This is part 1 in a 23- part study on the Book of John. Below is a modified transcript of the audio lesson.

Ken Boa’s spiritual study series brings you a teaching journey through the gospel of John. This is the introduction to John.

Let’s begin with a prayer. Lord we thank You for this evening together. We ask that You would bless and guide our time and lift up our thoughts on things that are pleasing to You as we reflect on this marvelous revelation from You, a personal revelation of the personal Incarnate One, who is the Author of the cosmos and the Author of salvation. We pray in His name. Amen.

We’re going to be doing an introduction to the gospel of John. This is the beginning of a series of teachings throughout this wonderful gospel. Really the most unusual gospel, the most distinctive of the four gospels because of it’s distinct content and also a very distinctive style as we’ll see.

It truly can be regarded as a supplement to the three synoptic gospels. Synoptic comes from two Greek words, sune which means together and optikos which means to see. So it’s a way of seeing together. The synoptic gospels see through one point of view together. The three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, are supplemented by this fourth gospel that gives us an account of Jesus’ life and ministry from a totally different perspective.

I think it’s easily the simplest and yet at the same time the most profound of the gospels. For many people it’s the greatest, most powerful and their favorite gospel. Some people love other gospels more but for me this is my favorite for various reasons. (Each of the four gospels appeals to different personality types in the Myer-Briggs if you break it down into four types. If you want to see more on that see Appendix A in my book, conformed to His Image, where I talk about that matter.)

This gospel is quite extraordinary because of the way it ties things together. It’s a gospel that was written for a very particular purpose. In fact it has the clearest purpose statement in Scripture that we will mention in just a moment. That purpose statement relates to bringing people to spiritual life through belief in the person and in the work of Jesus Christ.

Let me just say a word about the gospels as a whole and draw some comparisons between them. I think it would be very helpful for us to do that.

If we look at Matthew first of all, which is probably dated around 58-60 A.D. (we don’t know exactly when it was written but pretty close to that period of time) we see a gospel that focuses on what we call the Jewish mind. What I mean by that is that he is focusing on his basic audience, which is primarily Jewish. This is more of a religious gospel and the theme is of Jesus as Messiah and also as King. It presents Jesus as being Jesus the Messiah to a largely or originally Jewish readership. Its focus is on more of a religious mindset. Matthew was probably written from the province that the Romans called Palestine or possibly from Antioch in Syria.

Mark on the other hand which can probably be dated somewhere from 55-65 A.D., in that range, would have been written to a different mind. Mark probably wrote from Rome and he’s really writing to a Roman mindset, a different orientation. It reflects a different kind of mind. The Jewish mind has more of a religious orientation and a great deal of quotations from the Old Testament. In the gospel of Mark, focusing on the Roman mind, there is a much more pragmatic orientation. The word eutheos, (straightway or immediately), is used some 41 times in Mark’s gospel. It’s a very pragmatic culture and so we have a very crisp portrait of Jesus. There He’s presented more as the Servant and also the Redeemer.

I want you to understand that the gospels are not really biographies so much as they are thematic portraits of Jesus. They really give us portraits that come out of the same Person from different angles. It’s like looking at a gem from different perspectives and you’re looking through the various prisms of that one gem and the total is greater than the sum of the parts. When we put these four gospels together we see various aspects of our Lord’s life.

The gospel of Luke’s most probable date would be about 60-68A.D. My view for various reasons is that all three of the synoptic gospels were written prior to the fall of Jerusalem, which took place in the year 70 A.D. Luke, was written from either Rome or Greece, focuses much more on a Greek mindset. A Greek mind would be much more idealistic. So while the Jewish mind would be religious and the Roman mind pragmatic, the Greek mind would be more idealistic. We see in Luke the portrait of a perfect man. He is the perfect man, the ideal of all that the Greeks would have sought to epitomize. A great deal or stress in Greek culture was on character and the whole idea of virtue. Right now I have a classics reading group that meets about 5or 6 times a year. We read Roman and Greek classics together. It’s the only way I’ll ever read this stuff! This is stuff I’d otherwise never read! Right now we are reading Plutarch’s Lives. It parallels the lives of Greeks and Romans. He goes back and forth. Plutarch by the way was a big deal in European cultures for most centuries. We don’t hear much about him anymore but he was the big deal. His focal point is character. The ideals that the Greeks had of character and virtue are certainly going to be appealing in Luke’s gospel. It appeals to the perfect man.

John on the other hand would’ve been written probably around the range of 70-90A.D. If pressed I would say closer to 80-90A.D. It was written probably from Ephesus according to tradition. It was not written to a Jewish mind, which was religious, not a Roman mind that was pragmatic, nor a Greek mind, which is idealistic, but John wrote a universal gospel. What I mean by that is that there is a universal dimension that is found in his gospel and that is we see Him as the Son of God and not just a perfect man.

I want you to understand that all four gospels really complement one another. They complete one another. In fact they also have symbols that have been historically associated with the four gospels. For example, the Matthew gospel would focus on the lion, which is a symbol of strength and of power and authority. Mark’s gospel focuses on the bull because you can see the idea of power but also sacrifice and service. Luke’s symbol would be the perfect man so we have this image of a perfect man. Guess what John’s symbol would be? If you know anything about the four cherubim, the four faces that they had, they were in fact a lion, a bull, a man and the fourth one, an eagle. What we have here is a picture of deity in His personhood. We have a portrait here of the One who is both the Lion King as well as the Servant Sacrifice as well as the Perfect Man as well as the divine Son of God, who in fact is symbolized by the beauty of the eagle.

After looking at the four gospels what I want to do is draw a contrast between the first three gospels, the synoptic gospels, whereas John is a supplemental gospel. The first three, the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke,, remember optics, seeing together, as opposed to John which is supplemental. Partly I say that because clearly John was aware of the other gospels if he wrote it when he did and the evidence is that he wrote after the other gospels were being circulated and known. What we have in the synoptic gospels is the focus on man/God. In the supplemental gospel we have the focus on the God/man. Both are true. He is fully man and fully God, fully divine and human. If you wanted to pull something out, you’d see that John supplements the others by particularly focusing on His deity. It’s not to say that John minimizes His humanity. There are evidences of His clear and full humanity.

Another contrast we have is that the synoptic gospels tend to be more historical in their orientation whereas John’s gospel is more theological. Not to say it’s not historical but there’s a dimension to it that the other gospels may not have.

In fact the unique material of the other gospels goes as such. In Matthew only 42% of the material is unique to Matthew. In Luke only 59% is unique to Luke. In Mark only 7% is unique to Mark. In other words only 7% of the verses in Mark are found only in Mark. John’s material by contrast contains 92% of material not to be found in the other three gospels. We clearly have only an 8% overlap here.

It’s important for us to see how John is deliberately supplementing and layering and giving us understanding that we would otherwise have not known. We wouldn’t of known about Jesus’ early Judean ministry before his Galilean ministry. The other gospels don’t start with that. John tells us things we wouldn’t have known about the wedding in Cana and the miracle of the water and the wine. He tells us about Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus. He tells us about Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well. We wouldn’t of known about that. He talks about his relationship to Him. Behold the Lamb of God- the Agnus Dei- is only found here. There are many materials unique to this gospel.

There is another contrast even in terms of the Passovers. In the synoptic gospels only one Passover is mentioned whereas in John’s gospel 3 or perhaps 4 (depending on how we understand the feasts) are mentioned.

The synoptic gospels concentrate on the Galilean ministry and John’s gospel looks a great deal more at the Judean ministry of Jesus Christ. They do fit together.

The discourse material in John is more private. For example we have the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew and Luke, which is a very public discourse. But what is the key discourse in John? The third of the great discourses, the upper room discourses. This is revealed to only a handful of people. It is a good deal more private. If it were not for John’s gospel we would not have Jesus’ parting teachings to His own disciples to prepare them for His departure from this earth. That discourse gave His disciples an intimate portrait in the Upper Room and also it contains the seeds for the later epistles and teaches us about the spiritual life and the resources we have available to us. Again, materials we would of not otherwise have known are to be found in this book. We have parables that are repeated in the synoptic gospels but in the supplemental gospel we have allegories, for example, the allegories of the Good Shepherd and the Vine. We don’t have parables in John’s gospel. We have these allegories. It is a different approach that is taken. The teaching emphasis in the synoptic gospels is more an ethical and practical teaching. We have that dimension. Not that we don’t day it’s not focusing on the person of Christ but I would say that the supplemental gospel more on the person. It’s more of a personal application of the truth. It’s how do you embrace, it’s how do you become immersed in a relationship with the God who has loved us.

So we see that the synoptic gospels complement each other but this one supplements the others.

Next in our introduction, I would like to talk about authorship because it’s a highly debated issue, as some of you may well know. Jesus by the way nicknamed John and his brother, James. What did he call them? He called them the sons of thunder in Mark 3. Their father was Zebedee and their mother was Salome and they served Him in Galilee. Salome was also present at Jesus’ crucifixion. John was evidently among the Galileans, I take it that followed John the Baptist in John 1. Remember John opens up with disciples of John the Baptizer. Evidently John is writing from an eyewitness perspective and must’ve been among those. We then see later on that these Galileans were called to become full time disciples of the Lord in Luke 5. In Luke 5 it’s our first encounter with them but we have an earlier encounter with some of these men prior to the Galilean call. There was some history going on before He told them to leave those boats. John was among the 12 men in Luke 6 who were selected to be what were called the apostles or sent ones. After Jesus’ ascension John became one of the basic pillars of the church in Jerusalem along with James and Peter according to Paul in Galatians 2:9. Who were Peter, James and John? They were the inner circle if you recall. They were the inner circle of disciples. John’s mentioned in the book of Acts three times and each time he’s mentioned it’s in association with Peter. He had an intimate and close association with Peter right from the beginning and we still see that in the book of Acts.

Tradition tells us John apparently went up to Ephesus before the destruction of Jerusalem and had a ministry in Asia Minor. Ephesus was the capital city of Asia Minor. John was on a circuit. Remember the seven cities of Revelation? John was really an apostle to those 7 cities and he would send his messages out. If you look at a map they kind of follow a circuit. He would start out in Ephesus and go to Laodicea, Smyrna and so forth and come back after Philadelphia and so forth. He would eventually come back to Ephesus. He ministered to those churches. The Romans eventually exiled him for a time to the island of Patmos. We see that in Revelation 19 where he is given the revelation of Jesus Christ that takes place from the island of Patmos. It’s basically a small barren island.

In any case, I want to talk about the idea of John’s authorship. My own view is that it really is John the disciple who wrote this. I also argue that it’s the same John who wrote the 3 epistles that are attributed to him and the Book of Revelation. Some would say that it was the presbyter John and there are some theological assumptions that motivate critics to question whether John was the real writer.

Actually however John Reiland’s papyrus was discovered. In john Reiland’s library, Papyrus 52 contains portions of the book of John chapter 18 and this dates back to 135 A.D. It was found in Egypt so there had to be some time for it to have been copied and brought there. We have a manuscript that dates from within a few decades of the original that is by the way unparalleled in ancient materials. Only in the New Testament do we have dates that close. Typically in the Greek and Roman writings it is usually 4,5,6,7, 8, or more centuries after the original that copies or fragments are found. Here we have something that close. Furthermore it shows that it was not a 2^nd century doctrine at all but actually quite clearly what it claimed to be- a first century document.

Here is a person who wrote evidently after the other gospels were written. His familiarity with the topography of Jerusalem, with the environs of Judea, Smyrna, Perea and the area of Galilee shows that he had an intimate knowledge of that area. Clearly he lived in that area.

It was written by what we would a Palestinian Jew, not an outsider. He gave meticulous attention to details such as the number of fish caught and people’s names. This affirms his claim that he was an eyewitness.

Other verses also verify his eyewitness claims. These illustrate this idea that this is not something second hand. This claims to be in it’s own terms an eyewitness account form one who had seen these things. I’ll be using the NASB bible. John 1:14, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” It wasn’t they saw it. We saw it. He puts himself among those who saw this glory. Look at John 19:35. Near the end of the epistle he makes a very specific and explicit claim to this. John 19:35, “And he who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you also may believe.” He also goes on to say in chapter 21 (the last chapter) verses 24-25, “This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and wrote these things, and we know that his testimony is true. And there are so many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written.” So he says, I’m the one. This is the disciple who goes unnamed as the one who wrote them.

How can we deduce that this is John just from the internal evidence? Well, here’s how we can do it. Remember there was an inner circle of three. The disciple whom Jesus loved is mentioned several times. That disciple whom Jesus loved is clearly part of the inner circle of the disciples and is closely associated with Peter. The synoptic gospels name this inner circle and we mentioned them before, Peter, James and John. Now Peter in John’s gospel is separate from the beloved disciple. For example go to John 21:7, “ Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord.” So it’s clearly the disciple he’s referring to which is also the disciple who is testifying to these things is not Peter. We also know it can’t be James from Acts12: 1-2 because James, John’s brother, was martyred quite early. So it has to be John.

Furthermore the external evidence supports this internal evidence. Irenaeus said this was John who wrote this. Irenaeus was a disciple of a man named Polycarp. Polycarp was a personal disciple of John. We have a clear succession. Irenaeus was a disciple of the disciple of John. There is a very personal connection there with no broken gap. He mentions this in his book against heresy and bears witness to John’s authorship. He not as well that John lived to the time of the emperor of Trajan. Now we know that the Emperor Trajan reigned from the year 98-117 A.D. There are other early church fathers, Clement of Alexander, Theopolis of Antioch, Origen and others, who ascribe this book to John.

Let me say a word about the purpose statement that I alluded to earlier. Here we have the clearest purpose statement in the bible for a book of the bible. John 20:30, “Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.” In other words he is saying, I was highly selective in the signs that I presented. By the way the word he uses is signs not miracles. We’ll talk about that later. They are signs that point beyond themselves to spiritual truth. He says there are many other signs but I chose these ones. These have been written and actually we only have eight of them. We have seven up through the point of chapters 2-12. Then the greatest sign of them all, the resurrection in chapters 20-21. These few signs were chosen, he said, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Anointed One, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have eternal zoe in His name.

The word zoe is used 40 times in John and he never defines it. This is very clever of him for various reasons but it’s very provocative. Seventeen of those appearances have the modifying adjective eternal. So the image 17 times is of eternal zoe. Remember what I told you before? Bios is one thing, zoe is another. Bios as we’ve observed has to do with biological life. Even the word bio- we took biochemistry or biology or at least some of us did- that has to do with physical life, physical existence. Zoe on the other hand has to do with spiritual life. What we see here is that bios is found in the first birth because everybody is born- by definition if they’re born they have biological life. But no one, according to this gospel and the testimony of scripture, is born with zoe, spiritual life. Because of the blast of the fall, because of our fallen condition, we are separated from God in this world and therefore there needs to be a new birth. We call it a second birth. He describes this in John 3. Jesus’ discourse with Nicodemus, one of the members of the Sanhedrin, when He says a man must be born again. Nicodemus takes it literally and Jesus says you’re missing the point here. There is a spiritual birth not just a physical one. We have to have this new birth so that we can have life with God Himself. And so in this theme his purpose is clear.

He has written these things so that you may believe. He uses pisteuo for believe. Pisteuo is a special word, which we’re going to look at in more depth starting next week. Pisteuo means more than intellectual assent. It does include the intellectual side but it also means a heart response. It means that a person must embrace, chose, come to know by trusting or entrusting one’s self to this Person. You see, Jesus is not nearly presenting propositions to be assented to; He presents himself as a person to be trusted and embraced. There is an idea of propositional truth that points to personal truth. That revelation, that scripture, was not only revealed to inform us but to transform us. It’ll only transform us if we personally respond. It’s one thing to believe about Jesus, it’s another thing entirely to entrust one’s self to this Jesus. That’s Johns point: so that you may believe He is the Son of God and by believing you may have what kind of life, zoe not bios. We already have that, but that you may have this new quality, new form of life.

John’s basically selected the signs that he would use with what we would call an apologetic purpose. Apologetics has to do with the defense of the faith and presenting it’s reasons, nature. He creates an intellectual case that you may believe and a spiritual case that by believing you may have life. It’s a conviction that’s both intellectual and spiritual because God is the author of both the mind and heart. He wants the two welded together so that there is a conviction that we are to embrace about the Son of God.

The key word believes requires knowledge. There’s a component of belief that involves knowledge, knowing the truth. Look at John 8:32, “ and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” The word that is used there refers to this idea of pisteuo, that truth. He also says kind of the same thing in John 10:38, “Though you do not believe Me, believe the works that you may know and understand the Father is in Me and I am in the Father.” Okay, if you don’t believe in Me believe then the works that I do because these reveal I am who I claim to be. There’s this intellectual component but also there is more than that.

One of the most important verses in the entire gospel is John 1:12. We will look at the prologue to John’s gospel next week. I’m going to give you an assignment for next week. I want you to read John 1:1-18 many times. I’d like you to slowly and prayerfully read that throughout this next week. It’s not meant to be read quickly but it’s meant to be read in a contemplative way, a meditative way. The whole thing richly rewards slow meditation.

By the way, understand that you can all meditate. We’re doing it all the time. Usually we’re meditating about stuff we shouldn’t be thinking about like worries and fretting and anxiety. To meditate means to ruminate, to chew it over, and to mull over it. We’re always mulling something over. The best thing you can to do is not to stop thinking about something but rather replace that thought with truth. In other words you can choose what you think about. You’re not some kind of machine that can avoid that. You can make a choice, a volitional choice, to set your mind on the things above and not on the things below. So when you find yourself tempted and so forth instead of mulling that one over, because that will only make it worse, the better thing to do is to replace it with truth. I can’t stress this enough. It’d be very wise of you to carry a handful of 3x5 cards that have verses that have spoken to you in the past. Put them in your car and have one of them to be the theme of your day.

For example, I have a stack of these cards in my car. On my way over here I got fresh red. This means you got to the traffic lights just in time to get a fresh red light. I usually don’t like fresh red! This happened twice. Now I can look at it two ways. I can look at it as a hassle or I can look at it as an invitation. I thought of it as an invitation to a mini Sabbath. The mini Sabbath I had was at the red light. I took out one of those cards and I meditated particularly on Hebrews 1, the radiance of His glory, the Son of God, the exact representation of His nature, how He upholds all things by the word of His power. That’s enough right there to fill your mind; run that by again and again. It’s powerful truth. I’m suggesting that you have something so that when your mind wanders you can go back to that, especially during dead time.

John doesn’t mince around. Right from the beginning he comes in and begins his incredibly powerful prologue. In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God (John 1:1). The Logos, this Word, became flesh (v.14). So the Word who was with God and is God took on human flesh. The prologue is rich in truth and you can meditate on it with great profit. That is what I will be teaching next.

As we consider this concept, the predominant theme in this gospel is kind of a dual response, a back and forth as you’ll see. John structures this gospel so we see two kinds of responses to this Jesus. One is the response of faith and the other of unbelief. We’ll see him often presenting the signs and then in a narrative material we’ll find the response that would be that of some believed and some rejected Him. Then he goes on to another sign and some believed and some rejected. What are you the reader invited to do when you are reading about this? You have to make a decision. What do I do about this? One thing you can’t do is to ignore Him. You see you can’t spend much time with Jesus and ignore Him. You’ll either finally embrace Him or reject Him, ignoring Him is not an option. It was never meant to be. John’s gospel really brings us to the point where we’re forced to make some kind of a response to His claims. You can respond by receiving or rejecting. To ignore Him is tantamount to rejecting Him. So we’re in this uncomfortable position where response will in fact be made. You cannot ignore that. John is dealing with that whole theme.

In any case we see this theme of eternal life. He’s arguing again and again that those who reject Him are under the condemnation of God. John 3:36 does not mince these words. “He who believes in the Son of God has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” Obedience to the Son of God is to receive His gift. Those who choose not to receive His gift then are actually under the wrath of God. Strong words these days. You probably wouldn’t preach well. But I’m not making this up. You have to understand this isn’t my idea. If you look at John 5:24-29 you see the same thing. “Truly, truly I say to you, he who hears My word and believes Him who sent Me (there’s that word again, pisteuo), has (present tense) eternal life (zoe), and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life”. That is one of my favorite verses in the entire bible because, and we’ll look at this more, the conditions for having eternal life, not coming into judgment but coming out of the sphere of death into life are to believe His word and Him who sent Him, entrusting ones self. Again he goes on to say in John 5:25-26, “Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself; (not derivative life, divine life, a life that has no beginning, a life that has no end); and He gave Him authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of Man.” Look at the kind of claims He is making. He is claiming that people, the dead, will eventually hear His voice and they will rise. He is the One who will judge. He goes on to say; “Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs will hear His voice, and will come forth; those who did good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment.” John defines the good and the evil. He describes this reality again in John 10:27-29, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given then to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.” We have this powerful portrait here of being in fact embraced in the grip of the Father and in the grip of the Son. There’s a portrait of security, a portrait as well of genuine hope in the age to come. That I really think summarizes the reactions of reception and rejection that are traced through the rest of this book.

The clearest one perhaps may be in John 1:11-12, “The One who made the world came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name.” Here by the way he equates receiving and believing as one and the same. Its not only intellectual there is also a reception. How do you receive a gift? You may believe that I have a gift and I may say I have a fabulous gift I brought back from my trips and I’d like you to have it and you may believe I’ve got it. I hold it out to you and you see that it’s a nice gift and you want to have it and so I offer it to you. You say, that sure is a nice gift but you don’t do anything about it. That sure is a nice gift. Yah, why don’t you take it? That is a wonderful looking gift. You go on playing that game and you’ll never take it. There comes a point where you have to take it or it’s not yours. So it is here. He’s offering and offering and offering and a lot of people acknowledge it. That’s like coming up to the altar in a wedding ceremony and the part where it is asked; will you have this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife? Yah, I think she’d be a great companion for me. No, that’s not the answer were looking for. Would you have this woman to be your wife? Well, I think she’d be a wonderful provider and person to live with, a companion. This can go round and round. But it will never work until he says yes. Now you can just keep talking about it but at some point action is required. It comes down to that issue. What does it mean really to believe in Him? Now then John’s summary is this, those who were His own didn’t receive Him but as many as received Him. What we have here in those two little verses is a kind of summary of the gospel. In a sense that in Chapters 2-19 we have the context of those who, the majority, did not receive Him. His own people rejected him over and over again. However there were also people who did embrace Him. We see that portrait.

John is a subtle writer. His Greek is so simple. He uses the vocabulary of a child. That’s why if you ever take New Testament Greek, you’ll start with John. You won’t start with Luke or Paul. Their sentence structure is quite complex. Their vocabulary is more sophisticate. John’s Greek is very simple. It’s an easy one to translate. That’s why when I tested for the New York University they gave me the option of Greek and I could be pretty sure it wouldn’t be John. I figured they’d give me a couple of chapters in the New Testament and it’d probably be Luke. He is the most sophisticated of the Greek writers. Then to make it harder I figured it probably wouldn’t be a narrative but something a little more technical. I figured it might be chapters 1 and 2 so I particularly looked at that. Now it doesn’t always go that well but this time it did. They gave me those chapters to translate and it went well. I said, man this is great. The guy who read my translation wanted me to do some more stuff. It was a good thing but I want to tell you John is not the one you’d start with if you were going to take a test because it’s pretty simple Greek.

So it would seem. But the surface, under that apparent simplicity, lays profound technique. For example there are rich parallelisms; children of light, children of darkness; layering of meaning of life and of death. He uses very subtle images, multiple images that are used as he layers. So in some ways you might say John is very simple but it is also the most profound and theological of all the gospels. It’s actually harder to study than the synoptic gospels for those reasons. What appears to be simple actually has greater profundity. What does that remind you of? It should remind you of the teaching style of Jesus Himself. He used very simple parables but there’s an awful lot of layering underneath those parables if you really think about that. John knew Jesus best. He’s the beloved disciple. He imitated the Master. So what we have are images like truth, light, darkness, the Word, knowledge, world, believe, abide, love, witness, and judgment. All these words are used in very special ways, in layered ways. It’s a spiritual supplement as I say to the other gospels.

I want to stress something else about John before we go any further. John also uses the number seven not only in terms of seven signs but there are also seven I AM statements. I am statements are very powerful. He says, “I am the Bread of Life (6:35, 6:48), I am the Light of the World (8:12, 9:5), I am the Door (10:7-9 - the Doorway to life itself), I am the Good Shepherd (10:11&14), I am the Resurrection and the Life (11:25), I am the Way, the Truth and the Life (14:6), and I am the True Vine (15:1-5). He uses these wonderful graphic images of who He is. All these I am statements are also used by John to reveal that He really is the Christ, Son of the Living God.

Indeed we see a good deal of I am imagery in other passages for example, John 8:24, “ Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.” The word He in my translation is in italics because it’s not in the original. It’s being supplied, really He means unless you believe that - ego eime means I am. What does that make you think of? What was the name that God gave to Moses at the burning bush to tell him to use before Pharaoh? God said tell them that I AM sent you. The Jews understood that name. Actually that could be translated, I shall be that which I shall be, the self-existent One. When we ask the question, by the way, where did God come from or what was around before God? It’s a category error, category because you’re trying to limit God to space and time. If He is the Author of space and time, He always is. He Himself created time as part of His created universe. To say where did He come from is to suppose that He has a beginning. He’s not self creating- God can’t create Himself. He’d have to exist before Himself to create Himself. That’s not correct. He is the uncreated One, the self-existent One. He exists. I am who I am. Jesus is really making this kind of claim. Look at John 8:28, “So Jesus said, ‘When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and I do nothing on my own initiative, but I speak the things as the Father taught Me.” The most offensive verse to unbelieving Jews at the time was John 8:58, “Truly, truly I say to you, before Abraham was born ego eime.” And they took up stones to throw at Him (v.59). They understood that if He was not who He claimed to be then He was blaspheming the name of God and He deserved to be stoned. They would’ve been correct. They were taking the right action. My point is that they understood what He was saying and He made such a radical and dramatic claim.

The point is that we see a number of images here of the affirmations of His deity. This is very powerful. One of the most beautiful affirmations of the deity of Jesus in the entire New Testament is to be found on the lips of one of the most skeptical men, Thomas. Remember he is the one who said unless I can see this One, unless I can plunge my hand into His side and see the nail marks, I will not believe. When Jesus approached Thomas, He came and visited them again, the doors having been shut, they were locked, but there He appeared in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.” He said to Thomas, “Reach here with your finger and see My hands: and reach here your hand and put it in My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing.”(John 20:27) At that point Thomas does not have to do any more investigating. Thomas answered and said to Him, “ My Lord and My God!” (John 20: 28) A powerful portrait of the deity of our Lord is emphasized.

Understand the other side of the coin is equally true that the Word was God but the Word also became flesh. (John1:14) The humanity of Jesus can be found also. He was weary, thirsty, and dependent. He showed grief. His soul was troubled. His anguish and death all revealed that He was not some phantom as the Gnostics would teach but rather that He was the Incarnate God come in the flesh. It’s the same John who said that the spirit of the antichrist denies that Jesus has come in the flesh. To affirm the two is to say that He is both fully God and fully man, a wonderfully balanced portrait. Next week we’ll launch into the prologue of John’s gospel.

Question: Why did Jesus’ own people not accept Him?

Answer: Frankly this was no surprise because it even said in the Old Testament that they would reject their own Messiah. Isaiah 53 is a perfect portrait. He came to us and we did not esteem Him. Scriptures predict that the Messiah would come. That’s why He said didn’t you understand that it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer and to die? Then remember going from Moses and all the prophets, He spoke to them of all the things concerning His death on the Emmaus road (Luke 24). He made as if He was going to go on further when the disciples were stopping for the evening. This is an important point. They had to invite Him in the house. He would have table fellowship with you but only if you invite Him in. So they invite Him in to sup with them and when they sit down to eat, He takes the bread, blesses it and He had a token image that they knew and when they saw this they recognized Him in the breaking of the bread. He disappeared from their sight and then they said, didn’t our hearts burn within us when we heard and spoke about the scriptures? Then they realized He was the One and they ran off to Jerusalem.

Question: (Inaudible)

Answer: They had two understandings of Messiah. They couldn’t unify the two. The son of Joseph was not going to be a great king but a suffering servant. There’s also the messianic reigning king who’ll come in power. Zechariah talks about that. How do you reconcile these two? Who would’ve dreamed it’d be the same person? If you were a Jew under Roman oppression which one would you opt for? It’s pretty obvious. You’d go for the one who would deliver you from Roman oppression and bondage and set you free. In other words He didn’t offer them what they were looking for. They were looking for the physical. He was offering the spiritual. I use this analogy. A man was let down from a roof and Jesus said your sins are forgiven you. Imagine if at that point He said, “ Okay, take him up.” That’s not what they had in mind. They didn’t lower him just to have his sins forgiven him. They lowered him down so he would be healed physically. Am I correct? I tell you though if He just said your sins are forgiven you, he would have been far better off than if He had just said, rise, take up your pallet and walk. But then Jesus went on to say, so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins, they were questioning that, He then turned and said, rise, take up your pallet and walk. He is saying that’s a trivial pursuit compared to the bigger thing, the spiritual. Men look to the visible and treasure the visible over the invisible. That’s another reason He didn’t meet their expectations. There is in fact an enmity against the claims of God in the human heart. Paul discusses this in several passages. It’s evident through the scriptures that there is some unnatural bent because of our fallen condition that seeks some how to pursue our autonomy and avoid the claims of the living God.

Question: Where does Paul talk about the enmity?

Answer: One of those passages is in Colossians where he describes the enmity we have. Ephesians 2 talks about how we were by nature children of wrath. Romans 5 talks about even when we were enemies. A number of texts talk about the natural disposition. Ephesians 2 also talks about how we are spiritually dead. That’s a bad condition. You’re dead, your bound and your blind. Actually for a person to be regenerated, that is to say born again, it’s a greater miracle than to be raised from the dead. That’s what the text tells us.

Question: (Inaudible)

Answer: My understanding is that he never speaks about himself but instead he refers to himself in that third person where as other gospels mention John directly. So you plug it all in and you see that it fits. The disciple that Jesus loved wasn’t Peter because they’re clearly distinguished in John’s gospel. He never mentions himself in that way. He mentions himself in the third person. James, the other one of the inner three intimate ones, died too soon to have been the writer of this epistle. That disciple whom Jesus loved was also the one to whom Jesus said, Woman behold your son and son, behold your mother. No others do that.

Let’s close with a prayer, “Lord, we thank You for this time and we ask that You would indeed cause us to understand through the power of Your Spirit, lead us into all truth. We pray that we would embrace and understand what it means in a deeper and deeper way in our own experience to walk in newness of life in Christ Jesus and to understand the One who spoke the worlds into being is also the One who invites Himself for us to sup with Him. We pray in His name. Amen.”

This is part 2 in a 23-part study on the Book of John. Below is a modified transcript.

Let’s begin in a prayer as we continue our study of John. Lord, we thank You for Your goodness, for the hope that we have in Christ Jesus, for the grace, the truth and for the understanding that you’ve communicated to us through Your revealed word. We pray that we would be people who not only hear Your word but also respond, in Jesus’ name, amen.

We’re going to continue our introduction to John and then launch into the prologue to the gospel of John and in doing that I want to talk about the contribution that John makes to the bible. Last time we looked at a number of themes; the structure of the book, its theme and purpose, the background, some things about John himself and the date.

How does this book make a unique contribution to the scriptures? My answer in part is that it provides an entirely theological gospel, more so than the rest. It is also very selective and highly topical in its very nature. I find John to be a profound gospel. It uses a very simple linguistic structure and a very, very simple vocabulary yet it’s layered in nuance. It provides more insight in the way that we can understand this book than other texts of scripture especially because of some unique contributions it makes.

About 90% of John is in fact unique to John. It supplements the other gospels, the synoptic gospels, which see together, that are really portraits of Christ written somewhat earlier as I take it. John was written somewhere between 80 and 90 A.D. Though it’s possible it was written somewhat earlier, my suspicion is a little bit later and probably written for Ephesus during the time when John was ministering as an apostle to a number of churches that were in Asia Minor. Ephesus as you know was the chief city of Asia Minor.

John, a very pastoral person indeed, was a man who really emphasizes love. You can see his pastoral dimension in the three epistles, I, II, and III John; a very profound desire that his children would walk in the truth. He always talks about this idea of walking in the truth and also understanding what that truth is as defined by the doctrine of the apostolic fellowship especially in view of the fact that there would be a great deal of error that keeps popping up. So much of the New Testament deals with erroneous thinking, doesn’t it? If you look at scripture, so many of the epistles have to deal with overcoming false doctrine and false practices.

