Soli Deo Gloria!
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
90 Days with Jesus, Day 13: John 4:1-10: Jesus Talks With...Anyone
John 4:1-10
1The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, 2although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. 3When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee. 4Now he had to go through Samaria. 5So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour. 7When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8(His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) 9The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) 10Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
This is the first of our meditations on John chapter 4. We’ll be here for the next five days reading about Jesus’ encounter with an unnamed Samaritan woman. What strikes me here is that John tells us that Jesus was tired, that he ‘had’ to go through Samaria, and that he asks this woman for a drink—he is thirsty! There is something magnificent about Jesus being tired and thirsty and having to do something that he, according to all the smart people, did not have to do. I suppose all of this might be beside the point, but I have not found John to be one who throws words around for no purpose. He uses words carefully and not necessarily liberally. So later on he will famously tell his readers that the woman ‘left her water jar behind’ as a way of telling us that because she met Jesus she forgot about her worldly problems. It’s sort of the same way the author of the book of Judges tells us, the Samson narrative, that Samson’s hair started to grow back apart from the notice of the Philistines. It’s a narrative clue giving you and me information that the characters in the story may not have. The woman did not know that Jesus had to go through Samaria. She did not know, when she woke up that day, that a tired and thirsty Jewish Male would be at Jacob’s well and ask her for water.
I might also add this: Why did Jesus wait behind by the well when the disciples went into town to buy food? Did it take 12 men to get food? That’s a lot of food! Why didn’t Jesus go with them? Why did he wait? Well, all of this could be just my fanciful desire for there to be something more going on than there actually is. It could just be that Jesus was tired, thirsty, and didn’t feel like going into town to get food. Later on he does say, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” Maybe he wasn’t hungry and food was their idea, not his. Who knows?
Ironically, it is Jesus who begins the conversation by asking this unnamed Samaritan woman for a drink. We are told rather pointedly that Jews and Samaritans do not ‘associate’ with one another. The NIV footnote informs us that this could also mean ‘they do not use one another's dishes’ or something to that effect. Whatever the case is Jews and Samaritans did not get along well at all with, sadly, the Israelites leading the way on hate and dislike. What’s worse is that this woman was, well, a woman. So, here’s Jesus. All alone. A man. A woman. Talking. Preachers don’t do things like this in today’s world. In today’s world that is taboo. Someone might get the wrong idea or spread a rumor or gossip and cause the ruin of reputations or formulate all sorts of sick mind fantasies. Not so with Jesus. Jesus talks to anyone, anywhere, and he really could not care less what people think or say. (Later John says, in verse 27, the thing all of us were thinking: “Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, ‘What do you want?’ or ‘Why are you talking with her?’”)
I think the woman is either offended or surprised at Jesus’ request. I’m not sure which it is. I’d like to think surprised, but something tells me that she did not like Jews any more than Jews liked her. I cannot get into this too much, but there is something to be said about this (and I don’t want to get too far away from the theological point Jesus was making). But how many times in our lives have we come across someone and written it off as mere chance or coincidence? How many times have we purposely refused to talk to someone precisely because we were terrified of what someone else might say about us; what they might say about us? Or how many times do we simply go out of our way to avoid someone because of what we think we know about them? Yet here is Jesus for all intents and purposes going out of his way on purpose to meet with this unnamed, Samaritan woman. That was bad enough. At this point we have yet to read verses 16-18 which, when read and understood, will surely make this situation far worse for Jesus and his reputation probably will not hold up under scrutiny. Interestingly, Jesus was more concerned about this woman than he was about himself. The servant life, the Cross driven life, carries this burden and refuses to be stigmatized or calloused by the world’s peccadilloes. Jesus sat down—he didn’t stand up, back way off, wait for his disciples so that all hint of scandal could be diffused. He sat down, meaning he meant to stay for a while, and he initiated the conversation.
And then it gets fun. Jesus said, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” Jesus cuts to the chase and begins to unveil his identity to this woman.
This is not something for mere admiration. Forsyth wrote how some people, liberals in his day, viewed God. They think ‘God is our helper and no more. He is not a real sense, but only a figurative sense, our Redeemer. He helps us to realise our latent spiritual resources and ends. There is no break with self and the world, only a disengagement from an embarrassing situation” (The Cruciality of the Cross, 65). Jesus did not engage this woman in conversation that day to merely help her through a bad day or to help through her embarrassing marital situation or to help her through all the, undoubted, abuse she had endured at the hands of many men, or even, really, to help her physical thirst be quenched. He unveils to her not the solution to all of life’s woes and inadequacies and injustices and tediums, but he unveils to her himself. And it is only after she realizes who Jesus is that she eventually leaves her water jar behind. Jesus did not stop by Jacob’s well that day merely to engage in polite conversation about water, or merely to rest, or merely to break all sorts of social and racial taboos. Jesus sat down that day to reveal to this woman the Savior of the World: Himself.
Finally, did Jesus ever get his drink of water? He asked, but John never tells us if he got it or not. And the woman who came to draw water? Did she ever get her drink? Oh, I think she did! What happened though is that Jesus diverts attention away from her physical need, thirst, and redirects it to himself. He does the same thing later in chapter 11 when he raises Lazarus: He diverts Martha’s attention away from her grief and redirects it to himself. Essentially he is saying, “I am the solution to your grief, the victory over death (”I am the Resurrection and the Life”)” and here in chapter 4, “I am the solution to your thirst (”I you knew the gift of God…He would have given you living water”).”
Sometimes we think that the only way to be effective evangelists and witnesses for God is to solve the physical problems people have and then introduce God as the purpose or reason behind our good deeds and joy. People politely listen so they can get what they really want from us or Him. I think it should be exactly the opposite. Jesus first introduced himself. I believe we must first confront people with the reality of God, with the presence of Christ–they must hear the Gospel. It is through the Gospel that people will come to faith (Romans 10). Jesus saves; water does not. In other words, what people most need in their lives is Jesus Christ.
I hope this 13th Day of 90 is Blessed for you in the Lord Jesus.
Soli Deo Gloria!
1The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, 2although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. 3When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee. 4Now he had to go through Samaria. 5So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour. 7When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8(His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) 9The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) 10Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
This is the first of our meditations on John chapter 4. We’ll be here for the next five days reading about Jesus’ encounter with an unnamed Samaritan woman. What strikes me here is that John tells us that Jesus was tired, that he ‘had’ to go through Samaria, and that he asks this woman for a drink—he is thirsty! There is something magnificent about Jesus being tired and thirsty and having to do something that he, according to all the smart people, did not have to do. I suppose all of this might be beside the point, but I have not found John to be one who throws words around for no purpose. He uses words carefully and not necessarily liberally. So later on he will famously tell his readers that the woman ‘left her water jar behind’ as a way of telling us that because she met Jesus she forgot about her worldly problems. It’s sort of the same way the author of the book of Judges tells us, the Samson narrative, that Samson’s hair started to grow back apart from the notice of the Philistines. It’s a narrative clue giving you and me information that the characters in the story may not have. The woman did not know that Jesus had to go through Samaria. She did not know, when she woke up that day, that a tired and thirsty Jewish Male would be at Jacob’s well and ask her for water.
I might also add this: Why did Jesus wait behind by the well when the disciples went into town to buy food? Did it take 12 men to get food? That’s a lot of food! Why didn’t Jesus go with them? Why did he wait? Well, all of this could be just my fanciful desire for there to be something more going on than there actually is. It could just be that Jesus was tired, thirsty, and didn’t feel like going into town to get food. Later on he does say, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” Maybe he wasn’t hungry and food was their idea, not his. Who knows?
Ironically, it is Jesus who begins the conversation by asking this unnamed Samaritan woman for a drink. We are told rather pointedly that Jews and Samaritans do not ‘associate’ with one another. The NIV footnote informs us that this could also mean ‘they do not use one another's dishes’ or something to that effect. Whatever the case is Jews and Samaritans did not get along well at all with, sadly, the Israelites leading the way on hate and dislike. What’s worse is that this woman was, well, a woman. So, here’s Jesus. All alone. A man. A woman. Talking. Preachers don’t do things like this in today’s world. In today’s world that is taboo. Someone might get the wrong idea or spread a rumor or gossip and cause the ruin of reputations or formulate all sorts of sick mind fantasies. Not so with Jesus. Jesus talks to anyone, anywhere, and he really could not care less what people think or say. (Later John says, in verse 27, the thing all of us were thinking: “Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, ‘What do you want?’ or ‘Why are you talking with her?’”)
I think the woman is either offended or surprised at Jesus’ request. I’m not sure which it is. I’d like to think surprised, but something tells me that she did not like Jews any more than Jews liked her. I cannot get into this too much, but there is something to be said about this (and I don’t want to get too far away from the theological point Jesus was making). But how many times in our lives have we come across someone and written it off as mere chance or coincidence? How many times have we purposely refused to talk to someone precisely because we were terrified of what someone else might say about us; what they might say about us? Or how many times do we simply go out of our way to avoid someone because of what we think we know about them? Yet here is Jesus for all intents and purposes going out of his way on purpose to meet with this unnamed, Samaritan woman. That was bad enough. At this point we have yet to read verses 16-18 which, when read and understood, will surely make this situation far worse for Jesus and his reputation probably will not hold up under scrutiny. Interestingly, Jesus was more concerned about this woman than he was about himself. The servant life, the Cross driven life, carries this burden and refuses to be stigmatized or calloused by the world’s peccadilloes. Jesus sat down—he didn’t stand up, back way off, wait for his disciples so that all hint of scandal could be diffused. He sat down, meaning he meant to stay for a while, and he initiated the conversation.
And then it gets fun. Jesus said, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” Jesus cuts to the chase and begins to unveil his identity to this woman.
This is not something for mere admiration. Forsyth wrote how some people, liberals in his day, viewed God. They think ‘God is our helper and no more. He is not a real sense, but only a figurative sense, our Redeemer. He helps us to realise our latent spiritual resources and ends. There is no break with self and the world, only a disengagement from an embarrassing situation” (The Cruciality of the Cross, 65). Jesus did not engage this woman in conversation that day to merely help her through a bad day or to help through her embarrassing marital situation or to help her through all the, undoubted, abuse she had endured at the hands of many men, or even, really, to help her physical thirst be quenched. He unveils to her not the solution to all of life’s woes and inadequacies and injustices and tediums, but he unveils to her himself. And it is only after she realizes who Jesus is that she eventually leaves her water jar behind. Jesus did not stop by Jacob’s well that day merely to engage in polite conversation about water, or merely to rest, or merely to break all sorts of social and racial taboos. Jesus sat down that day to reveal to this woman the Savior of the World: Himself.
Finally, did Jesus ever get his drink of water? He asked, but John never tells us if he got it or not. And the woman who came to draw water? Did she ever get her drink? Oh, I think she did! What happened though is that Jesus diverts attention away from her physical need, thirst, and redirects it to himself. He does the same thing later in chapter 11 when he raises Lazarus: He diverts Martha’s attention away from her grief and redirects it to himself. Essentially he is saying, “I am the solution to your grief, the victory over death (”I am the Resurrection and the Life”)” and here in chapter 4, “I am the solution to your thirst (”I you knew the gift of God…He would have given you living water”).”
Sometimes we think that the only way to be effective evangelists and witnesses for God is to solve the physical problems people have and then introduce God as the purpose or reason behind our good deeds and joy. People politely listen so they can get what they really want from us or Him. I think it should be exactly the opposite. Jesus first introduced himself. I believe we must first confront people with the reality of God, with the presence of Christ–they must hear the Gospel. It is through the Gospel that people will come to faith (Romans 10). Jesus saves; water does not. In other words, what people most need in their lives is Jesus Christ.
I hope this 13th Day of 90 is Blessed for you in the Lord Jesus.
Soli Deo Gloria!