When we look at this, John is no exception especially in his first epistle. By the time He wrote I John, where he’s criticizing and actually condemning the error of those who believe that Jesus did not come in the flesh but came in some kind of a Gnostic form. Doceticism was a later doctrine that basically said that Jesus didn’t really come in a full human form but rather that He was some kind of spirit who appeared to be human. That sort of doctrine was something that was really compatible with Greek thought. Greek thought was opposed to the idea of the body itself. The idea of Greek thought would be that the body is essentially something that is a product of some kind of demi-urge or some kind of evil, some kind of force, that the way things are- we have to get rid of this body and we want to be liberated from it’s shackles so that we can actually enjoy a disembodied existence. The gospel of the incarnation was an offense. It was also an offense to the Jews to say that God Himself has become one of us.

John wonderfully takes truth, combines it with love and communicates this. When we look at this prologue we have a backdrop that gives us insights we wouldn’t otherwise have- particularly about the pre-incarnate nature of Jesus Christ. His preexistence is going to be particularly stressed- the preexistence of the Word who came among us and took on flesh and pitched His tent in our midst.

I mentioned before John uses allegories where as the synoptics use parables. John uses themes, for example, and discourses that are actually more systematically developed whereas the sayings material in the synoptics is not as systematically developed. You do have the Upper Room Discourse. In John you have other discourses that discuss exactly what’s going on and they are very powerful pictures that help us understand how the signs in John’s gospel can be interpreted from God’s perspective. It shows us they are in fact symbolic of spiritual truth.

There are seven miracles in chapters 1-12 and of those seven miracles only the feeding of the multitudes and walking on water are found in the synoptic gospels, all the others are unique to John.

As we look at John, I want us to see it in several ways. I have a chart (this is available in the Open Bible) and this is what we will see:

Incarnation of the Son of God- It’s what we call the prologue verses 1-18 and it gives us an introduction to who the God Man really is. In looking at that we have a portrait of Him that gives the backdrop for all that follows.

Presentation of the Son of God- (verses 1:19- 4:54) Here in the presentation He presents Himself. We have the first 2 of the 7 signs that are found in John. In presenting Himself to Israel, He’s presenting Himself through the 7 signs or miracles that communicate truth about Him in powerful ways that point beyond themselves to spiritual truth. In my talk, Through the Bible, I mentioned that they symbolized the life changing results of belief in Jesus.

I will mention the 7 miracles again. The turning of the water to wine symbolizes how the ritual of law is replaced by the reality of grace in chapter 2. Law is replaced by grace and we’ll see that the water to wine miracle of the kingdom both in quality and quantity and of radical abundance and of great joy as well. It’s a picture of the life to come. It’s an illustration that God will save the best for the last.

The second sign is the healing of the nobleman’s son (John 4)- what we have here is that the gospel brings spiritual restoration- the physical restoration points beyond itself to a spiritual restoration as well. There’s always the spiritual and physical in John- keep this in mind so that we look in different ways at it. If we look at it from the physical standpoint we see one thing but the physical always points beyond itself to a spiritual truth about healing- physical but spiritual healing as well.

The third of those miracles, which begins in chapter 5, is the movement of opposition to the Son of God. In chapters 5-12 we see especially the theme of mounting opposition to the Man and His message. In view of the fact that the world itself is disposed to reject His actual offer, I want to say a word about the kosmos. John communicates the kosmos, the world, can be used in a positive, neutral or negative sense but John largely uses it in a negative sense. It is a way of seeing the world to be something, a system, which is organized to leave God out and to provide other alternatives. It pursues darkness over light.

The next miracle is the healing of the paralytic in chapter 5. In this case we see that there’s going to be opposition to the miracles themselves. Some believe- some reject. Another miracle. Some believe- some reject. In reading it this way you’re kind of forced to draw your own conclusions and make your own decisions. What do you do about this Jesus? Reading John will force you to move beyond the position of assumed neutrality to a position of commitment either to know Him or reject Him. One of the things you see when people have an encounter with this Jesus is that they can’t spend much time with Him without either receiving or rejecting. They cannot ignore Him.

I’m intrigued by the fact that the Visual Bible is now coming up with the third in its series and it’s going to be the gospel of John. Their intention is to slowly work their way through the scriptures in a visual way. They use a word for word biblical reading and they’re not distorting the message but they’re simply conveying it. We also have Mel Gibson’s, The Passion, which has recently come out. I can promise you these kinds of things will not be happily received by the world. You’ll have more objections especially to Gibson’s movie because you can’t ignore Him. John gives us a little better context of why that is. The world will certainly see no neutral system. It is not objective- especially when it comes to spiritual truth.

The fourth miracle is the feeding of the multitude. We have Christ satisfying our spiritual hunger, not just the physical. People are often looking for the physical handout. He’s offering them something a good deal better than that.

The fifth sign is in chapter six when He walks on water. The Lord transforms fear to faith. Again in each section we have these signs that are always pointing to spiritual truth.

The sixth miracle or sign is sight to the man born blind where Jesus overcomes darkness and brings in light- one of the most interesting narratives in the entire bible- the conflict between the man who was born blind and the Pharisees.

The seventh sign, the raising of Lazarus in chapter 11, is the gospel bringing people from death to a sphere of life.

Understand then if you put all these signs together we see how they converge. As you saw before in chapter 20 at the very end, John specifically says that there was a reason why he selected these. There are actually many other signs but he’s selected these so that you may believe that He is the Christ. His point is evangelistic. His desire is that people will come to know Him as the Son of God and that by believing Him they may have life in His Name.

Again last week I drew the contrast between bios and zoe. I was arguing that bios, physical life, we have all received at the first birth but zoe, spiritual life, no one receives in the first birth -that is a product of the second birth. This is the life of Christ, which is embedded in the life of the believer. I mentioned the word pisteuo, faith, which is not merely intellectual assent but personal reception that is the key to receiving the life of Christ in our lives. We have that important theme which runs throughout the gospel.

The next scene as we go through the opposition to the Son of God and looking at the reactions of belief and disbelief we then move into the preparation of the Son’s disciples. In chapters 13-17 we have what is often called the Upper Room Discourse. We see how Jesus prepares His disciples for His imminent departure. He prepares them as well for the way they are going to live, empowering them to live according to what the resources are that God will provide. He Himself will be with them and the Holy Spirit will be with them and furthermore the Father is in them.

We have an extraordinarily important section here in chapters 13-17. This is one of the most important sections in all of scripture in terms of really encapsulating the essence of the spiritual life. These are Jesus’ parting words to His disciples and you and I are privileged to listen in to those words. They were communicated only to a handful of men at the very end when He knew there would only be a few more hours before He would then be glorified, lifted up, which is His term really for crucified. It is very interesting how He uses that idea, now the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified when the Son of Man is lifted up then He will draw all men to Himself. This image here rather than portraying humiliation actually shows it ultimately will lead to true glory and victory. So we have this preparation, a season of revelation from Christ, followed by the narrative of the crucifixion and resurrection of the Son of God.

As we move from this little kernel of the epistles, all the patterns and key principles, we now end up with this scene of the crucifixion and a glorious scene in the last chapter of the resurrected Christ communicating Himself to His disciples. We move from introduction to revelation to rejection and then we have another revelation and another rejection of Christ and so on.

There are 7 miracles in chapters 1-12, and then the Upper Room Discourse in chapters 13-17 followed by what I call the supreme miracle, which is the resurrection itself. This is the key miracle. All the gospels point to this and this is supreme. The point is that you may believe and that you may have life. These were written so that you may believe and that believing you may have life in His name. (John 21:31) So this theme of life becomes very critical.

In chapters 1-12 we have a few years in our Lord’s earthly life but then he slows the clock down to a few hours. All of a sudden everything hones in to a few hours of teaching and really boiling that down to these chapters. Then there are a few weeks at the end of John.

In looking at this then I want to launch into the prologue to John’s gospel, chapter 1:1-18. There is good evidence especially if you examine the nature of this prologue, it gives such skill and remarkable profundity, an economy of words, that it may well have been John’s earlier draft of this because you can see that there may have been some sources that are evident. There are some scenes, literary scenes and so forth that can actually be seen to come together and there are bits and pieces here- some things seem out of order like chapter 6. Most scholars would seem to say it might have preceded chapter 5 and things of this sort. There are elements in here, which might cause us to see that originally he may have actually started with verse 19 as the other gospels essentially do. The other gospels essentially start with the ministry of John. Later on, it may be especially during the time when he was writing his other epistles that he added this material to emphasize the theological truth- and the Word became flesh. This is something he was wrestling with in some churches and it would make good sense to see it in that way.

There are other passages that are of this nature as well as we’ll see later on. For example if you jump ahead with me just for a moment and you went from chapter 14:31 and you jumped to chapter 18:1 and skipped chapters 15, 16 and 17 it would move very smoothly. It may be that this was material that he later added. You’d have a very smooth transition because He really seems to imply that He’s going to be leaving now, “Arise, let us go from here” (John 14:31) and then “When He had spoken these words, He went forth with His disciples”(John 18:1) you see it would smoothly connect. It also may be, for example, that some scholars would comment it appears that John’s real ending may have been chapter 20:30-31 but then this extra material was also added then in chapter 21. It wouldn’t be likely that John just sat down in one sitting and wrote the whole gospel. It’s evident that like the other gospel writers, he used various sources. It was a product of a great deal of reflection. I think it was something that took a good deal of time for him to encapsulate so he goes back. Have you ever done this before yourself when you’re writing a paper? You write something and say hmm, I’m missing something here. I’d better add this here and that bit there. That sort of thing is done quite a bit. I think that is what we see in that structure.

Remember scripture is fully human, fully divine. What we have in the humanness of this gospel, which is an illustration, is it not- the process of revelation is actually an illustration in the written word, an analogy of what we have in the living Word. When you think about how Jesus, fully God and fully man is in fact without sin so the written word, fully God and fully man is without error in it’s original. You see the idea that there would be an analogy. What we have here is John’s style, his vocabulary and a variety of things indicative of the man himself, just like the gospel of Luke reveals a totally different style, a very different vocabulary and a different approach and structure yet still superintended by the life of the living God.

I’ll point ahead to II Peter 1:20-21 just to see about this process of inscripturation which is the closest we may get to the process of inscripturation, “But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” Men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. It’s not dictation. It was actually something that fused to the life of the person himself. We see John’s character come through and so does Jesus. That’s why the four gospels reveal those four aspects of different facets of His life and character.

As we look at the prologue some scholars have suggested the first 18 verses may in some aspects of it at least, have been an early Christian hymn. We have those in Ephesians 5, Philippians 2 and Colossians 1. We have some evidences that some early Christian hymns would be memorized and this may well have been used here. I’ll tell you this though, it was known right away. This is so significant. The medieval church venerated these 18 verses. In fact some people actually wore them in amulets. It was written out and put in an amulet around their neck or it would be read over the sick and newly baptized. It was actually used as the final prayer in some Roman Masses. It was that important, very, very critical because what we have here is an overture to the rest of the gospel. Themes that are wonderful that are going to be developed in John’s gospel in full are already hinted at here. For example the theme of the preexistence of Christ is going to be seen here but we also have the theme of light versus darkness that immediately appears here and then is developed throughout the gospel especially in John 3.

I also think about the idea of the only Son. Christ is God’s only Son. Jesus is the only Son of the Father. He had a divine birth and His life and ministry is characterized by glory.

Let’s take a look then at the very beginning and look at the first portion of this. It’s kind of like a stanza almost. Let us hone in on the Logos which is found especially in chapter 1 and then after that we don’t have that theme of the Word or the Logos being developed in John but we see Him here. John 1:1-2, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” We have here His relationship to God Himself. We are invited to see the parallels between this and Genesis 1. In Genesis 1 we have the theme where you have the darkness and then the light appears and illuminates the darkness, the Spirit of God brooding over the face of the waters and so forth. In Genesis 1 we also have God who breathes into the nostrils of Adam the breath of life and the whole idea here of a new breath as well.

Something very significant here is that John 1:1 precedes Genesis 1:1. You have to understand that. Effectively the bible begins now with John 1:1. This precedes the creation of the heavens and the earth. This brings us back far before the created order itself. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth but this is prior to the beginning when there was simply the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.

John 1:3, “All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.” He is the very source, the very well spring, and the very fountainhead of life itself in all things. Looking at the parallels, I’d like you to turn to Hebrews 1 and also Colossians 1 just to see two important New Testament parallels. “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in may ways, (of course portions and ways would include dreams, visions, prophecy and other ways in which He revealed Himself to them- through narrative and poetry, song, historical events of the deliverance, miracles - all these were revelatory acts in which God manifested Himself to the fathers and prophets) in these last days (the highest form of revelation) has spoken to us in His Son, (The most decisive revelation because it’s personal revelation. It’s not merely revealing an idea; it’s not even revealing God’s power in nature or miracles or in redemptive acts. There’s something even bigger than that, it’s God revealing Himself and coming among us. He has spoken to us in His Son. Notice how He refers to the Son.) whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.”(Hebrews 1:1-2)

Hebrews 1:3a, “And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power.” That’s well worth reflecting on. The more you put that together the more you are impressed by the vastness of the created order and the more you are impressed by the humility that was involved in the Incarnation. The more you are impressed also by the reality of Christ in you the hope of glory, which is profoundly mysterious. That this One who crafted the heavens is now making His dwelling in us. We become the temples of His very life. It’s deeply profound. Who could’ve made something like that up? It’s without parallel in the world. There’s nothing like it.

In Colossians 1 an additional portrait of the cosmic Christ in this regard is given and I have particularly in mind verse 15 speaking of the One in whom we have redemption and the forgiveness of sin (v. 14) Verse 15 calls Him the image of the invisible God, (very similar to the image in Hebrews 1 isn’t it?) the first-born of all creation. This means the One who is pre-eminent over all things, the Word, the first born, has authority, preeminence over all things –the heir of all things as Hebrews puts it. “For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities – all things have been created by Him and for Him.” (v. 16) This particular text invites us to see that these are apparently referring to various orders of angels and the medieval thought eventually arrived at seven orders of angels. Satan by the way imitates God’s hierarchy because if you go to Ephesians 6 it talks about the forces in the world and he calls them the rulers, the powers, the world forces of this darkness, spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. My own belief here is that the enemy will typically counterfeit what God has done and distort it in various ways so that they too have a kind of hierarchal order and a sequence as well.

The point is Jesus, who spoke all things into being spoke that which is seen and unseen, both the heavens and the earth, both the realm of men and the realm of angels, all these things are under His authority. Furthermore it says all things have been created by Him and for Him. In verse 17, “And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” That word, sunistemi, means that He keeps it together and keeps it from dissolving, from dissipating. When I did my Powers of Ten presentation I mentioned my theoretical speculation that it may well be that one thing that He could certainly or that would be related or pertinent to this is what we in our ignorance call the “strong force”. This binds the nuclei of atoms together especially in so far as they are positively charged particles and the protons with the neutrons which are neutral in their charge, what on earth holds those protons together when they’re so incredibly close because the closer they get the more repulsive force there will be? Well, we call it the “strong force”. That’s nice but nobody knows exactly or really what that is, where it comes from or how it works. I promise you this though if that “strong force” were removed even for a microsecond the whole universe would turn from matter into energy that quick. When we look at it all that we call matter is slowed down energy. What is energy? Nobody knows the answer to that. It manifests itself in different ways, heat, mechanics and such but nobody what energy itself is. That’s why Hebrews tells us the things that are seen are made of that which are unseen. Here, Jesus hold it together.

One other test that supports these ideas would be I Corinthians 8 where Paul talks about this theme in verse 6, “yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him.” The gospels the epistles, scriptures teach us that all of human life is derivative existence. You owe your biological life as well as your spiritual life to the One who is life. (I am the way, the truth and the life.) This is a very high Christology; we’d call this a portrait of who Jesus Christ really is.

This Word, this Logos, which you see in the beginning wasn’t just matter and energy and the impersonal plus time and chance as Francis Schaffer used to put it. If you’re a naturalist that’s all you’ve got. You don’t have anything more than that. Here it says in the beginning you have Personhood. In fact when it says, the Word was with God, the Word was God you right here have a portrait of Trinitarian theology. We’ve all seen this chart before but it bears repeating. When we look at this ancient chart where we have the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and we can certainly say that the Father is not the Son, the Father is not the Holy Spirit and neither is the Holy Spirit the Son. They are not each other but we could also say on the other hand that they are all God. So the Son is God, the Father is God and the Holy Spirit is God but they are not each other. That’s really a great way of summarizing this Trinitarian truth. In the deep abundant mystery of the Trinity we see that God is not a monad but a trinity. Because He is a trinity we have an ultimate foundation for the Lover and the Beloved and the love that flows between them. We have an ultimate basis for unity as well as diversity; for oneness and community- the idea of relationship and of communication.

Logos is an interesting word because at the very least it means that there is intelligence. One of the beauties of this intelligent design movement that is now developing is the idea the universe now points to an intelligent source to account for the complex systems that we observe. We have now in the beginning an intelligent personhood and this was all in the beginning, timeless outside the boundaries of time and space.

All things came into being through Him and through Him was life and the Life was the light of men. We have this idea of life and light. In looking at the idea of life then we see that this life in Him, again zoe, is that which provides light for us. Now he goes on to speak about this light and speaks in terms of it as light that shines in the darkness and the darkness does not comprehend it. The darkness cannot defeat or overcome the Word. There seems to be an opposition, there’s a hint of struggle here already going on between the light and the darkness. In one sense we can certainly say that the darkness cannot understand it; cannot comprehend the light. That’s why it’s very intriguing to me that you can be in a cave that’s totally black and off in the distance the smallest pinpoint of light would be enough to tell you that that’s the way to go. The slightest pinpoint of light shines in the darkness.

Remember that wonderful theme of light and darkness found in II Peter 1:19, “And so we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts.” Imagine then a moonless night without electricity. In Palestine, Canaan, you didn’t have electric lamps so you’re in a wasteland here and suppose you’re not at a village so you don’t have artificial light. Imagine then how important it is for that lamp to illuminate your pathway. It’s sufficient to illuminate your pathway one step at a time but what happens when the sun rises? You’d feel rather silly wouldn’t you having this lamp that now becomes hard to tell if it’s either on or off? There comes a point when the sun rises and you turn it off. So he goes on to say, which you would do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts. The day will come when the light of God’s manifest presence will be so great that you will no longer need now the revealed word in that regard but you’ll have the light of God Himself that will illuminate your understanding on your path. So right now we see things darkly but then we will see face to face.

We have this picture of darkness. Darkness is an image then of the response of the world. He goes on to discuss this concept, which I’ll talk more about later.

He talks about the idea of John and says, “There came a man, sent from God, whose name was John. He came for a witness, that he might bear witness of the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came that he might bear witness of the light. (John 1:6-8) One of the important things to understand about John’s mission is the denial of his own significance as an end in himself. John continually emphasized, I’m not the one to be pointed to, I point beyond myself to the One who is the Life. By the way, is that not our mission as well? You truly find your significance in pointing beyond yourself to the One who has utter significance but in understanding that it doesn’t mean you’re a worm. It just means you have a great calling to participate in His life and plans and purpose. You have great significance but the idea is to find your significance in Him. Remember the key to humility is not thinking of how weak you are or how foolish you are or how sinful you are. That’s not going to make you humble, in fact it will be a perverse form of pride. Humans are very strange that way. The key to humility is preoccupation with Jesus. The more you’re consumed by His greatness- the more you get your eyes off of yourself.

It’s the same as if you went to a great concert. A concert can be a very humbling experience in the sense that the glory of the instruments and music can so enrapture you that you’re transported and you don’t even think about yourself at all. If it’s a great concert you’re not even aware of your own presence. All you’re doing is enjoying the presence of the music.

So it is with a great scene in nature as well. One of my favorite things to do with Karen when we were in England would be to go to great gardens and we’d often go and look for a particular vantage point on a bench. I can think of each garden we visited and 2 or 3 benches in each garden. We’d typically spend 10 or sometimes 20 minutes just sitting there and taking it in. Those are the most vivid moments of my trip because I can see them. I can see what everything looked like because I kind of burned it in like a photographic plate gathers light from the stars the longer it’s exposed the more light it gathers. So I received that and what I was doing was basking in the glory. To be frank with you we’d get to the point where it wouldn’t be a matter of us looking at it but it would be pure enjoyment itself. Extasis means that you’re outside of yourself, standing outside of yourself, so that ecstasy or the idea is a very other centered notion and the best things that we see we wish to share with another. So we share that beauty with another and enjoy that together.

So it would be as well in this- that this One here created all things then, this community of being. He Himself is the light to whom John points. His role is assigned as to being the forerunner, the one who would prepare His way as Isaiah and Malachi indicated that he would. He’s the one who would come in the spirit and power of Elijah. He said, “I’m not the One.” We’ll see 3 denials in the next section. I’m not the One, He’s the One and he’d point beyond himself. Similarly we need to do that as well. Our mission would be to point beyond ourselves to the presence and person of Jesus Himself- not to an idea but to a Person. The emphasis on the personhood of the truth is really very, very clear.

Now in verse 9 we move on to the theme of genuine revelation. “There was the true light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man.” Actually it’s an image here of how natural revelation, written revelation and personal revelation all bear witness to this Light. No one can say that they are totally ignorant because nature itself points beyond itself to spiritual realities in the sense that Romans 1 tells us about God at least in terms of eternal power and divine majesty. It is clearly seen by what’s outside of us and also that testimony is embedded in us. We are also aware of a problem in our lives namely the conscience and how we can try to defend ourselves. In any case, what we have here is this Light that enlightens us.

“He was in the world, and the world was made through Him and the world did not know Him.”(John 1:10) Now this kosmos, which appears 78 times in this gospel alone, from which we get the words cosmic and so forth, can really mean 3 different things. It can refer in a positive way where God so loves the world- that world would be the people who are in the world. But there’s also a sense in which we could say that it’s neutral- for example he says, what I have heard from Him I tell the world. But then there’s this mostly negative use of the word where it’s the sphere of creation that lives in rebellion against the person and the purpose of God. If you look at the epistles of Paul you discover the human heart is at enmity with God. Romans 5, Colossians 2, and Ephesians 2 make that very clear. We are dead in our trespasses and sin. We are in fact in rebellion against God. That’s why it says, even when we were His enemies; Christ died for us. It’s not neutrality but there is hostility. The human heart is not bent to receive and respond to light. That requires God’s previous initiative and the grace of illumination so that we would be willing to respond to the light that God gives us.

That’s the picture we have in this book- while some receive the revelation because their deeds are true (John 3:21) many flee because their deeds are evil. John 3:19- 20 says, “And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather that the light; for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.” This theme of light and darkness runs through the gospel. It’s interesting that Nicodemus comes by night. It’s also interesting as well that John adds that chilling phrase after Judas departed to do his worst- and it was night. The deeds of evil are done in the dark in that scene. This theme of light and darkness is more than just physical; it is also spiritual.

When I was going to New York University and teaching at Kings College, I spent the night at a friends apartment on Broadway and 11^th street that was close so that I could walk right down to NYU. I’ll never forget staying in their apartment because the down side was that the place was totally filled with roaches. I mean they had these roach motels all right. Do you remember those roach motels? They say roaches check in but they don’t check out! The problem with the roach motels was they immediately became filled with guests and no matter how many you put out it seemed like there’d be a hundred more roaches to replace the captured ones. At night, you’d have this eerie noise of things moving around and if you’d turn on the light they’d be gone! You see- we’re like that. When you do something wrong and the light comes on you scurry away and say I’m out of here!

The light comes on and you scurry for the nooks and crannies because we do not want to be exposed. It’s almost like Adam- who told you that you were naked? The idea here is that he’s been exposed. What’s his first reaction when he realizes that now as a fallen man God’s penetrating gaze exposes His nakedness? It is a wonderful theme that can be traced profitably from Genesis to Revelations- this idea of being naked and being clothed. Adam’s first reaction is to cover up his nakedness but it is inadequate so God Himself is the One who has to cover them with the skins of animals. Hence, the first sacrifice was made by God and not by men. God’s the One who had to bring about the first sacrifice. He sacrificed animals to cover them up which is a powerful picture, is it not, of being covered as well by that animal sacrifice and the later assistance of animal sacrifice we see in the Old Testament. The point here is that this is part of the human condition. John is exposing that very perceptively. We are enlightened but we have to respond to the light or it will do us no good at all.

It goes on to say in verse 10 and 11, “He was in the world, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him.” He’s referring to the Jewish people here. That’s a sad picture because there should’ve been readiness and receptivity instead there was only rejection. It reminds me of Isaiah 53 that wonderful song of the Suffering Servant written some seven centuries before the birth of our Lord- specifically in verse 2, “That He grew up before Him like a tender shoot and like a root out of parched ground.” What’s that parched ground? It’s an image here of the spiritual desert that Israel had become at this time. Oh they had become very orthodox in their practices but it was all externalism and not an internal reality. It was religion without relationship. We’ve all seen this happen. I think its humans’ natural bent. They get religious and get into all these external things but it’s always trying to be outside in and not inside out. It’s religious practices rather than the emphasis on a relationship. You can measure practices but you can’t quantify relationships. We’re not comfortable with that.

Scripture makes it very clear that He would in fact be rejected and despised and forsaken by men. A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and like one from whom men hide their face, He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried; yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. (Isaiah 53:3-4) That is to say they thought He was on the cross because of some evil that He had done. But now it goes on to say, “But He was pierced through for our transgression, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed.” (Isaiah 53: 5) You have this wonderful portrait here so prophetic and so clear that’s outlining the response that Israel must make in order for Him to come. The point is that He came to His own people and they rejected Him.

John 1:12 says, “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God even to those who believe in His name.” It’s the same idea of reception and rejection. You could almost say that chapters 1-12 portrays many who rejected Him and chapter 13 and following focuses on those few who did receive Him. This is like a mini portrait of the theme in this gospel of acceptance and rejection. I want to stress and have you remember the words, received Him. You have a connection between the words believed and received. You’ll notice in your bibles the word, even, is in italics. It should be unless you have a paraphrase but most regular translations will say- become children of God even to those who believe in His name. The word even is actually supplied. That’s why it’s in italics. Actually what we have here in the Greek is apposition. It’s when two things are being called equivalent without a connector. We could say in effect that what is happening here in the structure is to receive Him and to believe Him are being equated as one and the same. Reception here, remember pisteuo, has to do with personal trust not merely intellectual assent. In my opinion this is the thing that is typically missed in many, many churches. Many churches talk about belief as if it were a cognitive assent to the creeds. I think there are many people who do not know Jesus who recite the creeds. It’s a sad story. It’s very possible to say I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth and in Jesus Christ, His only Son our Lord and affirm it intellectually without ever knowing Jesus. Some of us will bear witness to that experience where we might have had that in our own lives at one time.

The real key here is to grasp that to believe in Him is to receive Him. I always use some kind of a homely illustration if I’m trying to share this message say with a friend. I offer them this pen and they believed I wanted to give it to them; they believed it would be a good thing to have but until they reach out and receive it they don’t have the pen. It’s one thing to know you need it and another thing to receive it. There comes a point of choice where a person then simply does this and it’s not easy. It’s simple in one way but it’s extremely difficult in another when you have to come to the end of your own resources and acknowledge that you don’t clean up your act to come to Jesus and that He actually offers Himself to people who know they can’t clean up their act. That’s the whole point of the message- to receive His gift is to simply invite Him into one’s life and to personally transfer one’s trust from one’s self to Him. Now you’re inviting Him to come into your heart and transform you from the inside out- make me be the kind of person You want me to be. That is the essence of the good news.

He goes on to say in verse 13, “who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor or the will of man, but of God.” This is not an earthly birth but it is something that is done of God.

One of the most important verses in the entire bible is, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” (It’s extremely important. It’s radical. It would stun the Greek mind for who the separation of the divine spirit and the mundane world would be the idea of the complete separation. It would also stun the Jews to claim that this Word actually came among us and became flesh. It’s an incredible and awesome idea that He became flesh. It says He dwelt among us and in effect you could call that- He pitched His tent. skenoo is the word and it means tabernacle. In other words it speaks of the Old Testament tabernacle. Remember how God manifested Himself there- the glory, the pillar of cloud, the pillar of fire and the Most Holy Place. He pitched His tent in our midst and manifested Himself in a very personal way. This is localized divine presence.) “and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1: 14) The idea here is that God displays His actions in grace and truth is displayed in His words. Curiously this word grace only appears here in the prologue four times and then it disappears from the rest of the gospel. He does develop this theme though.

John 1:14 says, “John bore witness of Him, and cried out, saying, “This was He of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.’” How old was John relative to Jesus? He was six months older yet he says He existed before me. You get the important understanding of the emphasis on the preexistence of Christ. So in chronological years John was born six months before Him but he affirms this One existed before me. He’s been telling them about the One who was to come and John tells them, this is the One I told you about. He has a higher rank and He existed before me.

Verse 16 says, “For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace.” There’s a wonderful portrait here of how it’s lavishing, almost like waves of grace that have been bestowed upon us. I surely do believe that the more we understand about the work of the preincarnate Christ and the work of His creation and the work of His redemption and the work of His indwelling presence, the more you grasp that the more I think you’ll realize grace upon grace. You’ll see for example in II Corinthians 3:18, “But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.” I think it’s a process that as we continue to set our eyes and fix our eyes on Jesus the Author and Perfecter of our faith that we begin to see it’s bigger than we thought. It’s far bigger than you ever guessed. It gives you true dignity, security and true significance because you are a person of dignity and destiny. The living God who pitched His tent in our midst did so in order that we might have life.

That’s John’s theme, in spite of the darkness of this world we receive life. As we tie our thoughts together he says, “For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.” (John 1:17) It’s not to say now that the law was untrue or didn’t have grace by contrast it’s like looking at a 60-watt light bulb in the middle of an extremely bright day. You surely had hints of grace, truth and the love and compassion of God but by comparison to the progress of revelation it’s really now very dim in comparison. The contrast between law and grace are themes as well that will be picked up especially in Paul and particularly in Galatians.

He concludes, “No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.” (John 1:18) He has explained Him. He’s communicated Him. He has given us an understanding that you don’t see the Father but you see the Son. He said, he who has seen Me has seen the Father, he who hears My words hears the Father’s words, he who believes in Me believes in the Father, he who obeys Me obeys the Father and he who rejects Me rejects the Father. Whatever you attribute to the Son is also going to be associated to your relationship to the Father because Jesus and the Father are One. (John 10) We see this theme here of how He has revealed Him in a powerful way- the One who was in the bosom of the Father.

I want to stress a few thoughts here. I want to stress that this book then is not about an idea. It is about a Person. It is a book that tells us about the way that life truly is. We see certain themes in this gospel that tells us especially about who Jesus Christ is- His true identity and the true meaning of His revelation and redemption.

We see how it tells us as well of the nature of the world. The world is in darkness and the world is not a neutral place. It is not a place of open inquiry and curiosity about God, the new religious synthesis. There is a new religious synthesis redefining Jesus into a therapeutic person and basically reducing Him down not to the Jesus of the gospel but the Jesus of our own time, watering down that message and decontextualizing the gospel. All these then are things that come out of darkness, not out of light.

Fundamentally what comes from God is the light and because people’s deeds are evil, we have a natural disposition like those roaches to hide or like Adam to clothe themselves but even there the clothing is not adequate. The point here is only God can expose your true nakedness but He also is the One who can cover you with the garments of righteousness. Only when you come before the cross, naked with no excuses and come to embrace the wonder of the revealed love of Christ that is now made manifest by His being glorified by His offer of Himself, only then do we discover that He Himself can clothe us with the garments of His own goodness and righteousness. As I like to put it, the One who knows you best loves you most. The One who knows you through and through also is the One who loves you most- which is great. You don’t have anywhere to hide and on the other hand you’ll discover He lays His hand upon you not to crush you but it is in fact to welcome you into the heart of all things. That is a great and glorious good.

Finally we see about the possibilities, this is the theology of hope and the more you study this gospel, the more you see that it is embedded in a true, real hope- a hope for a form of life that begins now but continues on. This is eternal life that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. So this life isn’t something in the future but is now a present gift, John 5:24 makes this particularly explicit.

Answer: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth so Genesis 1 begins with the creation event whereas this speaks about the Word who preexisted the created order. The Greek word arche can mean a number of things but essentially it means, in a sense, timelessly. Before all that was this is the beginning of all things. He is preeminent over all creation; all things have been handed over to Him. It’s really very difficult to describe timelessness but what you’re dealing with is before things come into being, understand there was one time when Pantheism was true. Pantheism means God is all and all is God. That was true before He created the world. He was It. There was no other thing than God. When He spoke the world into being there was now the Creator and the creation. I think it’s deliberately alluding to the Genesis account as a beginning of the narrative that we have here. There’s a beginning in a sense without a beginning. It’s a beginning that’s endless because it goes beyond the actual realm of time and space itself. To be frank, it’s incomprehensible to us because we’re bound by time and space.