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Feeling Left Behind, Left Out, Out in Left, Left Alone
Originally posted at www.dangoldfinch.wordpress.com
Friends,
I’m in my study. It’s a beautiful day outside–I’m inside. I’m making phone calls, returning e-mails, ordering office supplies, and typing on my laptop a post for my blog. Right now I’m waiting on hold with the office supply people; part of an order was backordered and I’m curious to know how long I have to wait. In the meantime, I have a confession to make.
I just received an e-mail from a company who would very much like me to attend a leadership conference in Washington, Dallas or Orlando–cost is on $199.00, which sounds reasonable until you factor in fuel, food, lodging, and all the books I would undoubtedly need to purchase once I arrived for this three day conference. Oh, David Crowder Band will be playing; I’d go just for that. There’s other reasons I wouldn’t go.
One reason, the only reason I’ll expound on here, is that I watched the trailer. The trailer began by showing a clip of JFK, then moved on to MLK, and then to Ronald Reagan–all stalwarts in their respective fields; leaders without peers. But I think that is the very reason I cannot go. The irony of this: I heard a lot of names dropped–impressive names. But I didn’t hear anything about Scripture or even Jesus for that matter. I watched a 2:02 video trailer (minutes, seconds) and here’s what happened.
I heard about choosing the go to the moon. I heard about someone having a dream. I heard about someone else demanding that someone else tear down a wall. I learned about ‘impacting culture,’ which in my judgement is a totally fallacious and meaningless enterprise; it cannot be done; it will not succeed. The fact is, with all the people in this nation who claim to be Christians, the impact should already be felt. I don’t mean at the polls, or in elections; those aren’t the real indicators of impact. Think of Star Wars episode IV when Luke Skywalker and the rest of the rebels are going up against the Empire’s weapon of Mass Destruction: The Death Star. One rebel made a pass, fired his proton torpedo, pulled out of the trench and lamented, “No, it only impacted on the surface.” When Luke Skywalker flew down through the trench, fired his proton torpedo, it entered the exhaust port, flew into the center of the ‘Star’ and destroyed it and all who were on it. For the rebels, there was no success in merely impacting the Death Star. I’m funny like that. I’m not interested in impacting the culture. Christ wasn’t either for that matter. He came and blew up the stereotypes and the status quo and, in a manner of speaking, he totally wrecked culture. Jesus did not come here and say, “OK, let’s see how this Christianity thing will fit into the prevailing culture.” He came and said, “I am the culture.” There’s a big difference that has been lost on a generation of Christians whose preachers and prophets are far less concerned with Scripture and Truth than they are with the size of their congregations and buildings.
Here was the accusation leveled against those Christians, “We gave you strict order not to teach in this name. Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man’s blood” (Acts 5:28). I don’t think we can be accused of this any more. The Church is far to welcoming to culture. The Church is far to concerned with having a good name among the pagans. The Church is far too accomodating to those who reject Christ, far too sensitive to their ‘felt’ needs, and far to willing to overlook the problem that Christ died for: Sin. The fact is, the world’s opinion of Christ and His Scripture doesn’t matter or change the veracity of it. It is true whether the world rejects it or accepts it.
Anyhow, this conference I mentioned. I watched 2 minutes and 2 seconds of worth of trailer. When they got around to mentioning who would be speaking or whatever, the video mentioned first a musician, second a musician, and then some other ‘leaders’ who have, no doubt, important things to say. It is about ‘unleashing 20-30 somethings to action.’ I heard zero calls to exalt Christ or to submit to Scripture or to repent from sin. I heard a lot about ‘impacting culture’; nothing about being profoundly counter-cultural. I heard a lot about serving the world; nothing about repenting of sin. I heard zero, count them, zero, calls to Scripture. No mentions of hearing from the greatest leader: Jesus Christ.
Here’s my thing. I just don’t think I fit in anywhere. I feel, I’m very serious about my feelings, left behind, left out, out in left field somewhere because I find this sort of stuff seriously missing the mark, and irrelevant. I don’t see the point. Is this what is necessary to ‘unleash 20-30 somethings’? Isn’t this really beside the point? Wouldn’t the devil love for us to be sidetracked in such a way? I’m 36 and I don’t find it particularly necessary to be unleashed. Why should people need motivation to be unleashed to live what they supposedly believe? Has God ordained such things to promote His agenda? I feel like a 30 year old with no place to call home because I can’t understand those who are of the opinion that I need more motivation to believe, live, and do what is right. And how shall this be done for these folks? How shall we be the exact opposite of everything this culture says we should be? Yes, another leadership conference is what we need.
I’m sort of rambling on a bit. I feel that way today. Our motivation should be other, I think. I don’t need soul-stirring concerts, emotionally charged atmospheres, competition for my feelings, or exceptionally motivational speakers to energize or unleash my potential; and I don’t think anyone else does either.
I think what we need is a fresh look at the Cross. If the cross does not motivate us, unleash our energy and energize our potential, if the Cross does not stir in us a love for God, then I don’t want to be stirred, unleashed or energized. I don’t want what this world calls and offers up as motivation for service. In my estimation, it will be short lived and meaningless–no matter how exceptional the cast of speakers. What is needed is the Cross. “We love because He first loved us.” “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to
lay down our lives for our brothers” (1 John 3:16).
Look to the cross. And may God have mercy on those who think that more is necessary to motivate us than the Cross. And May God have mercy on those who think they need more than the Cross.
jerry
Friends,
I’m in my study. It’s a beautiful day outside–I’m inside. I’m making phone calls, returning e-mails, ordering office supplies, and typing on my laptop a post for my blog. Right now I’m waiting on hold with the office supply people; part of an order was backordered and I’m curious to know how long I have to wait. In the meantime, I have a confession to make.
I just received an e-mail from a company who would very much like me to attend a leadership conference in Washington, Dallas or Orlando–cost is on $199.00, which sounds reasonable until you factor in fuel, food, lodging, and all the books I would undoubtedly need to purchase once I arrived for this three day conference. Oh, David Crowder Band will be playing; I’d go just for that. There’s other reasons I wouldn’t go.
One reason, the only reason I’ll expound on here, is that I watched the trailer. The trailer began by showing a clip of JFK, then moved on to MLK, and then to Ronald Reagan–all stalwarts in their respective fields; leaders without peers. But I think that is the very reason I cannot go. The irony of this: I heard a lot of names dropped–impressive names. But I didn’t hear anything about Scripture or even Jesus for that matter. I watched a 2:02 video trailer (minutes, seconds) and here’s what happened.
I heard about choosing the go to the moon. I heard about someone having a dream. I heard about someone else demanding that someone else tear down a wall. I learned about ‘impacting culture,’ which in my judgement is a totally fallacious and meaningless enterprise; it cannot be done; it will not succeed. The fact is, with all the people in this nation who claim to be Christians, the impact should already be felt. I don’t mean at the polls, or in elections; those aren’t the real indicators of impact. Think of Star Wars episode IV when Luke Skywalker and the rest of the rebels are going up against the Empire’s weapon of Mass Destruction: The Death Star. One rebel made a pass, fired his proton torpedo, pulled out of the trench and lamented, “No, it only impacted on the surface.” When Luke Skywalker flew down through the trench, fired his proton torpedo, it entered the exhaust port, flew into the center of the ‘Star’ and destroyed it and all who were on it. For the rebels, there was no success in merely impacting the Death Star. I’m funny like that. I’m not interested in impacting the culture. Christ wasn’t either for that matter. He came and blew up the stereotypes and the status quo and, in a manner of speaking, he totally wrecked culture. Jesus did not come here and say, “OK, let’s see how this Christianity thing will fit into the prevailing culture.” He came and said, “I am the culture.” There’s a big difference that has been lost on a generation of Christians whose preachers and prophets are far less concerned with Scripture and Truth than they are with the size of their congregations and buildings.
Here was the accusation leveled against those Christians, “We gave you strict order not to teach in this name. Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man’s blood” (Acts 5:28). I don’t think we can be accused of this any more. The Church is far to welcoming to culture. The Church is far to concerned with having a good name among the pagans. The Church is far too accomodating to those who reject Christ, far too sensitive to their ‘felt’ needs, and far to willing to overlook the problem that Christ died for: Sin. The fact is, the world’s opinion of Christ and His Scripture doesn’t matter or change the veracity of it. It is true whether the world rejects it or accepts it.
Anyhow, this conference I mentioned. I watched 2 minutes and 2 seconds of worth of trailer. When they got around to mentioning who would be speaking or whatever, the video mentioned first a musician, second a musician, and then some other ‘leaders’ who have, no doubt, important things to say. It is about ‘unleashing 20-30 somethings to action.’ I heard zero calls to exalt Christ or to submit to Scripture or to repent from sin. I heard a lot about ‘impacting culture’; nothing about being profoundly counter-cultural. I heard a lot about serving the world; nothing about repenting of sin. I heard zero, count them, zero, calls to Scripture. No mentions of hearing from the greatest leader: Jesus Christ.
Here’s my thing. I just don’t think I fit in anywhere. I feel, I’m very serious about my feelings, left behind, left out, out in left field somewhere because I find this sort of stuff seriously missing the mark, and irrelevant. I don’t see the point. Is this what is necessary to ‘unleash 20-30 somethings’? Isn’t this really beside the point? Wouldn’t the devil love for us to be sidetracked in such a way? I’m 36 and I don’t find it particularly necessary to be unleashed. Why should people need motivation to be unleashed to live what they supposedly believe? Has God ordained such things to promote His agenda? I feel like a 30 year old with no place to call home because I can’t understand those who are of the opinion that I need more motivation to believe, live, and do what is right. And how shall this be done for these folks? How shall we be the exact opposite of everything this culture says we should be? Yes, another leadership conference is what we need.
I’m sort of rambling on a bit. I feel that way today. Our motivation should be other, I think. I don’t need soul-stirring concerts, emotionally charged atmospheres, competition for my feelings, or exceptionally motivational speakers to energize or unleash my potential; and I don’t think anyone else does either.
I think what we need is a fresh look at the Cross. If the cross does not motivate us, unleash our energy and energize our potential, if the Cross does not stir in us a love for God, then I don’t want to be stirred, unleashed or energized. I don’t want what this world calls and offers up as motivation for service. In my estimation, it will be short lived and meaningless–no matter how exceptional the cast of speakers. What is needed is the Cross. “We love because He first loved us.” “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to
lay down our lives for our brothers” (1 John 3:16).
Look to the cross. And may God have mercy on those who think that more is necessary to motivate us than the Cross. And May God have mercy on those who think they need more than the Cross.
jerry
90 Days With Jesus, Day 12: John 3:31-36: Jesus Above All
John 3:31-36
31"The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is from the earth belongs to the earth, and speaks as one from the earth. The one who comes from heaven is above all. 32He testifies to what he has seen and heard, but no one accepts his testimony. 33The man who has accepted it has certified that God is truthful. 34For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit. 35The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands. 36Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him."
Ours is a world that is dominated by many gods. Ours is a world that is filled to the brim with theologies of these gods. These gods have their apologists, their theologians, their exegetes. These gods have their preachers and teachers and singers and dancers. These gods have their bibles and their bible colleges and their PhD professors. These gods have their own churches. The difference between our world and the world of, say, the apostle Paul is that he had to walk through Athens to get a glimpse of all these gods. The Athenians had them stacked and erected and perched all around for people to see; all they had to do was walk. Our world is much, much easier. I’d say, to an extent, that we are much closer to Laban from Jacob’s day whose daughter Rachel stole some of his ‘household gods.’ I don’t know really what that means: ‘household gods.’ But I’m guess it’s not as far removed from us as we might think. Laban kept them in the house; the Athenians perched them all around town; we do both.
Our gods are all over: we perch them in town squares and call them memorials or nativities. We line them up on shelves in our living rooms so that visitors can see, smell, and touch them. We have their sermons preached to us nightly as we watch the television or listen to the radio or surf the internet. Sometimes we go out to the park and hold a collective worship service with others: cheering, clapping, hooting, participating in responsive readings, and singing their songs of praise and adoration. The gods have come down among us, we say. We invite them in for dinner or we share with them, or make an offering to them, through Visa and Master Card or Amex or Discover. Truly we are a remarkably religious society. And yet, we are profoundly empty, hollow, and virtually meaningless.
We can make a religion (or a god) out of anything. It really doesn’t even require much thought or effort. I visited a web page yesterday and listened to an old man prattle on for about 15 minutes (the entire video was nearly 60 minutes long!) about the joys, benefits, intellectually satisfying, and benevolent nature of secular humanism. His stated purpose is to prove that one can live this way, with joy, intelligence, benevolence, quite apart from any religion. The clear point he is making, however, is that these can be had quite apart from Christianity. As I watched, I actually felt sorry for that man. He who deigned to feel sorry for us, who obfuscated the reality of Christian faith and human centered religion, and who set-up himself and his ilk as the martyrs in this nation—‘the poor, persecuted, secular humanists’—was a actually a pathetic lump of flesh with no hope beyond his secular, humanist, fleshly life. He was hopeless despite his efforts to remain hopeful. His means would be his end. For him, there was no sacrifice left. God have mercy.
But John here makes the point that we needed outside help. His point is that we cannot for a moment save ourselves by or in our flesh. That is why Someone was sent ‘from above.’ And John further demonstrates this One’s superiority by stating that He is Above All. This leaves no room for any other. The One (and this is more than a neuter marker of identity; it is also a singular marker as in ‘One and Only’) from above is above all. David Wells notes, "There is nothing in the modern world that is a match for the power of God and nothing in the modern culture which diminishes our understanding of the greatness of Christ" (Above All Earthly Pow’rs, 11).
But it’s worse. Wells also notes that the place once held by God in this world has been replaced by human beings: "Meaning and morality, which only God could give, were taken to be purely human accomplishments; but in promising what only God could do, the Enlightenment sowed the seeds of its own downfall. It promised too much. It promised, in fact, that all human problems could be solved by purely natural means—and that, plainly, rested on false assumptions. It both underestimated the magnitude of the problems and overestimated the capacity of human nature to remedy them" (Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs, 31). Sadly, there are prophets of human nature still convinced that we no longer need outside interference or intervention. We don’t need God, God the Holy and True, to do anything—if He even exists—or intervene in any way. We have created gods in our own image, they are at our beck and call, we worship them, they serve us; it’s a very convenient relationship.
But the fact that God did in fact intervene in history proves to us that this premise is fallacious. In fact, we cannot solve our own problems. Indeed, the gods we have created are indifferent and incapable of solving our problems. And, ironically, we have identified not the problems which need solved, but the symptoms of the problem. The problem is that we are sinners, corrupt, degenerate, depraved. We are in a condition unsuited for saving anything because everything we touch falls to pieces. God knows this and thus He sent His One and Only Son. And this One from above, who is above all (31 two times), also testifies as to what He has seen and heard—and no one accepts him. We are told later the reason we don’t accept him is that we don’t want to hear the truth; we’d rather believe the lie. But the One from Above, who is above all, who testifies to what He has seen and heard, speaks, John tells us, ‘the very words of God.’ That is, we have God’s testimony about us, to us, for us. God informs us of our position and our needs. Apart from His opinion and testimony we can only rely upon ourselves and history has shown that man is thoroughly incapable of making sound judgments about anything.
So we learn: The Father Loves the Son and has placed all things in His hands. This means all things and nothing is outside of his control. This means that secular humanism cannot save us. The enlightenment cannot save us. Politicians cannot save us—no matter how many promises they make. Money and technology cannot save us. (As a sidenote, Wells insightfully notes, "Along the way, however, we have come to think that happiness is unattainable and unimaginable in the absence of comfort and affluence. The means to reach this end—capitalism and technology—have, in the absence of serious engagement with the truth of God and the God of that truth, become themselves the final ends of life", Above All Earthly Pow’rs, 47.) It also also means that this world is still under the Sovereign control of the Son. Paul said later, "All things hold together in Him." We need this continued Providence. We need this continued guidance. We need His constant intervention. We need the ‘whole world in his hands.’ As John writes, "The one who has accepted it has certified that God is truthful." We certify God’s truthfulness because we accept his assessment of our situation and His remedy.
The final end? There is only One Savior: "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him." I need not say anything about this because it says all that needs to be said. There is simply no hope outside of Christ. I am here today, in this meditation, making the appeal to all who read these words: Return to Christ. Surrender to Him. Don’t you understand that apart from Christ there is only death, decay and decadence? Don’t you understand that those outside of Christ are already succumbing to the wrath of God which ‘remains on’ them? I make this appeal to the church and to the Christians who claim Christ: Return to the Way of Christ. Banish from your midst all the buying and selling and living and pursuing the empty gods of this world. If Jesus is in fact Above All Things, and in fact Everything has been placed in His hands, and in fact there is no other way to eternal life but through the Son, then isn’t it time for the church to start believing it?
I heard someone say recently, in a sermon, that the church has always been good at orthodoxy and poor at orthopraxy. In other words, we believe the right things but do not do the right things. I disagree. I think the reason we don’t do the right things is precisely because don’t know and believe the right things. It seems to me, I say so humbly, that it is high time for the Church to renounce its ways and one again Lift Jesus High. In my humble opinion, when Jesus has again been elevated in the church, then the church will do the right things. Until then, I submit, the church will continue to be inundated and overwhelmed by wrong things—things that do not have the least bit to do with salvation through Christ alone and everything to do with exalting the god we call ‘the American Christian.’ Jesus is the Way. The Only Way. He is Above All.
31"The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is from the earth belongs to the earth, and speaks as one from the earth. The one who comes from heaven is above all. 32He testifies to what he has seen and heard, but no one accepts his testimony. 33The man who has accepted it has certified that God is truthful. 34For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit. 35The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands. 36Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him."
Ours is a world that is dominated by many gods. Ours is a world that is filled to the brim with theologies of these gods. These gods have their apologists, their theologians, their exegetes. These gods have their preachers and teachers and singers and dancers. These gods have their bibles and their bible colleges and their PhD professors. These gods have their own churches. The difference between our world and the world of, say, the apostle Paul is that he had to walk through Athens to get a glimpse of all these gods. The Athenians had them stacked and erected and perched all around for people to see; all they had to do was walk. Our world is much, much easier. I’d say, to an extent, that we are much closer to Laban from Jacob’s day whose daughter Rachel stole some of his ‘household gods.’ I don’t know really what that means: ‘household gods.’ But I’m guess it’s not as far removed from us as we might think. Laban kept them in the house; the Athenians perched them all around town; we do both.
Our gods are all over: we perch them in town squares and call them memorials or nativities. We line them up on shelves in our living rooms so that visitors can see, smell, and touch them. We have their sermons preached to us nightly as we watch the television or listen to the radio or surf the internet. Sometimes we go out to the park and hold a collective worship service with others: cheering, clapping, hooting, participating in responsive readings, and singing their songs of praise and adoration. The gods have come down among us, we say. We invite them in for dinner or we share with them, or make an offering to them, through Visa and Master Card or Amex or Discover. Truly we are a remarkably religious society. And yet, we are profoundly empty, hollow, and virtually meaningless.
We can make a religion (or a god) out of anything. It really doesn’t even require much thought or effort. I visited a web page yesterday and listened to an old man prattle on for about 15 minutes (the entire video was nearly 60 minutes long!) about the joys, benefits, intellectually satisfying, and benevolent nature of secular humanism. His stated purpose is to prove that one can live this way, with joy, intelligence, benevolence, quite apart from any religion. The clear point he is making, however, is that these can be had quite apart from Christianity. As I watched, I actually felt sorry for that man. He who deigned to feel sorry for us, who obfuscated the reality of Christian faith and human centered religion, and who set-up himself and his ilk as the martyrs in this nation—‘the poor, persecuted, secular humanists’—was a actually a pathetic lump of flesh with no hope beyond his secular, humanist, fleshly life. He was hopeless despite his efforts to remain hopeful. His means would be his end. For him, there was no sacrifice left. God have mercy.
But John here makes the point that we needed outside help. His point is that we cannot for a moment save ourselves by or in our flesh. That is why Someone was sent ‘from above.’ And John further demonstrates this One’s superiority by stating that He is Above All. This leaves no room for any other. The One (and this is more than a neuter marker of identity; it is also a singular marker as in ‘One and Only’) from above is above all. David Wells notes, "There is nothing in the modern world that is a match for the power of God and nothing in the modern culture which diminishes our understanding of the greatness of Christ" (Above All Earthly Pow’rs, 11).
But it’s worse. Wells also notes that the place once held by God in this world has been replaced by human beings: "Meaning and morality, which only God could give, were taken to be purely human accomplishments; but in promising what only God could do, the Enlightenment sowed the seeds of its own downfall. It promised too much. It promised, in fact, that all human problems could be solved by purely natural means—and that, plainly, rested on false assumptions. It both underestimated the magnitude of the problems and overestimated the capacity of human nature to remedy them" (Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs, 31). Sadly, there are prophets of human nature still convinced that we no longer need outside interference or intervention. We don’t need God, God the Holy and True, to do anything—if He even exists—or intervene in any way. We have created gods in our own image, they are at our beck and call, we worship them, they serve us; it’s a very convenient relationship.
But the fact that God did in fact intervene in history proves to us that this premise is fallacious. In fact, we cannot solve our own problems. Indeed, the gods we have created are indifferent and incapable of solving our problems. And, ironically, we have identified not the problems which need solved, but the symptoms of the problem. The problem is that we are sinners, corrupt, degenerate, depraved. We are in a condition unsuited for saving anything because everything we touch falls to pieces. God knows this and thus He sent His One and Only Son. And this One from above, who is above all (31 two times), also testifies as to what He has seen and heard—and no one accepts him. We are told later the reason we don’t accept him is that we don’t want to hear the truth; we’d rather believe the lie. But the One from Above, who is above all, who testifies to what He has seen and heard, speaks, John tells us, ‘the very words of God.’ That is, we have God’s testimony about us, to us, for us. God informs us of our position and our needs. Apart from His opinion and testimony we can only rely upon ourselves and history has shown that man is thoroughly incapable of making sound judgments about anything.
So we learn: The Father Loves the Son and has placed all things in His hands. This means all things and nothing is outside of his control. This means that secular humanism cannot save us. The enlightenment cannot save us. Politicians cannot save us—no matter how many promises they make. Money and technology cannot save us. (As a sidenote, Wells insightfully notes, "Along the way, however, we have come to think that happiness is unattainable and unimaginable in the absence of comfort and affluence. The means to reach this end—capitalism and technology—have, in the absence of serious engagement with the truth of God and the God of that truth, become themselves the final ends of life", Above All Earthly Pow’rs, 47.) It also also means that this world is still under the Sovereign control of the Son. Paul said later, "All things hold together in Him." We need this continued Providence. We need this continued guidance. We need His constant intervention. We need the ‘whole world in his hands.’ As John writes, "The one who has accepted it has certified that God is truthful." We certify God’s truthfulness because we accept his assessment of our situation and His remedy.
The final end? There is only One Savior: "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him." I need not say anything about this because it says all that needs to be said. There is simply no hope outside of Christ. I am here today, in this meditation, making the appeal to all who read these words: Return to Christ. Surrender to Him. Don’t you understand that apart from Christ there is only death, decay and decadence? Don’t you understand that those outside of Christ are already succumbing to the wrath of God which ‘remains on’ them? I make this appeal to the church and to the Christians who claim Christ: Return to the Way of Christ. Banish from your midst all the buying and selling and living and pursuing the empty gods of this world. If Jesus is in fact Above All Things, and in fact Everything has been placed in His hands, and in fact there is no other way to eternal life but through the Son, then isn’t it time for the church to start believing it?