Answer: The Holy Spirit is not developed in the prologue. We’ll see the Holy Spirit particularly discussed in John 6, 14, and 16. Here in the prologue He’s not developed although the Spirit brooding on the surface of the deep is seen in Genesis 1.

Answer: In a very real way we’re in the end times, the last days the summary of all things. Paul stressed, especially in Thessalonians, look, understand that He will make His manifestation at any time.

Let me close with a prayer and next week we’re going to pick up from where we left off and look at the end of this chapter. Study verses 19 to the end of this chapter and please when you study it, take it in small chunks. Don’t read fast. Most people when they read the bible, they speed through it and get this vague fuzzy idea. Read it slowly and drink it in and take it in bit-by-bit, a little here a little there, and stop and let the Spirit of God make that become a real in your life and experience.

Lord, we thank You for Your grace and truth. We thank You for the Incarnation and how the Word became flesh and pitched His tent in our midst and how He has overcome the darkness and the spiritual forces of wickedness and for how He has created all things in heaven and on the earth, things that are visible and invisible. He is preeminent over all things and He is in fact the One who is in true rule and authority in the heavenly places. We anticipate His coming again. We walk in hope and expectation that we will see Him face to face and thus we pray Lord that Jesus would become more real in our lives and experiences as we come to see Him more and more not as a proposition but as a Person, a Person to be trusted and loved. We pray in His name, amen.

This is part 3 in a 23-part study in the Book of John. Below is a modified transcript of the audio lesson.

Let’s begin with a prayer. Lord, we thank You that You have been good to us in ways we don’t often understand. I pray that we would be a people who are receptive to the person and work of Christ and discover more and more through this book and other resources what it means to be one who approaches You, comes and sees You, follows You, remains with You and to discover the terms of discipleship. We pray in Christ’s’ name. Amen.

We have seen that as we looked at the prelude or prologue to John’s gospel that it gives us an extraordinary portrait that is not to be found in the synoptic gospels. In John 1:1-18 we have a picture of Jesus as the cosmic Christ who preceded the heavens and the earth. In fact it was through Him that all things were made- nothing came into being apart from Him. We saw His preexistence, His work as Creator, His work as the One who illuminates the work of the Father and reveals Him to the world, as the One who is the Word, and the Word of God who became flesh and dwelt among us.

It’s pretty common in our time for people to confuse the idea of Christ with some kind of cosmic consciousness. It’s a common notion that when we hear Christ these days especially from folks who are involved in the new religious synthesis, He is not just Jesus but is a force or principle or a higher level of consciousness that anyone can ultimately attain. This is simply not the case, from the gospels and epistles Christ is the Messiah, the Anointed One, and a specific Person. He was predicted in the Old Testament- specifically we learn about who He would be, where He would be born, what He would accomplish and so forth. This is something that is related to a person and not just to a force. Jesus is the Christ and there is no other manifestation- there is no other God-Man. There is no other name given among men where by we must be saved- it’s the name of Christ. He makes this message available to all people.

The scriptures, which emphasize this, especially as John was writing later in the 1^st century, have to deal with this problem. People were denying that Jesus had come in the flesh because they were becoming a little more Gnostic as time went by. He has to refute that and say that the Word really did become one of us. He became flesh and dwelt among us. So in this gospel we see the gospel of the divine Christ while we also see His humanness. We see Jesus is the Son of Man but also is the Son of God- this is going to be emphasized throughout- the connection between the two. He is the One who manifests the glory of the Father.

The Law was given through Moses (v.17) but grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. We have this contrast. The Law led up to Christ but you see the Law could never save anybody. The Law could only bring us to a point of seeing God’s perfection and righteous requirements but nobody could keep the Law. The Law was never intended to save people. It instead was designed to be a schoolmaster to drive us to dependence upon the One that God would send- the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world. He alone fulfilled the perfect and righteous requirements. Now it is possible for us to be righteous before God because Christ offers His very life to those who would follow Him. The perfection of Christ is placed in our account. It is through that then that we become people who through the power of the indwelling Spirit are capable then of fulfilling the righteous demands of the living God.

As we look at the last part of John 1:19-51, I want us to just walk through certain themes. I’ll comment on various components. I want to tell you that this is a gospel that is so rich and so multi-layered that we could spend an enormous amount of time unpacking all the profound implications that are here. If I did that we would have a very lengthy study indeed so instead I’m kind of moving us through more or less a chapter an evening. I’m just going to make a few comments along the way.

In John 1:19 we have a picture of the testimony of John. That’s an important word because I want you to understand that this section relates to testimonies. We will have testimonies of men whose lives were affected by their encounter with Jesus Christ. The testimony of John is followed by the testimony of two of these disciples. We see later in chapter 1:35, the account of Andrew and an unnamed disciple. We also see Philip and Nathaniel. These are all testimonies of their encounters with this One. These testimonials, which are the word martyria, are the word for testimony. Does it have a familiar ring to it? It should – martyr – a martyr was one who bore witness to or testimony of another. These are accounts of people who had some personal encounter with Him so that He is not merely a principle but a Person. They must receive and come to know and welcome Him into their very lives.

If we understand this idea, we’re going to see that this section of John, particularly 1:19-51, gives us a portrait of the nature of conversion and the nature of discipleship. We’ll see men coming even here in slightly different ways to Christ. I want you to observe that there’s an incarnational dimension here where John focuses on these kinds of historical events and uses them to paint a theological tapestry but his primary concern as I see it here, if for us to understand what conversion and discipleship is really about. How does one encounter Him? How does one now grow in relationship to Him?

This is the testimony of John the Baptizer who was introduced in verses 6-8, “There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify about the light, so that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but he came to testify about the light.” This is a hint- an anticipation- because people will inquire of him. Who are you? Who do you claim to be? He’ll in effect say I’m not the light. I point beyond myself to the One who is the light.

John 1:19-20, “ Now this was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” He confessed – he did not deny but confessed – “I am not the Christ!” That word would be the Anointed One and there is a good history that led up to that particular word.

Before I go any further though you’ll see it says the Jews sent to him priests and Levites. Now it is interesting because the word Ioudaios is used 71 times in John’s gospel. Many have said it’s ascribing to the Jews evil behaviors, disbelief, rejection and rebellion. You must understand it actually and especially focuses on the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem and especially those who had authority over the temple. This is not an anti-Semitic gospel. Jews wrote it, about Jews and about One who is in fact the Jewish Messiah. It can’t be anti-Semitic. It’s rather focusing on some Jews, in fact it even says of a Jewish man that the Jews put him out of the temple. You see where I’m going with that? It’s the same sort of misunderstanding that will in fact form the kind of anti-Semitic comments or claims about Mel Gibson’s, The Passion, but it’s really lies and misunderstanding of what that term means.

The Jewish leaders sent priests and Levites, leaders from Jerusalem, because he was causing something of a ruckus. After all, thousands were coming to this guy and he was a rough looking character. We find from the other gospels that he dressed in a rough manner with a leather belt. He ate locusts, which by the way were kosher. It was one of the clean insects you could eat. The fact is John was not your ordinary character. He was very much a prophet in the line of Elijah. We are invited to see obvious parallels between him and Elijah. Elisha would be more a portrait in many ways of Jesus. You might even say Elijah is to Elisha as in some ways as John the Baptizer was to Jesus. There’s an analogy there because Elisha had a double portion and you see a lot of miracles like feeding of a multitude and raising the dead that are similar to some of the miracles we see in the life of Jesus. In any case, John was a rough-hewn character indeed. People were flocking out because you see the concept of a prophet coming back was something radical and fantastic after four centuries of prophetic silence. The last prophet was Malachi in 425 B.C. When the word got out that one who was coming with the authority and power of a prophet everyone flocked out to see him. This spiritual desert, this darkness, this dirth was now suddenly being overcome by on who would point to the light that was dawning. He was not the light but he pointed to the Light that would come.

This was an exciting idea and you could well imagine the more interest it caused the more concerned the Jewish leadership became. Who are you? Who do you claim to be? He answered - I am not the Christ (v.20), if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m not the Messiah. I’m not the Anointed One. So then they asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not!” (v. 21a) That’s an interesting thing because if you turn to Malachi 4:5, you see the idea though of Elijah and certainly this was something that was being developed. “Look, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord arrives.” In Mark 8:27- 29 speculation was rife about this concept. “Then Jesus and his disciples went to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” They said, “John the Baptist (obviously this would be after John the Baptist’s death and so they say you’ve come back from the dead), others say Elijah, and still others, one of the prophets.” He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Christ.” This is the question all of us must ultimately answer.

There’s this issue here but I’d also like you to turn to Matthew 11:14, “And if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah, who is to come.” So what does that mean? Turn to Luke 1:17, putting it all together, “And he will go as forerunner before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah...” So in one sense he’s Elijah but in another sense he’s actually one who comes in the spirit and power of Elijah. He’s not the fulfillment of all that’s promised yet. There’s this other image of the fullness that will come.

In any case they ask him about that, he’s not the Messiah, he’s not Elijah, then are you a prophet? This is an illusion to Deuteronomy 18:15, which talked about the fact that Moses predicted, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you- from your fellow Israelites; up must listen to him.” So they ask, are you that prophet, the one who would come? And again he answered no. So John, articulating the essence in one regard of the relationship with Christ is one who denies himself and points beyond himself to another. True discipleship is where you point beyond yourself and lead people to another. Rather than lifting up and exalting himself because he could well have been tempted to so, after all the crowds were large and he had a powerful impact, instead he points beyond himself. This was not just an act of personal humility where he’s focusing on himself. There are certain perverse forms of humility that will do that. The person is actually all preoccupied with himself or herself. True humility occurs when you are preoccupied with another- when you are preoccupied with the grace and person of God. Your eye is off of your self and that is exactly what John is in effect doing.

John 1:22, “Then they said to him, “Who are you? Tell us so that we can give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” John then speaks and if you go back to Isaiah 40, a fairly well known text at the time, we hear about a voice crying in the wilderness. Also Isaiah 40:3, “A voice cries out, ‘In the wilderness clear a way for the Lord; construct in the desert a road for our God.” John 1:23, “John said, “I am the voice of one shouting in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord,’ as Isaiah the prophet said.” In effect John is telling us that, I have come in the wilderness of the world’s need and in doing so the gospel is pointing men and women to the One who alone can satisfy the world’s need- nothing else will do. We seek position, power, possessions, prestige and discover again and again none of those things really satisfy our deepest longing and our deepest needs. Here is the one who can actually prepare the way and in effect it’s also a hint about what it means to be a follower of Jesus. There’s a very real sense in which you have to prepare a way for the Lord in your life- in your own heart. You have to clear a highway for Him to come so He removes all the crooked in conduct and narrow in outlook and He opens up a way to Himself. There’s an anticipation of that idea or dimension in discipleship.

John 1:24, “(Now they had been sent from the Pharisees.)” This is already a hint of what’s to come. If we know the gospels at all, we know that just to use the word Pharisee was a hint of opposition and rejection. It’s already anticipating the drama that will continue to unfold and reach a climax with the passion narrative.

They are very persistent. They’re still not quite satisfied with the idea of one crying in the wilderness. John 1:25, “Why then are you baptizing if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” What authority do you have? The Jews had these areas where they would baptize Gentiles and so proselytes would go and be baptized, immersed, and they would come out and become Jewish proselytes. They also had ceremonial cleansing. The idea of baptizing a Jew would be something quite different. The only way in which there’d be a basis for baptizing someone who was already Jewish would be that there is a new age, a new dimension, dawning. What is this message that you’re communicating? What is this new thing that is occurring? Some kind of transition is being hinted at here.

John 1:26, “John answered them, ‘I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not recognize.” Again this anticipates the response of the Pharisees- they never really do get it. They never do know Him. Although it does mention in the other gospels that some of the Pharisees did come to believe Him but they were secretive about that but most of them never came to know Him.

John 1:27, “It is He who comes after me, the thong of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.” You see when you had a disciple of a master; the disciple even then would still not do the work of a slave- to untie the thong of a sandal was something only a slave would do. He says, I’m not even worthy to treat Him as if I were a slave. You see the exaggeration there, the emphasis that he’s making. He’s developing this theme. He is so much higher than I. I can’t even function in the role of a slave before Him- let alone be one who is familiar in a casual way. There’s a sense of authority- One who’s coming in power. It is He who comes after me, the thong of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.

John 1:28, “These things happened in Bethany across the Jordan River where John was baptizing.” Frankly we don’t have a clue as to where that was- somewhere in the province of Perea, which is on the other side of the Jordan but nobody knows what that Bethany was. It’s not the Bethany that’s near Jerusalem on the Mount of Olives. This is a different one- all this took place in the wilderness.

John then was a prophet. John was Jewish, in fact he was related as a cousin- he was connected with Elizabeth. He was fully Jewish.

His water baptism was negative rather than positive. It cleansed but it bestowed no gift by which you could stay clean- only Jesus could supply the gift that would keep us cleansed.

We have this portrait then of John prior to the actual arrival of Jesus but we’ve already seen Jesus in this marvelous prologue that lifts Him up and gives us a marvelous portrait of who He is.

This all takes place on the first day and then there’s the second day. John 1:29, “On the next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” In verse 36 he says it again- Behold, the Lamb of God. Other than Stephen’s use of the phrase, the Lamb of God, you don’t find this until the Revelation. We have this image here- a different way of looking at Him. Paul never calls Him the Lamb of God in that way. We see this picture. What does that Lamb of God imagery mean? John is given an insight. John has already baptized Jesus and he’s been led by prophetic insight to recognize Him as the One for whose coming Israel was seeking.

John 1:30, “This is the one about whom I said, “After me comes a man who is greater than I am, because He existed before me.” This goes back to verse 15 and John’s earlier testimony. He’s referring back to his earlier testimony but now he says and at that point, “I did not recognize Him but I came baptizing with water so that He could be revealed to Israel.”(v.31)

John 1:31, “Then John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending like a dove from heaven, and it remained on Him.” It was by divine revelation, divine disclosure, as a gift of God that John was able to recognize Him. By the way, that is how all spiritual truth is apprehended at the end of the day- it is something that is a gift of God. God gives us a spirit of wisdom and revelation, the spirit of illumination and the heart who wants to find Him. There’s a divine disclosure in which we can come to grasp that. In this case, it’s when he saw the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven.

John by the way, unlike the synoptics, in this particular account, focuses on the Spirit (mentioned 3 times). The synoptics mention the baptism itself and the testimony of the Father. Part of the reason for this is the idea of that the Spirit- He’s the One who is going to baptize you in the Spirit and with fire- the idea of the Spirit coming upon Him. Now that idea was known in the Old Testament, the Spirit of God. He would come and anoint and empower some kings, prophets, judges and so forth but it was not a permanent affair nor was it really internal. We have something very unique here. This is something for the first time- He remained upon Him. The Spirit is now permanently upon Him and for the rest of His ministry, Jesus will walk in the power of the Spirit. In fact He will be the One who opens the gate so that we can be baptized with the same Holy Spirit so that we can enter into a communion with Him as members of the body of Jesus Christ. We have these anticipatory concepts that are being conveyed in this text.

We have several dimensions here. How would a Jewish observer, hearing John’s testimony, associate, behold, the Lamb of God? One might associate the offering of Isaac. You recall when Isaac spoke to Abraham, his father, in Genesis 22:7-8, “Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father?” “What is it my son?” he replied. “Here is the fire and the wood,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” God will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son,” Abraham replied. The two of them continued on together.” Parenthetically in verse 5, “So he said to his servants, “You two stay here with the donkey while the boy and I go up there. We will worship and then return to you.” Abraham didn’t know how that was going to happen but Hebrews tells us he was convinced God could raise Isaac from the dead if need be. That’s a powerful and radical understanding. The point is one could well associate the Lamb of God with one who takes our place, a substitute; which is what actually happens of course in this imagery. God will provide the Lamb.

I want to stress something parenthetically here. We have something that is utterly unique in the world- only in the biblical vision do we have God sacrificing for us. It’s to be found nowhere else. You will not find God suffering for people anywhere else. This is unique. He suffers in order that through His suffering we might know Him. He suffers not only to pay for our sins but also to put us in a condition where now we can be welcomed into His very presence and become a part of His eternal family. His intention then is to go to that great extreme, that level of descent, in order to raise us up into newness of life. It took something that radical. That’s why Galatians puts it so well. If it were possible to keep the law- if righteousness came (by works) by keeping the law- what about the work of Christ? What is he going to conclude? Christ then, if that were the case, died needlessly. Such a radical thing would not have been necessary. The law condemned us. It did not save us. It is a schoolmaster that would lead us to faith and reveal the perfect character of God and His expectations that could not be met by us. He Himself underwrites the cost of His own creation and in doing so makes it possible for us to be people of whom it is said- the sin of the world has now been taken away and placed on the Lamb of God.

Another way of looking at it would be perhaps some might associate it with Isaiah 53 and the passage of the Suffering Servant. Whenever one does Jewish evangelism this is the passage you’d normally start with because it’s the clearest, most explicit portrait of Messiah in the Hebrew bible. There are obvious reasons why this is the case. Many Jews, especially starting with Maimonides, tried to argue that this was actually talking about Israel- the Suffering Servant. The text makes it very clear that actually it was Israel who was the cause of the One who suffered. Surely our grief’s He Himself bore and our sorrows He carried. We esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted but He was pierced through for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. This is the people of God now speaking- showing that they realize that they in fact misunderstood and at the crucifixion it was because of their sin He was crucified. Verse 7, “He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open His mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so He did not open His mouth.”

I also think you that you can’t miss the obvious image and that is the Passover. If you turn to Exodus 12 you have the clearest presentation of the details associated with the Passover- look particularly at Exodus 12:13-17 and you will discover a wide variety of aspects that portray in anticipation the work of Christ. The lamb that would be the Passover lamb had to be a year old in the prime of life, had to be sacrificed between the 2 twilights; which would be between 3 and 6 in the afternoon, had to be on the 14^th day of Nisan which was exactly when this took place- the Great Passover; which is associated with the work of Christ Himself, and many other details such as don’t break the bones and so forth. There are many things that anticipate the work of Messiah. If you’ve ever been to a Jewish Passover ceremony, they are intriguing especially when you see Christ in the Passover. The matzoh itself is pierced and striped and unleavened. They take it, break it and put half in the afikomen, cover it up and it is hidden for a period. There is a lot of symbolism that goes on.

Jesus then invites us to see this idea- this cup- speaking about the cup of redemption, which would be the 3rd out of the 4 cups in the Passover ceremony-, this cup is the New Covenant in My blood. There’s a connection here that is going on so certainly we would be justified in suggesting there is a Passover image here as well. But notice what it says about it- He takes away, He removes the guilt of sin and He removes it’s power as well. This is the foundation of the gospel.

John 1:30, “He existed before me.” We know that chronologically John was six months older than Jesus. For him to say He existed before me is a powerful picture of His preincarnate nature- an emphasis then on He was around before me and that’s why I’m not even worthy of serving Him as a slave.

The gospel continues verse 32-34; Then John gave this testimony; “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. I would not have known him, except that the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’(Note-This is the one who baptizes in the Holy Spirit. I can only baptize in water. This One will do something far greater than that.) I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God.” Although it may well be there are some variant readings and the harder reading is chosen and that that’s what’s involved here where the Son of God is mentioned later on when Nathaniel calls him the Son of God- the king of Israel (v.49). It may well be he’s focusing on the Chosen of God which would be an illusion to Isaiah 42:1, “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations.” There’s even a connection there with the Spirit of God and being His Servant, His Chosen One.

We’ve gone through two days and the next day is the third day of revelation. Verse 35-37, “The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, ‘Look, the Lamb of God! When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus.” I must tell you that many people engaged in discipleship ministry are at least tempted to try to get people dependent on them. In other words it’s natural for you to enjoy people following you, needing to be around you and that sort of thing. The idea of telling them leave me and go to Him is not natural. That’s exactly what he’s telling them to do. I’ve taken you as far as you can go, this is the Anointed One, this is the Lamb of God, and you must follow that One. In John 3 we know he says, He must increase and I must decrease. John understands that.

John 1:38, “Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?” Here’s the first question found in all the gospels. What do you seek or what do you want? You can translate it either way. This is a very important question. I think about the questions in the bible that are gripping. The first question for example, where are you? Who told you you were naked? Those kinds of things are very illuminating questions. They are saying something aren’t they? What do you seek as you stand before Him? Whom are you looking for? (John 20:15) Remember then He asked that question, whom do you say that I am? I love this other question later in this gospel; do you want to be made well? It is a very fascinating question. Are you sure you want that because it will change the whole way in which you live your life? At least you had an identity before but now what’s going to happen when you can no longer identify with this sickness, this condition that you’ve had? Then this other question later on in this gospel, do you love Me?

See these questions become very, very specific and very, very pointed as we go. You see they’re looking for something so He speaks to them and asks what, not who, are you looking for? It’s almost like He’s assuming like the rest of humanity, they’re looking for some thing that will satisfy their needs rather than a person. He’s saying the “thing” you’re looking for is in fact a person and that Person is the One you’re talking to. This is a very, very strong and radical claim indeed. These questions are very revealing. You see, Jesus is what John could never actually be, the Savior of men. Romans 4:25 points us to this position where we see- He was delivered for our transgression and He was raised up because of our justification. John couldn’t do that. John could only point to the One who is in fact the Savior of the world.

So they reply with a question when He asks them what do you seek? What would your answer be to that question? That’s not a bad question to ask yourself. As I argue this may be in some ways the most important question you could ask yourself. Whatever you are looking for will determine basically what you will find and if you seek Him, you’re going to find Him. “So they said to Him, Rabbi (which means Teacher) where are you staying?” (v. 38b) Now this might seem to be just a counter question and it seems like a request for information so they could visit Him and get more instruction. Actually there’s something more. There’s an actual word, meno, being used. The word meno means to dwell or to stay or abide or remain. That is a word that is used of discipleship in this gospel. There’s already a hint of this concept. Akoloutheo basically means follow me- “Come and see.” (v.39a) The idea here is He’s inviting them to come, take a step, and coming to Him and seeing Him and remaining with Him and abiding with Him are portraits of discipleship. One comes to Him, which is a choice one makes, one then sees Him or beholds Him and then one moves beyond that to abiding and remaining with Him. There’s a developing concept here. We have to understand this meno, His home, was something He never had in the sense that it was something He could own. He borrowed and used places but He was dwelling continually in heaven. He is the One bidding them to come and gain from Him the mind and purpose of God Himself because really in effect He is the only One who could provide the fundamental needs that we desire to find. We look in all kinds of substitutes and never find it in this world. He is the One who alone can satisfy the things, which we truly seek in our heart of hearts because remember God has planted eternity in your heart. Thus He creates us in such a way that we long for more than what the world can offer.

John 1:39b, “So they went and saw where He was staying, and spent that day with Him. It was about the tenth hour.” We have the picture of two ex-disciples of John staying with Jesus and coming to understand that discipleship means nothing less than abiding with Him. Commentators disagree about the 10^th hour but I think it’s more like 4 p.m. They followed the Roman reckoning but they still followed the Jewish side of it where they would start with 6 o’clock a.m. and that would make it late in the afternoon.

John 1:40, “Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said, and who had followed Jesus.” My personal suspicion is that the other one, the one not named, is John himself. It’s just my guess and I can’t demonstrate that but it is significant who the first ones we discover are when Jesus calls them fishers of men. You have Peter, Andrew, James and John. It may be kind of a hint again, as he never refers to himself or discloses his name, but is referred to as the disciple whom Jesus loved. It’s my suspicion and of course that would make him an eyewitness to these accounts as well.

John 1:41-42a, “The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, ‘We have found the Messiah’ (that is, the Christ). And he brought him to Jesus.” We go back to that imagery where John claimed not to be the Christ but we found the One who really is the Christ. He brought him to Jesus, which is really what a disciple will do. Once you’ve come to know Him, you’re going to bring others to Jesus as well. You’re going to want to be a way in which people are conveyed to Him.

John 1:42b, “Jesus looked at him and said, ‘You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas’ (which translated, is Peter).” Peter responds immediately as he always will whether for good or ill. He’s going to be given here a new name and so we see this account. This is really a play on words because cephas in the Aramaic is a word for rock and petros in the Greek is a word for rock. It was not so much a proper name as it was a nickname- like Rocky. You have this idea that names in the Jewish mind really had something to do with character and some thing about their personality. Wouldn’t it seem rather odd to call this one a rock though? After all, isn’t he the one who constantly goes back and forth, he was unstable and later he was going to be the one to deny Him? I think what Jesus is doing here is He sees what he will be. It’s an anticipation of what He will see him to be. You see, Jesus sees things in us that we don’t see in ourselves. He sees potential and He looks at us in a way we might not see. He sees His purposes for a person. It says in Revelation we will be given a new name. This idea of naming is powerful too because for one to give another a name is a picture of authority. It’s not just a random thing for one to name another. It is a very important idea. Remember Jacob is given a new name- he who was known as the supplanter or the heel- now becomes someone different- Israel. We have a picture here of how he is named and it’s in anticipation really of how you and I have a new name and a new identity that follows from that new name.

We see then the next day- this might be the 4^th day. Some commentators disagree over this- some take it that there are 4 days altogether. Day one, 1:19-28, day two, 1:29-34, day three, 1:35-42, and day four 1:43-51. There are different perspectives on this so there’s not uniformity in understanding this. Although if you looked at it in that way then you’d have John the Baptist’s self-denial in day one and John the Baptist’s saying who Jesus is in day two. What you’d have then is one disciple in Perea bearing witness to Jesus, then two disciples in Galilee (v. 43-51) bearing witness to Jesus- Philip and Nathaniel.

John 1:43, “The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, ‘Follow me.” Galilee is about 100 miles north from Judea. I’d like to know more about that encounter! Jesus is the One in this case who found Philip whereas the others were looking for Jesus. Philip means lover of horses. It’s kind of a Greek name that is associated with that whereas Nathaniel is more of a Jewish name. You can already see in Galilee there is a mix of Roman and Jewish influence and also the Hellenistic culture as well.

John 1:44, “Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida.” Bethsaida would be up on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee just east of where the Jordan River had its’ inlet into the Sea of Galilee. Capernaum would be just west of where that inlet is and they eventually move to Capernaum. If you recall, Jesus did many miracles in Bethsaida and Capernaum and He said they would be culpable because of their failure to believe Him and their failure to respond to those miracles that went on. In any case He’s moved up into Galilee.

John 1:45, “Philip found Nathanael and told him, ‘We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote- Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” Some commentators think that Nathaniel may have been Matthew or perhaps Bartholomew but we don’t know. He may have been one of the seventy. Nathanael is mentioned here and we know from John 21 he was actually from Cana of Galilee. It’s an anticipation of the next verse, 46, “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked. ‘Come and see,’ said Philip.” So here Andrew brought Peter, Philip brings Nathanael and in both cases they’re bringing someone to Jesus. We have a scene here where Nathanael is somewhat more skeptical. Peter came right away and Nathanael wants to hold back. Maybe Cana and Nazareth had a little rivalry but he has a skeptical stance here. Philip said the same thing Jesus said to the two disciples of John- come and see. You need to check it out. That’s an invitation for all of us. In effect John is telling the reader, come and see. You’re never going to know Him for who He is unless you come and see. You will not come unless a choice is involved. There’s an image here of Him being the Messiah. There’s an image also of Him being One to whom one must come and approach. So here comes Nathanael but he’s not a believer by any stretch.

John 1:47, “When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, He said of him, ‘Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is nothing false.” At least Nathanael was willing to make the move. That’s the key issue here. You may be skeptical but at least you’re moving which means there’s a seeking dimension there. There are other skeptics that won’t get off their duffs! Those skeptics will get hardened in their skepticism because they were unwilling to make the move, consider the evidence, and see for themselves. This is the issue here. There are those who seek and there are those who really do not seek. So at least we see Nathanael coming to Him. There is no guile or falsehood. He’s very different from Jacob- just the opposite- the anti-type. Here is a man who would be really open to the things of God. Psalm 32 would describe such a man where it says, How blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity and in whose spirit there is no deceit. There’s this image of a person of one who seems to have an open heart before God and he desires to know Him. There’s an idea of a man who has a purity of heart enough to want to know the truth.

John 1:48, “How do you know me?’ Nathanael asked. Jesus answered, ‘I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.” Now we have to read between the lines because evidently there’s no way Jesus was where He physically, in the flesh, could see him under the fig tree. What was he doing under the fig tree? As you know, it provides a nice cool canopy and it’s a place where people would sometimes meditate, read and reflect. I wonder if he wasn’t reading something. Perhaps he was reading for example Geneses 28. I’m only speculating here but I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the kind of text he was meditating on under the fig tree- especially verse 12. It’s the dream of Jacob and it’s quite interesting to me because we have another parallel here with Jacob. He had a dream when he was going from Bathsheba to Haran- Behold, a ladder was set on the earth with its top reaching to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. We discover later on in verse 16- 17 he was afraid when he had this encounter with God. “Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.’ And he was afraid and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” Wouldn’t it be great if he was reading that text as in fact Jesus used this very image. So we hear Jesus speaking to Nathanael who was previously under the fig tree.

I’ve got to say I’m impressed with Nathanael here because he gives Him three great titles. John 1:49, “Nathanael answered Him, ‘Rabbi, You are the Son of God; You are the King of Israel.” These are insights that very few people would grasp. There’s something about this man, his purity, and his guilelessness that allows him to see truth by the grace of God and when he sees it he sees it big time. So all of a sudden you have this triple affirmation- a very, very high Christological section here. This whole text is designed to lift up Christ and for of course to see who this Jesus really is. Many titles are given of Him, as we’ll see in a moment as I wrap up.

John 1:50-51, “Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Because I said to you that I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe? You shall see greater things than these.’ And He said to him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, you shall see the heavens opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” There’s that Bethel image you see there. Wouldn’t that be great if it was the text he was reading? In any case this is still a great image- a powerful image because Jesus is the House of God. He incarnates the dream of Jacob. He is the Way; the Word made flesh, He Himself the meeting place between heaven and earth. The God Man being the meeting place between heaven and earth. We see in Him the One who can make contact with earth bound men and lift them up to heaven itself.

Note by the way in verse 51, and you won’t see it in English, when He says truly, truly, He’s speaking to Nathanael but then He goes to the plural you. Why does John do that? It’s as if John is saying, Jesus isn’t just speaking to Nathanael, He’s speaking to all of us. You- plural- will see the heavens open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. Again it’s an invitation to come and see, behold who He is, get up and follow Him and then abide with Him. This is where we see amen, amen- truly, truly-it’s an affirmation as in prayer. You’d have this idea- truly I’ve said. The doubling we find so much in John’s gospel is something that is an emphatic picture. The dominant theme of this gospel is how God reaches down and lifts us up and thus becomes the gateway to heaven where you’ll see the angels of God. That’s a fascinating image isn’t it? It’s as if He’s the ladder and the angels are walking up and down Him. There’s this idea of Him being the point of mediation, intimacy, revelation and light.

I’d like to give you some of the names of Jesus that are used in this gospel as we close. I’m going to give you seven particular names. The first one in this first chapter is the Word in 1:13-14, and the Word became flesh.

We also see Him as the Light and as the Light we see Him particularly in 1:4-13 where people were blind to their own Messiah. It’s needful for us to appropriate or receive that Light for us to find our life in Him.

He’s also called the Son of God in 1:15-28 and verse 49. As the Son of God we see Him as eternal, combining grace and truth and that He reveals God to us. He alone can explain Him.

He is called the Lamb of God. As the Lamb of God, He takes away the sins of the world particularly in verses 29 and 36.

Fifth, He’s also called the Messiah as we discover Him here in verse 20 and 35-42.

In addition to being the Messiah, He is King of Israel. As the King of Israel in verses 43-49 we see His Lordship and His authority.

Finally we see Him as the Son of Man in this list in verses 50-51. This is an unusual title for John to use. As the Son of Man, He is the living link between heaven and earth and He identifies with us.

In addition to these seven titles we also see that He is the Prophet in verse 21. He is called Jesus in verse 29. In verse 33 He is the One who baptizes with the Spirit. In verses 38 and 49 He’s called Rabbi and Teacher. He’s called the son of Joseph and the Nazarene in verse 45.

I want to stress something. This is a highly Christological passage of scripture and it invites us to see that both the mind and the heart must weld together. You must understand truth and appropriate it. Just to have piety, love for Jesus, without really knowing about who He is and how that all connects together, what scripture teaches, is not to be embedded properly. But on the other hand to have an orthodox grasp of theology without a warm heart is also to miss out on the life of Christ. Again it’s important for us to grow in our apprehension of who this One is and the more we can name Him and know Him the greater our own capacity will be then to know Him intimately. We want to know Him, to love Him, but it’s also true that that you want to love Him to know Him. You see how they both connect together. The mind leads to the heart and the heart affects the mind. There’s mutuality between the two.

Question: Why is it that John the Baptist and Jesus didn’t just spell it out clearly, everything is kind of mystical and with hindsight?

Answer: There’s a kind of gradual revelation. You have to understand that the whole theme in scripture is a movement of progression. There’s progressive revelation as we go where God gradually reveals Himself. Remember in fact He says even when He would heal people, don’t tell anyone, the time had not yet come. There’s a timing issue as well. It’s not for Him to be fully manifested until His hour would come. John really anticipates a later understanding. There’s a development in that grasp. The issue is always this. There’s always some light to which we must respond. If we come to the light that we’re given, God’s role will be the One to illuminate us. Please keep in mind that He knew Nathanael before Nathaniel knew Him. This is the other side of that coin. We must grasp that God’s grace will be previous to your response. It’s not a game of hide-and-seek but it illumination when the heart is made ready and prepared. God knows in each heart what they need and how they are to respond. Frankly, people come to Him differently. Notice how Peter comes right away and Nathanael hesitates. So we have different personalities, different temperaments and so forth. I think God uses these truths in unique ways that are appropriate to us. There is a theme in scripture of progressive revelation.

Question: (inaudible)

Answer: Fairly early on in Jesus’ ministry when John the Baptist was thrown into prison. I would probably guess within a year or so. Later in His ministry, they were asking- Are you John the Baptist? That seems to be the case where Herod was upset because of John’s nailing him and so that is when he had him beheaded.

Question: (inaudible)

Answer: Are You the One whose going to come or shall we seek someone else? Part of this is are You the One that I recognized upon whom the Spirit came or is this yet someone else? There were a lot of false messiahs running around, pretenders, and so John wants to know if this is the same One that I saw or not? Jesus sends him back the response, go and tell him what you have seen. The dead are raised and so forth. You have all these signs given. John himself had his own uncertainty at that juncture. Is this really the One? Keep in mind he was in prison so he didn’t have an opportunity to be hanging around Him. One wonders more about that though after His baptism, did John the Baptist have any further contact with Jesus at all? My suspicion is he probably did not have any direct contact.

Question: (inaudible)

Answer: I think you have to understand there are a lot of confusing and mixed signals about the nature of the Messiah that were somewhat confusing to the people. It had been politicized. There was not a clear understanding- was He coming in power as the world would see it or was He coming in power as One who is going to be dealing with the real needs of people but not in a political context? The signs that He performed showed that He was not of a political nature of deliverance from physical or Roman bondage or oppression. That always raised a question and to this very day many Jewish people reject Him because He didn’t fit their expectation of Messiah, as they wanted Him to be. They wanted Him to be more of a political, physical deliverer. Jesus offered something more profound than that. Ultimately the physical will not come until after the spiritual is fulfilled. When Jesus returns, He will come decisively. He will come to invade and at that time He will not come in humility and weakness. There won’t be any ambiguity when He comes back. That’s why He says don’t listen to them when they say the Messiah’s come, here He is, there He is-don’t worry about that- you’ll know. Just as the sun goes from the east to the west you’ll know when He comes.

Question: Why did John not identify himself when writing this?

Answer: It might be almost as John the Baptist who never speaks about himself. He says what he’s not. He doesn’t even name himself. There’s a sense in which the spirit of one whose purpose is not to draw attention to himself but always to focus on the other. He doesn’t want to be a central theme or figure. He wants the attention to be off himself. It may well be he doesn’t even feel worthy of putting himself in that scenario. I think we can be sure that part of it was animated by that concern.

Question: (inaudible)

Answer: This is no letter. Peter would identify himself. Paul would identify himself because that’s a correspondence. This is something more universal. It’s compatible with the universality of the gospel and that it not be particularized by the author himself. He does stress the one who has seen these things bears witness that it is true- I am an eyewitness.

Question: (inaudible)

Answer: They knew who John was. He didn’t have to say it. Iraneaus was a disciple of Polycarp and Polycarp was a disciple of John. There was a direct connection. They understood that. There was a living testimony and witness. These early church fathers were not ignorant. There were just some things they didn’t need to develop or say.

Question: (inaudible)

Answer: I think in part being more of a Zealot, Judas desire was more politically motivated because he was such a patriot. He let his patriotism actually come in the way of his grasp of the identity of Jesus. I think Jesus literally disappointed him at a point and he finally decided to have Him brought into custody. I don’t think his intent was to have Him executed, it went beyond what he had expected, but when he discovered what he’d really done it was another matter. His hanging even there was remorse not repentance.

This is part 4 in a 23-part study on the book of John. Below is a modified transcript.

Let’s begin with a prayer. Lord, we thank You for this opportunity to gather together and for us to study Your word together. We pray that You would give us discernment and clarity and give us ears to hear, eyes to see and a heart willing to obey and respond so that we are not merely hearers but doers of Your word. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

We are looking at John chapter 2 and if your recall, there are no chapter and verse distinctions in the originals. You always want to remember that. It’s very important for you to see the smoothness of this because it then goes on to say in chapter 2 verse 1, on the third day. The question some scholars have is you identify earlier days for example John 1:35, again the next day and so forth. Some scholars identify four previous days and then three more days after those days and that is to say His journey up to Galilee would perhaps be for a total of seven days. The sixth day would have been passed over in silence according to this view and in that setting you’d have the idea of seven days of witness and of revelation in the knowledge of Christ.

Now I like a particular application or a particular way of seeing that I found in a book by Gary Burge in the NIV application commentary that says that in John you actually have two books. The book of signs is chapters 1-12 and the reason why it’s called the book of signs is because you have this first main part, which looks at semeion rather than dunamis. Dunamis is the word used in the synoptic gospels of Jesus’ works of power and it means miracles. Signs, semeion, point beyond the miracles to the spiritual revelatory power and meaning of the miracles. So that it’s one thing to believe in Him because you see miracles but it’s another thing to see that the miracles actually point beyond themselves as signs for us to recognize who He is. See the concept there. There’s the idea that John uses this phrase in contra distinction from the synoptic gospels. As the book of signs, he’s developing a case very generally with a sign followed by a discourse and then another sign and a discourse. Although in chapter two we do not have a discourse until after Nicodemus in chapter 3. Then speaking of the relationship between Jesus and John the Baptist in the 2nd half of chapter3, there is another discourse. You have this kind of back and forth movement but the signs are designed to teach us something about who He is. We’re also invited to see that there is a response. There are some people who accept and some who do not embrace Him. There’s movement between the forces of light and the forces of darkness.

There’s also the book of glory, which are chapters 13-21. The reason why it’s called the book of glory is because Jesus interprets the hour of glorification, namely His departure to the cross. This is the time where God Himself honors and exalts Himself through His Son so that the cross, rather than something being ultimately dishonorable turns out to be a sign of great victory, power and authority where He is in fact lifted up before all men.

Within the book of signs though, I want you to notice especially as John 2 opens up to us that we see John concentrating on both the festivals of Judaism and the institutions of Judaism. The reason why he’s doing this is he’s contrasting what Jesus is offering in the new covenant with what was found in the old covenant under Judaism both in terms of it’s institutions and it’s festivals. If we were to consider, for example, the institutions in John we would look particularly at chapters 2-4. There we would discover a wedding in Cana (2:1-12), the temple in Jerusalem (2:13-25), a Rabbi in Jerusalem (3:1-24) and a well in Samaria (4:1-42). You have various powerful symbolic institutions that are repeated over and over again in the Old Testament. In the Hebrew Bible you have a contrast between what Christ has been providing and you have these institutions there, the wedding was a major feast, the temple, the Rabbi and the well. Then there are the festivals. They’re particularly found in chapters 5-10. The festivals would be the Sabbath in chapter 5, Passover in chapter 6, then Tabernacles in chapter 7, and Hanukah, the festival of lights in chapter 10. We have a symbolic portrait of how Jesus consistently does something here. There’s a theme of replacement and fulfillment in each of these cases. He’s going to be replacing the temple, a whole new way of teaching, a whole new approach to the Sabbath, the Passover and the festivals. All these things now are being replaced in one way and being fulfilled in another. He’s actually going to fill them with the wine of His own life and revelation. We have a radical transformation that’s taking place.

Typically here is what we see throughout the action. You usually see a four-fold pattern. Jesus would appear at an important event in Judaism- that’s the first thing. So whatever the important event is, He shows up, whether it’s a marriage, at the temple, one of the members of the Sanhedrin approach Him or a well which symbolized a very big theme in the old covenant. Jesus exploits symbols that are associated with those very events to make His own identity clear. Each of these things exposes something about His actual identity. There’s a progressive exposure of His very identity. John is a book of increased exposure and increased revelation just as the whole bible is progressive revelation as you go. God Himself in His very nature and character is being exposed in a revelatory manner. We increase in our grasp of the light and He builds to a crescendo so that we have a fairly clear grasp of who He is and what He claims to be by the end of the gospel. We, the readers, are given the opportunity to decide whether we embrace Him as being the Christ, the Son of the living God, and by embracing Him we receive life in His name. There’s a wonderful literary structure using subtle sub-themes and layers like this.

Secondly, He exploits the symbols that are associated with the event to reveal something about Himself.

Thirdly, He shows or provides something in abundance that the event actually promises. At the wedding He provides the abundance of wine. The temple had been dead but now He clears it of the old and cleanses it so He can replace it with Himself- with a temple that is His actual body.

The fourth characteristic is He’s misunderstood along the way. Typically what we’re going to see is that whatever He does seems to also be misunderstood often by the religious leaders. There is this motif that John exploits as he develops his material in this gospel.

Let’s take a look then first of all at the wedding in Cana of Galilee and we’ll see this pattern here. Mary, His mother, is there. She’ll be showing up again at the cross in John 19.  John 2:1-5, “On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there: and both Jesus and His disciples were invited to the wedding. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to Him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what does that have to do with us? My hour has not yet come.” Some people regard that as being a little harsh. I’ll explain what’s really going on there in a bit. John 2:5-11, “His mother said to the servants, ‘Whatever He says to you, do it.’ Now there were six stone water pots set there for the Jewish custom of purification containing twenty or thirty gallons each. Jesus said to them, ‘Fill the water pots with water.’ So they filled them to the brim. And He said to them, ‘Draw some out now and take it to the headwaiter.’ So they took it to him. When the headwaiter tasted the water which had become wine, and did not know where it came from (but the servants who had drawn the water knew), the headwaiter called the bridegroom, and said to him, ‘Every man serves the good wine first, and when the people have drunk freely, then he serves the poorer wine; but you have kept the good wine until now.’ This beginning of His signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory, and His disciples believed in Him.”

The first thing we want to look at is the importance, the symbolic meaning of the wedding and the importance of this context here. Some critics believe this is a luxury miracle that wasn’t necessary. I want to argue that this is not at all purposeless. It really reveals some important principles of supernatural power and also it is a miracle of deep significance. Again we have in verse 11 this semeion, the miracles of Jesus, signs displaying the glory of Jesus and the wonder of His redeeming love. We have here the seventh day of the new creation week, which manifests His glory if we take that approach to it although it can’t be demonstrated. Scholars disagree over the structure of the days but unlike the other signs in this gospel this one is not followed by a discourse explaining a spiritual truth. I think it does however show how Jesus is exposing the inadequacies of Judaism as a religion of salvation and initiating his own disciples into the necessity for His own redeeming death. You have these stone water pots that are going to be for purification and Jesus is going to take them and use them in an entirely different way. The water for ceremonial purification is now going to be transformed into wine and that wine gives life. As it says in Psalm 104:15, it makes man’s heart glad. This is a fitting symbol of the new spiritual power that’s made available for humanity by the shedding of the blood of Jesus. We have a picture as well of a great abundance and great quality. I believe in one way it’s the miracle of the kingdom. It’s a miracle of what Jesus is going to inaugurate. There’s an eschatological dimension to it. You have to understand this- weddings in those days really were the chief celebrations of the year. They were a big thing- even bigger than in our culture. They often lasted for a week of celebration. It would be very easy for the wine to run out especially if you had more guests than you expected. Jesus says His mother, Himself and the disciples were invited there because Cana really wasn’t very far as a village, maybe four miles from Nazareth. Folks in that environment would’ve been invited and very likely they ended up with more than they expected and more people hung around as well. This was a huge embarrassment as you can well imagine and so this is a cause of concern.

Why did Jesus’ mother feel the need to take upon herself the burden of that? It’s not explicitly answered but there is indeed a concern or compassion for the painful situation that that actually implies. It’s as though they are insulting the guests by not providing for them. This is no minor thing. I want to suggest that this whole image here of weddings in the Jewish mindset was their best way to typify the glories of heaven, the glories of the kingdom. The idea of table fellowship is a big thing in the scripture as you can imagine. Table fellowship is the idea of people enjoying food and drink together in the context of communion and community and doing it in the context of worship. So the Eucharistic meal became the ultimate portrait of the heavenly banquet. The idea here is that we have something that seems to point beyond itself and Jesus now is actually filling it with something far, far greater.

The key verse for interpreting this is verse three where we see His mother saying, “They have no wine.” She didn’t say do something about it. She just makes this observation. They are out of wine. Of course Jesus knows very well that she is pointing this out to Him. She doesn’t know what He’s going to do. This is the beginning of the signs. I don’t believe she expected Him to actually do a miracle here. What did she expect Him to do? I’m not quite sure but the point here is He did more than she expected.

But then He makes a statement here so different really that His concern is really different from Mary’s. That’s why He says and this is literal, “Woman, what to me and to you.” - Greek literally translates- what to me and to you. Now woman in modern English conveys the erroneous impression that Jesus is reproving His mother. That’s not the case. Actually He used that word in other contexts as well with others for example the woman of Samaria, Mary Magdalene at the tomb and so forth. It’s not unusual to use that term but the context tells us that they don’t have the same concerns. What He’s really saying is this- what do you and I have in common in this issue. You’re being concerned about the human and I’m concerned about My Father’s will. If what you’re asking me to do does not really move in the direction of what My Father’s called me to be then it’s a different concern. We see that the word hour is used in a very special way as it consistently refers to the hour of the Passion and it hasn’t come yet. The certainty of that hour would condition everything Jesus would say and do. That hour is a critical theme. We see it again and again in this gospel. It’s an important motif because it’s God’s timetable in the life of our Lord. I want to say that in verse 5 Jesus’ greater concern didn’t prevent Him from acting according to His mother’s unspoken question.

Here’s what happened. Instead of saying anything back to Jesus at that point, she turns to the servants and says, “Whatever He says to you, do it.” She has no idea what He is going to tell them to do. But she does know that He’s there for a reason. She was sure He was going to take some action and this is the point I want to stress- He will act in His own way. He will not come to our beck and call in the way we might expect. He will act for His own reasons. He will act in His own time. May I tell you that that is a portrait of prayer. We often want God to act in our way for our reasons. I want you to see that He has sovereign authority. I also want you to see that His actions would not only satisfy the physical need there but also point beyond that to a greater abundance and provision of spiritual needs.

The physical in John is always ultimately pointing beyond itself to the spiritual, which would be won by His coming sacrifice. We see in verse 6 as we go beyond this- 6 stone water pots for the purification. Clay water pots would not do. They could become contaminated. They’d need to be broken. A stone water pot according to the Mishna which was the Jewish oral tradition that was later written down, was still available in the oral tradition at that time. Later, around 200 A.D. the Mishna would be written out and actually become part of the Talmud with the Gemara, the commentary. You also had the Babylonian Talmud and the Palestinian Talmud. You had theses Talmudic commentaries, which were being memorized from Rabbi to Rabbi and part of the oral tradition was that you needed to have stone water pots for it to be adequate for purification. Note too that the temple was made of stone and there’s a connection between this miracle and the cleansing of the temple and the fact that the temple was empty or had something wrong in it that needed to be cleansed before that which is of the Spirit can enter.

These were very large containers- 20 or maybe 30 gallons each. Jesus was going to fill them up with wine and fill them to the brim as He stresses so we’re dealing with 120 to 150 gallons of wine and not ordinary wine. I would argue that this is the best wine ever created! My point is that this was not just a miracle of abundance but of kingdom quality and excellence as well. They were surprised because typically you bring out the better wine first and then when people’s palates were not as discerning they’d bring out the cheaper stuff. The idea that he would save the best for now is a surprising concept to them. We see here a miracle really of the old creation and the parable of the new creation. The new worship in spirit and truth surpasses the old as much as wine surpasses water.

Turn to Ephesians 3:20. It’s a reminder of the imagery we have of the blessings of God, “Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us.” We have this wonderful portrait of how much superior this is compared to anything people had known. We see here a picture as well of how God saves the best for the new life, the new creation in Christ. It then in effect, points beyond itself to its ultimate fulfillment in the echelon or future in God’s kingdom. Remember what Jesus said to His disciples, “I will no longer drink with you of the fruit of the vine until I drink it anew with you in My Father’s kingdom.”(Mark 14:25) Remember that strong word- I will drink with you in my Father’s kingdom. Now that will be impressive. That will be a feast. I want to tell you at that banqueting table and I’ve said this before but the best meal you’ve ever had on this planet is like cardboard in comparison with that. It’s like the food you thought was good will be like stale, old, cheap food. You haven’t tasted anything yet! The same would be true of art and of music and all sorts of beauty. We haven’t seen all that awaits us. We’ve only seen little patches, little hints and little bits every so often as a flash of God’s true glory come because I don’t believe we have the capacity to grasp it or to appreciate it. It would be too much for us. We don’t have the capacity now but it will be good and our capacity will be enhanced. That capacity was limited and bounded as a consequence of the fall and will be more than restored in the resurrection. You might recall that we will be so great in God’s economy that we will be the greatest creatures He’s ever created- even above the angels, which we will judge. “You’ve made them for a little while lower than the angels. You have crowned him with glory and honor” (Hebrew 2:7) The idea here is that we will be judging angels. We see these hints in these anticipations.

Though it was only the disciples who saw what had happened in verse 11. “This beginning of His signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory, and His disciples believed in Him.” So we see a further ground beyond John’s testimony for believing Him as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. You can see the disciples now seeing more about Him. They had already followed Him. They’ve already committed themselves to Him but now they have more ground, more warrant and more experience. The more they walk with Him, the greater their base is. I want to stress then that as the evidence increases their trust, their confidence and their assurance increases.

May I suggest that’s the way it should be in the spiritual life. As you build a personal history of God’s work in your life, shouldn’t that increase your trust and confidence in Him? Particularly as you see how He’s delivered you from things you thought you could never escape from in the past. We have all been in hard spots haven’t we? You looked ahead and said, “How on earth am I going to escape?” But then we look back and some how see a pattern and you build a redemptive history that we’d do well to recall. Our typical experience however is to forget God’s blessings in our lives and to move on as if they hadn’t happened. I suggest that you would be well advised to cultivate the spiritual discipline of remembering. I don’ really see that in Richard Foster’s, Celebration of Discipline, but it wouldn’t be a bad discipline- call it remembering. That is to say the discipline of gratitude, a spirit of thanksgiving honors God. When you do that you gain a confidence in God’s revealing of Himself progressively in your own life. You’re discovering not just God’s works but also God’s way. As you move in that direction then you begin to get an increased confidence in spite of the difficulties of the present tense, which can face us from time to time. We get a confidence because He has delivered us from the past and we can be confident about what He’ll do in the future and in our present. We have a confidence as well that He is leading us in a direction that will ultimately be for our highest good. His disciples then were really entrusting themselves to Him.

We move now to verses 12-25 and the cleansing of the temple. We saw in the first section the glory of Christ manifested and now we’re going to see something about His zeal and about His knowledge of humans. His zeal is going to be particularly revealed in v. 12-23 and His knowledge of what we’re about particularly in v. 23-25.

In verse 12 there is this little hint, a motion here that mentions, “He went down to Capernaum.” He’s going from the heights here down to the area around the Sea of Galilee. He goes down to Galilee, down to Capernaum, which is on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee, which is identified as His home- the place where He really made what is His ministry focus-His headquarters. “He and His mother and His brothers and His disciples; and they stayed there a few days.” My own view about the brothers of Jesus is that Mary actually had other children. Mary had no union with Joseph until she gave birth to the Son, suggesting there were later children. I have no problem with that but what took place as years went by would be the assumption that Mary was a perpetual virgin. That idea became more and more prominent. These would then be called His cousins or something like that and in any case they were among those who came down to Capernaum. They stayed there a few days and after that incidental verse we go then to the following.

John 2:13-25, “The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. And He found in the temple those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the moneychangers seated at their tables. And He made a scourge of cords, and drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen; and He poured out the coins of the moneychangers and overturned their tables; and to those still selling the doves He said, ‘Take these things away; stop making My Father’s house a place of business.” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for Your House will consume Me.” The Jews then said to Him, ‘What sign do You show us as your authority for doing these things?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews then said, ‘It took forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?’ But He was speaking of the temple of His body. So when He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He said this’ and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken. Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name, observing His signs which He was doing. But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men, and because He did not need anyone to testify concerning man, for He Himself knew what was in man.”

In verse 12 it says after this or after these things. It usually introduces a new section and this section in John’s gospel extends to the end of chapter 4 with a minor break at 3:21, which deals with the new temple, the new birth and the new worship. In verse 13 after a brief notice of this visit to Capernaum we shift to Jerusalem and the temple. We go from Cana to Galilee and now we’re going back to Cana before we were actually in Jerusalem. This north and south and earlier picture we have in Mark 11:18 of the second cleansing that leads directly to the passion. Scholars debate over this because you know the synoptic gospels associate the cleansing of the temple with an event just prior to or near the end of His life. So how does a very early account in His life fit in with that? There are only two options. Either there were two cleansings that were distinct from one another and that this one was an aberration of what would happen at the later cleansing or some would say that John as often happens in the gospel, he reorganizes his material and deliberately takes it out of actual chronological sequence to emphasize a theological point. Frankly, I don’t have a dog in this fight! The fact is it doesn’t bother me all that much. I lean toward it probably being two cleansings but you could go either way. The thing I want to stress is that it’s not a contradiction. There’s no need for that to be contradictory, as either way would work. I’ll let you wrestle with that.

At the very least, you know how some people say these can’t be harmonized. My perspective is illustrated in this example. If you went to any intersection downtown Atlanta or anywhere and you had people at four corners and they saw an accident take place and you interviewed them independently of one another you’d have a lot of overlap but you’d have some variation as well. One might for example point out there were two people there. Another might say, “he said” and doesn’t refer to the other person. Just like you have two angels in one account that were at the tomb and one angel in the other account at the tomb. Well if there were two there was one. That is to say there isn’t just one and only one but it could be referring to the more prominent of the two who was actually speaking. There’s not a direct contradiction and frankly the usual so-called contradictions are based, I think, on an inadequate view where things have really already been revealed. It’s kind of a low view of the authority of scripture and the inspiration itself.

Question: In audible

Answer: The theological purpose in this case is because He’s dealing with the institutions of Israel so it would be very a propos for Him to talk about the Rabbi, the temple, the marriage and these kinds of themes and then the various institutions, the feasts and the Passover. And for him to build a case as well for why there might have been some encounter with Nichodemus later on, the growing hostility but we don’t know for sure. Again competent scholars disagree over this so there’s enough ambiguity and happily I will say where Scripture has a little bit of ambiguity it’s not concerning important doctrines.

My point about the four witnesses is this; if the four gospels could be exactly meshed I would suspect collusion. That’s my point. It’s actually evidence of the fact that they are eyewitness accounts but they don’t make an attempt to smooth it out and yet they can be harmonized.

We have something that would be given to us in v. 14- the spirit of Malachi’s prophecy although it’s not actually quote. Jesus, after His earthly ministry began, worked in the spirit of Malachi’s prophecy. Let me read it for you so we can get that setting from the last of the Old Testament prophets. Malachi 3:1-3, “Behold, I am going to send My messenger, and he will clear the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple; and the messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight, behold, He is coming,’ says the LORD of hosts. But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. He will sit as a smelter and purifier of silver, and He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, so that they may present to the LORD offerings in righteousness.” You can see a similarity there, a motif that would be in the Messianic text that would fit very well with this idea of refining and purifying.

In any case, look at v. 14, “And He found in the temple those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the moneychangers seated at their tables. “And in the temple”- the word that is used here is the word “hieron” not the word “naos”. Hieron is used for the whole of the temple precinct including the court of the Gentiles whereas naos is used of the shrine, the inner sanctuary. It’s interesting in v. 19 He switches to the word naos. So He cleansed the outer courtyard but the naos, the inner sanctuary, is what He is referring to as His own body. There is a play on that imagery. As we go, we see Him making a scourge of cords and driving them out of the temple with the sheep and the oxen. The reason why he’s doing it is not necessarily because they’re extorting the other people but because it was happening there in that context, that precinct. It was something that was supposed to be a house of prayer, and they made it into a place of commerce. Frankly the scary part about this kind of cleansing is that I often wonder if Jesus were to come to one of our institutions, one of our churches, what would He do in that setting? I almost wonder if He wouldn’t get some pew ropes and start putting them together and start driving something away.

It does show here that He does know what is in people’s hearts. It’s a theme we’ll see in a moment. He also sees that the visible always has a way of occluding the invisible and eventually people get all wrapped up in their routines and rituals. They get so fired up about exact performance in a particular way and you follow the stages correctly and the supposition is that outward performance will lead to inward knowledge of God. It doesn’t work. Outward ritualism is not the same as an inward embrace and an inward trust. It’s easy for us to connect and go to the organization over the organism. That’s just our natural bent isn’t it? We focus more on the organizational side of the faith more often than we do on the organism as the living body of Christ. It’s the visible over the invisible.

Question: Inaudible

Answer: The difference is this. Commerce was not to be done in the temple precinct. If you brought animals for sacrifice or if you had to purchase animals for sacrifice it should not be done there in that precinct. It shouldn’t be done in a context that’s sanctified or set apart. They made it a place of commerce. Part of what was going on there was the Sadducees saw this as a context in which they could gain the power, and wealth and also as means of getting their hands into the pot. People would also bring their own animals and there was some corruption going on because sometimes they would bring an animal and they would say it was not perfect. They would sell them a perfect animal and then put the so-called imperfect one into the pen and resell it to the next person who had brought a so-called imperfect animal and on and on. That sort of thing did go on.

The point here is that this particular place, this locale, should be set apart not as a place of commerce. If it was to be done it should be done elsewhere. This was the court of the Gentiles but it was still associated there with the actual temple precinct.

The main point that we want to stress is that Jesus is challenging the externalism and the outward life and the commercialism that was actually becoming so rife that it became more of a context for greed and exploitation. Do not take the sacred and render it profane. We have here not only the reforming of the old system but He’s actually abolishing it. In this context He’s specifically denouncing fraudulence of moneychangers and He’s also objecting to any business at all that’s being transacted in the temple.

Question: Inaudible

Answer: It’s a good observation. They don’t question what He’s doing. It’s almost like they sheepishly acknowledge that there’s something correct and right about what He’s doing. He’s the first one to stand up to what everyone knew was an increasingly corrupted system. Indeed, in Mark’s account of the later cleansing (if we take it that way) Jesus recalls that the temple had been intended by God to be a house of prayer for all people. If you look at Mark 11:17 with me you see a slightly different angle. In fact it even mentions He drove them out in v. 15. In John’s account he mentions the animals and Mark just mentions the tables and so forth, then it mentions the doves. He wouldn’t permit anyone to carry merchandise through the temple. May I tell you, by the way, that’s pretty powerful stuff because there were thousands of people there. What time of the year was this? This was in fact the Passover. This is a big time. It’s a crowded place and there are thousands of people there. What manner of man was this that He had the authority to prevent them from doing this? It says in Mark, in this context here, and I take it that there’s a parallel between them- He has an authority to keep them from actually carrying merchandise and that’s when He said, “Is it not written,’ My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a robbers’ den.” The chief priests and the scribes heard this, and began seeking how to destroy Him.” (Mark 11:17-18a)

Question: Inaudible

Answer: She’s asking why did God require animal sacrifice and really why doesn’t He require it now? The answer would be in the book of Hebrews. Hebrews tells us that the blood of bulls and goats never made propitiation or satisfaction for sin. All it did was point beyond to the One who would ultimately bear our sins. This One, when He offered Himself actually sat down at the right hand of God having made a complete sacrifice so that there would no longer be need for any more animal sacrifices. The Old Testament sacrificial system always pointed to the life of the One who would come. The idea was this- the life is in the blood. Leviticus 16 focuses on this. So that life being in the blood becomes a key symbol then when the new covenant, in My blood, is established so that the blood becomes the life. The life is the Zoë, the life of Christ that He’s offering to us. My point then is that the old covenant sacrifices could only anticipate and put off the debt but they could never actually pay for the debt. Hebrews stresses this- the animals could not actually pay for the sacrifice. They would only cover it up. So once a year in Yon Kipper, the Day of Atonement, the high priest would go into the Most Holy Place and there he would actually take the blood of a goat and he would sprinkle it on the Mercy Seat. What was inside the Mercy Seat? The law of God was in there. You have the blood of the animal covering between them and the law so in effect God sees that and it’s an anticipation of Christ who would not just cover but ultimately atone- so His life for our life- the life in the blood- so now we have His life in us. I’d particularly recommend Hebrew chapter 8, 9 and 10. It would be good to read about that. So what are the shadow and the substance? Once we have the substance, this One, after He’s offered Himself as a sacrifice, one time for sin, sat down, which means the work was now satisfied or complete and no further sacrifice was required after that. That would certainly relate to this.

Now in John 2:17, “His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.” You have this recall of His zeal for the house. It was bound to lead to His destruction and ultimately to His own death. That’s why Jesus answered to them after they said “What sign do You show us as your authority for doing these things?”(v.18) He said, “ Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”(v. 19) Again we have His answers, prophetic of His death and resurrection. The implication is this; He’s challenging their whole system of sacrifice. The whole system of worship has to be destroyed so the new one can take its place. That’s really in part what is going on, His death and destruction, so it’s more than just the sacrilegious although that’s a part of it because they’ve made it a den of thieves and robbers. You don’t want to minimize that idea but there’s more to it than that. He’s actually going so radical in His claim that you’ve got to destroy the old so the new could come in. There must be a new covenant.

What does a new covenant imply in Hebrews 8,  9 and 10? If there’s a new covenant there’s got to be a new priesthood. There has to be a new sacrifice, a new temple and all that is seen. So the new of these is consistently called better than the old. His own death and the destruction of the temple are now being linked together. He foretold this destruction on the eve of the Passion. What’s happening here is that Jesus is making possible a far more direct approach to God because it’s a pure offering, a sacrifice of worship- His own body.

His mission was not merely negative. The Resurrection would make possible the emergence of a new spiritual temple. First Corinthians 3:17 is one of those texts I have in mind, “If any man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him, for the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are.” That is radical in terms of its contrast to the physicality of the temple. Also 1 Peter 2:5 says something very similar, our understanding of the temple is changed now, “You also, as living stones, are being built as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” We are now living stones in this new temple as part of the body of Christ. He would be taunted by the very words that He’s using when he says, “Destroy this temple and in three days, I’ll raise it up”(v, 19) as He hung upon the cross. They said why doesn’t He deliver Himself if He can do that?

John 2:20, “The Jews then said, ‘It took forty-six yeas to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” What He is saying here is that you’re missing the spiritual truth here as so often happens. Herod the Great in 20 B.C. decided to build a great temple to win or earn favor with the Jews because he was regarded as an outcast. He was a descendant of the Edomites and as such he decides to actually embellish the second temple, which was not really that impressive compared to Solomon’s temple but he wanted to make it so great it would actually rival Solomon’s temple. He consecrated a thousand priests to be trained to become stonecutters so that it would be ceremonially pure. Eighteen thousand people were working full-time for many years to build this temple. It was an impressive piece of work. The consequence was it took many, many years to complete- beyond Herod’s life. In fact they started it then but it wasn’t completed until 64 A.D.- over 80 years in the building of it. The Romans destroyed it six years later. In each of these cases with the temple worship, this becomes a very significant concept here- the centrality of this as a political, religious, spiritual and social centerpiece of Israel’s history. Thus when Judas Maccabeus wanted to attempt to defeat the Greeks, which he succeeded in doing in the 2^nd century B.C., he had to capture the temple first to win popular Jewish support, which he did. When the Romans occupied the land in 63 B.C., Pompeii wanted to be sure they were recognized so they created a fortress near that temple. They built a fortress called the Antonio Fortress in the northwest precinct of the temple. They would actually overlook the temple area. That’s exactly where Jesus, as you recall, was quote “prepared” for crucifixion under Pilate’s soldiers. The Jewish zealots when they stood against Rome in 66 A.D. again wanted to make the temple their fortress and rallying point. Finally when Titus came in and saw this impressive temple, he wanted to preserve it. He was so impressed and dazzled by the beauty of the temple but his soldiers destroyed it partly because there was gold in there and when it caught fire, the gold was actually seeping down through the stones. Some of these stones were huge. They would weigh up to 70 tons. They actually would remove every stone to get the gold that had seeped out. Not one stone will stand upon another. They kind of inadvertently fulfill His prophecy because when you go to Jerusalem, there are no stones in that temple. All you have is the outer courtyard wall, what we call the Western Wall or the Wailing Wall, but you don’t have the temple. You can see some of the stones that were actually used in it but they’re not actually in the temple itself- a very significant focus.