I heard someone say recently, in a sermon, that the church has always been good at orthodoxy and poor at orthopraxy. In other words, we believe the right things but do not do the right things. I disagree. I think the reason we don’t do the right things is precisely because don’t know and believe the right things. It seems to me, I say so humbly, that it is high time for the Church to renounce its ways and one again Lift Jesus High. In my humble opinion, when Jesus has again been elevated in the church, then the church will do the right things. Until then, I submit, the church will continue to be inundated and overwhelmed by wrong things—things that do not have the least bit to do with salvation through Christ alone and everything to do with exalting the god we call ‘the American Christian.’ Jesus is the Way. The Only Way. He is Above All.
Monday, June 11, 2007
90 Days With Jesus, Day 11: John 3:22-30: Finding Joy in Being Less
John 3:22-30
22After this, Jesus and his disciples went out into the Judean countryside, where he spent some time with them, and baptized. 23Now John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because there was plenty of water, and people were constantly coming to be baptized. 24(This was before John was put in prison.) 25An argument developed between some of John’s disciples and a certain Jew over the matter of ceremonial washing. 26They came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, that man who was with you on the other side of the Jordan—the one you testified about—well, he is baptizing, and everyone is going to him.” 27To this John replied, “A man can receive only what is given him from heaven. 28You yourselves can testify that I said, ‘I am not the Christ but am sent ahead of him.’ 29The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. 30He must become greater; I must become less.
Here we are on Day 11. It is now 12:21 AM, Monday Morning, June 11, 2007. I really should be sleeping. I’m not tired though. I just looked over some of the ‘statistics’ for my blog—Life Under the Blue Sky—they seem a bit low, but I forgot some people read at the Life in the Aquarium blog too. But I digress. I sometimes forget that its not quite about me. Bonhoeffer wrote, “Jesus has graciously prepared the way for this word by speaking first of self-denial. Only when we have become completely oblivious of self are we ready to bear the cross for his sake. If in the end we know only him, if we have ceased to notice the pain of our own cross, we are indeed looking only unto him” (The Cost of Discipleship, 88).
Here is an interesting passage of Scripture that begins with a quiet and serene setting. A flowing river, disciples gathered around baptizing eager converts or penitents, harmony all around—except for that fight that broke out among some of those baptizing. The argument sort of gets dropped, but John’s disciples do use it as a pretext for asking their master why he doesn’t seem more concerned about this Jesus fella who is gaining more disciples. But John does not seem to care; in fact, he seems downright elated: I have done my job, my joy is now complete. (I think too that John’s statements concerning Jesus the Lamb of God were also John’s way of saying, “Look! There’s the One you should be following.” That’s why he said it twice. He wondered why people were still hanging around him.)
John then says the most astonishing thing a human being has ever uttered: He must become greater; I must become less. John doesn’t get involved in the argument. John does not care that more people are going to Jesus. John does not go out of his way to attract attention to himself. He always points to Jesus and is not jealous when Jesus begins to rise in stature. How could he? John, in my estimation, perfectly understood his role. He accepted what God gave him and did not throw a fit that it was not more. Really, that is about it for these verses. John was doing all he could to get out of the way so that people could see Jesus.
So here’s what I’m thinking about this. We need to get out of the way too. It’s no wonder, isn’t then, why God chooses us to be his messengers? Who else but us could so adequately make the case that this message is from God and not us? And that is precisely why we must continue to preach the gospel! That is precisely why we must continue to preach Christ Crucified! That is exactly why the treasure is hidden in dirty vessels like John the Baptist, me, and many others just like us. God hides his message in us and says: Point away to Jesus. I can’t emphasize this enough. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of Jesus, the Supremacy of Jesus, the Above-all-there-is-Jesus, the Son of God Jesus, the Lamb of God Jesus.
I don’t even want to tell you today what I think the problem is in most preaching, but it has something to do with preachers being far too concerned about their job security and the approval of parishioners and the respect of their peers and colleagues. Hey, I’m a preacher, I’m most likely part of that problem to some extent so I think I’m safe to criticize my own. But I have to say something about: Preaching, preachers, prophets nowadays are far too self-centered. They know too much about too many things and so instead of preaching the simple Gospel of Jesus Christ and Him Crucified, the Whole of the Scripture, preaching takes on new shapes and dimensions and rises to new levels of oratory and rhetoric and psychology. But preachers are to be more like John and get out of the way. God doesn’t need us to stand up and glorify ourselves. God needs preachers to point to Jesus. There is something to be said about preachers not being so smart about so many things and instead being prophetic geniuses when it comes to the cross and the Crucified Lord.
David Wells, writing about the place of Scripture in the church, wrote in God in the Wasteland, “The fact that this Word is now so silent, that it has so small a part to play in the church’s worship, understanding, and spiritual nurture, goes a long way toward explaining why God, in his holiness, is also a stranger to the church…And so it is that God is disappearing from his church, being edged out by the self, naked and alone, as the source of all mystery and meaning” (149). Wells has much more to say about this, but let me sum up the main idea which is this: When the church becomes so full of us, it becomes emptied of God (there’s not room for both in the Body). When preaching, that means by which God has ordained his Gospel to be announced, is less filled with, constructed from, and centered on Scripture, what else is left to preach but the self–and many are profound exegetes of their culture, themselves, and films but not of Scripture. And I submit to you that man’s life, man’s experience, man’s wisdom is not sufficient enough to guide the lost or the redeemed through this life; and it cannot even come close to leading people to that Place where the Houses are build by the Hands of God. Wells concludes, “Without this transcendent Word in its life, the church has no rudder, no compass, no provisions. Without the Word, it has no capacity to stand outside its culture, to detect and wrench itself free from the seductions of modernity. Without the Word, the church has no meaning” (150).
All of this is an example of what happens in the church when we become more and Christ becomes less. When Christ becomes less then we don’t even have ‘use’ for the Scripture let alone reverence and dependence upon it. When we become more and Christ becomes less then the mission of Christ is less about the Cross and more about our ideas which are decidedly cross-less. My encouragement to you today is this: Make it your ambition, or not your ambition just your life, to become less. It’s hard to want to not be all things to all people at all times. It’s hard to be the moon and not the sun. It’s hard to get out of the way, but do it anyhow. Be a servant. Accept what God has given you and find joy and satisfaction in seeing Jesus exalted, lifted up, gaining, growing, becoming more. Become less so that Jesus can become more. When what matters most in your life is Jesus and not you…well, then what matters most will matter most. And that matters. It seems to me that Scripture is convinced that God can do far more with less than He can with more. Ours is a culture of more, and to a great degree this pathetic philosophy has penetrated the hearts and minds of church folk. The Way of Jesus is counter-cultural: Narrow ways, foolishness, weakness, and, surprisingly, less.
22After this, Jesus and his disciples went out into the Judean countryside, where he spent some time with them, and baptized. 23Now John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because there was plenty of water, and people were constantly coming to be baptized. 24(This was before John was put in prison.) 25An argument developed between some of John’s disciples and a certain Jew over the matter of ceremonial washing. 26They came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, that man who was with you on the other side of the Jordan—the one you testified about—well, he is baptizing, and everyone is going to him.” 27To this John replied, “A man can receive only what is given him from heaven. 28You yourselves can testify that I said, ‘I am not the Christ but am sent ahead of him.’ 29The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. 30He must become greater; I must become less.
Here we are on Day 11. It is now 12:21 AM, Monday Morning, June 11, 2007. I really should be sleeping. I’m not tired though. I just looked over some of the ‘statistics’ for my blog—Life Under the Blue Sky—they seem a bit low, but I forgot some people read at the Life in the Aquarium blog too. But I digress. I sometimes forget that its not quite about me. Bonhoeffer wrote, “Jesus has graciously prepared the way for this word by speaking first of self-denial. Only when we have become completely oblivious of self are we ready to bear the cross for his sake. If in the end we know only him, if we have ceased to notice the pain of our own cross, we are indeed looking only unto him” (The Cost of Discipleship, 88).
Here is an interesting passage of Scripture that begins with a quiet and serene setting. A flowing river, disciples gathered around baptizing eager converts or penitents, harmony all around—except for that fight that broke out among some of those baptizing. The argument sort of gets dropped, but John’s disciples do use it as a pretext for asking their master why he doesn’t seem more concerned about this Jesus fella who is gaining more disciples. But John does not seem to care; in fact, he seems downright elated: I have done my job, my joy is now complete. (I think too that John’s statements concerning Jesus the Lamb of God were also John’s way of saying, “Look! There’s the One you should be following.” That’s why he said it twice. He wondered why people were still hanging around him.)
John then says the most astonishing thing a human being has ever uttered: He must become greater; I must become less. John doesn’t get involved in the argument. John does not care that more people are going to Jesus. John does not go out of his way to attract attention to himself. He always points to Jesus and is not jealous when Jesus begins to rise in stature. How could he? John, in my estimation, perfectly understood his role. He accepted what God gave him and did not throw a fit that it was not more. Really, that is about it for these verses. John was doing all he could to get out of the way so that people could see Jesus.
So here’s what I’m thinking about this. We need to get out of the way too. It’s no wonder, isn’t then, why God chooses us to be his messengers? Who else but us could so adequately make the case that this message is from God and not us? And that is precisely why we must continue to preach the gospel! That is precisely why we must continue to preach Christ Crucified! That is exactly why the treasure is hidden in dirty vessels like John the Baptist, me, and many others just like us. God hides his message in us and says: Point away to Jesus. I can’t emphasize this enough. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of Jesus, the Supremacy of Jesus, the Above-all-there-is-Jesus, the Son of God Jesus, the Lamb of God Jesus.
I don’t even want to tell you today what I think the problem is in most preaching, but it has something to do with preachers being far too concerned about their job security and the approval of parishioners and the respect of their peers and colleagues. Hey, I’m a preacher, I’m most likely part of that problem to some extent so I think I’m safe to criticize my own. But I have to say something about: Preaching, preachers, prophets nowadays are far too self-centered. They know too much about too many things and so instead of preaching the simple Gospel of Jesus Christ and Him Crucified, the Whole of the Scripture, preaching takes on new shapes and dimensions and rises to new levels of oratory and rhetoric and psychology. But preachers are to be more like John and get out of the way. God doesn’t need us to stand up and glorify ourselves. God needs preachers to point to Jesus. There is something to be said about preachers not being so smart about so many things and instead being prophetic geniuses when it comes to the cross and the Crucified Lord.
David Wells, writing about the place of Scripture in the church, wrote in God in the Wasteland, “The fact that this Word is now so silent, that it has so small a part to play in the church’s worship, understanding, and spiritual nurture, goes a long way toward explaining why God, in his holiness, is also a stranger to the church…And so it is that God is disappearing from his church, being edged out by the self, naked and alone, as the source of all mystery and meaning” (149). Wells has much more to say about this, but let me sum up the main idea which is this: When the church becomes so full of us, it becomes emptied of God (there’s not room for both in the Body). When preaching, that means by which God has ordained his Gospel to be announced, is less filled with, constructed from, and centered on Scripture, what else is left to preach but the self–and many are profound exegetes of their culture, themselves, and films but not of Scripture. And I submit to you that man’s life, man’s experience, man’s wisdom is not sufficient enough to guide the lost or the redeemed through this life; and it cannot even come close to leading people to that Place where the Houses are build by the Hands of God. Wells concludes, “Without this transcendent Word in its life, the church has no rudder, no compass, no provisions. Without the Word, it has no capacity to stand outside its culture, to detect and wrench itself free from the seductions of modernity. Without the Word, the church has no meaning” (150).
All of this is an example of what happens in the church when we become more and Christ becomes less. When Christ becomes less then we don’t even have ‘use’ for the Scripture let alone reverence and dependence upon it. When we become more and Christ becomes less then the mission of Christ is less about the Cross and more about our ideas which are decidedly cross-less. My encouragement to you today is this: Make it your ambition, or not your ambition just your life, to become less. It’s hard to want to not be all things to all people at all times. It’s hard to be the moon and not the sun. It’s hard to get out of the way, but do it anyhow. Be a servant. Accept what God has given you and find joy and satisfaction in seeing Jesus exalted, lifted up, gaining, growing, becoming more. Become less so that Jesus can become more. When what matters most in your life is Jesus and not you…well, then what matters most will matter most. And that matters. It seems to me that Scripture is convinced that God can do far more with less than He can with more. Ours is a culture of more, and to a great degree this pathetic philosophy has penetrated the hearts and minds of church folk. The Way of Jesus is counter-cultural: Narrow ways, foolishness, weakness, and, surprisingly, less.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
90 Days With Jesus, Day 10: John 3:9-21: Believe in the Crucified Lord
(I’m sorry this is so late. This is Sunday’s meditation. Number 11 soon!)
John 3:9-21
9″How can this be?” Nicodemus asked. 10″You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? 11I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. 12I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? 13No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. 14Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. 16″For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. 21But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.”
There is a book I have enjoyed by a man named Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was a Lutheran preacher in Germany during the tulmultuous times of the 1940’s. He was hanged in April 1945 after vigorously opposing the regime set up by the Nazis. The book is called The Cost of Discipleship. This is no book for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach. In it Bonhoeffer makes perfectly clear that there is no room in the disciples’ life for what he calls ‘cheap grace.’ Cheap grace is, in Bonhoeffer’s words, ‘the deadly enemy of our Church,’ (page 1, paragraph 1, sentence 1!). “Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate” (Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 45). In Bonhoeffer’s writing, discipleship is directly linked to the cross of Christ. In fact he writes, “Here the call to follow is closely connected with Jesus’ prediction of his passion” (86). He then goes on to describe this Passion for his readers:
“There is a distinction here between suffering and rejection. Had he only suffered, Jesus might still have been applauded as the Messiah. All the sympathy and admiration of the world might have been focused on his passion. It could have been viewed as a tragedy with its own intrinsic value, dignity and honor. But in the passion Jesus is a rejected Messiah. His rejection robs the passion of its halo of glory. It must be a passion without honour. Suffering and rejection sum up the whole cross of Jesus. To die on the cross means to die despised and rejected of men. Suffering and rejection are laid upon Jesus as a divine necessity, and every attempt to prevent it is the work of the devil, especially when it comes from his own disciples; for it is in fact an attempt to prevent Christ from being Christ. It is Peter, the Rock of the Church, who commits that sin, immediately after he has confesed Jesus as the Messiah and has been appointed to the primacy. That shows how the very notion of a suffering Messiah was a scandal to the Church, even in its earliest days. That is not the kind of Lord it wants, and as the Church of Christ it does not like to have the law of suffering imposed upon it by its Lord” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 86-87).
In John’s Gospel scarcely a conversation goes by where Jesus does not allude to or flat-out say he is going to be crucified. This conversation with Nicodemus is certainly no different. Nicodemus, however, just did not understand all this talk of being born again, being born of water and Spirit, being born from above; none of it made any sense to Nicodemus and the last words we hear from him are: “How can this be?” He’s incredulous. I sense him saying something like, “Jesus, what are you saying? You are talking about things that no one is going to believe. You are making demands that no one can meet. Who then can be saved?” Or, maybe he understood it and was saying, “You mean to tell me that being a good Israelite is not enough? If what you are saying about the Spirit is true, then anyone can get into this Kingdom! They won’t even have to be Jewish! How can this be!?” Of course he did not say all that, but he came close. How can this be? And after a good ribbing from Jesus about his inability to understand simple things like birth and water and wind, Jesus lays it all out for Nicodemus. Jesus says it boils down to belief in the Crucified One: “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life.” Belief, thus, is tied to the crucified Lord; salvation is tied to the cross; eternal life is fixed in His death.
I think what this means, then, is that it matters what we believe about Jesus. It matters whether or not we serve a crucified Lord or not. It matters whether or not we believe he came from God and was sent by God. It doesn’t change the fact of it being true if we believe or not, but John seems to be making a connection between who Jesus is (and why he came, and what he did) and our salvation, our eternal life. Everyone who believes in the Son of Man who must be lifted up will have eternal life. Whoever believes in him, the one God gave—God’s one and only Son—will not perish but have eternal life. Note this: Whoever does not believe in him stands condemned already because he has not believe in the name of God’s One and Only Son. It is impossible to not make a decision for Christ. You either actively decide for Him or you passively choose against Him. Those who refuse to actively believe in Jesus—the One from God, God’s Only Son, God’s Crucified Son—already stand condemned. There’s no waiting until the end; they are already over and done. I wonder if they can be rescued? Do you realize that there are people who are walking around this earth right now and for all intents and purposes have this giant sign flashing above their heads that says, “Condemned! Condemned! Condemned!”? And, I wonder, will they be rescued? Can anyone help these condemned folks? Yet they refuse to come to Christ to be healed.
This is the message of the Gospel. There is only one hope: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. These last few verses teach us essentially one thing: You are either walking in the light or you are not. You either hope to conceal your evil deeds by hating the light or you come out into the full blaze of his glory that your deeds may be seen—that they have been done through God. Sadly, many in this world still cling to evil. It’s hard to fathom; difficult to comprehend. Men revel in their evil deeds and love darkness. All the while darkness enslaves men, holds them hostage, makes them mere puppets and here’s what’s worse: Evil does not take men and women captive because evil has an agenda for evil’s sake. No, evil takes hold of men and women in order that men and women will continue to reject God and be condemned. Evil is just a means to an end not an end itself. The end is to have people reject light, hate light, reject God’s One and Only Son. The ultimate evil is the ongoing rejection of Jesus Christ.
Here’s what we know. God sent his Son, His one and only Son, into the world to save people who, despite God’s demonstration of love for them, choose to perish, choose to do evil, choose to be condemned, and choose to hate the light. This is our argument: We’d rather live in utter and complete misery than to submit to the Crucified Lord. And here’s the irony, God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world. But not humans, we are far too content with our misery, with the darkness, with our condemnation. Bohoeffer’s words are ever true: He was a rejected Lord. Folks think Jesus is here to make life difficult and complicated. Jesus came to make life simpler by removing the burden of our slavery to the flesh. This is exactly why the cross must be at the center of our proclamation. Until people see in the cross their utter failure, their utter lostness, their utter condemnation, all their sin, they will never be united to God. The cross must be preached, and this is why Jesus preached it (in verses 14-15). People must be confronted by the cross because only in the cross are people confronted with the darkness and suffocating nature of their sin and their slavery to it. If people do not see the crucified Jesus they will never recognize themselves for who they truly are apart from him.
What’s ironic here is that Jesus says this: For God so loved the World that He sent His One and Only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. The irony? God knew all about man: His rejection of the Light, his condemnation, his persistence in loving darkness, his hatred of the light—indeed, God knew all this about man, and sent His One and Only anyhow. He sent His Son despite what He knew about man; He sent His Son precisely because of what He knew about Man. Even more ironic is tha tall He asks from us is Belief.
I hope your 10th Day of 90 was Blessed!
Soli Deo Gloria!
John 3:9-21
9″How can this be?” Nicodemus asked. 10″You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? 11I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. 12I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? 13No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. 14Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. 16″For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. 21But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.”
There is a book I have enjoyed by a man named Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was a Lutheran preacher in Germany during the tulmultuous times of the 1940’s. He was hanged in April 1945 after vigorously opposing the regime set up by the Nazis. The book is called The Cost of Discipleship. This is no book for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach. In it Bonhoeffer makes perfectly clear that there is no room in the disciples’ life for what he calls ‘cheap grace.’ Cheap grace is, in Bonhoeffer’s words, ‘the deadly enemy of our Church,’ (page 1, paragraph 1, sentence 1!). “Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate” (Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 45). In Bonhoeffer’s writing, discipleship is directly linked to the cross of Christ. In fact he writes, “Here the call to follow is closely connected with Jesus’ prediction of his passion” (86). He then goes on to describe this Passion for his readers:
“There is a distinction here between suffering and rejection. Had he only suffered, Jesus might still have been applauded as the Messiah. All the sympathy and admiration of the world might have been focused on his passion. It could have been viewed as a tragedy with its own intrinsic value, dignity and honor. But in the passion Jesus is a rejected Messiah. His rejection robs the passion of its halo of glory. It must be a passion without honour. Suffering and rejection sum up the whole cross of Jesus. To die on the cross means to die despised and rejected of men. Suffering and rejection are laid upon Jesus as a divine necessity, and every attempt to prevent it is the work of the devil, especially when it comes from his own disciples; for it is in fact an attempt to prevent Christ from being Christ. It is Peter, the Rock of the Church, who commits that sin, immediately after he has confesed Jesus as the Messiah and has been appointed to the primacy. That shows how the very notion of a suffering Messiah was a scandal to the Church, even in its earliest days. That is not the kind of Lord it wants, and as the Church of Christ it does not like to have the law of suffering imposed upon it by its Lord” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 86-87).
In John’s Gospel scarcely a conversation goes by where Jesus does not allude to or flat-out say he is going to be crucified. This conversation with Nicodemus is certainly no different. Nicodemus, however, just did not understand all this talk of being born again, being born of water and Spirit, being born from above; none of it made any sense to Nicodemus and the last words we hear from him are: “How can this be?” He’s incredulous. I sense him saying something like, “Jesus, what are you saying? You are talking about things that no one is going to believe. You are making demands that no one can meet. Who then can be saved?” Or, maybe he understood it and was saying, “You mean to tell me that being a good Israelite is not enough? If what you are saying about the Spirit is true, then anyone can get into this Kingdom! They won’t even have to be Jewish! How can this be!?” Of course he did not say all that, but he came close. How can this be? And after a good ribbing from Jesus about his inability to understand simple things like birth and water and wind, Jesus lays it all out for Nicodemus. Jesus says it boils down to belief in the Crucified One: “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life.” Belief, thus, is tied to the crucified Lord; salvation is tied to the cross; eternal life is fixed in His death.
I think what this means, then, is that it matters what we believe about Jesus. It matters whether or not we serve a crucified Lord or not. It matters whether or not we believe he came from God and was sent by God. It doesn’t change the fact of it being true if we believe or not, but John seems to be making a connection between who Jesus is (and why he came, and what he did) and our salvation, our eternal life. Everyone who believes in the Son of Man who must be lifted up will have eternal life. Whoever believes in him, the one God gave—God’s one and only Son—will not perish but have eternal life. Note this: Whoever does not believe in him stands condemned already because he has not believe in the name of God’s One and Only Son. It is impossible to not make a decision for Christ. You either actively decide for Him or you passively choose against Him. Those who refuse to actively believe in Jesus—the One from God, God’s Only Son, God’s Crucified Son—already stand condemned. There’s no waiting until the end; they are already over and done. I wonder if they can be rescued? Do you realize that there are people who are walking around this earth right now and for all intents and purposes have this giant sign flashing above their heads that says, “Condemned! Condemned! Condemned!”? And, I wonder, will they be rescued? Can anyone help these condemned folks? Yet they refuse to come to Christ to be healed.
This is the message of the Gospel. There is only one hope: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. These last few verses teach us essentially one thing: You are either walking in the light or you are not. You either hope to conceal your evil deeds by hating the light or you come out into the full blaze of his glory that your deeds may be seen—that they have been done through God. Sadly, many in this world still cling to evil. It’s hard to fathom; difficult to comprehend. Men revel in their evil deeds and love darkness. All the while darkness enslaves men, holds them hostage, makes them mere puppets and here’s what’s worse: Evil does not take men and women captive because evil has an agenda for evil’s sake. No, evil takes hold of men and women in order that men and women will continue to reject God and be condemned. Evil is just a means to an end not an end itself. The end is to have people reject light, hate light, reject God’s One and Only Son. The ultimate evil is the ongoing rejection of Jesus Christ.