John 2:21-22, “But He was speaking of the temple of His body. So when He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He said this; and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken.”

These last three verses in chapter 2 are intriguing to me. John 2:23, “Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name, observing His signs which He was doing.” Again they saw the signs and believed in Him but this was not necessarily the kind of belief that led to salvation but at the least they believed that He had authority.

But if it was just that they were impressed by miracles and power and so forth because of these signs, it would be one thing but Jesus on His part says in verses 24 and 25, “But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men, and because He did not need anyone to testify concerning man, for He Himself knew what was in man.” He had a unique insight into human nature. He understood then that all belief in Him was superficial if it didn’t have the idea of the need for forgiveness and the conviction of Him as the mediator of that forgiveness. You could believe about Him but entrusting one’s self to Him as the One who provides great forgiveness and newness of life is the key issue.

The point here is this. I see Jesus who knows us very, very well and there are many who straddle the fence. They want His works but not His word. The issue is always going to be one of the entrusting of one’s self to Him rather than merely being impressed by what He has done. In that sense, we have to approach Him on His terms and not on our own. He does not come just to meet our idea of our needs but He comes to meet our desperate need before God.

We see One who knows us through and through. To be perfectly frank with you, He has a knowledge that is divine. None of us can look and understand the motivational structure of others. We think we can. That’s the danger. Look at 1 Corinthians 4:3-5 where Paul speaks about this concept, “But to me it is a very small thing that I may be examined by you, or by any human court; in fact, I do not even examine myself.” For I’m conscious of nothing against myself, yet I’m not by this acquitted; the one who examines me is the Lord. (Note- In other words, I might have a clear conscience but that doesn’t mean before God all is well.) Therefore do not go on passing judgment before the time, but wait until the Lord comes who will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness and disclose the motives of men’s hearts; and then each man’s praise will come to him from God.” He’s been talking about the judgment seat of Christ. It’s not a judgment of condemnation but one of reward.

To be perfectly frank with you there is this tension. I was thinking about this before I came over here. I had heard about a particular minister who made a statement that troubled me. I wrestled with this concept but then on the other hand I wrestled with it because one does want to have an impact in this world. If you’ve been given great gifts wouldn’t you want to make an impact in this world? One struggles with this. How do we separate that desire to have an impact in the world with ambition? Here’s where it gets very tricky. We don’t even fully know our own motives. Is it possible for example for us to so assume that our zeal is for God’s house? That our zeal is to build something that will be honoring and pleasing to God but after awhile if we’re not careful, is it possible that our own identity gets so wrapped up in that thing that it becomes a projection of ourselves and yet we sacrifice supposing it’s other centered? It’s totally self-denying and yet at the very core of it, could it possibly be something that is just an extension of one’s ego? I ask myself these questions. These are questions all of us must ask. I heard of a minister who said, “I don’t want to play second fiddle.” I thought about that and who wants to be a second fiddle? But then I got to thinking a bit more about that. Is it possible because God’s economy is so radically different from our own that many who become, from the world’s point of view, second fiddle may have a greater reward in the kingdom of heaven than many who aspire to be first violin? God’s not impressed with how many people we have an impact on, how many people we touch but rather the fidelity we have with what we have been given. I wrestle with this issue of motives because God knows my heart. I don’t even know myself let alone can I judge the motives of another. I’m here to tell you I often do. That’s the problem. I often assume I know what their motives are. That scares me because I am not Jesus and I don’t know. He knows.

The amazing part about this text is He knows us through and through and still loves us. That’s the thing that stuns me. Remember that phrase I told you before- the One who knows you best loves you most. Now I can’t put that together but He knows all our imaginations, all our foolishness, silliness, our foolish pride and all that, the coveting, our greed, our ambition, our envy, our secret pleasure when competitors or people in our industry stumble and at their downfall, our grieving at their successes when we thought we should’ve attained that success and yet He loves us and invites us to take what we do know of ourselves and to recommit that to what we know of Him.

Question: Inaudible

Answer: He’s saying about prayer that this issue of outcome is a big thing. Remember and I’ve described this before- many of our prayers and mine are included- whenever I point a finger at you three go back to me. Many times my prayer strategy session with God is where I tell Him pretty much what I think my best interests look like and then try to wheedle and manipulate Him to accomplish them and give Him generous suggestions as to how to do it and when to do it. You see- that’s what my prayer will be. When actually a more biblical model of prayer is where I invite the Spirit of God to speak to me and reveal what His will is rather than trying to persuade God to do mine. That’s a harder matter of prayer because it requires a good deal more trust and particularly to let go of the ownership of the outcome, timing and way.

Question: Inaudible

Answer: As to the timeline matter, Jesus’ grasp of His own life was increasingly based upon the vision of that for which He came. That is to say the Son of Man has come to seek and save that which is lost. He had a clear vision that He did not come to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many. He Himself saw the climax of His life. He came for this very purpose that He might give His life so that the cross, the passion, was the climax. He sees that with more and more clarity and as it approaches He communicates that to His disciples with greater clarity. The issue of His hour is absolutely critical because everything He does has to be in timing with the Father’s timing. He seeks to be in tune with the Father’s will and with the Father’s timing. He discerned in John 13:1a, “Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He would depart out of this world.” That’s a very significant point. My hour has not yet come; My hour has not yet come He would say and now His hour had come. That’s when He spoke to His disciples and trained them because He was about to leave them. How does that relate to me? We all have an hour in a way. We all have a great moment. We all have a purpose. We all have a life that’s supposed to move in a direction that God would have for us. Though we do not know exactly what that script will be or what it looks like. It’s revealed frame by frame instead. Our desire though is to readjust and in prayer, hopefully that becomes a context in which we realign ourselves with God’s timing, way and purpose. Generally speaking, all things being equal, my timing is not God’s. Almost always He answers later than I want Him to. It just seems to be the way it is. On the other hand, how would your faith be stretched if He always showed up just when you felt He should do it? He always waits beyond what you think He should, the eleventh hour and all that. That’s part of the process. In my view, getting to know a person is a disclosure. It requires a receptivity and a willingness to entrust yourself especially to Him in advance. When you say, God I want to do Your will even though I don’t know what it is in advance, you’re entrusting yourself radically to Him. He also knows your heart through and through but here’s where I rest in the fact that God is not yet finished with us and will not be until we are perfectly conformed to the image of His Son. Nothing will prevent Him from accomplishing that purpose. It’d be wise for us however to cooperate with Him in the process.

Let me close in a prayer. Father, we thank You that You have loved us even to the end and manifested this love. And this is love, not that we loved You but that You loved us and sent Your Son to be the satisfaction for our sins. May we therefore be a people knowing that we are beloved of You. Give us now the power, give us the security give us the sense of satisfaction in this life in Christ so that we can become people who love others as You have loved us. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

This is part-5 in a 23-part study on the book of John. Below is a modified transcript from the audio lesson.

We want to keep in mind that there’s a direct link with the end of chapter 2 and recalling that the text itself never had the original verse and chapter divisions. The last phrase in John 2 said, “Because He did not need anyone to testify concerning man, for He Himself knew what was in man.” It’s interesting because the word anthropos is used right there. He knew what was in anthropos.

Now there was an anthropos of the Pharisees. He’s inviting us to see what it means for Jesus to know what was in man. You see it’s a case in point. The Greek causes us to see- here’s a perfect illustration of a man who might come for various reasons but it turns out that he’s going to get insights he could never have known. Nicodemus came to Jesus for various reasons at night. I think in part because he didn’t want to be publicly associated with this very controversial figure. He certainly didn’t want to be associated as one of His disciples though there’s more to it than that because of John’s nuances- light and darkness- the idea of night and not really being able to comprehend the light and the light overcomes the darkness but that there is a spiritual warfare in these regards as well.

A friend and I were talking after I taught last time how in John 2 the water becomes wine, then we move from that to wine symbolizing blood. The blood really leads to and is the basis for eternal life and this eternal life is really a river of living water. You have this imagery- one thing pointing beyond itself and that there’s a connection. All these terms link and connect together.

The rest of this gospel will illustrate the truth of John 2:25. This is very, very clear in the dialogue with Nicodemus and also it goes on to be clear in the dialogue with the woman at the well in John 4. He knows in a way that she finds startling. How could He know me through and through? This is an interesting point because there’s nothing in us that can really be hidden from the present gaze of the living God. I want to stress something, I’ve mentioned this so many times before, the One who knows you best is also the One who loves you the most. That’s an important thing to keep in mind. He knows us through and through but at the same time He wants to embrace us and draw us to Himself. He goes to great pain- infinite pain on the cross- in order to make it possible for us to in fact become His friends. Remember in John 15 we’re going to see that text where Jesus says, “No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.” There’s this idea of intimacy. We’re given this invitation to intimacy. He knows us through and through.

Now Nicodemus initially was attracted to Jesus because of the various signs that He did in chapter 2:23-25. It mentions that there were people who were in Jerusalem at the Passover during the Feast and many believed in His name. They observed His signs, which He was doing. John doesn’t detail those signs but evidently there were enough signs where Nicodemus says in verses 1 and 2, “Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews; this man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, ‘Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.” So it’s an allusion back to the fact that he’s seen remarkable things that cannot be fully understood- this concept of signs.

Right away we’re going to hear Jesus tell him that he must be born again. Immediately there’s going to be a misunderstanding. That’s a motif in John- for example we hear about a misunderstanding concerning the temple in chapter 2. They take it literally and Jesus is speaking about the temple of His body. There’s also confusion in this chapter as well. In John 3 we’re going to have the confusion about birth and about the fact that Jesus is speaking about spiritual birth. Nicodemus is taking it on a literal level and of course it wouldn’t make any sense to go back into your mother’s womb and be born a second time. It’s a grotesque image.

Again it will happen in chapter 4 with water. Jesus will be speaking about this living water that He’s offering and she’s going to be thinking that He’s offering her water that she can actually bring up and drink. So we have another confusion.

It’s happens again with food because the disciples think He’s speaking of literal food when He says, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” (John 4:32) He’s actually speaking about the food, which is to do the will of the Father. We see it also about food in John 6 when they confuse what He’s saying- again He’s speaking in a spiritual level and they’re taking Him on a literal level. In John 6 He says, “I am the bread of life.” They take it literally. He’s speaking in a spiritual way. This is not an accident.

About His departure- where’s He going to go? Does He know some place where He can hide and we’re not going to find Him? Jesus was referring in John 7 and 8 about His departure to the Father. They’re taking it as if He’s going to hide Himself literally.

It happens concerning His identity- they are confused and they stumble in John 7, 8, and 10 about who He really is. He’s claiming to be something more than they may fully grasp. They are saying who are you to make yourself out as if you know God in some special way? He’s actually claiming that the one who has seen me has seen the Father- to hear Me is to hear Him- to believe in Me is to believe in Him- to obey Me is to obey Him- to reject Me is to reject Him- an integral connect.

Finally there’s confusion even about death in John 11 concerning the issue of Lazarus. They think Jesus is saying that he’s merely fallen asleep- if he’s asleep then someone will wake him up. He says our friend Lazarus has died- again this imagery. Why so many confusions?

I think part of the reason that John illustrates these, is that the natural mind does not accept and appreciate and grasp the things of the Spirit of God because they are spiritually received and appraised. It’s the I Corinthian 1 imagery. There is something that must be revealed to you concerning these signs; the divine signs are ambiguous without God’s aid. A person can see the sign but unless God interprets it to you and opens up your mind and your heart, you won’t be able to really grasp it.

As an example, you can know an awful lot and not grasp it. When I have led tours in Israel, my experience was so different from the guides who were unbelievers- whether Palestinian or Israeli. There were guides who were truly believers versus those who were not believers. The interesting thing about the ones who were not believers was that they often knew the gospels better than most Christians. They knew the stories. They can go to Capernaum and they can give a five century discourse about exactly what was going on there. They can actually quote all Jesus’ messages about this because this is part of how they were learning it. They put it together and they know that material very, very well. A lot of Christians often think it’s their mission to convert these guides but I promise you they’ve heard it all before and what it comes down to are the issues of truth. One seminary professor knowing that that was an issue asked, you know more about the gospels than most Christians do, what’s your view concerning them as to the issue of truth? Could they possibly be true? His response was- “I’m a Jew. His statements are interesting but they don’t have any meaning for me.” What does that tell us? Clearly there are Jewish believers and there are Gentile believers. There are Jewish unbelievers and Gentile unbelievers. There’s the issue really of whether the Spirit breaks through because a person can know the gospel extremely well but intellectual knowledge is not the same thing as a response personally.

That’s what is going to be a part of the issue in this text. Jesus is going to be talking about the need, not only for a person to be born from above but also for a person to confess the truth that He is in fact who He claims to be. The discourse we’ll find here beginning in verse 16 and moving on to verse 21 invites us to make a choice as to what do we do with this Man? Frankly the final question for all of us will always have to be the question, “Who do you say I am?” You cannot ignore it in the end.

You can either call Him the One who was deceived about what He was saying or that He was in fact deceiving others or you can say that what He said was true. The old liar, lunatic or Lord trilemma has been developed. The concept that either Jesus was right or He was wrong. If He was wrong and He knew it that would mean He was quite a deceiver and liar. If He was wrong and He didn’t know it, He was a lunatic. When you think about the things He claimed about Himself which are so extreme, in fact it could be utterly unique, He’d have to be a complete madman. The third option is that He wasn’t wrong, He was right. In which case He is who He claims to be, the Lord of all.

A fourth option that people have opted for and more popularly these days is that it was a legend. That He really didn’t say those things. More and more competent New Testament scholarship is dismissing that alternative and really a simple look at the gospels as primary historical narratives even apart from buying into their interpretation would cause us to see that there is great warrant both in the gospel narratives and also extra-biblical resources that tell us about Him. There’s no warrant for saying He was some kind of a legend. The dates of these writings including the epistles are just to near to the fact for them to have been legendary.

Now there are others who claim that He was a fifth El for a lama. In other words He went off to the East and what they do in the New Age teaching, the new religious synthesis, or whatever you want to call it, is to redefine His teaching and try to do it in an Eastern or more Gnostic form. John Turner has written an article for us and we’ve posted it on the Reflections Ministry website (Reflections Ministries.org) concerning Elaine Pagels two popular books, Beyond Belief and The Gnostic Gospels. The books are basically claiming that Jesus really was more of a Gnostic kind of a teacher who was very influenced by Eastern oriented thought and that there were other accounts that were available in the first century that the church originally suppressed. However the evidence for this doesn’t work. The evidence shows that these are late second century forgeries that were not available for, at the least, 75 years after the gospels were written. The church didn’t have another set of options or repress them. That’s a myth that is now being propagated as it is also by the DaVinci Code. I invite you to go to Reflections Ministry.org and type in the search bar Elaine Pagels and the article can be found. I encourage you to read that.

I want to argue that Jesus, at the end of the day, cannot be ignored.

Now this Nicodemus in verse 2 was genuinely impressed by what Jesus said and did. Again John is using the particularly Johannine word for Jesus’ supernatural works- not dunamis for works of power- but semeion which is the idea of a sign. Unlike those Pharisees that would attribute Jesus’ extraordinary power to Satanic influence, Nicodemus is recognizing Jesus as One who has done what? “You’ve come from God as a teacher.”(Part of verse 2)

Now he being a Rabbi would be a very curious teacher because as you know, a Rabbi would be very interested in carrying on oral authorative traditions. A Rabbi would interpret the text as a teacher and that is why they had this oral tradition that was later written down in the form of what would later be called the Talmud. The Mishna, which was the commentaries and the commentary on the commentary, was the Gamara. He’s thinking of Him as a great Rabbi, some teacher, who has insights and he wants to know more about Him.

In John 3:3, “Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” He just completely diverted Nicodemus’ track because Nicodemus is not expecting that. He may have wanted to ask Jesus a question similar to that perhaps of the rich young ruler about qualifications. What do You say we need to do to enter eternal life? Or maybe he was like the scribe who was trying to figure out what the supreme commandment of the law was because Jews were debating these issues. I don’t know exactly what question Nicodemus had in mind but I promise he didn’t get his question out. The whole subject changed. Maybe he supposed that Jesus could’ve been or was even possibly the inaugurator of the kingdom of God. I don’t doubt that he was expecting that was going to be coming and maybe that he’d have it right because of his loyalty to Pharisaic traditions. But as soon as he paid his compliments to this unprofessed Rabbi, Jesus just completely cuts out all from under his feet- all ground for self-satisfaction. The fact that he keeps Torah, the fact that he keeps temple worship, the fact that he’s involved as the teacher of Israel, none of that really matters too much compared to what Jesus is saying.

Again John is looking at the various institutions of Judaism, the temple, the rabbinic system, and their devotion to Torah, the sacrificial system, the priesthood and in each of these he’s showing that He Himself is the fulfillment that brings a higher understanding. John is developing this one level at a time. We see here that no one, regardless of race or piety, can experience the reign of God apart from the experience of this new birth. If you want to be concerned about the kingdom, neither racial privilege nor religious observance will eliminate the sin, which is in every child of Adam.

This is the first of four illustrations of salvation. The first one is that of birth. In John 3 we see this image of being born and it says, “Unless one is born again.” That word anothen can be used not only for again but also means from above. I think he’s using it in two ways as so often occurs. He’s got to be born from above as well as being born a second time. We see a picture here of Jesus’ claim that a person must receive a new form of life. We’ve often said that biological life is something all of us receive at birth but nobody has spiritual life. That is a gift of God and it requires the new birth. We weren’t born with spiritual life, what the bible calls zoe, we were born with bios- biological life.

By the way, I’d like to point out that when Jesus says truly, truly the word is amen, amen. That is how we would translate verily or truly to amen. Unlike the synoptic gospels where Jesus would say, truly I say to you, John has Him saying it twice. I think it’s adding solemnity and underlining the truth of that which follows.

In other word it means believe Me when I say this. I want you to listen very carefully to what I’m about to tell you here. I assure you that to be born again you’ve got to be willing to receive the gift that God offers. You’ve got to abandon every attempt to become righteous by the things that we typically do to try to earn favor with God, which is what religion seems to be all about. You need to instead be willing to receive a free gift of grace. John Calvin said that this claim, that we must be born again, reveals that there is nothing in us that is not defective. In effect he’s saying you don’t need a makeover, you need a completely new birth. You’ve got to start all over again. It requires a totally new kind of life than the one you have now. This is a complete reorientation. It’s really something you can liken to physical birth because it’s an emergence from darkness into light. The point here is that being born from above is a whole new radical experience.

Naturally what does Nicodemus say when he hears this startling claim? John 3:4, “Nicodemus said to Him, ‘How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?” So for all his theological learning, Nicodemus lacks spiritual insight. He sees Jesus’ words in a very literal and therefore absurd way. He’s got to learn that God’s creative power isn’t just limited to the material and the physical but rather it extends to the spiritual as well. It’s not to say that one is less important than the other but the scriptures affirm the goodness of the created order.

That is to say, there’s another level that it’s true in nature as it’s true in the scriptures. You cannot understand the lower levels without grasping the higher. We can understand from the top down but bottom up will never work. For example, the mindset that we are the product of impersonal processes and that eventually leads to rationality- a bottom up explanation that doesn’t work because there’s a higher category that’s not even implicit. Frankly if you look at the organism as a whole, the atomic material, the DNA, is totally indifferent to life itself. DNA is not life. It’s not alive by itself. The chemistry is indifferent to the life. There’s something bigger than the chemistry that cannot be accounted for on the basis of the biochemical material. The upper can explain the lower but the lower can never account for the higher.

So it is also in the spiritual realm. If we try to project nature on to God as Freud and others would do, they’ll try to tell you, aww, he’s just a God projection, some father figure. What you’re trying to do again is you’re trying to explain the higher in terms of the lower. You’ll always reduce it down to a two-dimensional flat interpretation. It’s what C.S. Lewis called, “nothing buttery.” By nothing buttery he meant that’s nothing but this and this is nothing but that. Frankly there’s something bigger. We must come to see that the higher level will always help us to grasp the lower, a total reorientation.

John 3:5, “Jesus answered, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of the water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” He’s not dealing really so much with baptism. In fact, water baptism in the New Testament is connected with death not birth. Something we need to keep in mind in association with baptism is that we were baptized into His death- there’s an image of dying. In fact baptism is a marvelous image because what happens when a person is dunked in that way is that they kind of die to the old and then they are raised to newness of life. I don’t think that’s what is being concerned here.

We have two parents for a physical birth so also in effect there are two for a spiritual birth. They are the Spirit of God and the Word of God. 1 Peter 1:23, “For you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God.” James 1:18, “In the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the word of truth, so that we would be a kind of first fruits among His creatures.” We have the Spirit and the Word birthing components that bring us into the kingdom.

As I see it then, we have an emphasis in this chapter on the idea of believing especially in verses 14-21. Salvation comes as a gift through faith so that there is a response to the truth.

John 3:6-7, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.”

This brings us to a second illustration and it’s the idea of the wind. He’s going to be using the wind in a parallel way to speak about the work of the Spirit of God. Just as the Spirit of God births us so also the Spirit cannot be predicted or understood just like the wind. There’s a mysterious dimension to Him. John 3:8, “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going, so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” He connects those two images of birth and wind. As you know the word for Spirit is also the word for wind in both the Hebrew and also the Greek. There’s a double use once again of that kind of image. We see here that this picture of the mysterious process of the new birth of the Spirit is something unpredictable. Something about the behavior of the person who experiences it becomes unpredictable like the effects of the wind. They are undeniable and it moves with a power. This is telling us in a way that we’re not fully under the dominion of nature but that there is something new about us that cannot be accounted for merely on the basis of the lower. The higher can account for the lower but the lower can never account for the higher, not without reducing it down and eliminating truth.

Nicodemus is still wrestling with this issue. Again he’s trying to take it in a literal way on the physical level. Jesus is speaking about another kind of a level, a higher perspective. John 3:9, “Nicodemus said to Him, “How can these things be?”

John 3:10, “Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Are you the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things?” Don’t miss the article “the”- the teacher of Israel. It assumes a very specific place for him. This is not some ordinary Rabbi. He is recognized as “the” distinguished teacher of Israel. He has an authority. That’s one of the reasons why he came by night because he doesn’t want to be caught with this controversial figure. It could compromise his position as the teacher of Israel. And yet, and here’s the thing I want to stress, that this man is willing though to breakout of some darkness. That is to say he’s willing to evaluate, consider and move into some truth. We have a person who is at least willing to wrestle with spiritual truth in this way. I want us to understand at least this man asks questions, makes inquiries and takes the risk.

I would like to mention something about verse 8 and the wind. There’s something powerful that Jesus may be alluding to as well in Ezekiel 37 where there is a valley of dry bones. Nicodemus, as the teacher of Israel, would’ve known this text. Ezekiel 37:1-5 speaks about the Spirit of the Lord who put him down in the valley full of bones and caused him to pass among them and round about. There were many on the surface. How could these bones live? The Lord said to prophecy over them so that they will hear the word of the Lord. And thus says the Lord God to these bones, “Behold, I will cause breath to enter you that you may come to life.” Do you see the imagery there? There’s already actually a hint about the word being prophesied, about the Spirit that would come upon them and about that, which is dead, coming to life.

Ezekiel 37:6, “I will put sinews on you, make flesh grow back on you, cover you with skin and put breath in you that you may come alive, and you will know that I am the Lord.” It’s an image of decay in reverse. It’s a fascinating picture.

Ezekiel 37:7-8, “So I prophesied as I was commanded; and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a rattling; and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And I looked, and behold, sinews were on them, and flesh grew and skin covered them; but there was no breath in them.” That must’ve been a scary thing to see- you see a skeleton come together and then you see the musculature on them, then the skin covers it up- but they’re still dead. They are pictures of unanimated beings. They look like they could be alive but they’re not.

Ezekiel 37:9-10, “Then He said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, ‘Thus says the Lord God, ‘Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they come to life.” So I prophesied as He commanded me, and the breath came into them, and the breath come into them, and they came to life and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.”

Ezekiel 37:13-14, “Then you will know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves and caused you to come up out of your graves, My people. I will put My Spirit within you and you will come to life, and I will place you on your own land. Then you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken and done it,’ declares the Lord.”

So the teacher of Israel surely must’ve read this text many times but he didn’t put it together. This is the image of an extraordinary picture and it’s also found in Ezekiel 36:25-27. This is another text speaking about God’s promise to take them from the nations- to take the scattered people who have been scattered as a consequence of their rebellion against God and be gathered from all the lands and brought into their own land. Verses 25-26. “Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.” Those are the kind of texts that I think Jesus was alluding to when He says in John 3-10, “Are you the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things.”

There’s a part of us though and we understand, that so many texts that were concerning Jesus the disciples didn’t understand and recall until later on. Then as they reflected on it they saw that that was a prophecy of scripture. They put it together and they began to see the whole.

What, I think, Jesus is really implying here is something so radical that we could only call it the morning of a new eschatological era. Don’t you love that word? I love the word eschatological. Eschatos is just the word that means last. Logic- logos- means the study of. Eschatology simply means the study of last things. So when you put the word into and make it eschatological it means you’re looking at God’s work in the future but there’s a sense in which His future work is already becoming realized in the present tense. We’re between two ages. Right now, you and I dwell in two ages. We dwell in the present age but we also in some other way dwell in the age to come. How can that be? Because He put His Spirit within us and He’s animated us inside out there’s that in us now which is actually the stuff of the age to come. That’s already alive in us. We become now people who are participants in God’s kingdom even though the full manifestation of that kingdom awaits the future. There’s a sense in which we have one foot in this age and the other in another. It’s an anticipation of what God is going to do. So it is with the power of the Spirit of God who implants the life of Christ in us and causes us as Paul says, to be transformed and he can truly say that our dwelling place is now at the right hand of the Father in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 1) That is a radical concept. I don’t’ know how often you think about yourself being there. Does this occur to you often? That’s where you really are. It’s not the stuff that we would normally meditate on and reflect upon but He says it is so and it is true.

Question:inaudible

Answer:If you are living and walking in the Spirit, you are actually manifesting the power of the age to come in the present tense. This is another word I’ll give you- proleptic. You’re living proleptically which means before the time. These aren’t bad words! These are good words and you shouldn’t be afraid of good words! You should learn these words. To live proleptically is to be a person who actually hints at the age to come. So as one person likes to put it and I like to quote it although I don’t know where he got it from (You know we have very few original thoughts in our lives. The key is to quote from the best!) It is, “The spiritual life is manifesting it so that wherever you walk you are spreading the geography, the invisible geography, of the new creation wherever you go.” You see that concept? The kingdom is there. He says as you walk you manifest the kingdom. There is a sense that even now anticipated proleptically (repetition is the mother of learning), the power of the age to come- you’re anticipating the power of the coming age. That is to walk in the Spirit and not to walk in the flesh. It is to walk now as we truly are by faith, believing what God tells us about ourselves is true even though we don’t feel that way or haven’t fully experienced that. He’s inviting us to choose to embrace that truth and to live accordingly.

I so often want to tell you that you will live out your understanding of yourself. Your understanding of your identity will be the way you live. If you see yourself as merely a person who is really in a position where they’ve got to merit favor with God and kind of win Him over and all that or if you see yourself as a worm, worm theology, you’ll live that way. You have to see yourself as something bigger than that and to see and embrace the truths about who you are. Romans 6 and 8 for example are good to read.

Now on to John 3:11, “Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and testify of what we have seen, and you do not accept our testimony.” I think the plural “we” seems to include the disciples and the plural “you” in this verse and the next verse may address the majority of the Jews who disbelieved.

John 3:12, “If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things.” We see here that the religious leaders are really in the dark. They would not submit to the authority of Christ’s witness. That becomes a growing theme in John’s gospel.

Frankly and here’s another scary thing, He’ll tell them later on why one of the reasons you don’t respond to the light and my claims is because they love the praise of men more than the praise of God. That’s a frightening word. Look at John 12:43, “For they loved the approval of men rather than the approval of God.” Another powerful verse along those lines is John 5:44, “How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and you do not seek the glory that is from the one and only God?” My conviction here is that the audience to whom you play will shape your belief system. The audience you play to will actually shape your beliefs. If you want to play to the world and get the approval of men a great way to do that then is to buy into what the world teaches. It’s an easy thing for us to do.

We have to decide who are we playing to and who’s opinion are we treasuring? I promise you to treasure the truth of scripture and the authority of Christ above the authority of this world system will not make you that popular in the eyes of the world itself. There’s going to be a struggle that we’ll have. Certainly that would be especially true in academic professions. Where, for a person to confess Jesus as the Lord won’t help your academic career very well. Or if you believe for example in creation rather than just basically atheistic evolution, non-directed evolution, any hint that you may be a creationist and you won’t get past the referees in scientific journals. That’s just the nature of it.

You have to understand that if you come out and express your commitment to Christ that it can be a very real problem in the way in which you are received by the world. You have to choose whose opinion you treasure more. It will shape the way you live. You can rationalize your compromised belief if you choose to do that but who will that honor?

In Verse 12 Jesus is talking about earthly things or a human analogy, which can point to heavenly things or spiritual truths. But there are heavenly things where there is no earthly analogy. Look at Romans 5:7-8 for example of a truth that doesn’t have much of an earthly analogy where Paul says, “For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” There’s no natural parallel. You won’t find people naturally and willingly die for a person that they are opposed to. You might die for your buddy, someone you love, but you won’t willingly die for a person who is your enemy, not in this world. And yet God says He sent His Son in such a way that while we were at enmity against Him, He still died for us. We have spiritual things and truths that are so high that we hardly have any analogy for them and we can hardly understand them.

John 3:13, “No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven; the Son of Man.” This revelation about the new birth is the gateway to the kingdom of God but it becomes a revelation about Jesus Himself that He’s the inaugurator of the kingdom of God. He’s the One seen in Daniel’s vision in chapter 7 as the Son of Man who stands before the Ancient of Days. He’s the One though who is not an apparition. He has come in the flesh. He’s come to reveal in human deeds and in human words the things that could never be discovered by human guesswork or intuition. I want to stress that we are seeing a Person who gives us a disclosure that is so beyond the capacity for human imagination or wisdom that no one could’ve made it up. That’s why it’s unique. You will not find this teaching about grace or this idea of God’s sacrificing and suffering for us anywhere else. You’ll find it here because of something that ultimately comes down from above. This is truth that is actually revealed from above and so that there is a power and an authority but it must be responded to. A person still must make a choice.

Question: Inaudible

Answer: To what extent did Paul influence John? I would say probably not much. Recall Paul came when John, Peter and James were pillars in the church. Paul came and brought his message to them for them to verify it in Galatians 1. They affirm that the message was in fact true. But it would be a good deal more to say that Paul may have been more influenced by John than the other way around. However, their own course of ministry was different as well so they moved off in different directions. You don’t want to reduce John to Pauline thought. It’s a different witness. It’s a different understanding yet they do comport. One is not derivative from another. They are witnesses both one to another just like Peter and James. Each of them has their own unique presentation that they can make.

John 3:14, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” We have this third image here of the serpent on the pole. You recall when the people were in rebellion in the wilderness, God sent serpents to bite them and it would lead to death unless they looked to the brass serpent that Moses was instructed to build and put up. When people came to see that and looked on it in faith they would be healed of their disease. Later on we discover, many centuries later, that they kept the thing around and it became another idol that they would worship. Just as the serpent was lifted up and those looking on it in faith were healed, so the Son of Man is to be lifted up and we look to Him in faith and will not be subjected to the death penalty which is sin.

“Lifted up” again is hupsoo, it also means to be glorified and exalted. If you look at John 12:20 you’ll see that the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. He uses that term speaking of His crucifixion and so He says there that He is the One who is going to be glorified. That is connected as well in Acts 2 and 5. It is a picture here that He is not just being crucified but He’s going back to the Father. This is all as it was meant to be. He must come. He must die so that He can be resurrected and that His sacrifice will have been something that now makes and leads to life and thus He returns to the Father from whom He came. It’s a portrait of His ultimate glorification.

John 3:15, “So that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life.” He’s lifted up to save us from sin and death so as we look by faith we realize just as the world’s been bitten by sin and the wages of sin is death, He is the difference between perishing and living.