Here’s what we know. God sent his Son, His one and only Son, into the world to save people who, despite God’s demonstration of love for them, choose to perish, choose to do evil, choose to be condemned, and choose to hate the light. This is our argument: We’d rather live in utter and complete misery than to submit to the Crucified Lord. And here’s the irony, God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world. But not humans, we are far too content with our misery, with the darkness, with our condemnation. Bohoeffer’s words are ever true: He was a rejected Lord. Folks think Jesus is here to make life difficult and complicated. Jesus came to make life simpler by removing the burden of our slavery to the flesh. This is exactly why the cross must be at the center of our proclamation. Until people see in the cross their utter failure, their utter lostness, their utter condemnation, all their sin, they will never be united to God. The cross must be preached, and this is why Jesus preached it (in verses 14-15). People must be confronted by the cross because only in the cross are people confronted with the darkness and suffocating nature of their sin and their slavery to it. If people do not see the crucified Jesus they will never recognize themselves for who they truly are apart from him.
What’s ironic here is that Jesus says this: For God so loved the World that He sent His One and Only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. The irony? God knew all about man: His rejection of the Light, his condemnation, his persistence in loving darkness, his hatred of the light—indeed, God knew all this about man, and sent His One and Only anyhow. He sent His Son despite what He knew about man; He sent His Son precisely because of what He knew about Man. Even more ironic is tha tall He asks from us is Belief.
I hope your 10th Day of 90 was Blessed!
Soli Deo Gloria!
Friday, June 08, 2007
90 Days with Jesus, Day 9: John 3:1-8: You Must Be Born Again
John 3:1-8
1Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.” 3In reply Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” 4″How can a man be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!” 5Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. 6Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 8The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
I admire Nicodemus for having the courage to come to Jesus and talk to him. Jesus may have admired his courage, but Jesus had other news for Nicodemus, news, I believe, shocked Nicodemus to his very core.
Nicodemus comes to Jesus and says something like, “Rabbi, we know…” and then he goes on and says ‘this’ and ‘that’ and ‘here’ and ‘blah, blah, blah…’ In other words, Jesus, we have a whole bunch of information about you, where you are from, about the signs you are doing; we even have this sneaking suspicion that you are from God. Seriously, who could do these things if he were not from God? We might expect Jesus to be flattered, and sort of like, ‘Oh, shucks!’ But that is not what Jesus does. Instead, Jesus upends Nicodemus, hamstrings him, turns the tables on this intrepid nighttime inquisitor by saying, “Nicodemus, you can have all the information about me that you want, but it is not going to help you. You can have all the right information about me that you have, but it is not going to help you. You can ply me with platitudes, but it will not help you in the lest bit. If you are truly interested in the Kingdom of God, you must be born again. Apart from being born again, you have no chance at the Kingdom I proclaim.”
I imagine at this point Nicodemus must have tripped over his own tongue and stammered and choked on his matza. So, Nicodemus either plays dumb or trumps Jesus’ ace by saying, “OK, Mr., if this is true, how do you propose a man go about it? Surely you must be joking! You are speaking of something that is physically impossible!” But Jesus does not get out-logiced (not really a word, but worked with me here) in conversations. Furthermore, he is unrelenting and not about to change his demands just because Nicodemus points out a rather illogical demand. There is, in short, not changing the tune or the demand: You cannot enter the Kingdom of God unless you are born of water and Spirit. The demands do not change just because of our objections. The demands do not change because we have a more reasonable argument. The demands do not change because something is physically, humanly impossible. The demands of Jesus are the demands of Jesus. Whatever water and Spirit means, and I think we have a rather decent idea of what it means (See Titus 3:5, for example) it is certainly a demand that Jesus makes of all who wish to enter the Kingdom of God.
So far Jesus has told Nicodemus two things. First, he said having information, albeit the correct information, about Jesus is not enough. You cannot even see the Kingdom of God with the right information. Second, he told him that being from the right group (in this case, being an Israelite) is not enough. You cannot enter the Kingdom of God just because you happen to be born into the right family. In both cases Jesus made the same demand, You must be born again (or, ‘from above’) if you wish to participate in the Kingdom. Now, in verses 7-8, he makes one last point and again he ties it to being ‘born again.’ His point in these last two verses is this: Being humanly alive is not enough. You can’t just go down to the local store (or local church) and put on some new clothes, smile a lot, be in the right places, say the right things, do the right things and expect that this is a satisfactory born-again (or ‘from above’) experience. No, Jesus says. If you want to be born again (‘from above’) it must be a work from outside of yourself; it must be something over which you have no control. People who are born again are these peculiar people who have been born not just of water but simultaneously of Spirit. We are a peculiar people who have been touched by God deep in our being. People who are born again of water and Spirit are being changed from the inside to the outside.
Ultimately, this being born again is not something you can control in the sense that the human controls the direction that God makes us all we were born to be, in the sense that we have any idea what it really means to be human and alive, in the sense that we can shape ourselves in the knowledge in the image of our Creator (see Colossians 3:9-10). What I mean is this: Only God truly knows the direction the Spirit will carry us, the shape he will give us, the truth to which He will conform us. It is not a human directed enterprise; It is a Spirit directed enterprise. Merely human directed enterprises amount to little more than therapeutic counseling sessions that enable us to ‘live to our fullest human potential.’ Jesus has other things in mind for the direction of our peculiar lives. We are being crafted by the Spirit into the Imago Dei; we are the portrait of Christ. Only the Spirit of Jesus can make us look like Jesus.
It’s not enough to have the right information. It’s not enough to be from the right group. It’s not enough to be humanly born again (as in made physically whole, psychologically sound; we don’t need Oprahed or Dr Philed to get into the Kingdom). In all cases we must be born again of the water and Spirit. This is the demand of Jesus. It is his peculiar demand for people who wish to participate in His Kingdom. If you want to participate in His Kingdom you have to do things His way. If you don’t do things His way, it is not His Kingdom you are participating in at all. Funny thing is this: Neither the world nor the church nor any human being sets the standard for entrance into the Kingdom; Jesus does. He has the right to do so. John Piper has written, “And what Jesus demands from Nicodemus, he demands from all. He is speaking to everyone in the world. No one is excluded. No ethnic group has a greater bent toward life. Dead is dead—whatever our color, ethnicity, culture, or class. We need spiritual eyes. Our first birth will not get us into the Kingdom of God. But we do not cause ourselves to be born again. The Spirit does that. And the Spirit is free and blows in ways we do not comprehend. We must be born again. But this is a gift of God”—(What Jesus Demands from the World, 39).
Being born again means, in simple terms, that we must not put stock in, trust in, or hope in the flesh. Being born again means, in simple terms, that we must die to this life and be reborn by and in the Spirit. Paul wrote in Romans 6: “Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” That’s what Jesus is talking about here.
I hope your 9th Day of 90 with Jesus is a Blessed one in the Lord!
Soli Deo Gloria!
1Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.” 3In reply Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” 4″How can a man be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!” 5Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. 6Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 8The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
I admire Nicodemus for having the courage to come to Jesus and talk to him. Jesus may have admired his courage, but Jesus had other news for Nicodemus, news, I believe, shocked Nicodemus to his very core.
Nicodemus comes to Jesus and says something like, “Rabbi, we know…” and then he goes on and says ‘this’ and ‘that’ and ‘here’ and ‘blah, blah, blah…’ In other words, Jesus, we have a whole bunch of information about you, where you are from, about the signs you are doing; we even have this sneaking suspicion that you are from God. Seriously, who could do these things if he were not from God? We might expect Jesus to be flattered, and sort of like, ‘Oh, shucks!’ But that is not what Jesus does. Instead, Jesus upends Nicodemus, hamstrings him, turns the tables on this intrepid nighttime inquisitor by saying, “Nicodemus, you can have all the information about me that you want, but it is not going to help you. You can have all the right information about me that you have, but it is not going to help you. You can ply me with platitudes, but it will not help you in the lest bit. If you are truly interested in the Kingdom of God, you must be born again. Apart from being born again, you have no chance at the Kingdom I proclaim.”
I imagine at this point Nicodemus must have tripped over his own tongue and stammered and choked on his matza. So, Nicodemus either plays dumb or trumps Jesus’ ace by saying, “OK, Mr., if this is true, how do you propose a man go about it? Surely you must be joking! You are speaking of something that is physically impossible!” But Jesus does not get out-logiced (not really a word, but worked with me here) in conversations. Furthermore, he is unrelenting and not about to change his demands just because Nicodemus points out a rather illogical demand. There is, in short, not changing the tune or the demand: You cannot enter the Kingdom of God unless you are born of water and Spirit. The demands do not change just because of our objections. The demands do not change because we have a more reasonable argument. The demands do not change because something is physically, humanly impossible. The demands of Jesus are the demands of Jesus. Whatever water and Spirit means, and I think we have a rather decent idea of what it means (See Titus 3:5, for example) it is certainly a demand that Jesus makes of all who wish to enter the Kingdom of God.
So far Jesus has told Nicodemus two things. First, he said having information, albeit the correct information, about Jesus is not enough. You cannot even see the Kingdom of God with the right information. Second, he told him that being from the right group (in this case, being an Israelite) is not enough. You cannot enter the Kingdom of God just because you happen to be born into the right family. In both cases Jesus made the same demand, You must be born again (or, ‘from above’) if you wish to participate in the Kingdom. Now, in verses 7-8, he makes one last point and again he ties it to being ‘born again.’ His point in these last two verses is this: Being humanly alive is not enough. You can’t just go down to the local store (or local church) and put on some new clothes, smile a lot, be in the right places, say the right things, do the right things and expect that this is a satisfactory born-again (or ‘from above’) experience. No, Jesus says. If you want to be born again (‘from above’) it must be a work from outside of yourself; it must be something over which you have no control. People who are born again are these peculiar people who have been born not just of water but simultaneously of Spirit. We are a peculiar people who have been touched by God deep in our being. People who are born again of water and Spirit are being changed from the inside to the outside.
Ultimately, this being born again is not something you can control in the sense that the human controls the direction that God makes us all we were born to be, in the sense that we have any idea what it really means to be human and alive, in the sense that we can shape ourselves in the knowledge in the image of our Creator (see Colossians 3:9-10). What I mean is this: Only God truly knows the direction the Spirit will carry us, the shape he will give us, the truth to which He will conform us. It is not a human directed enterprise; It is a Spirit directed enterprise. Merely human directed enterprises amount to little more than therapeutic counseling sessions that enable us to ‘live to our fullest human potential.’ Jesus has other things in mind for the direction of our peculiar lives. We are being crafted by the Spirit into the Imago Dei; we are the portrait of Christ. Only the Spirit of Jesus can make us look like Jesus.
It’s not enough to have the right information. It’s not enough to be from the right group. It’s not enough to be humanly born again (as in made physically whole, psychologically sound; we don’t need Oprahed or Dr Philed to get into the Kingdom). In all cases we must be born again of the water and Spirit. This is the demand of Jesus. It is his peculiar demand for people who wish to participate in His Kingdom. If you want to participate in His Kingdom you have to do things His way. If you don’t do things His way, it is not His Kingdom you are participating in at all. Funny thing is this: Neither the world nor the church nor any human being sets the standard for entrance into the Kingdom; Jesus does. He has the right to do so. John Piper has written, “And what Jesus demands from Nicodemus, he demands from all. He is speaking to everyone in the world. No one is excluded. No ethnic group has a greater bent toward life. Dead is dead—whatever our color, ethnicity, culture, or class. We need spiritual eyes. Our first birth will not get us into the Kingdom of God. But we do not cause ourselves to be born again. The Spirit does that. And the Spirit is free and blows in ways we do not comprehend. We must be born again. But this is a gift of God”—(What Jesus Demands from the World, 39).
Being born again means, in simple terms, that we must not put stock in, trust in, or hope in the flesh. Being born again means, in simple terms, that we must die to this life and be reborn by and in the Spirit. Paul wrote in Romans 6: “Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” That’s what Jesus is talking about here.
I hope your 9th Day of 90 with Jesus is a Blessed one in the Lord!
Soli Deo Gloria!
90 Days with Jesus, Day 8: John 2:12-25: God in the Center
John 2:12-25
12After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. There they stayed for a few days. 13When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!” 17His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.” 18Then the Jews demanded of him, “What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” 19Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” 20The Jews replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” 21But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken. 23Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name. 24But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. 25He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man.