The best-known verse in scripture is John 3:16. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” I want to comment about this. This is by the way where the discourse begins. As I take it here, we move from the discourse with Nicodemus. In v. 16-21 it’s John’s commentary in discourse material- comments by John.

I want you to see something that many people fail to grasp. I think a lot of people somehow suppose, in spite of the truth of verse 16 and others like it, that Jesus came to appease a God who was against us. That Jesus actually has to appease us from the wrath of God and so that now God can be placated. But there’s something more profound, the cross must be seen as the Father’s work. It is God’s work. It is the Father who has loved us and who sent His Son. You must come to understand that the cross is really the expression of God’s love for us. It’s of His mind. So rather than seeing the Father as an enemy that Jesus now hat to placate, you must understand instead that the Father is the One who out of His love for us makes the sacrifice on our behalf.

The reason why that’s hard for us to embrace is because a lot of times we’ve had these deficient views of the Father- of perfectionism, of conditional love, performance based acceptance and all those things can really give us distortions. We must come to see this is the work of the Father. Look at II Corinthians 5:18-19, “Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.” Colossians 1:19-20, “For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say whether things on earth or things in heaven.”

So we see then as we continue on in John’s discourse verse 17, “For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.” He came to give them an option that they didn’t otherwise have.

John 3:18, “He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” So Jesus’ presence in the world will inevitably divide humanity. Sin invariably leads the sinner to hide him or herself from God even as Adam and Eve hid themselves from Him in the garden. So the children of light versus the children of darkness become manifest in this way.

We have this portrait here of light and darkness in verse 19 picking up on this theme. “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.” This is the fourth portrait, light and darkness. We have the imagery of the new birth, of the wind that blows where He wishes, of the serpent on the pole and how God makes a provision so that the people can have life rather than death but the choice must be made and we have the idea of light and darkness to illustrate the truth because the truth reveals us.

John 3:20-21, “For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.”

I believe that this is John’s commentary in v. 16-21 to help us grasp the need for us to make a choice, to respond. I think it’s extremely important. Intellectual problems are only part of the reason why people don’t trust Christ. There comes a point when it’s not just an intellectual barrier, it’s a moral and spiritual barrier. I’ve known a number of people who will continue to wrestle on this issue and after awhile you can discern they’re throwing up smoke screens. The problem is not intellectual anymore. I’ve used this story before but on more than one occasion I’ve asked people when I suspected that this might be the case but I ask them, “ You know if I could demonstrate to you that Jesus really rose from the dead, would you then receive Him?” They’d say no. Now you realize it’s not just intellectual. There’s another matter as well. There is a spiritual apprehension.

May I tell you, even when you come to faith in Christ, even now, as a believer, you’re going to sometimes resist the conviction work of the Spirit of God because the more you love the darkness, the more you’ll want to avoid His convicting work in your life. We just have this natural disposition. We want to have autonomy. We don’t want Him to invade us too much. We don’t want to completely lose control or so we think. We have this issue just as we come to faith in Christ. Now there are still a moral and spiritual preliminary and you do not just grow in the intellectual knowledge of Him. You can do theology that way but you don’t come to know Him experientially. You’ll only know Him in a cognitive way. There’s another kind of knowledge, an experiential knowledge, that’s born by receptivity and a willingness to do His will and to receive Him in that way.

Nicodemus at this juncture fades out of the narrative and we have no record of the reaction to the challenge presented to him here by Jesus. John, the Evangelist, focuses on what the life and death of Jesus means for all men. But we do learn more about Nicodemus a little later and we do discover that with Nicodemus, he eventually, as I take it, the wind of the Spirit does accomplish the purpose for which it was sent. As one writer put it, he apparently finally passed from the midnight of confusion to the sunlight of confession. The idea is that he identified with Christ at Calvary. I think in chapter 19 there’s an intimation of that.

This idea of a conversion experience, as I do believe Nicodemus later had, is an important theme we don’t want to overlook. I think we need conversion stories. We need to review and it’s good to hear about a person’s new birth and to hear their testimony, which is a powerful story about where they were while it’s fresh in their memories. It’s a very healthy thing for us to hear and review again and again. There’s an authority and an authenticity about conversion stories that can be very powerful.

In John 3:22-36, we have a different account. We have the account of John the Baptist’s final witness to Jesus. In those verses we see that there’s a parallelism here - just as Jesus came from above, (v. 3) and unless one is born from above (v. 31). He who comes from above is above all. You see a parallel here- just as in John 3:12-13, He was descended from heaven we also see that in v. 31-32, He’s the One who comes from heaven. You have a parallel also between the Jewish leaders in the first half of John 3 and then you have this Jewish prophet in the second half of John 3. There are similar discourses and themes that are going on here.

We have in verses 1-15 the story of Jesus and Nicodemus and then in verses 16-21 we have John’s discourse. Similarly in verses 22-30 we have the story of John the Baptist and in verses 31 -36 we have another discourse, John’s commentary. There’s a parallelism in the literary structure that invites us to see similar themes, which are being developed in both halves of John 3.

John 3:22, “After these things Jesus and His disciples came into the land of Judea, and there He was spending time with them and baptizing.” But notice in John 4:2, “(Although Jesus Himself was not baptizing but His disciples were).” At the most it would appear that He baptized His disciples but later delegated this function to the twelve. You can imagine the problem that you’d have of elitism, hey; Jesus Himself baptized me. You see He wisely avoids that problem as you can see there were problems later on when people were saying, I am of Paul- I am of Apollo. We’re just this way. We want to take these little things and then our pride just overwhelms us.

John 3:23, “John also was baptizing in Aenon near Salim, because there was much water there; and people were coming and were being baptized.” Aenon in Salim means springs near peace and we don’t know precisely where that was but it appears that there are some springs in the area that are not far from Samaria

John 3:24, “For John had not been thrown into prison.” Verse 24 presupposes the synoptic story because he doesn’t discuss that here but the synoptics tell us about John being thrown into prison. It’s one of those places where John assumes that his readers are familiar with the synoptic gospels. This text tells us something the synoptic gospels don’t tell us, namely there was some overlap between John and Jesus’ ministry until John was arrested. Then Jesus had to go up to Galilee because of the pressure there. It fits. The Galilean incident recorded in chapter 2:1-11 is not regarded as part of the public ministry of Jesus.

So we have this picture particularly in verse 25 with this discussion concerning what John was doing. “Therefore there arose a discussion on the part of John’s disciples with a Jew about purification.” See, this is troubling. Baptism was something that you do with Gentiles when they became converts or proselytes but the Jews wouldn’t be baptized. They would have cleansing. That’s why they had these mitvos, which were ceremonial baths that would be taken before prayer or sacrifices. They were ceremonial cleansings for purification. But the idea of baptizing a Jew- they didn’t have any kind of category for that. They’re discussing this issue. What’s he trying to do? Is this a ceremonial washing or what?

John 3:26, “And they came to John and said to him, ‘Rabbi, He who was with you beyond the Jordan, to whom you have testified, behold, He is baptizing and all are coming to Him.” Actually I think that this text is included here because as we know, there was a problem later on in Acts 19. A number of people were disciples of John but they weren’t disciples of Jesus. The Church Fathers tell us this went on for a few generations and maybe John was addressing this issue in this very text that would say, “Look, get your eye off of John because John himself would not of wanted you to do that.” Instead, follow what John said, “He must increase and I must decrease.”(v.30) They were concerned about this.

John 3:27-28, “John answered and said, ‘A man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven. You yourselves are my witnesses that I said, ‘I am not the Christ,’ but, ‘I have been sent ahead of Him.” John is divinely commissioned to be a forerunner of the Christ but like other human teachers, he’s earthly in origin.

That’s why he goes on to say, I must decrease and He must increase. This is true for all of us. The danger we have is sometimes the followers of a charismatic leader can put that person in such a position that they begin to defend that person so much that they almost elevate them to a position that he himself would be uncomfortable with. It often takes place this way. John is saying, “Don’t do that.” Don’t pursue factions- let Jesus increase. His servants are not meant to call attention to themselves. It’s important for us to see then that this, as Hudson Taylor put it, “We are little servants of an illustrious Master.” That’s the way to look at it. That He is the One who must increase. John the Baptist is the best man. Don’t make so much of speakers, writers and ministers that you miss out on the real issue of Jesus. The focal point must always be that, as this text would encourage us to see.

John 3:31, “He who comes from above is above all, he who is of the earth is from the earth and speaks of the earth. He who comes from heaven is above all.” So no human teacher comes from above. This is the truth that must descend. It is something from the outside. It’s something foreign to our experience. It’s something we couldn’t of made up. It’s something that we must respond to.

John 3:32-34, “What He has seen and heard, of that He testifies; and no one receives His testimony. He who has received His testimony has set his seal to this, that God is true. For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God; for He gives the Spirit without measure.” I take it he’s referring to the giving of the Spirit without measure to Jesus and that He has given Him immeasurable possession of the divine Spirit.

John 3:35, “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand.” All that is to be revealed about God has been committed to Him and thus we need to respond by accepting His teaching.

John 3:36, “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” You see to accept His teaching is to testify that God is in fact true. (v.33) To reject it is in effect to make God a liar. (I John 1:10) First John 5:10, “The one who believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself; the one who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has given concerning His Son.” Disbelief and belief in the Son of God is a matter of life and death. It’s a supreme revelation of God’s love. It brings assurance of eternal life. I sometimes put it to you as, those who are born once will die twice and those who are born twice will die once. Do you catch that understanding? There’s a need for two births that leads to one death and only one birth leads to two deaths. There’s a physical death and then there’s a spiritual death or separation. There can be no neutrality when it comes to the witness of Christ. Either He must be embraced and accepted or He must be rejected.

I want you to see the three “musts” in this chapter. There’s the must, first of all, of the sinner- you must be born again. That’s a must. In verse 14 there’s the must of the Savior- so the Son of Man must be lifted up. Thirdly, there is the must of the servant. He must increase and I must decrease.

We see that the first must is we must embrace whom He is and we must be born again. The must of the Savior is the One who is actually going to be lifted up. We must lift our eyes to Him and find our life in Him. Not to do so is to be in a position where we do not have spiritual life and therefore we are separated from Him.

You want to understand something that’s very unique. This is offering this message to all who will come to God regardless of their origin and their background. We have a picture there in that one sense it’s inclusive but there’s another sense in which Jesus is quite exclusive. He’s not inclusive, as we’d like Him to be. I invite you to read Matthew 7. There’s a way that leads to life and there’s a way that does not. There’s a path that leads to destruction.

Here’s the issue. While He’s inclusive in His offer the decision is ours to make and He will not include those who do not choose to be included. It’s a dangerous heresy to suppose that everybody gets in whether they like it or not because it’s to say there is no barrier upon what you believe, how you behave and your eternal destiny. I think the scriptures tell us otherwise.

The reason why He came to do such a radical thing was to make it possible for us to escape the wrath of God and to embrace instead the love of God. The One who deserves the love of God, namely the Son, receives the wrath of God on the cross. We who deserve His wrath receive His love on the cross. That’s a portrait of how God goes to such extreme measures in order to make it possible for us to have knowledge of Him.

Question: inaudible

Answer: Do you mean John 3:16? That’s the best-known verse in the bible and there’s good reason for it. It’s the gospel in a nutshell. I want you to notice what we often overlook , namely that God’s the One who is the initiator. It’s not Jesus wrestling salvation from an unwilling Father. Actually it’s the Father who sends Him and Jesus is on a mission from the Father. That’s extremely important for us to capture.

Let’s close in a prayer. Father, I pray that we might indeed be a responsive people. If there’s anyone here who hasn’t received the new birth, I pray that they would make a choice and respond to Your loving initiatives since Jesus cannot ultimately be ignored. We must make a choice to receive Him so that we will have the life. Those of us who already know Him, I pray that we would make daily choices to let Him increase while we decrease. The more He increases, the more we discover our true pleasure and satisfaction is in His service. We discover our true significance. It is to be found in seeking His pleasure, Your pleasure above our own. May we be a people who walk as servants because You have first served us. Now we can become servants of You and of others. We pray in Jesus Christ’s name. Amen.

This is part 6 in a 23-part study on the book of John. Below is a modified transcript.

We’re looking at John 4 and we’ll be looking at the woman of Samaria but it’s more than that because in this chapter, Jesus ministers to a number of people- the Samaritan woman, his disciples in a brief text, the Samaritans from the village of Sychar and at the end, He ministers to the nobleman and his household. Now what all these accounts have in common is that they all point to faith in Christ. All of them have that conclusion, which is to surrender to Christ and that is John’s real purpose in his gospel. He’s bringing his readership to a grasp of what that means- to be surrendered to Christ.

In the first 30 verses we see the story of the Samaritan woman and immediately we find a surprise here. We know that the Jews rejected the Samaritans. There was this whole situation of antipathy between the Jews and the Samaritans.

John 4:1-4, “Therefore when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus Himself was not baptizing, but His disciples were), He left Judea and went away again into Galilee. And He had to pass through Samaria, so He came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.”

Now there were other ways in which one could go. You could take the coast or more often Jews would bypass Samaria by going into Perea or perhaps going all the way through Jericho and up along the Jordan River on the extreme west, just next to the river and then cutting across bypassing the whole province of Samaria. The most direct and quickest route would be to go through Samaria. Typically Jews would avoid it because of the hostility that was there.

In the year 722 B.C. the Assyrians captured the northern kingdom of Israel. That captivity led to an intermarriage policy where the Assyrian conquerors forced the Jewish people who were scattered there to be intermarried- some with the Persians and some with the other people who had been conquered. As a result, they couldn’t prove their genealogy. After awhile, they actually built their own temple and garrison. They created an alternative form of worship contrary to the Jews. That led to an increased hostility toward the Jews as time went by. They were a people who really owed their origin to the mingling of a remnant. As a result, their worship became contaminated by idolatry.

In II Kings 17:28-41, there is a story of this very concern, a concern of corruption as a result of their own contamination by idolatry. Verses 28-29, “So one of the priests whom they had carried away into exile from Samaria came and lived at Bethel, and taught them how they should fear the Lord. But every nation still made gods of its own and put them in the houses of the high places which the people of Samaria had made, every nation in their cities in which they lived.”

In II Kings 17:30, it tells of how the men of Babylon made Succoth-benoth, the men of Cuth made Nergal and the men of Hamath made Ashima. Let me jump down a little bit and you see they actually burned their children in the fire in pagan rituals even in the immolation of their own children to these kinds of demonically inspired gods.

II Kings 17:32-34, “They also feared the Lord and appointed from among themselves priests of the high places, who acted for them in the houses of the high places. They feared the Lord and served their own gods according to the customs of the nations from among whom they had been carried away into exile. To this day they do according to the earlier customs: they do not fear the Lord, nor do the follow their statutes or their ordinances or the law, or the commandments which the Lord commanded the sons of Jacob, whom He named Israel.”

Basically he said that they didn’t listen and did according to the earlier customs so the conclusion in the last verse of II Kings 17:41, “So while these nations feared the Lord, they also served their idols: their children likewise and their grandchildren, as their fathers did, so they do to this day.”

What the writer is saying in effect is that they sought to intermingle a kind of Judaism but a very selective one in which they eliminated everything except for the Pentateuch. They only had their Pentateuch. It became known as the Samaritan Pentateuch because of some of the changes they had made. They rejected the other books, the prophets and the poetical books, thus their whole bible was just limited to their Pentateuch. They had their own alternative worship system in their own temple. This led to tremendous conflict. They did their best, in fact, to interfere with the rebuilding of Jerusalem when the Jews returned from their Babylonian captivity.

In fact when the Jews wished to be offensive to Jesus, what did they call Him? They called Him a Samaritan. John 8:48, “Do we not say rightly that You are a Samaritan and have a demon?” That was a two-fer; they got Him on both accounts!

The Jews when they had the opportunity in 128 B.C. actually destroyed the Samaritan temple. They burned it. Now you can see there that this was not a happy combination. There was a racial enmity. The Jews never accepted them. The Samaritans had an alternative form of worship that was a rather bizarre combination of paganism and Old Testament Judaism in regards to the Pentateuch.

Jesus does something that is very dramatic here. When Jesus is discussed in this chapter as having spoken to a Samaritan woman; it’s a shocking concept. In fact in the synoptic gospels, Jesus does something quite surprising. He made the Samaritan the hero of one of His parables- the Good Samaritan. You’ve got to understand how radical this is. It’s like making an Arab the hero to the Jew or the Jew the hero to the Arab in a parable. That would be the same kind of enmity they had.

Even speaking to the woman, He overcomes a number of barriers, as we’re about to see.

In John 4:2, where Jesus wasn’t baptizing but His disciples were, it corrects an inaccuracy in the information that had apparently reached the Pharisees. Here’s what is happening- tremendous hostility as a consequence of Jesus’ growing reputation. Surely when John the Baptist was brought into captivity and then finally executed and Jesus was really getting their attention, He knew then that He also had to keep Himself away. All four gospels express Jesus’ concern to avoid arrest at the hands of the Pharisees before the appointed time. So that’s why it says in John 4:3-4, “He left Judea and went away into Galilee, and He had to pass through Samaria.” I think He went there because it was the shortest route and also there are appointments that take place.

God has divine appointments. He didn’t necessarily leave Judea with any fixed intention of ministering in Samaria, He just planned to pass through but the Spirit will always blow wherever He wishes. True messengers of God are never subject to fixed programs and to prejudices. We need to keep that in mind for ourselves. You don’t know what you’re called to do. You don’t know what ministry you’re going to have and very often your greatest moment might be something that was not planned- something may appear to be an interruption or something that might not seem very productive.

I had a call this morning from a fellow, whom I hadn’t seen since 1984- a long time ago, maybe 19-20 yeas ago. He called to thank Karen and me for something that we did in his life that we don’t even remember saying or doing. Apparently it had some significant impact on his life. You never know when something will have an impact whether planned or unplanned and it’s often the unplanned things that will go on. I’ve said this many times before but you’re all in ministry. Whether you like it or not, you’re all called to ministry. Your experiences and background and your arena of influence will shape your ministry. You already have a sphere of influence and you’re called to become a manifestation of the life of Christ with those people. You use your unique spiritual gifts, background and experiences. You have a life message you’re supposed to be forging. The key to this is not simply what you plan but often the unplanned agenda takes place.

We see here in a way, the proclamation of the gospel by the early Christian evangelist to the people of Samaria. In Acts 8, it’s already foreshadowed in this interview and in Jesus’ subsequent stay in a Samaritan village. This is something that is very telling because in this text, this prefiguring of what is to come in the book of Acts several years later is the idea of what Jesus is already launching in His public ministry. Namely, that since the advent of Christ, the people of God consists of all who acknowledge Him as the Savior of the world and who have received from Him the life giving Spirit and who worship God in spirit and in truth. In this and the other gospels, Jesus ultimately overcomes all racial and all cultural barriers. It’s an anticipation of things that are to come.

John 4:5-6, “So He came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph; and Jacob’s well was there. So Jesus, being wearied from His journey, was sitting thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour.” The sixth hour is about high noon, which is very telling because this is when the woman comes out to draw water.

I also want you to notice that Jesus in this gospel, as we’ve seen, is being proclaimed as the Son of God but He also is seen very clearly as being a true man. It shows that He’s weary, hungry and thirsty. This kind of text shows that He’s fully capable of identifying with us in our needs because He’s experienced the human condition and knows what it is like to grow weary, to become exhausted, to become hungry and to become thirsty. This little touch here tells us being wearied, He sat thus by the well.

As you know, when they would dig these wells, very deeply, they would put a little stone wall around them to keep people from falling in and usually they would have a stone covering on top. It would be at such wells that, for example, Jacob would meet his future wife. At such wells, they would have some kind of a tripod that would often contain a bucket where they could lower it down. These were very common.

The two Greek words used in this chapter are both translated “well” in v. 6 and v.14 is the word pege, which means fountain also. This indicates that Jacob’s well was apparently supplied deeply with running water way underneath, reaching down then to some kind of underground source. The other word in v. 11-12, the ordinary Greek word for well, phrear, is used. The point here is that we are seeing again, the Johannine contrast between the spiritual and the physical and the misunderstanding that takes place between the two.

John 4:7-8, “There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, ‘Give Me a drink.’ For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.” So Jesus was left alone, sitting on the well and He sent His disciples off to get something to eat.

John 4:9, “Therefore the Samaritan woman said to Him, ‘How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?’ (For the Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)” The woman is a timeless figure because like most men and women she’s almost exclusively concerned with the provision of what will satisfy physical needs, not spiritual needs- particularly the idea of Christ quenching water which can be obtained only by the expenditure of a good deal of time and energy in that particular culture. As a consequence then she is really more concerned for the welfare of her body more than the welfare of her soul. In that way she points beyond to ourselves because we’re often in that condition too.

Now let’s consider this, Jesus not only speaks to her but asks her for a drink. He asked her to do something. Now her knowledge during this interview will increase. There will be a progressive revelation of Jesus during this discourse. Jesus had a discourse in John 3 with Nicodemus, a ruler of the people and a moral religious leader, who came to Him by night. By contrast, here we have an immoral, non-Jewish woman who comes in the middle of the day. We do not see the outcome in John 3 of Nicodemus’ response but here we do see her response. There’s the idea of a bit of a contrast. In terms of responsiveness, this woman actually turns out to be more responsive than Nicodemus was. There is a rather immediate response that takes place.

I want you to note that there are in fact four barriers that Jesus has to overcome even to speak to her. First of all, there is the fact that it was improper in that day for a Rabbi to speak in public to a young woman. In fact, typically, even if you were married, you often wouldn’t even speak to your wife in public. You need to understand how radical the gospels are- how liberating they are with regard to women because they are so utterly contrary to the culture of that time. We often fail to see that. Often what we’ll do is take our own ideas and impose them on the gospels but actually the gospels were liberating and radical in their treatment of women. Jesus, as a Rabbi, furthermore, should be more cautious about speaking to a woman, let alone a woman in this condition who was a Samaritan. There was the barrier of sex because the public discourse between a man and a woman, especially an unmarried man, would be prohibited or looked down upon.

Secondly there was the barrier of race.

Thirdly there was the barrier of lifestyle. In fact, that’s why she was coming in the middle of the day. Typically women would come and it was a place of congregation. It’s a place where they would meet because you had to spend a lot of time collecting water. Usually they’d come early in the morning or at dusk when it was cool. There, women would discuss things with one another. It was a meeting point. Why was she coming in the heat of the day? It was because the women did not accept her so she finds herself virtually an outcast. We discover later she doesn’t have the best reputation in town. Her own people regarded her as an immoral person.

Finally there was the barrier of religion. There’s an expression of bewilderment because Jews and Samaritans don’t share things in common. The Jews did have some dealings with the Samaritans but the idea of sharing from the same bucket was totally contrary to that concept.

We see here that Jesus is soon going to point out to her that there can be no unity between Jew and Samaritan unless both accept the same gift of God - that gift of God which He is prepared to bestow, eternal life, which can be received from God alone. In fact, from Jesus because He Himself is that gift as we saw in John 3:16. He Himself is the actual gift of God to His people.

John 4:10, “Jesus answered and said to her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” See, as it is, I have asked you for physical water but if you knew who I was you would’ve asked Me for another kind of water. Now she’s not really grasping what He’s trying to say. In any case, I want you to notice how He adapts His communication to her to that situation. Notice the way He speaks to Nicodemus and contrast that with the way He speaks to this woman. You’d see that He adapts His very style of communication to the needs of the person whom He is dealing with. He doesn’t have a canned presentation but rather He’s always sensitive to the personality and needs of the person. By the way, I strongly recommend that in our lives as well.

I find, for example, when I’m sharing the gospel with a person who is perhaps a computer programmer or an engineer or perhaps an attorney, often they’re going to be very concerned about evidence. They’re very impressed by the facts. They want some logic and clarity. But if I’m dealing with a person who might be a literature major it might be a totally different kind of a thing- a story, a narrative or a film. You see where I’m going? In a post modern culture a story or narrative becomes particularly relevant. I might have to adapt and I might discover that for this person I will have to adjust my approach midcourse. My approach also depends on the questions they are asking me. You know that you can ask a question in three ways. You can ask a question to say, “Show me how much you know.” You can ask a question to get information- an honest attempt to get it. You can discern sometimes if the question is a smoke screen or not. There’s a need for us being led by the Spirit to adapt our words to speak graciously and wisely to each person we encounter and tailor our speech to each person. Jesus was a master at this. He could know people. Remember it says, He Himself knew what was in man. (John 2:25) He could understand what the heart was and He would adapt. It’d be very interesting for you to contrast His approach to Nicodemus with His approach to this woman. It is a very different orientation.

Jesus says I alone can supply a living water which can supply every need and become the perpetual source of life because it turns out living water was a term for moving water- water that was in a stream or river. That’s why they had to use that in ceremonial purification but there weren’t any streams in this area. She wonders what He’s talking about. Where’s this kind of water that’s alive? In other words, water that you can actually dip into- that’s in motion-that is not in a well or a cistern. Where is this living water? That’s immediately what she assumes He means by living water. Today the well in verse 11 is identified by archeologists as one of the deepest in Palestine. When Jesus mentions living water she’s then seeing this well as being a deep well but she wonders what He’s talking about.

John 4:11, “She said to Him, ‘Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do You get that living water?” Notice she’s particularly concerned that He may be on to something even though He’s a stranger to these parts and knows something nobody else knows. Maybe He knows where there is a stream here. It’d be a lot easier than having to dip this bucket. She’s thinking I’d sure like to have that so I don’t have to keep coming here day by day and getting it.

John 4:12-14, “You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself and his sons and this cattle? Jesus answered and said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.” It’s a beautiful metaphor. It’s like an artesian well that springs up and it has no boundaries, no limits. It continues to spring from the inside to the out. This is a marvelous metaphor of the Spirit of God who is ultimately going to be given. We discover there in John 7 when Jesus speaks about the Spirit He uses this very imagery.

Look at John 7:37b-38, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.” By the way that’s an allusion as well to Ezekiel 47 where you see this water and it starts out as a little trickle coming out from the east of the temple and continuing as it heads east to get deeper and deeper until it becomes a torrential flow of water. But this He spoke of the Spirit, those of them who believed in Him were to receive for the Spirit was not yet given for Jesus was not yet glorified. This imagery of water is one of the images, one of the symbols, one of the signs of the Spirit. What are some other characteristics or signs of the Holy Spirit? Wind- pnuema even means wind, light, oil, dove-you’re missing a very obvious one- fire. All these are images of the Spirit of God. All of these reveal something that none of them singularly can do but corporately we see many facets of the work of the Spirit.

Clearly we’re being invited by John to see that Jesus is ultimately going to be speaking about that living artesian well that comes from inside and goes outward. He goes on to say that this is water that will satisfy. You see, she was ignorant of three important facts back in verse 10. She was ignorant of who He was. She was ignorant of what He had to offer. She was ignorant of how she could receive it. When you stop to think about it, that’s the gospel. Who is this Jesus? What does He have to offer? How do you receive Him? That’s the essence of the good news.

In verse 13 and 14, He was saying the water that people drink will not satisfy any more than bread will satisfy you forever. It’s only going to be something that will sustain you for a short time. But whoever continues to drink of the water or anything that the world has to offer will discover that that water will bring them to thirst again. The fellow I was speaking to this morning was talking about how he had acquired a great deal of wealth at one time and discovered how empty it was. He was kind of reviewing his own sojourn and discovered that actually when he came to the end of his own financial resources, he discovered God in a more profound way than he did before. It’s not that wealth is the problem. The problem is that often we fail to understand that it doesn’t satisfy the deep desires of the heart. At the end of the day it can only provide so much but it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be. The things of the world never completely satisfy. That’s part of the thinking in this gospel.

John 4:15, “The woman said to Him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw.” Do you see what she is saying? I want to get this kind of water so I won’t constantly be thirsty and draw here. I want something quicker and easier. She’s not fully grasping this. She’s thinking it’s some magical supply of ordinary water and she won’t have to visit the well anymore.

Suddenly in verses 16 to 19 the rules change. There’s going to be a need for a change in the way Jesus communicates to her. Suddenly and unexpectedly, Jesus penetrates her defenses with these words. John 4:16, “He said to her, ‘Go, call your husband and come here.” He changes the topic. These are very effective words because her slumbering conscience is going to be awakened and the beginning of a new birth was going to be apparent. She’s going to abandon further attempts at subterfuge.

John 4:17-19, “The woman answered and said, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You have correctly said, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly.” The woman said to Him, ‘Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet.” This is an interesting word here. There’s an increasing recognition but I think she’s trying also to change the subject. She wants to move Him off on a detour, let’s talk religion. Let’s get off of the subject of me and let’s start talking about religion. Jesus knows exactly what He’s doing. She recognizes Him as a prophet because He is endowed with the knowledge to know her through and through. He manifests a remarkable understanding- not just the human nature in general but of her very heart. He can read her heart. Look later in verse 29 at what she says to her people, “Come see a man who told me all the things that I have done. This is not the Messiah or the Christ, is it?” She’s kind of suggesting that. That impresses her but it’s a little bit too close to home so she changes the conversation.

John 4:20, “Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” That’s true because even to this day there’s a small number of Samaritans who still practice animal sacrifice in that area. She’s trying to bring it into a kind of diatribe there. It doesn’t work because the Prophet informs her that it’s no longer a relevant topic.

John 4:21, “Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.” It’s not a question of where you are going to be worshiping. In fact He says neither temple had pure and undefiled worship. The time when pure and undefiled offerings were offered in the temple of God was only for a brief period in Israel’s history. Early on, as you remember, in the time of Solomon there was corruption and it was often beseeched with idolatry and corrupted by images that were actually brought into the temple because of these corrupt kings. The few good kings that there were, many of them would try to make reforms-Josiah for example in cleaning out the temple. But even there, there was often people being pacified with high place worship where there was still a kind of a combination- not an absolutely, unmitigated worship for the living God. There were some moments under Hezekiah and Josiah where they had reformed but as a whole, since that time it had become a religious externalism without and devoid of life. It doesn’t tell us for example after the temple became ichabod- the glory has departed- chabod means glory. Ichabod means that the glory is gone. That’s why Washington Irving’s story about Ichabod Crane is a perfect name because the name means no glory. This guy doesn’t have any glory at all. It’s a great name for Him! But here the temple became ichabod when the glory left the temple in the vision in Ezekiel. It hovered for a period of time in the courtyard and then went up to the Mount of Olives to disappear. The glory, it appears, did not return even in the second temple. It doesn’t mention that when they built that temple that the glory had come back. The point is that the worship in the temple had been corrupt.

So the time was fast approaching and in a real sense the time has already come when as Malachi prophesied God’s name would be great among the Gentiles and then in every place pure offering would be made unto the Lord. Let’s read from Malachi 1:11. It’s one of those prophets in the Old Testament that is easy to find. Usually the small prophetic books are hard to find but here, all you have to do is go to Matthew and go left one book! Malachi 1:11, “ For from the rising of the sun even to its setting, My name will be great among the nations, (Note- Not just Israel among the nations. There’s a prediction of what Messiah alone can bring about and that He can make the name of Jesus great among the nations) and in every place incense is going to be offered to My name, and a grain offering that is pure; for My name will be great among the nations,” says the Lord of hosts.” We have a powerful portrait of what God is ultimately planning to do.

John 4:22, “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.” So although He says that the worship in the temple is not ultimately satisfying or pleasing to God, ultimately God is going to remove that and deal with it, yet for all its’ imperfections, it was still better than the worship of the Samaritans. The Jews had a greater horror of idolatry than the Samaritans and because the scriptures of the Jews included the workings of the prophets and poets. Those writings very clearly revealed things that the Samaritan bible did not have. Furthermore, they had greater understanding of the divine will. Look at Romans 9 for example, where Paul speaks about the advantage the Jewish people have. When he speaks about how concerning his kinsmen according to the flesh who are Israelites, it was to them that the adoption as sons belonged- the glory, the covenants, the giving of the temple service, and the promises. They are the ones who were the fathers and it was from them that the Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God bless them forever, would ultimately come. We don’t want to minimize that. In other words, Jesus is making it clear that not all religions are acceptable before God. This is Jesus’ own word. Again, popular religiosity would have us believe that all religions are equally valid attempts to reach God- not according to this.

Question: Inaudible

Answer: An affirmation of the Pentateuch. It’s an affirmation of that but it’s an affirmation of the Jews having a greater knowledge than merely the Pentateuch. The Jews have a greater grasp because they also embrace the prophets and the poets whereas the Samaritans deny that. The entire Hebrew bible then is being grasped and embraced by the Jewish people, which give them a decided advantage over the Samaritans who were limited merely to the Pentateuch.