Friends, after today, you will have read two chapters in John’s Gospel. This is good progress. You have taken your time, read slowly, and chewed on only a few passages each day. You have allowed them to sink deep into your heart and there take root as you learn about the Jesus you follow, and learn about how to follow the Jesus you know. Congratulations! This is not small thing in our hurry up world. The hurry up world says it has to be done today and delights in large, massive quantities. We are taking the long stroll, the far look, and the slow journey. We are not tourists visiting interesting sites; we are disciples on the narrow road, on a ‘long obedience in the same direction.’ Also, please feel free to leave me your thoughts by clicking the ‘comment’ link.
The (physical) place of worship had turned into a place of economics; the practice of worship has turned into an empty, hollow, market place where God is not at the center. As such, worshipers were marginalized, worship was de-sacralized, and other less vital functions were elevated and imperialized. It sounds strange to say it in such a way, but consider this: what dominates us controls us, what is important to us takes precedence. Here in the temple clearly what dominated people’s lives was not theology, not worship, and not the Presence, but economics, power, and control. It was a market, Jesus said, a place where buying and selling, bartering and bickering, haggling and harassing were taking place not necessarily to the exclusion of worship, but more prominently than worship and in distraction of worship. In other words, the place of worship, the atmosphere of worship, the spirit of worship were all subjected to the whims of humans. Human interraction, human function, human beings and their needs and wants were centralized; God was marginalized. Does this sound at all familiar?
Imagine you invited a friend over to your house for a nice dinner and conversation. Imagine you had planned out a nice afternoon together of fellowship, eating, drinking, making merry and simply enjoying one another’s company and conversation. Imagine, now, that your friend arrives and sets up a yard-sale in your front yard and begins hawking and hollering at other guests you had invited. There would be no fellowship, no companionship, no conversation that would be enjoyable. Intimacy would turn into rape. And, I suppose, you would be jealous that you had to compete with your guest for the affections of your friends and neighbors–in your own house! It’s not the best analogy, but I think it suffices. In the house of God there is only One Master and He is not keen on sharing the limelight. It’s His House. Now whatever else this passage teaches us I think it certainly teaches us this: Jesus’ purificaction of the temple was an act of judgment against those who had been invited guests. He wasn’t angry with a building, but with people; people he knew all too well. And His point was clearly this: The God who lives here will not tolerate competition. Would that such zeal would consume many of those who are invited guests in the house of God today. But I suspect that the same exact thing happens in many ‘temples’ today: There is competition for attention, competition for Centralization, competition for Glory & Praise. This is what happens when God is marginalized, when worship is economized, when the sacred is trivialized. God is moved out and man takes over; can man keep anything pure and righteous?
David Wells wrote, “It is hard to miss in the evangelical world—in the vacuous worship that is so prevalent, for example, in the shift from God to the self as the central focus of faith, in the psychologized preaching that follows this shift, in the erosion of its conviction, in its strident pragmatism, in its inability to think incisively about the culture, in its reveling in the irrational. And it would have made few of these capitulations to modernity had not its capacity for truth diminished. It is not hard to see these things; avoiding them is what is difficult” (No Place for Truth, 95). I think what was happening that day is this: Jesus was not only purifying the temple, creating space, centralizing God once again (we say ‘cleansing’), he was also emptying it of all that deadness that inhabitited it and preparing it for new life. This is precisely why he ties this action to his resurrection: Destroy this temple, he said, and I will raise it up again in three days. He was saying, through actions, that the true purpose for the temple will never again be found in Jerusalem’s physical ediface, but will be found in Himself. He was telling the people, through word and deed, that the temple would be destroyed: His was also an act of judgment. But no matter! The true temple would be raised up and the function and purpose of the temple will be reestablished and never again corrupted. Jesus is the true temple and in Him, the Resurrected Lord, God will never again be marginalized, man will never be centralized, man will no longer control and ‘change’ (‘you have turned it into…something you desire’) the purpose of the temple and worship will continue freely and unabated by those who seek God. (Why do we prefer busy markets to worship?)
I think it is no wonder that Jesus would not entrust himself to man. The Bible says, “He knew what was in man.” I don’t suppose that has changed. Man has found a way to corrupt the church, to ‘turn it into something it was not intended to be’, the make man the center and life of the church, and, worse, we have found a way to do this to Jesus. I hate to say it, but man, within whom lies so many evils and ills, has found a way to corrupt the temple once again. We have found a way to make Jesus serve our purposes. We have found a way to use him. If man could not rightly serve in the physical structure the Presence inhabited, do you think we can or will rightly serve the Lord Jesus who inhabits us? Or do you think that we, like the temple rulers then, will once again turn the temple into something we can control, corrupt, and use? I cannot help but wonder if this is not already the truth. David Wells again:
“This is why we need reformation rather than revival. The habits of the modern world, now so ubiquitous in the evangelical world, need to be put to death, not given new life. [This is essentially what Jesus was saying in his judgement of the temple that day. And a new temple would be established in Himself.] They need to be rooted out, not simply papered over with fresh religious enthusiasm. And they are by this point so invincible that nothing less than the intrusion of God in his grace, nothing less than a full recovery of his truth, will suffice…In this regard, the death of theology has profound ramifications. Theology is dying not because the academy has failed to devise adequate procedures for reconstructing it but because the church has lost its capacity for it. And while some hail this loss as a step forward toward the hope of new evangelical vitality, it is in fact a sign of creeping death. The emptiness of evangelical faith without theology echoes the emptiness of modern life. Both have elected to cross over into a world in which God has no place, in which reality has been rewritten, in which Christ has become redundant, his Word irrelevant, and the Church must now find new reasons for its existence” (No Place for Truth, 301)
Judgment. Destruction. Resurrection. I wonder if it would take this much for the church to realize afresh that we are slowly killing ourselves by removing God from the Center? What will it take for Jesus to entrust himself to us? Woe is us if we try to turn the True Temple into something we can manage, manipulate, and master. Jesus, the Lamb of God, is also the Lion of the tribe of Judah. And judgment begins with the house of God.
12After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. There they stayed for a few days. 13When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!” 17His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.” 18Then the Jews demanded of him, “What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” 19Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” 20The Jews replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” 21But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken. 23Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name. 24But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. 25He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man.
Friends, after today, you will have read two chapters in John’s Gospel. This is good progress. You have taken your time, read slowly, and chewed on only a few passages each day. You have allowed them to sink deep into your heart and there take root as you learn about the Jesus you follow, and learn about how to follow the Jesus you know. Congratulations! This is not small thing in our hurry up world. The hurry up world says it has to be done today and delights in large, massive quantities. We are taking the long stroll, the far look, and the slow journey. We are not tourists visiting interesting sites; we are disciples on the narrow road, on a ‘long obedience in the same direction.’ Also, please feel free to leave me your thoughts by clicking the ‘comment’ link.
The (physical) place of worship had turned into a place of economics; the practice of worship has turned into an empty, hollow, market place where God is not at the center. As such, worshipers were marginalized, worship was de-sacralized, and other less vital functions were elevated and imperialized. It sounds strange to say it in such a way, but consider this: what dominates us controls us, what is important to us takes precedence. Here in the temple clearly what dominated people’s lives was not theology, not worship, and not the Presence, but economics, power, and control. It was a market, Jesus said, a place where buying and selling, bartering and bickering, haggling and harassing were taking place not necessarily to the exclusion of worship, but more prominently than worship and in distraction of worship. In other words, the place of worship, the atmosphere of worship, the spirit of worship were all subjected to the whims of humans. Human interraction, human function, human beings and their needs and wants were centralized; God was marginalized. Does this sound at all familiar?
Imagine you invited a friend over to your house for a nice dinner and conversation. Imagine you had planned out a nice afternoon together of fellowship, eating, drinking, making merry and simply enjoying one another’s company and conversation. Imagine, now, that your friend arrives and sets up a yard-sale in your front yard and begins hawking and hollering at other guests you had invited. There would be no fellowship, no companionship, no conversation that would be enjoyable. Intimacy would turn into rape. And, I suppose, you would be jealous that you had to compete with your guest for the affections of your friends and neighbors–in your own house! It’s not the best analogy, but I think it suffices. In the house of God there is only One Master and He is not keen on sharing the limelight. It’s His House. Now whatever else this passage teaches us I think it certainly teaches us this: Jesus’ purificaction of the temple was an act of judgment against those who had been invited guests. He wasn’t angry with a building, but with people; people he knew all too well. And His point was clearly this: The God who lives here will not tolerate competition. Would that such zeal would consume many of those who are invited guests in the house of God today. But I suspect that the same exact thing happens in many ‘temples’ today: There is competition for attention, competition for Centralization, competition for Glory & Praise. This is what happens when God is marginalized, when worship is economized, when the sacred is trivialized. God is moved out and man takes over; can man keep anything pure and righteous?
David Wells wrote, “It is hard to miss in the evangelical world—in the vacuous worship that is so prevalent, for example, in the shift from God to the self as the central focus of faith, in the psychologized preaching that follows this shift, in the erosion of its conviction, in its strident pragmatism, in its inability to think incisively about the culture, in its reveling in the irrational. And it would have made few of these capitulations to modernity had not its capacity for truth diminished. It is not hard to see these things; avoiding them is what is difficult” (No Place for Truth, 95). I think what was happening that day is this: Jesus was not only purifying the temple, creating space, centralizing God once again (we say ‘cleansing’), he was also emptying it of all that deadness that inhabitited it and preparing it for new life. This is precisely why he ties this action to his resurrection: Destroy this temple, he said, and I will raise it up again in three days. He was saying, through actions, that the true purpose for the temple will never again be found in Jerusalem’s physical ediface, but will be found in Himself. He was telling the people, through word and deed, that the temple would be destroyed: His was also an act of judgment. But no matter! The true temple would be raised up and the function and purpose of the temple will be reestablished and never again corrupted. Jesus is the true temple and in Him, the Resurrected Lord, God will never again be marginalized, man will never be centralized, man will no longer control and ‘change’ (‘you have turned it into…something you desire’) the purpose of the temple and worship will continue freely and unabated by those who seek God. (Why do we prefer busy markets to worship?)
I think it is no wonder that Jesus would not entrust himself to man. The Bible says, “He knew what was in man.” I don’t suppose that has changed. Man has found a way to corrupt the church, to ‘turn it into something it was not intended to be’, the make man the center and life of the church, and, worse, we have found a way to do this to Jesus. I hate to say it, but man, within whom lies so many evils and ills, has found a way to corrupt the temple once again. We have found a way to make Jesus serve our purposes. We have found a way to use him. If man could not rightly serve in the physical structure the Presence inhabited, do you think we can or will rightly serve the Lord Jesus who inhabits us? Or do you think that we, like the temple rulers then, will once again turn the temple into something we can control, corrupt, and use? I cannot help but wonder if this is not already the truth. David Wells again:
“This is why we need reformation rather than revival. The habits of the modern world, now so ubiquitous in the evangelical world, need to be put to death, not given new life. [This is essentially what Jesus was saying in his judgement of the temple that day. And a new temple would be established in Himself.] They need to be rooted out, not simply papered over with fresh religious enthusiasm. And they are by this point so invincible that nothing less than the intrusion of God in his grace, nothing less than a full recovery of his truth, will suffice…In this regard, the death of theology has profound ramifications. Theology is dying not because the academy has failed to devise adequate procedures for reconstructing it but because the church has lost its capacity for it. And while some hail this loss as a step forward toward the hope of new evangelical vitality, it is in fact a sign of creeping death. The emptiness of evangelical faith without theology echoes the emptiness of modern life. Both have elected to cross over into a world in which God has no place, in which reality has been rewritten, in which Christ has become redundant, his Word irrelevant, and the Church must now find new reasons for its existence” (No Place for Truth, 301)
Judgment. Destruction. Resurrection. I wonder if it would take this much for the church to realize afresh that we are slowly killing ourselves by removing God from the Center? What will it take for Jesus to entrust himself to us? Woe is us if we try to turn the True Temple into something we can manage, manipulate, and master. Jesus, the Lamb of God, is also the Lion of the tribe of Judah. And judgment begins with the house of God.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Church Membership, Grace & Sin, Preaching
PT Forsyth wrote, in 1908-1909, the following words concerning Church membership in his day:
“The reports that come in are clear about the cooling of that interest as they are about the drop in membership of the churches. The decay in membership of the Church is due to a decay of membership in Christ. Our social preoccupation has entailed real damage to personal and family religion For even among those who remain in active membership of our Churches the type of religion has changed. The sense of sin can hardly be appealed to by the preacher now, and to preach grace is in many (even orthodox) quarters regarded as theological obsession, and the wrong language for the hour, while justification by faith is practically obsolete.”–The Cruciality of the Cross, 33-34 (emphasis mine)
He said this nearly 100 years ago and I cannot believe he is less relevant today. The church needs a good dose of Christ and biblical religion. We need to learn again why Christ died on the cross: It was for our sin. Too much preaching in today’s pulpits simply disregard the issue of sin in favor of preaching about ‘your purpose’ or ‘your best life now’ or the ‘believer’s voice of victory’ or ’sowing your financial seed’ or some such other nonsense. Notice how it’s all about what is ‘yours’? Why is it there are no preachers, at least at the popular television, megachurch level, reminding people also of ‘your’ sin? But do we make light of God’s grace when we never broach the subject of sin? So many know so much about so much; too few know about the price Christ paid for our sins.
jerry
“The reports that come in are clear about the cooling of that interest as they are about the drop in membership of the churches. The decay in membership of the Church is due to a decay of membership in Christ. Our social preoccupation has entailed real damage to personal and family religion For even among those who remain in active membership of our Churches the type of religion has changed. The sense of sin can hardly be appealed to by the preacher now, and to preach grace is in many (even orthodox) quarters regarded as theological obsession, and the wrong language for the hour, while justification by faith is practically obsolete.”–The Cruciality of the Cross, 33-34 (emphasis mine)
He said this nearly 100 years ago and I cannot believe he is less relevant today. The church needs a good dose of Christ and biblical religion. We need to learn again why Christ died on the cross: It was for our sin. Too much preaching in today’s pulpits simply disregard the issue of sin in favor of preaching about ‘your purpose’ or ‘your best life now’ or the ‘believer’s voice of victory’ or ’sowing your financial seed’ or some such other nonsense. Notice how it’s all about what is ‘yours’? Why is it there are no preachers, at least at the popular television, megachurch level, reminding people also of ‘your’ sin? But do we make light of God’s grace when we never broach the subject of sin? So many know so much about so much; too few know about the price Christ paid for our sins.
jerry
90 Days with Jesus, Day 7: John 2:1-11: Something (One) Better
John 2:1-11
1On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, 2and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.” 4″Dear woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied, “My time has not yet come.” 5His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” 6Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons. 7Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim. 8Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.” They did so, 9and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside 10and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.” 11This, the first of his miraculous signs, Jesus performed in Cana of Galilee. He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him.
When I was in college, I took a semester long class on the book of Acts. As part of the semester’s requirements, I had to produce 10 sermon outlines from the book of Acts. Recently, the church secretary was sorting through some of my files and one day, when she wasn’t looking, I snuck a couple of them out of the pile. One of the files I took out contained some old term papers I had written, all 4.0’s I might add, and also those old outlines that I produced for Acts class. My outlines were really bad and I think my professor was being generous when he marked a couple of them with 4’s. One of the 4’s that I received was on Acts 3:1-10. I wrote a pretty good outline, I thought at the time. The points were well made. I followed the flow of the text in the chapter. I thought I had done well until I saw, to the left of the 4.0, my professor’s rather lengthy paragraph written in stunning, glaring, red ink. He wrote:
I’m not sure our asking in prayer is really parallel to the lame man asking for money and receiving something better, but you have done a good job of expanding on a slightly shaky foundation.
Again, a generous 4.0 was given. I didn’t deserve the 4.0. I don’t suppose there are too many college sophomores who ever deserve 4.0’s—especially those sophomores who are learning how to ‘rightly divide the word of God.’ Strange though how after all these years it is the first part of his paragraph that stands out most in my mind. Even without the paper I remembered what he wrote: “I’m not sure our asking in prayer is really parallel to the lame man asking for money and receiving something better…” It’s that ‘something better’ that the author of the book of Hebrews argues, over and over again, that we find in Jesus Christ. It is this ‘something better’ that John illustrates by telling us the story of Jesus turning water into the best wine. It is no accident that Jesus chose six stone water jars that the Jews used for ‘ceremonial washing’ to complete his work. It is no accident that the wine was ‘the best wine’. It was no accident that this wine was ‘saved until after the guests had had too much to drink.’ It was no coincidence that after this sign Jesus errected that pointed to his glory that his disciples ‘put their faith in him.’ “The servants, Jesus’ mother, and his disciples knew, but the text mentions only the disciples as those in whom the sign accomplished its purpose: they ‘believed in him.’”—Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, 94
I’d like to take time to say about a million things about this particular episode from the life of Jesus, but I stop short because that ‘something better’ keeps sticking in my head. I cannot get it out of my head, my heart, my eyes, my ears. It’s ringing around in my ears, bouncing on the walls of my skull. Jesus is the ‘something better.’ When that lame man was healed by Peter the ‘something better’ he received was Jesus. That wine that the steward took to the master of the banquet served as a metaphor that something better was at hand, something better than the rules & ceremonial washings of the Jews. It was something generous—filled to the brim! It was something abundant—six jars holding 20 to 30 gallons each! The most prophetic line in the text: “You have saved the best till now,” uttered by some wine steward at a wedding banquet. Ironic. It was something better, not the cold, hard, letter of law; but the warm, human, compassionate Jesus.
The book of Hebrews fills out the picture for us. All you have to do is read through the short letter to see how the author continually points out to the reader that Jesus is the something better that the Scripture hints at over and over again. Here’s the list (complete, I believe) of the something better in Hebrews: “Even though we speak like this, dear friends, we are confident of better things in your case—things that accompany salvation” (Hebrews 6:9); “The former regulation is set side because it was weak and useless (for the law made nothing perfect), and a better hope is introduced, by which we draw near to God” (Hebrews 7:19); “Because of this oath, Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant” (Hebrews 7:22) (See also 8:6, 9:23, 10:34, 11:16, 35, 40, 12:24). The author of Hebrews is convinced that in Jesus everything else takes a distant second seat.
However, I must complain. I think the Christians have, by and large, settled for something far less than the something better. I think Christians have been sold down the river by preachers offering health and riches and cars and televisions and satisfaction with so much of life here on earth instead of preaching, simply, that in Jesus there is something better. Where is the holy dissatisfaction with this earth? Where is the longing and groaning for a better resurrection in Christ? Where is the despising of flesh and the longing for Christ? Where are the fervent prayers for Christ to hasten his return? Where is the conviction that Christ is Better and the living out of such a conviction? And those who have rejected Christ out of hand are missing out too, but I don’t have time to document their misery. It’s bad enough documenting the misery of the church.
Jesus is not just something better. He is Someone Better. I can’t get that out of my head. Of all that there is, Jesus is Better. Why isn’t the church convinced of this?
I hope your 7th Day of 90 with Jesus is blessed by your reading of His Word.
jerry
1On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, 2and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.” 4″Dear woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied, “My time has not yet come.” 5His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” 6Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons. 7Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim. 8Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.” They did so, 9and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside 10and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.” 11This, the first of his miraculous signs, Jesus performed in Cana of Galilee. He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him.
When I was in college, I took a semester long class on the book of Acts. As part of the semester’s requirements, I had to produce 10 sermon outlines from the book of Acts. Recently, the church secretary was sorting through some of my files and one day, when she wasn’t looking, I snuck a couple of them out of the pile. One of the files I took out contained some old term papers I had written, all 4.0’s I might add, and also those old outlines that I produced for Acts class. My outlines were really bad and I think my professor was being generous when he marked a couple of them with 4’s. One of the 4’s that I received was on Acts 3:1-10. I wrote a pretty good outline, I thought at the time. The points were well made. I followed the flow of the text in the chapter. I thought I had done well until I saw, to the left of the 4.0, my professor’s rather lengthy paragraph written in stunning, glaring, red ink. He wrote:
I’m not sure our asking in prayer is really parallel to the lame man asking for money and receiving something better, but you have done a good job of expanding on a slightly shaky foundation.
Again, a generous 4.0 was given. I didn’t deserve the 4.0. I don’t suppose there are too many college sophomores who ever deserve 4.0’s—especially those sophomores who are learning how to ‘rightly divide the word of God.’ Strange though how after all these years it is the first part of his paragraph that stands out most in my mind. Even without the paper I remembered what he wrote: “I’m not sure our asking in prayer is really parallel to the lame man asking for money and receiving something better…” It’s that ‘something better’ that the author of the book of Hebrews argues, over and over again, that we find in Jesus Christ. It is this ‘something better’ that John illustrates by telling us the story of Jesus turning water into the best wine. It is no accident that Jesus chose six stone water jars that the Jews used for ‘ceremonial washing’ to complete his work. It is no accident that the wine was ‘the best wine’. It was no accident that this wine was ‘saved until after the guests had had too much to drink.’ It was no coincidence that after this sign Jesus errected that pointed to his glory that his disciples ‘put their faith in him.’ “The servants, Jesus’ mother, and his disciples knew, but the text mentions only the disciples as those in whom the sign accomplished its purpose: they ‘believed in him.’”—Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, 94
I’d like to take time to say about a million things about this particular episode from the life of Jesus, but I stop short because that ‘something better’ keeps sticking in my head. I cannot get it out of my head, my heart, my eyes, my ears. It’s ringing around in my ears, bouncing on the walls of my skull. Jesus is the ‘something better.’ When that lame man was healed by Peter the ‘something better’ he received was Jesus. That wine that the steward took to the master of the banquet served as a metaphor that something better was at hand, something better than the rules & ceremonial washings of the Jews. It was something generous—filled to the brim! It was something abundant—six jars holding 20 to 30 gallons each! The most prophetic line in the text: “You have saved the best till now,” uttered by some wine steward at a wedding banquet. Ironic. It was something better, not the cold, hard, letter of law; but the warm, human, compassionate Jesus.
The book of Hebrews fills out the picture for us. All you have to do is read through the short letter to see how the author continually points out to the reader that Jesus is the something better that the Scripture hints at over and over again. Here’s the list (complete, I believe) of the something better in Hebrews: “Even though we speak like this, dear friends, we are confident of better things in your case—things that accompany salvation” (Hebrews 6:9); “The former regulation is set side because it was weak and useless (for the law made nothing perfect), and a better hope is introduced, by which we draw near to God” (Hebrews 7:19); “Because of this oath, Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant” (Hebrews 7:22) (See also 8:6, 9:23, 10:34, 11:16, 35, 40, 12:24). The author of Hebrews is convinced that in Jesus everything else takes a distant second seat.
However, I must complain. I think the Christians have, by and large, settled for something far less than the something better. I think Christians have been sold down the river by preachers offering health and riches and cars and televisions and satisfaction with so much of life here on earth instead of preaching, simply, that in Jesus there is something better. Where is the holy dissatisfaction with this earth? Where is the longing and groaning for a better resurrection in Christ? Where is the despising of flesh and the longing for Christ? Where are the fervent prayers for Christ to hasten his return? Where is the conviction that Christ is Better and the living out of such a conviction? And those who have rejected Christ out of hand are missing out too, but I don’t have time to document their misery. It’s bad enough documenting the misery of the church.
Jesus is not just something better. He is Someone Better. I can’t get that out of my head. Of all that there is, Jesus is Better. Why isn’t the church convinced of this?
I hope your 7th Day of 90 with Jesus is blessed by your reading of His Word.
jerry
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