John 4:23, “But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.” So it’s devastating that worship would no longer be limited to the Jewish temple. That would finally cease in 70 A.D. That would be the end of it. The destruction of the temple was also the elimination of the sacrificial system; the elimination of the priesthood, all of that would be done and no longer now would there be blood sacrifice. In the year 33 A.D. that one sacrifice to end all sacrifice had been completed. That’s why it says the veil of the temple was split- not from bottom to top but top to bottom. It’s a symbol of God reaching down to us and opening up the way between God and ourselves. What we now have that we didn’t have before is that the blood of this One would be sufficient to pay for all of our sins and thus He could sit down at the right hand of God, never having to have another sacrifice. The whole system was now fulfilled. That which was in shadow anticipated it but could never make atonement for sins as Hebrews says, because the blood of bulls and goats can never pay for sins they only put it off until He Himself – Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. (John 1:1) The Sin-Bearer would take them away and He would bear them all- an awesome burden. God is spirit and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.

So what we have in John so far is a new sacrifice (John 1:29), the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, a new temple according to John 2:19-21, a new birth as we saw in John 3:1-7, and a new and living water in John 4:11. We have a whole new economy then that ultimately overcomes the old. So since God is spirit it’s needful then for us to see that those who have been born anew of the Spirit have become His children and now they can come and worship Him as Father. God wants to be worshipped in spirit but also in truth. Those who accept His revelation in Christ, His ultimate truth, can worship Him in truth. We have this marvelous connect here of spirit and truth. Understand God is spirit but it doesn’t say spirit is God. There’s a big difference. In the New Age spirit is God- force is God- energy is God and so forth. God is a person but His nature, His essence, is that of being a spiritual entity. He does not have parts. He is not physical, as we would have for example in Mormonism where God the Father has a body. Here, He is spirit and those who worship come in spirit and truth.

John 4:25, “The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us.” So she has some insight into this.

John 4:26, “Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.” What He actually uses is ego eime- I AM. What we’ve seen is a revelation. First she sees Him as a Jew. Then she sees Him as greater than Jacob. Then she sees Him as a prophet. Finally she sees Him as Messiah. The ego eime statement- I AM- is the culmination where Jesus patiently and progressively leads her to a grasp of His true identity, as she’s able to receive it. She accepts His self-disclosure as true. She eagerly avails herself to the opportunity to go and return and tells her own people about this One who has spoken to her about everything she’s ever done.

John 4:27, “At this point His disciples came, and they were amazed that He had been speaking with a woman, yet no one said, ‘What do You seek?’ or, ‘Why do You speak with her?” At this point the disciples came and they were amazed that He had been speaking to a woman. They were so embarrassed that they couldn’t actually articulate it. This disturbed them. They were amazed. It didn’t fit their category. So when she saw them come, it was her opportunity to go to her own people. She left her water pot (John 4:28)- her mission because now she’s interested in the living water and no longer in the physical water. There’s a sign there.

John 4:29-30, “Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not the Christ, is it?” They went out of the city, and were coming to Him.” Now that’s pretty good because she must’ve had a fascinating life because everybody left to see this guy! In other words, here’s somebody that knows her through and through so the whole city left to find out about Him. There must’ve been plausibility, a credible thing that they wanted to go and see Him.

In the meanwhile, we have this little discourse that takes place with the disciples in verses 31-38. John 4:31-34, “Meanwhile the disciples were urging Him saying, ‘Rabbi, eat.’ But He said to them, ‘I have food to eat that you do not know about.’ So the disciples were saying to one another, ‘No one brought Him anything to eat, did he?’ Jesus said to them, ‘My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work.” It’s not that He doesn’t need physical food, but He’s talking about sustenance, a provision, that is even greater. He viewed His work as nourishment of His soul. That is to say, doing the Father’s will, will nourish you inwardly. It will satisfy you and satisfy your soul as you feed upon the will of God and do it and choose to discern it by asking God to reveal His will. One of the major purposes of prayer is to align our will with God’s will rather than telling God what we want Him to do. I’m not down on intercessory prayer but I’m saying it’s also wise for us to really discern the question, what would You have me to do? As we gain discernment then we discover what our direction is. We discover more as we go on. We are asking the Spirit of God to reveal and clarify our purpose for being on this planet. We discover inward nourishment, indeed a satisfaction, as the living water springs from the inside out and gives us a satisfying task to accomplish- so satisfying that it will last forever. This is water that will ripple on forever. It will continue to feed others. It will nourish and satisfy others as well. That’s why we have this important image.

John 4:35, “Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, and then comes the harvest? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are white for harvest.” It’s possible at that very moment that off in the distance you could see the Samaritans coming. They would be the harvest that He is referring to. Do you see the imagery there? At that very moment, as they’re looking up, they are coming in the distance. That’s the harvest He’s talking about. In other words there’s no four-month interval between the sowing by Him of seed in the heart of the Samaritan woman and then the harvest, which has resulted. You see, in the physical world, there is going to be an interval between the sowing and the reaping.

Remember what Amos, the prophet, said? You probably don’t remember, but I will remind you! In Amos 9:13 there’s a wonderful promise about the days of the kingdom. “Behold, days are coming’ declares the Lord, ‘When the plowman will overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes him who sows seed; when the mountains will drip sweet wine and all the hills will be dissolved.” This is almost the imagery of where we plant it and it almost immediately starts sprouting up so that the reaper overtakes the ploughman. It grows so fast, the curse has been removed, that now the earth no longer will yield its’ fruit with the sweat of our brow, but during the kingdom there will be some kind of an ecological transformation that will cause things to be so radically different that the world will now be as it was meant to be- a kind of removal of much of the impact of the curse. The earth will be, I think, transformed in a geopolitical way but there’s also going to be, as a number of these texts indicate, some kind of ecological transformation. Even the carnivores will become herbivorous. Remember where it describes how those carnivorous animals will now no longer be. There is a taming, an order, symmetry and a harmony that the world has not known since the blast of Genesis 3. Here’s the interesting image, in a sense, those days have already arrived. In a sense, in Jesus, sower and reaper can rejoice together because what’s happening here is that there can be if fact a co-joining.

John 4:37-38, “For in this case the saying is true, ‘One sows and another reaps. I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored and you have entered into their labor.” I see the imagery of I Corinthians 3:6-9 where Paul is speaking about the seed of the word. Verse 6, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth.” So we see that evangelism is a process where you sow the seed and you cultivate the soil by love and by prayer.

I’m very, very big on this understanding of evangelism. It’s not just a mere confrontation where we try to get a person to sign on the dotted line- many images of evangelism are. Frankly, people are terrified of it because it seems so confrontational and generally there are few people who are given the gift of personal evangelism. You hear about the person who leads the complete stranger to Christ and all that or about people who have such a passion that they share it wherever they go. That’s a person who’s been given a particular gift and capacity but most of us would be very uncomfortable with a confrontational model. But we can all embrace a relational model of evangelism where we might be involved perhaps in praying for a person even before the seed has been planted. Some people prepare the soil. Other people might plant the seed of the word and actually share the gospel. There may be several plantings of that. Somewhere down the road another person or persons might be involved in that person’s cultivation process.

What’s involved in cultivation? The soil has been prepared, the seed has been planted then you need to water it, fertilize it, weeding and all those things. I believe that the majority of actual time in the process is cultivation. There are many people who have heard the gospel long ago and only later on are they coming to an understanding of it. Somewhere along the line though it is all leading to a process where a person finally comes to faith- the reaping takes place.

Here’s my point, whether you’re involved in preparing, planting the seed, cultivating or reaping, if you are in fact, loving and serving a person who does not know Christ, with eternal values at heart, you’re involved as much in evangelism as the person who sees the reaping.

Evangelism is a process and God is the One who is going to be responsible. God’s the One who is going to cause the growth. That’s so liberating when you realize for the first time that you are not the one who needs to cause the person to come to faith in Christ. You can just be yourself and be available to that person. You see, otherwise the people who prepared, sowed and cultivate might suppose they’re failures. In equal error would be the person who saw them come to faith and supposes he or she is the one who did it when actually there was a whole history maybe involving dozens of people over years. Nobody really knows what role they played because you see intercessory prayer is also a part of it- even if they didn’t talk to the person that much they could’ve still played a part in the process. Only God knows how it works. You’re part of a larger process. You’ve entered into others’ labor. I find that to be a very liberating understanding. God Himself is the One who causes the outcome but we can participate in this process. I love this agricultural imagery.

Next we’ll go to the arrival of the Samaritans. We’ve looked at the woman at the well. She’s never named. We looked at Jesus’ encounter with the disciples. He’s always using teachable moments. They never did mention about the woman but Jesus talks about the harvest and illustrates what a harvest is like. He talks about what food is like. He talks about what the will of God is like and how that satisfies. He’s always using and leveraging teachable moments. Then the Samaritans arrive. It goes from second-hand knowledge to first-hand knowledge. This is always critical.

John4:39-42. “From that city many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, ‘He told me all the things that I have done. So when the Samaritans came to Jesus, they were asking Him to stay with them; and He stayed there two days. Many more believed because of His word; and they were saying to the woman, ‘It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this One is indeed the Savior of the world.” This is a strong text here because these villagers then had done what the disciples who were first called by Jesus and what Nathaniel had done- come and see. So they cane and they saw him and they ultimately believed. Their faith was based on a first-hand experience.

You’ve heard the expression that God has no grandchildren. It’s true. You cannot have a relationship with God by proxy. You can raise a child and you can share the truth but there comes a point in a child’s life where they must come to their own faith. They cannot live on the faith of their fathers or mothers. I remember when Heather was in that process. Our daughter was wrestling with this whole issue. She always kind of believed in these things but there was a point when she was in England when she really had to wrestle with whether this was true or not.

All of her friends in England were virtually atheists or agnostics. By the grace of God, He brought a person into her life that was involved with ministry in her particular school. This person had a powerful impact on her life and the lives of some of her friends. She saw a genuineness and authenticity about this man that she had not seen in other parts of the Christian world where she came from. Heather is very sensitive to hypocrisy. She picks it up in a second. She couldn’t explain this guy. It was not just our testimony but she saw the reality in her own school and with these new friends and so forth and that’s where she came to wrestle with this. When she came back to the States, she had pretty well hammered it out in that context. But there comes a point when every person needs to really make it a first-hand, not a second-hand faith. You don’t become a Christian, as you well know, simply by attending church any more than you become a baseball player by going to the baseball stadium. Just being an observer doesn’t work. There’s a choice to be made, a decision to be made, and it’s not going to be done by proxy.

The Samaritans call Him something remarkable- The Savior of the world. It’s found only here and one other place in the New Testament, I John 4:14. It’s very significant that the Samaritans of all people first applied it to Jesus. They had this profound insight.

Then Jesus did something that was quite remarkable. John 4:43, “After two days He went forth from there into Galilee.” Those two days spent in Sychar by Jesus were an exception to His general policy. Remember He said, I’ve only come to the lost sheep of the house of Israel initially. When He saw that the Jews were ultimately going to reject Him then it was after that rejection that the great commission was to bring it to the entire world. This visit is an exception.

Jesus came to Galilee and the Galileans received Him. What does He mean By His own country? In this particular verse He’s dealing with the idea that Jerusalem is really the hometown of every true Israelite. It should’ve been the first to welcome Him as Messiah but it was in the very heart of Judaism that His own did not receive Him. (John 1:12) So while some did believe in His name, He didn’t commit Himself because He knew that they had not accepted the implications of His actions. The word patros refers to Nazareth in the other gospels- His hometown- but here I think it means Jerusalem. If it were otherwise, you’d have a problem. The problem would be that was Jesus deliberately journeying to Galilee because it’s in the region and He would’ve been treated with little or no respect. That wouldn’t make sense. He comes to Galilee and the Galileans give Him a better reception than the people in Jerusalem did. See the idea? As I see it, Jerusalem is really where Messiah belonged but the people there rejected Him already and that becomes an increasingly obvious theme in the gospel.

Galilee is prepared to welcome Him because they had already been impressed by an account of some of their members that had seen Him when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover. John 4:45, “So when He came to Galilee, the Galileans received Him, having seen all the things that He did in Jerusalem at the feast; for they themselves also went to the feast.”

So now we have the fourth group of people in this chapter. First we had the Samaritan woman, then looked briefly at the disciples, thirdly the Samaritan people and finally we look at the nobleman’s son in verses 43-57 (the end).

John 4:46-47, “Therefore He came again to Cana of Galilee where He had made the water wine. And there was a royal official whose son was sick at Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had come out of Judea into Galilee, he went to Him and was imploring Him to come down and heal his son; for he was at the point of death.” I want to point out something that’s kind of interesting in this with the son. We had Jesus in Jerusalem in John 2. In John 3 we see Him moving up to Judea and then ultimately He moves up into Samaria. That’s kind of an outline of Acts 1:8. The gospel starts in Jerusalem, then goes to Judea, then to Samaria and then finally to the uttermost parts of the world.

In any case we see here that the news of what had taken place at the recent wedding of Cana would’ve been circulated in the district. So in verse 46 this royal official whose son was sick at Capernaum heard about this and he went the 25 miles from Capernaum to try and persuade Jesus to come there and heal his ailing son. The word that is used of a royal official-basilikos- is used here so apparently he was in service; I take it, at the court of Herod Antipas who was the tetrarch of Galilee at that point. I don’t believe that this narrative is the same or a variant account of the story of the healing of the centurion’s son found in Matthew 8 or Luke 7. In both cases it’s true that the sufferer was cured at a distance but apart from that the stories have nothing else in common. In the synoptic story, the centurion says, just say the word, You don’t have to come. In this story the nobleman requested Jesus to come and visit his home. It goes on to say that the son is at the point of death. He heard what Jesus did in Cana, the word has gotten out, and he goes out in this desperate attempt.

John 4:48, “So Jesus said to him, ‘Unless you people see signs and wonders, you simply will not believe.” So His first reaction seems to regard his request as typical of the Jewish demand to see signs first and then they’ll believe. He’s expressing disappointment at that persistent attitude. Some other scholars have suggested instead that this might actually be the word “wonders”. Remember, Herod of Antipas in Luke 23:8 wanted to see some tricks. He wanted Jesus to work some miracles so he was really pleased to have the opportunity to encounter Jesus. He thought He’d work some tricks and Jesus didn’t do a thing for him. He’s not a clown. He’s not a performer so Herod sent him back to Pilate. In any case, He’s rebuffing that whole attitude.

John 4:49, “The royal official said to Him, ‘Sir, come down before my child dies.” Instead of taking offense at any implied rebuff here, he speaks as a desperate man. It would touch a cord in the heart of any parent with this child that’s been stricken by fever in any land and at in any time. Wouldn’t it? I mean all he’s thinking about is that this is his last chance. He’s on the point of death and I’ve got to get Him to come with me. So he’s inviting Jesus to come and go out of His way.

But notice what Jesus says in verse 50a, “Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your son lives.’

The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started off.” This is the biggest risk he took in his life. He wanted Jesus to come. Jesus says, you’ve got to trust Me here. You go, He says, your son lives. You can imagine that was the critical moment in his life. If he goes back and Jesus wasn’t right then that was my last opportunity. Do you see this idea? There’s such finality about that.

I just got an e-mail, actually two e-mails, about the loss of a dear friend of mine in Dallas. It disturbed me greatly that I didn’t have a chance to say good-bye. Two weeks ago he was diagnosed with cancer of the liver and he died today. He and I go back to 1969. Every time I went to Dallas I’d always see my friend Ed. We’ve always been in contact. You can imagine the turmoil when they discovered this. I didn’t have a chance to talk with them. So what do you do? You go back to your last time with them. It was a good time that we had together. I went out of my way to see him and we had a rich time during my last trip to Dallas. But death is so final. The royal official knows that if this opportunity is missed that’s it. So here is “the moment” in this man’s life. It’s a story about who Jesus is.

John 4:50b, “The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started off.” That’s an awesome statement. He not only believed, he acted. He combines actual trust with that faith. We have not only faith but also a trust that takes place.

John 4:51, “As he was now going down, his slaves met him, saying that his son was living.” Who knows how far he went? It was a 25 –mile journey and as he was going down his slaves were going on their way to find him. Somewhere along the way, they met.

John 4:52-53, “So he inquired of them the hour when he began to get better. Then they said to him, ‘Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him. So the father knew that it was at that hour in which Jesus said to him, ‘Your son lives’; and he himself believed and his whole household.”

What was his first question? When did it happen? He wanted to know not only that he was alive but also when it happened. Notice the progression in the faith that takes place- first it starts from a crisis, a faith crisis. He goes there in a last desperate effort. Isn’t that how a lot of people come to faith in Jesus? They come out of a crisis situation. Usually it’s not out of our comfort but out of our pain, our crisis, our loss of control and when our world falls apart that often that is when we come to faith. But then we need to move from our crisis faith to a confident faith and then from a confident faith to a confirmed faith. That’s what happened here. It was a confirmed faith when he saw that the very hour was when his son became well. There’s also a fourth stage- from crisis to a confidence to a confirmed faith to a contagious faith. Who else believed? He and his whole household believed. The man became an evangelist in that regard.

I want you to notice something about this miracle. He performed it at a distance as He did with the centurion. The first miracle at Cana revealed His power over time. What was that miracle? He turned water into wine. It revealed His power over time- instant fermentation takes place. This miracle reveals His power over space. He can heal at a distance as well. He has authority over all things.

We see here the story ends up in a personal surrender to Jesus Christ. That is the image we have here. We have a complete surrender. They put their faith in Him.

There’s a progression as well in the nature of miracles.

As I tie these threads together for us, I want us to see again that God’s desire for us is to be part of a process, to see that we are part of a larger process bigger than we. That the inward dwelling of the Holy Spirit, the living water, is to come through us and become contagious to others where we actually point people to that water and manifest the presence and power of the Spirit of God in our arenas of influence. We are to be a part of that process, having a purpose, being on a trajectory of growth in our faith, our trust, our surrender, and our obedience so that God can use even further crisis, I will say, to draw us to Himself.

You know it’s not just one crisis. Life is filled with these kinds of stories. Another crisis comes and perhaps that will be used to kind of spearhead a new level of trust and faith. There might be a lot of arguing and wrestling with God during that new crisis but eventually the product will also mean growth if we respond eventually by surrendering on a new level. We surrender to a new insight about Him and a new insight about ourselves and we grow. We commit all we know of ourselves to all we know of Him. Another crisis comes along and we then continue to move along. Do you see the point here? What you have are a series of deliverances in the past that will form your present. Wasn’t He there? Didn’t He show up at that time? Did He show up here? After awhile, you begin to build a holy history that can remind you of His working in the past and that will give you hope in the future as well.

May we be a people of hope, a people of purpose, a people of faith, trust and obedience. May we be a people who sacrifice and surrender ourselves, knowing that whatever we have surrendered to Him that’s the only thing that is really safe and secure.

Father, we thank you for this time. We pray that You would guide us into all truth, as we respond to Your Son. In His name we pray. Amen.

This is part 7 in a 23-part study on the Book of John. Below is a modified transcript of the audio lesson.

Lord, we thank you for this time that we have together to study Your word and to reflect upon it. I ask that You’d give us clarity of insight and willingness to not only hear but to respond to what we hear. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

As we approach John 5 and looking next week at John 6, these two chapters seem to share a common theme. It is that of causes and the nature of Israel’s actual lack of faith in Jesus. It deals with the issue of rejection. Why did Israel reject her Messiah? Chapter 5 focuses particularly on what this looked like in Jerusalem during the Sabbath festival whereas chapter 6 explores what happened there at a Passover festival in Galilee. We go to Jerusalem in chapter 5 and back up to Galilee in chapter 6. There we see in both cases we have rejection- the Jews who refuse to accept Him as their Messiah.

This is a very common theme in the synoptic gospels. Remember the synoptics- Matthew, Mark and Luke- all concern “seeing together” (that’s what synoptic means). They all present conflict stories and also the Passion narratives but John adds something more.

What we have in John is a typology- a theme of what this looked like. John’s gospel places Jesus on trial and not just at the end of His life. In a way we see that He’s been on trial continually.

His arrival forces us to see. What evidence do we have that He is who He claims to be in view of His audacious claims? We see tonight His claims become much more direct and much more explicit than they were in the first four chapters of John. How are we to handle this? What are we to do with it? If He is, in fact, who He claims to be, the implications are nothing less than stunning. Whereas if He is not who He claims to be then He was a blasphemer and needs to be ultimately disciplined. In fact, the law would say He was to be stoned to death. You have this issue that really eliminates the possibility of seeing Him just as a mere teacher but it’s far, far more than that and claiming a great deal more than that. We have a template of accusations and response- a template of prosecution and then defense. The interesting irony is that wherever Jesus is on trial, the world gets on trial. It turns it around and ultimately it’s we, not Jesus, who is going to be on trial because the issue will be what do we do with this Person? He cannot be overlooked or ignored.

I want to point out a couple of things in this story. One of those things is in chapters 1-4 we saw that Jesus was being compared with institutions of Jewish piety in history. Now in chapters 5-10 we see a festival cycle. Jesus, in this new section of John, is being seen in light of the major festivals of Judaism. In chapter 5 we would see the Sabbath festival. We’ll see how Jesus handles this. This takes place in Jerusalem and what the controversy will be. There’s another festival that will appear and that will be the Passover in John 6. That takes place in Galilee. Then in John 7 and 8 you’re going to have the Feasts of the Tabernacles.

In John 9 there’s kind of a case story- a blind man and the issue of spiritual light and darkness and receptivity.

One of the movies I may eventually show, in my once a month movie study, is an Iranian film called the Color of Paradise. It’s not famous by any stretch but I believe it can be used to illustrate this theme of light and darkness. It’s a beautiful and touching film. It contrasts a blind Iranian boy’s physical blindness with his father’s spiritual and moral blindness. His passion and desire would ultimately be to see the face of God. Another film that illustrates the same thing is Woody Allen’s intriguing development of Crimes and Misdemeanors that is based upon the novel Crime and Punishment. In this novel you have a man who is an optician and so it immediately deals with the idea of sight. This optician is morally and spiritually blind. He hires someone to rub out his lover because she’s threatening to ruin his family. He has her bumped off and he eventually lives to be able to explain this to himself. In other words, although he’s filled with guilt at first, in about a year he realizes he’s going to get away with murder- literally! He finally comes to accept that and to actually embrace life and to move on from there. The interesting irony is that this optician’s brother turns out to be a Rabbi who goes physically blind. Woody Allen wrestles with the fundamental question about the goodness and evil that we find in life. He never arrives at a satisfactory conclusion but at least he raises the issues very, very well. Similarly in John’s gospel we see this theme of light and darkness being repeated again and again. Often people will be seen as dealing on a physical level but Jesus is speaking about a moral and spiritual darkness and blindness. That becomes particularly evident in chapter 9.

In chapter 10 we see the Hanukah festival. The Hanukah festival was one of the recent ones as well as Purim compared to the other festivals of Judaism. In Jesus’ time though they were already hundreds of years old. In Leviticus 3, three of these festivals required that Jews would go up with their families to Jerusalem. They were, Passover in the spring, Pentecost seven weeks later and finally in the autumn, Tabernacles, to thank God for the harvest of crop and to remember great episodes in Israel’s history. Jesus is going to be saying, just as I actually fulfill the institutions of Judaism concerning the temple and concerning other areas of life itself, so also will I fulfill the imagery here of these festivals.

We see in this gospel that the festivals were made by God to bring good gifts to people not to legislate and control behavior. What has happened in Judaism is it’s ossified all these things and made it a rigidity of external do’s and don’ts and lost all the joy. Religiosity has a way of really killing the spirit. We can lose the true vitality that comes from a living faith.

In chapter 5 we have an interesting development. We have accusations and Jesus’ response. We have Him being prosecuted but then we also see His defense. The crime, first of all, is to be seen in verses 1-15 where Jesus is accused as a criminal who violates the Sabbath. We see a man at Bethesda and he’s healed on the Sabbath day. The man is going to be interrogated by the Jewish religious leaders and ultimately the criminal, Jesus, is identified. Then in verses 16-18 we have the decision to prosecute. Jesus meets with tremendous hostility now that this man has identified who He is. There are two bases for this prosecution. First, they claim He violates the Sabbath. Secondly, He’s making divine claims. We have the issue of the Sabbath feast and Him claiming to have the prerogatives that only God could have. In verses 19-47 we have Jesus going on trial.

In this era, Jewish trials were different than what we have today. In our time, a person might be accused and so forth and eventually found innocent or guilty. In those days, defendants didn’t simply just prove their innocence and thus end the trial. The trial would work to uncover the truth and if the accusers were found to have made false claims in court, they could actually find themselves placed in the defense and subject to serious jeopardy. That’s an interesting twist on the law. Wouldn’t it be something if people making lawsuits would be liable for the consequences? In fact, punishments they hoped to inflict upon their opponent could actually turn back on them. The implications of the judiciary system would be profound if the consequence of people found making false claims would then in the same trial be prosecuted. It would actually lead to a great deal of less litigation. People would realize they had a real downside. Also the person who filed the lawsuit would have to pay the court fees if it is thrown out. This is what they do in England and they have a lot less litigation in England than we do because they have a lot more sensible approach to this matter. Frankly, anybody can sue, sue, sue- but what if you had to pay the court fees? Do you see my point here? The Jews had a different thing and here’s what happened. He goes on trial defending himself, marshals 5 witnesses as evidence to himself as we’re about to see. Then at the end of the chapter he’s accusing them. It’s all reversed around and they’re the ones on trial. That’s how this chapter will unfold.

May I stress something I’ve mentioned before but I must mention again and again? It’s so important for us to see this. Being Jewish isn’t the problem. You must understand that Mel Gibson’s film is being criticized for being anti- Semitic because it talks about the Jews. He’s specifically talking about the Jews who reject Jesus- those who were in the religious establishment. This gospel was written by a Jew about a Jew and all the disciples were Jewish. You have to understand it’s not anti-Semitic. It’s written about Jesus who’s a Jew and they were Jews and it was written about that. It’s idiotic to say it’s anti-Semitic if you follow the gospels. In fact what the gospel tells us is that really many of the Jews accepted their Messiah but many didn’t. The main point is that the leaders, the religious leadership, the establishment, ultimately rejected Him. That’s the point he’s making.

Furthermore, you need to understand that when John is writing this gospel, he’s also writing to show that this rejection of Jesus is the paradigm of what his actual listeners are experiencing in their own lives. It was written around 80A.D. or maybe a little later but at this time the Jewish believers who were in their assemblies, which were often called synagogues, were being persecuted as being part of a Christian synagogue as opposed to the Jewish synagogue. In other words, they were being persecuted by their own. This paradigm is saying, look, our Lord said that if you will follow Me, you too will be persecuted so don’t be surprised. Look at John 15:20, “Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word they will keep yours also.” He stresses then that what they’re going to be experiencing is conflict just as He’s experiencing conflict. It’s a comforting word to understand that this is no surprise. This is what happens when you testify the truth. It will not go over well with the world system. Ironically, the ones who will most hate it will be people who are in a religious establishment who would see their own positions as being threatened if this thing were really true. We have this paradigm that John’s developing to help us understand this model of the gospel. This issue is not something that is new. It’s an ancient concept.

May I point out one other verse that is often overlooked in this discussion of who really “murdered Jesus”? The answer is all of us. What the bible itself says about this is instructive. Acts 4:27, “For truly in this city there were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel.” In other words he’s saying it was Herod and Pontius Pilate, both the Jewish and Gentile authorities as well as the Gentiles and peoples of Israel- they all gathered against Him. See the point here? It’s not just the Jews but it was the Jews and the Gentiles. It was no accident. The Romans and the Gentiles crucified Him. As you know the Jews were not allowed to actually crucify. Their method of capital punishment was stoning. They couldn’t do it under the laws of that day because they didn’t have the right to that in that culture at that point. They had to get Pilate to go along with it and instigate it through him. The point is it’s not just one group or another.

John 5:1, “After these things (note-the previous chapter) there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.” Now it’s not “the” feast it would be better attested to say “a” feast of the Jews. This is probably not the Passover but it may be the Feast of Tabernacles but we’re not sure. If it were it would’ve happened on October 21-28 in the year 31 A.D. You can identify that. The events of John 6 are just before the Passover and that occurred on April 13-14 A.D. 32. You can date these. I take a 33 A.D. crucifixion. Some hold to a 30 A.D. crucifixion. I’m not going to lose sleep over it!

John 5:2, “Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porticoes.” We’re dealing right now in the first 15 verses with a cure. Now this particular pool was actually not discovered until quite recently. Earlier archeological attempts to find it proved unfruitful and many therefore criticized John’s gospel as being non-historical because they couldn’t find this thing. It was discovered in 1888. It fits the description and we have this pool that’s adjacent to the church of St Anne inside old city Jerusalem. It’s right there for people to see and you can go in there and see the five porches. This is where this particular event took place. It’s very specific.

John 5:3, “In these lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, and withered, [waiting for the moving of the waters;” There is a textual variant here and many texts do not have the next few verses. Mine has it in brackets because frankly some of the earlier manuscripts don’t have the remainder of v. 3 and v. 4. This is one of the biggest textual variations in the scriptures. No textual variations or various readings affect the sense at all in even a minor area of doctrine or practice. It may have been supplied later on. The moving of the waters refers to a superstition known at that time. That’s how the word got out! As soon as this legend came out it was never eradicated- that’s how it’s going to be.

John 5:4. “for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water; whoever then first, after the stirring up of the water, stepped in was made well from whatever disease with which he was afflicted.]” That is implied and if it’s in the original text, that’s fine because it would explain why he says in v.7 that there’s no one to put me in the pool when the water is stirred up. This gives an understanding of why that verse is there. It may or may not have been there but frankly at least this explains the actual tradition that was associated with it. In any case this is what takes place. The tradition was apparently that in this pool the water would get stirred every so often, supposedly by an angel of God, and you couldn’t know when but the first one to hop in would be cured. They were all waiting for their opportunity. This poor guy has been going there for 38 years and he hasn’t been very successful.

John 5:5, “A man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years.” It says there were sick, blind, lame and withered people there. It’s an image of the havoc that sin has brought into the world. It’s a portrait of the distortion of this world. This is not the world as it was meant to be. The Messiah would ultimately heal these infirmities. Look at Isaiah 35 and you’ll see the Messianic work includes this healing and ultimately this will be fulfilled. We see hints of it in this world. We see evidence of it in His ministry and hints even now. Every now and then, evidences that He’s done this from time to time. There will come a time when it will be universal among the people of God. Isaiah 35:3-4, “Encourage the exhausted, and strengthen the feeble. Say to those with anxious heart, ‘Take courage, fear not. Behold, your God will come with vengeance; the recompense of God will come, but He will save you.” This refers to the time of judgment- after that apocalyptic time of judgment. Isaiah 35:5, “Then the eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped.” I hear Handel’s Messiah here in one of his arias! Isaiah 35:6-8a, “Then the lame will leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute will shout for joy. For waters will break forth in the wilderness and streams in the Arabah. The scorched land will become a pool and the thirsty ground springs of water; in the haunt of jackals, its resting place, grass becomes reeds and rushes. A highway will be there, a roadway, and it will be called the Highway of Holiness.” He describes what I believe are kingdom blessings that are ultimately to come. You’ve got to associate them with the Messianic work. Part of the problem is, as we’ve seen so many times, that Jesus didn’t fit their ideas of what the Messiah would do. They expected Him to come, at least the version of the Messiah they wanted, and would finally deliver the people and bring in physical prosperity. Jesus came instead to first provide spiritual healing and reconciliation with God, which is the far greater thing to do- the miracle of actually reconciling them with God. They didn’t really go for that option. They wanted to have the visible. That’s the way we’ve always been. We want the visible over the invisible- its just part of human nature. Ultimately what they couldn’t realize is that the two are one and the same. The Suffering Servant is also to be the reigning King. This is the thing we want to keep in mind. The One who came and was rejected was really the Prophet that Moses spoke about, as we’ll see. That Prophet will not only be greater that the greatest of the prophets, He will also be the priest who will actually become the One who offers the sacrifice and becomes the offering once and for all. More than that, He’ll not only be a Prophet and Priest but He’ll also be Israel’s coming King. He will then deliver His people and bring in an eternal reign of righteousness. He’ll fulfill all three offices of Prophet, Priest and King. You know the mystery. How on earth could He be both a Priest and a King because to be a priest you have to be from Levi and to be a king you had to be from Judah? It turns out He’s not a Levitical priest but actually a higher order of priesthood, namely the priesthood of Melchizedek. He can actually function in all three roles in this unique way.

In John 5:5 we don’t know if this is some allusion but it is interesting at least there’s a certain parallel to the wandering of Israel of 38 years in Deuteronomy2:14. There was an extra 38 years that was not planned for. In a way you could almost say that this is a picture of Israel’s spiritual paralysis. This man turns out to be a paralytic. He was in a difficult condition because he’d been in that condition now for so much of his life. In v. 6 and v. 7 Jesus asks him a rather strange question at least at first glance.

John 5:6-7, “When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had already been a long time in that condition, He said to him, ‘Do you wish to get well?’ The sick man answered Him, ‘Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming, another steps down before me.” It sounds odd to ask someone if they would want to get well as they would say, well obviously I do, what do you think I am doing by this pool? But you’ve got to ask yourself this question again. Do you understand the implications of what will happen to you if you do get well? It will mean your whole identity will change. You can no longer define yourself as one who is carried here by your friends and dropped off and then basically lives off the charity of others who see your pathetic plight. It will mean your whole identity will change. It will mean that you have to move in another direction that you do not know. Are you sure you want that? All of us in effect are being asked this question. Do you really want to be healed? A lot of people, I find, resist coming to Christ not because of intellectual issues, often you can help them think through the intellectual objections, but many times it’s because of the moral implications of what it might mean for their lives. That is to say, coming to Christ is not a neutral matter. It’s not a matter of coming to Christ and having a better life just on your terms. It’s a matter of surrender to His purposes. That’s a scary thing. It might mean there’s some change. A lot of people don’t want that change and so they resist Him. This is an issue. So He says to him, “Do you want to get well?” Now this man will offer Him some excuses because his will in some way paralysis’ his body. We see here- compare it with John 5:40, “ and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life.” So He says, “Are you really willing?”

His excuse, John 5:7, “The sick man answered Him, ‘Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming, another steps down before me.” We have a frustrated man with no one to aid him, as was the case of the paralytic in Mark 2- recall his friends brought him. They were aggressive. They opened the roof and lowered him down and then Jesus spoke to him. I want you to notice He says to this man here almost exactly what He said to that man in Mark 2. The contrast is intriguing. Recall when that man was lowered down and the account is found in Mark 2:1-13. Specifically in v. 5 Jesus says,” Son, your sins are forgiven.” But then in verse 9 He said, “Get up, pick up your pallet and walk.” That is a pretty strong claim. The point is, I’m on this pallet for a reason. I can’t walk, that’s the problem so why tell me to get up-you see? It sounds very strange at first.

John 5:8, “Jesus said to him, ‘Get up, pick up you pallet and walk.” How can He possibly demand that he do something that’s impossible? It’s this. These men were healed by the power of His spoken word. He commanded him to do what he could not do but the command actually had the power of fulfillment. Take a look at Mark 3:5. It’s another example of this. He told the man with the withered hand, “Stretch out your hand.” That’s exactly what he can’t do. When he tried, he was able to do so. There’s a power in the word of Jesus then that actually makes the command possible. Similarly that’s an analogy of the whole spiritual life. There’s a power in His indwelling life that makes the Christian life possible. You and I can’t live it. But we’re inviting Him to do it through His indwelling word and His indwelling power. That’s what makes it possible for us to accomplish this. We see then this beautiful portrait of a healing that takes place and then John underscores something.

John 5:9, “Immediately the man became well, and picked up his pallet and began to walk.” He underscores that the man became well not in gradual fits and starts but immediately.

The problem was the Jews didn’t care for this kind of a thing because actually you’ll see in v.9 it was the Sabbath on that day. The scribes by this time had listed in the oral tradition some 39 tasks that were prohibited on the Sabbath. One of those 39 tasks was you couldn’t carry a burden. When they saw him picking up his pallet and carrying it, that was a violation of the Sabbath. They’re more concerned about their tradition than in his healing.

John 5:10-13, “So the Jews were saying to the man who was cured, ‘It is the Sabbath, and it is not permissible for you to carry your pallet.’ But he answered them, ‘He who made me well was the one who said to me, ‘Pick up your pallet and walk.’ They asked him, ‘ Who is the man who said to you, ‘Pick up your pallet and walk?’ But the man who was healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had slipped away while there was a crowd in that place.” Jesus often slips away after these miracles because His time has not yet come. They have this issue and they want to find out who would be so audacious to heal this man on the Sabbath and then tell him to pick up his pallet and walk around with it. By the way, it’s not actually clear if this man personally responded to Jesus. You don’t see any personal response yet. He is grateful for the gift and that’s why Jesus meets him in the temple. He doesn’t seem to pursue the Giver as much as he’s happy for the gift and has gone to the temple to thank God.

John 5:14, “Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, ‘Behold, you have become well; do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you.” Evidently we are invited to see that there was some connection between this man’s paralysis and his sin. You have to be very; very careful- it’s a tightrope to walk here- because indeed certain sins can lead to physical consequences. You will recall in I Corinthians 11:30 that because of people’s abuse of the Lord’s Supper, some would get sick and also be disciplined with physical death. “For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep.” There can be physical consequences of disbelief and disobedience to God.

What we don’t want to do is assume therefore that anytime something’s wrong it must be your lack of faith, trust or lack of belief. That’s a dangerous thing to say. Jesus in fact balances this out because He makes it very clear that sometimes things happen and it’s no one’s fault. Take for example Luke 13:1-5, “Now on the same occasion there were some present who reported to Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. And Jesus said to them, ‘Do you suppose that these Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered this fate? I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or do you suppose that those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them were worse culprits than all the men who live in Jerusalem? I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” What He’s saying is this, these things happened to them, they were at the wrong place at the wrong time and He says I’m not going to speculate as to why this particular group and not another perished but you need to understand that it is a sign of our need to repent before God.

One thing we must learn from other people’s experiences is that that very thing could have happened to me and it better give me a desire to make sure my life is right before God. How can I presume in the future that I’ll be here 24 hours from now? See the idea? Don’t presume in the future and think you have all the time in the world. I know a lot of people who felt that, you know, I don’t want to make this decision about Jesus, I’ve got plenty of time, I’ll think about Him later. Or some people want to say as Augustine prayed, “Lord, make me chaste but not yet.” Let me live it up a bit and then I’ll be ready. That’s a dangerous game to play. So He says, gain insight, you do not know the workings of the mind of God. He has mysteries here.

In John 9:2-3, there’s something else that balances this out if you recall the man who was blind from birth. “His disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” So don’t be quick to jump and assume but on the other side don’t say or suppose that disobedience is the case. God can chastise and discipline us in a variety of ways and one of them can be a physical consequence as well but we don’t want to be simplistic here. Clearly the text is inviting us to see that there was some kind of connection because in John 5:14 Jesus said, “Do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you.”

John 5:15-17, “The man went away, and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. For this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing these things on the Sabbath. But He answered them, ‘My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.” So Jesus deliberately chooses the Sabbath day. He’ll do it again in John 9 and He’s done it before- for example, in Luke 4, in Capernaum, he healed on the Sabbath and the word probably got out by this time to the Sanhedrin.

There were a lot of controversies over the Sabbath. John wants us to see this issue. Jesus says that He’s fulfilling the Sabbath; He’s the Lord of the Sabbath. This is a major claim. He’s showing His authority and He’s doing this deliberately. Look at Matthew 12. As you recall, Jesus went to the grain fields on the Sabbath, his disciples became hungry and they began to pick the heads of grain and eat. The Pharisees were quite upset by this and then Jesus claims that something greater is here than the Sabbath traditions. He says that the Son of Man is really the Lord of the Sabbath as He’ll also say in Luke 12:8. Matthew 12:8-14, “For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” Departing from there, He went into their synagogue. And a man was there whose hand was withered. And they questioned Jesus, asking, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?’- so that they might accuse Him. And He said to them, ‘What man is there among you who has a sheep, and if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will he not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable then is a man than a sheep! So then, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.’ Then He said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand!’ He stretched it out, and it was restored to normal, like the other. But the Pharisees went out and conspired against Him, as to how they might destroy Him.” The point here is that this has been an ongoing litany of controversy in these conflict stories and it centers on this tradition.

John is going to record a claim that Jesus is making that’s quite, quite radical along these lines. We see him deliberately doing this and it raises some controversy in which there’s going to be some very real trouble. His defense is going to be that the Sabbath was made for man. What was it for? It was to give them physical rest and also to kind of recharge them spiritually. Wasn’t it for relationships, to give them vitality and to give them an opportunity to enjoy God and each other? That was the point of the Sabbath. What’s happened is that the religious leaders and their traditions have so ossified it that they make it into a context of misery. People had to invent clever, little loopholes to get around it. For example, they came to define the Sabbath days’ journey as 3/5 of a mile. They’d have placed a meal there, almost like a little lunch, they’d eat and that’d become their new home and then they could go another 3/5 of a mile. This is bizarre stuff. If they think God’s going to be taken in by that- it’s incredible! It’s another chapter in my book, People Must Think God is Stupid! A book I’ll never write but one I’d love to write! When you look at religious observances, if you really analyze what people think- do they really think they can dupe God with these crazy, little loopholes and practices? God is not taken in by that. Most religions think they can bamboozle God- Hey; I got You in a loophole! I got You on a technicality. That’s some of the last words of W.C. Fields when he was found on his deathbed with a bible. Someone asked him what he was doing with a bible. He replied, “I’m looking for a loophole!” That doesn’t work!

John 5:18, “For this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill, Him because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.” How does this work? Here’s what we’ve got here. You see His own activity is paradoxically an expression of the Sabbath rest of God who actually keeps no Sabbath rest week by week but actually His sustaining work is always at work. My Father’s working until now. I’m working. That is to say, everyday the Father is at work sustaining the world, keeping things in control. Just as my Father is working and that His rest is a perpetual rest but it’s a work rest, a faith rest, in a very real way. He’s sustaining things but His is a perfect “shalom” in the same way. Jesus says I also am working and that I go beyond just the Sabbath traditions. This continuous and perfect activity, which is a unique characteristic of God that Jesus seems to be displaying and claiming. The Jews correctly see the meaning of His dissertation and it arouses in them a murderous hatred because He’s claiming- look, if in fact the Father is always at work and if I am doing the work of My Father then when I heal on the Sabbath then I am actually doing what the Father calls Me to do. I am not only His Ambassador; I am His Agent in this world. He makes Himself in effect like God. They understand that. It’s interesting to me that the Pharisees, the religious leaders, had a better grasp of Jesus’ claims often than His own disciples. Very often, they had a clearer picture of the implications because it was a shrewdness that was going on here. They wanted to kill Him. This is a motif that goes throughout the scriptures- the desire to really put Him away and to kill Him. In fact, if you’ll take a look at a few verses here in John 15:18, Jesus will tell His disciples this very thing. “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you.” Then He goes on to say in v. 25, “But they have done this to fulfill the word that is written in their Law, ‘They hated Me without a cause.’ They would hate the One who would be sent by God.

We have to ask ourselves this question. What if Jesus hadn’t come then but He came now, in our own time? How would the church, the religious establishment, receive him? Now of course that’s a strange question because the church is based upon Jesus’ coming. But in another sense though, you actually had this question, what if He were to come a second time after His first coming but came again in secrecy rather than to come in a second advent? How would we react to His claims?

Look with me at John 7:19, “Did not Moses give you the Law, and yet none of you carries out the Law? Why do you seek to kill Me?” Again in v. 25, “So some of the people of Jerusalem were saying, ‘Is this not the man whom they are seeking to kill?” John 8:37, “I know that you are Abraham’s descendants; yet you seek to kill Me, because My word has no place in you.” John 8:59, “Therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him, but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple.” This motif becomes a growing context of tension.

John 5:19, “Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.” So He is really saying that He cannot act independently of God because of the uniqueness of the Father-Son relationship that He enjoys. In ordinary father-son relationships, the love of the father for his son or the obedience of the son to the father is not perfect. In this relationship the Son is true to His Father’s word. You recall the accusation, You are right in what I say but here’s what I must do and if you’ll recall this concept here is something that we’ve seen again and again- the liar, lunatic, Lord dilemma. Recall this idea that C.S. Lewis came up with in his book Mere Christianity. “I’m trying here to prevent any one from saying foolish things that people often say about Him,” says Lewis. “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher but I’m not ready to accept His claim to be God. This is the one thing we must not say.” Lewis writes, “A man who is merely a man and said the sorts of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg or else he would be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was and is the Son of God or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool. You can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about Him being a great human teacher. That’s not an option,” he says. “Look, He might be a liar. If He was wrong and He knew He was wrong, He was lying. Or if He was wrong and He didn’t know He was wrong, He was crazy, absolutely nuts. Or if He wasn’t wrong, He was right, then what does that make Him? He’s the living Lord.”

Many people are now claiming there’s a fourth El and call Him a legend. Scholarship is increasingly pointing, if anything, to the authority and reliability of the scriptures, the gospels, as reliable narratives. When we hear things about the Jesus Seminar and some of these groups, they pose themselves as being in the mainline but they’re actually fringe scholars. They’re not in the mainline of real scholarship. The real strength of scholars, both evangelical and liberal, but in the mainline, still affirm that these gospel accounts have tremendous authority. You can’t just write it off as a total legend. They were written too early, there were too many witnesses who were around and there were too many things that would defeat the legend theory from being the case. Let’s look at His claims. First of all He says everything I do I do from the Father. Now in v. 19-23, He’s going to be claiming equality with God Himself.

John 5:29, “For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing; and the Father will show Him greater works than these, so that you will marvel.” It shows the Father works and He shares His love and His works. That’s why He’s called My Beloved Son in the first three gospels and also in John 3:35. The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand.

John 5:21, “For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom He wishes.” He’s going from the lesser to the mightier. If He’s the Lord of the Sabbath, He’s even more than that. He’s also the One who is the Lord of life itself. He has the authority of life and death- the power to raise the dead. That power belongs to God alone. We have the clearest expressions of the sovereign acts of God- the raising of men from death to life and the passing of the final judgment upon them. These are the prerogatives of God alone. Genesis 18:25b, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?” Deuteronomy 32:39, “See now that I, I am He, and there is no god besides Me; it is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded and it is I who heal. And there is no one who can deliver from My hand.” Jesus is claiming this very prerogative in this text.

John 5:21-22, “For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom He wishes. For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son.” This is another radical claim. Not only does He raise people from the dead but He also is the One who will actually give judgment. He has authority not only to raise the dead but also to judge the living and the dead. This is a powerful claim that He makes and He goes even further in v. 23.

John 5:23, “So that all will honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him.” He saying men must honor Me just as they honor God and that word for honor is the word for worship.

Question: Inaudible.

Answer: My role in My first coming is not to judge but to bring life but I will come as judge in the end. We have two advents. In His first advent, He’s not coming to judge the world but came to give them life. At the same time though He will be the judge. In fact the whole book of Revelation says that Jesus is the coming judge. If you want to look at that, you’ll see in Revelation that Jesus is the One who judges the earth.

Question: Inaudible

Answer: Yes, He came to bring love and tolerance. A lot of people have the mistaken idea that Jesus is a way but not the way. They think people can come to God in their own ways. That’s not an option. Jesus is making salvation available. You can decide if He’s wrong but if you take Him seriously, He’s claiming to be the way. Now that teaching will not make you popular. You have to understand that. Nor did it make Him popular in His day as well. It’s a strong teaching but I’m not making it up. Don’t shoot the messenger! The fact is that this is exactly what He claims. You have to ask yourself if Jesus isn’t the way, what options do you have? I’ll tell you what it is. Your option is you’ve got to work your way to God. It’s not going to be by grace through faith and the finished work of Christ on your behalf. Every other option is called bootstrap theology. You know how it works. You grab your bootstraps and try to lift yourself up into heaven. It doesn’t work. That’s the only option I know of. Every other religion, every cult, they all teach human works. If God’s perfect, how do you think you’re going to make it? We can’t even be perfect with our friends or with our loved ones. How can we be perfect before God? You see the point here? It’s a dilemma. In fact, Jesus is the One who claimed the human heart is actually the problem. We have a heart problem- both in the sins of the flesh and also sins of the spirit. These sins include coveting, envy, malice, and pride. Who of us have never had those problems? You see, we say, “I’m not an adulterer or I haven’t committed murder.” But the others will do very well. Jesus says it’s much more radical than you supposed. I think that’s one of the reasons that people water it down. This is not popular stuff in an age that elevates tolerance of truth as a virtue. Jesus, I find to be rather intolerant of error.

I want to stress the other side of that coin. Here it is. Anyone who seeks Him will find Him. You can chose not to seek Jesus but if you chose not to seek Him, you will not find Him. You have to figure out if you want to gamble your eternal destiny assuming that Jesus is wrong and you’re right. That’s the gamble that you’re going to make. What is your answer to the problem of the grave? Here we have One who has died and came back from the grave. He has the authority of life over death. I think I’m going to put my hands in Him rather than in my own speculations. That’s what He’s dealing with. Frankly, what’s happened in the first century has continued on and is even more rife today, especially among religious leaders. In fact, I don’t think He’d get a good reception at all if He came preaching the way He preached in the first century in many churches today. I think He’d be booted out of the churches. He’s utterly against the culture.

John 5:24, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.” This is one of my favorite verses in the bible. Every believer has three possessions and I want you to notice these are present, not future possessions. First he has eternal life (zoe). It is a new kind of life with a new quality. He already has it. You don’t have to wait until heaven to get that. He already has that gift when he hears My word and believes Him who sent Me. Secondly, he does not come into judgment. He is now in a condition where he is now accepted in the Beloved, in Christ Jesus. Therefore he is no longer going to be judged in the sense of the judgment of condemnation.

This is part 8 in a 23-part study on the Book of John. Below is a modified transcript of the audio lesson.

Let’s begin with a prayer. Lord, we thank You for our time together and we ask that you would guide our thoughts now as we reflect together on the glorious Gospel. Give us insight and not only a willingness to hear but also to apply and obey. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

We are looking at a story that involves yet another miracle, actually two miracles. After the account in John chapter five, where there was a case of mistaken identity, where people failed to see who, really, He is, we have understandings on two levels at once.

In John five we saw the healing at Bethesda and then we saw His discourse in Jerusalem with the rejection of His claims. He offered a number of witnesses as to who He was and we have a discourse that illustrates, through that healing, who He really is.

In this case, the healings, the miracles, reveals something more about who He is. The discourses in John are designed to communicate a message that is cumulative in its nature. Now, in this chapter we have the issue of the surface needs versus the deepest needs of humanity. We are going to see in this chapter that people are looking for just the surface needs. Just like the woman at the well, what was it that she wanted? She wanted physical water. The paralytic man wanted physical healing. One of the things you want to keep in mind is that we are dealing with the festival of the Passover.

It says in verse four, “Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was near.” There are going to be parallels here, with the stories and themes, to Exodus chapters 1 through 17. John is assuming that his readership has some familiarity with that. You have some imagery here, of how the manna in the Passover narrative, after you have the Passover and the great deliverance in the Red Sea and then the miracle of provision in the wilderness and the ideas that are found there are followed here and we have to understand that because it is going to give you understanding of the questions and issues that are raised. You need to see that Jesus is going to be superceding Moses himself.

For example, if you take a look at chapter six, verse five, of John, the question is raised by Jesus, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these may eat?” It echoes the question that Moses raised in Numbers 11:3, “Where can I get meat for all these people?” In Numbers 11:1 the people grumbled and in John chapter six you see them grumbling in verses 41 and 43. You have the parallels there as well. In Numbers chapter 11, the manna was described, particularly in verses 7 through nine and in John 6:31 it describes the manna as well.

There is that allusion back to the manna in the wilderness. In fact, one of the interesting ones here is in verse nine, “There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are these for so many people?” The interesting thing is that Moses raised this very question in Numbers 11, “We don’t have enough if all the fish in the sea were caught for them.” You see the similarities there? Even if we have all the fish, it won’t be enough.

Interestingly enough, in the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, which was done about 250 BC, the word that was used for fish was ‘opsas’ and the very same word is used for fish here, ‘opsarion’, which is the plural translation. In the Numbers 11 account, for gathering all the fish in the sea, the word ‘sunago’ is used and in John 6:11, Jesus told them to gather all the fragments and the same word, ‘sunago’ is used. There are a lot of similarities and parallels and we are invited to see, then, that this is not accidental.

So, let us begin. In verse one, “After these things,” which evidently refers back to the healing at Bethesda and its sequel, which we talked about before. In chapter five, Jesus was rejected in Jerusalem because of this healing because he violated the traditions of the Elders concerning the Sabbath observance. They couldn’t really grasp that he was the fulfillment of all the Messianic promises of Scripture. What you have, by the way, are a number of events, and when you compare the three synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, with John’s Gospel you discover that there are a number of events that were recorded in the other Gospels that are passed over here in this one. John’s Gospel is about 92% unique to John. Most of the material will not also be found in one of the synoptic Gospels.

It is a supplementary Gospel that really assumes that the reader has some familiarity with those accounts. Some of the things that happened in between chapter five and chapter six would be that the Sermon on the Mount was given and also there were the parables of the Kingdom. So, there was some time, clearly, between these two accounts. Now, this particular miracle, the one we see in John 6, with the feeding of the 5,000, is so significant that it is recorded in all four Gospels.

It is unique to have all four of them recording it. Some theologians claim that this was not a miracle at all. The idea, apparently, is that everyone just shared their lunches. That is not the case and you can tell by their reaction. Rather, this was a definite miracle and the people wanted to make Him king, so impressed were they by this. The response, in verses 14 and 15, indicate they wanted to make Him king because they saw He was something more than they had ever seen before.

It was clearly something to be accounted for as a great sign. There were some solutions to the problems that they had. When they went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, and by the way, the word in Old Testament for this was ‘kinnerth’, for harp or lyre. The shape of the Sea of Galilee resembles a harp and so that is why they called it that. It would be approximately 13 miles in length and at its widest point it would be about six miles across. So, it is not a very large body of water.

I might point out, by the way, that this was an inland basin and it is 650 feet below sea level. It is a good deal lower, for example, than even Death Valley and it eventually reaches 1,300 feet below sea level when you reach the Dead Sea. That is the lowest point on the surface of the earth. Now, it is interesting that in the nature of this you have mountains to the West and East and those in the West are about 2,000 feet and those in the East, the Golan Heights of today, would be about 4,000 feet in height.

What is fascinating is that, typically, in the afternoon, the cooler air from the Mediterranean Sea would come across the lake and it would collide with the lower, hot air from this basin and often it would cause sudden storm systems. So, people who worked the Sea of Galilee had to be very, very careful about this because they could become quite violent.

In fact, we are going to see one of those violent storm systems in this chapter. I will point out, by the way, just a couple of things so we have this mind. Up in the Northwest corner of the Sea of Galilee there is a plain where, according to tradition, the feeding of the 5,000 took place. These people had come out because of the healings at Cana as well as at Capernaum that were very, very key and, of course, word eventually got out about His power to heal.

In any case, let us continue on. John mentions the city of Tiberias for people who may not have been familiar with the area. Herod Antipas founded that city, over on the western shore, around AD 26. Herod Antipas was the son of Herod the Great and he named it in honor of the emperor Tiberias.

Continuing, now, with verse two, “A large crowd followed Him because they saw the signs He was performing on those that were sick.” So, they were following Him around looking for signs, miracles, and wonders. They weren’t so interested in the source of the signs but in the outcomes. They wanted the healings that they would be having and they were fascinated by a miracle worker.

It goes on to say, “And Jesus went up on the mountain and there He sat with His disciples.” So, He sat with His disciples and “the problem was that the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was near. Therefore Jesus, lifting up His eyes and seeing that a large crowd was coming to Him, said to Phillip, ‘Where are we to buy bread so that these may eat’?” Now, earlier, in Mark 6:35-36, the disciple’s solution was simply to send the people away. This would get rid of the problem but it wouldn’t be in their best interests.

Consequently, Jesus asked Phillip the question, “Where are we to buy bread so that these may eat?” He is kind of testing Phillip to see how he would respond. Sometimes people think money is the answer to all their problems. Phillip answered, in verse seven; “Two hundred denarli worth of bread is not sufficient for them, for everyone to receive a little.” That was about eight months worth of labor in those days.

He is testing, I think, the strength of Phillip’s faith and it a natural assumption for him to say if they had the money it would be no problem. One of the things folks discover in our world is that money often isn’t the answer to all things. We suppose it is but we discover it will leave us empty in the long run.

There was an old show years ago, called The Millionaire. You might recall that John Bairsford Tipton used to give out cashier’s checks for one million dollars. In this show the basic animating device was that the recipients could never reveal the amount or the source of the money.

The story line was centered around what impact it would have on those who received it. In most cases it was disastrous. Even now, when you hear about the impact on people winning the lottery, it is not a positive thing at all. Actually, it can be genuinely disastrous. People discover, too late, realize it is not the end to their problems. In any event, Andrew, then, found a boy, in verse eight, and said, “There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are those for so many people?” Now, barley loaves were a sign that these people were impoverished because barley was then associated with the bread of the poor.

I don’t know what he had in mind for Jesus to do, but he raises this question and then it goes on to say, “Jesus said, ‘Have the people sit down’.” The number was about 5,000 and they gathered around and sat down. “Then Jesus took the loaves, and having given thanks, He distributed to those who were seated; likewise also of the fish as much as they wanted.” So what we see here is the miracle taking place in the hands of the Savior, not in the hands of the disciples. He is the One who multiplied the food and they had the privilege of passing it out.

I would encourage you, by the way, to go see the film, The Gospel of John, before it leaves town. It is a tough thing to pull off, just doing the whole Gospel of John. There is no screenplay. All you have is the Gospel, word for word. It is about as good a job as you can do. It stretches out to about three hours in length. On the whole, it is a pretty good interpretation of it. This is part of the Visual Bible Series. They have also done Matthew, as well as the book of Acts. This will work well with historical books like these, but I don’t know what they are going to do with the Epistles.

In any case, moving on, “When they were filled, He said to His disciples, ‘Gather up the leftover fragments so that nothing will be lost’. So they gathered them up, and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves which were left over by those who had eaten.” Now, this is a very important picture here because we see that in contrast to the ‘little’, in verse seven, the Lord gives it with abundance.

I am reminded of the imagery from Ephesians 3:20, where He gives you exceedingly and abundantly and beyond all that you ask for. Not only did He satisfy them but also there was food left over. There was more than they could even eat, and you are talking about a very large crowd. So, that is an amazing miracle and the imagery that we see here is that He is never impoverished, our Lord, by the generosity of His giving.

There is more than enough to satisfy the people, but it is interesting that it is still precious, so they gather it up and do not waste it. Two times, by the way, John mentions that Jesus gave thanks, here is verse 11 and again in verse 23. The Synoptics mentioned as well, in the same parable account that Jesus looked up Heaven when He gave thanks because He saw God as the source of all good and needful gifts. James 1:17 says, “Every good thing given is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” Instead of complaining about what we don’t have, then, we need to give thanks to God for what we do have and I think God takes that and multiplies it. The idea here is that giving thanks is a settled attitude.

It is certainly relevant this week because it is Thanksgiving. Sadly, though, it is just a tack-on. We have now reduced it to what we call ‘turkey day’. It is rather a sad thing, just like some people call Christmas ‘Xmas’. Easter is associated with the Easter bunny and Easter eggs. It is almost like diffusing the real power behind these concepts. To give thanks is critical. The Eucharist, in liturgical Churches, means simply ‘the giving of thanks’.

The idea here is that it is something we are called to do and I argue that thanksgiving is a discipline; it is not meant to be left for spontaneous moments. It is something that we must choose to do and it is an attitude that one can have. And so, this idea here of giving thanks is this: see everything that you have as coming from the hand of God; that everything is really given by grace, everything is on loan. If we come to look at it that way we will have a different attitude on things.

We must invite God to be the One who determines the content of our life. We can only do what we can do, but we have to look to God for the outcome. So, this imagery of giving thanks is a big part, by the way, of our Lord’s ministry and it is a big part of the Epistles and, indeed, a big part of the Bible; the idea of remembering God in all things. So, I see a lesson in here, give all you have Jesus and let Him do the rest. You have give Him something, though; you see the idea here? Give Him something to start with and then He can multiply that. Give Him what you’ve got and it has been said that, “The Lord gives His best to those who allow Him to make the decisions.”

And so, we see in verse 14, “When the people saw the sign which He had performed, they said, ‘This is truly the Prophet who is to come into the world’.” Now, I have forgotten to mention that there is a parallel miracle in II Kings 4:42-44, where Elisha feeds 100 men with 20 barley loaves there were also baskets leftover there. Elisha is seen to be a type of Christ in the Old Testament. Now, here is what happening here, unlike the Judeans, the Galileans did accept Him as a Prophet, as anticipated in Deuteronomy 18:18.

Remember when Moses said, “There will be a greater Prophet than me who will come in the latter times.” They saw Him as a second Moses who could provide in the wilderness but they acknowledged Him for the wrong motives and the wrong intentions. And so, it says, “Jesus, seeing that they were intending to come and take Him by force, to make Him king, withdrew to the mountain by Himself alone.”

So, they wanted to seize Him and they wanted to use Him for their own agenda. I guess that their hope and expectation was that if He had this kind of power He could organize them and set Himself up as the King of the Jews and overcome the Roman dominion.

This idea, as the second Moses, then, is that He could do for them what the first Moses had done for their ancestors. What did the first Moses do? He delivered the people from oppression. However, I might also mention here that 1:19-25 and also John 7:40-42 seem to show that the Messiah and the Prophet were distinguished in their public expectation. They almost saw Him as two separate figures.

Now, the Scriptures, when we put it together, both speak of Him as One because the Prophet and the King and the Priest, in this case, are all one and the same. So, Jesus escapes this fate of being used by them for their own machinations by withdrawing to the mountain to pray in solitude. It is likely that He headed somewhat further north while He instructed His disciples to leave.

So, it says, “Now when evening came, His disciples went down to the sea, and after getting into a boat they started to cross the sea Capernaum. It had already become dark and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea began to be stirred up because a strong wind was blowing. Then, when they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near to the boat.” Apparently the wind was blowing contrary to where they were trying to go and so they were trying to row, instead of sailing against the wind. It says “They saw Jesus walking on the sea and nearing the boat; and they ere frightened.” The word would really be ‘terrified’ because this was a water miracle now. We have the miracle of the bread and now we a miracle involving water.

By the way, that would parallel Exodus chapters 13 through 15, the Red Sea crossing and his power over water. Let me return you to Psalm 77 for just a moment. There is also a parallel image here. You have to understand that Jesus is steeped in the Scriptures and a lot of these images would have been on His mind. Look at verse 16, “The waters saw You, O God; the waters saw You, they were in anguish; the deeps also trembled.” And in verse 19, “Your way was in the sea and Your paths in the mighty waters, and Your footprints may not be known. You led Your people lick a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.”

So, it is an image of His authority over water that we see here. Going back to our text, the disciples, who are terrified, then, have to assured when He says to them, in verse 20, “It is I,” and the phrase He uses is ‘ego ami’, which translates as ‘I am’. This is one of those statements that be can drawn as a parallel with the ‘I am, that I am’ imagery that we see not only in Exodus but in other texts which point to Jesus saying, “If you do not believe that I am, you will die in your sins. Before Abraham was born, ‘ego ami’, I am.” That is a powerful image because it refers back to the idea of God as the ‘I am’.

So, He says, “I am, do not be afraid’. They were willing to receive Him into the boat.” They overcame their terror. They were probably more afraid of Him than they were of the storm. “Immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going.” Was that another miracle? I don’t know, but all of sudden there they were, right where they wanted to go. Suddenly they were at the land. That reminds me, by the way, of another Psalm, Psalm 107. This is one of my favorite Psalms.

It is one of tremendous deliverance and it uses the imagery of deliverance in four ways. In verses 25 to 30, it says, “He spoke and He raised up a stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea. They rose up to the heavens, they went down to the depths; their soul melted away in their misery. They reeled and staggered like a drunken man, and they were at their wits end. Then they cried to their Lord in their trouble and He brought them out of their distresses.

He caused the storm to be still, so that the waves of the sea were hushed.” So, we see here a picture that goes on to say, “They were glad because they were quiet, so He guided them to their desired haven.” So, here we also see that, all of a sudden, they were where they wanted to be.

Now, here I see Jesus fulfilling the role of God. What has He already been doing? He has been feeding His people. He has been protecting them. He has been rescuing them and He has been guiding His followers despite the natural calamities that surrounded them. In an obviously similar way, I believe God will feed us and He will protect us and He will rescue us and guide us in our own lives.

Our lives, too, are going to be surrounded from time to time by storms and calamities. So, our calm sea, really, is in Christ even though the storms of life may become enraged, we still have One who can guide us to our desired haven. Only in His hands do we have the security to miss the shoals and storms of life. There we have that imagery and as I see it, then, this is a powerful way of seeing just exactly how Jesus really fulfills and satisfies and protects His own people.

Let us continue on, then, and by the way, when I see these stories about the boat it is like a floating seminary, there are four major events and each time you see them they learned something new about Jesus that they did not know before. And so, I see that as being a way of learning. Jesus used anything at His disposal to teach us.

May I say as well that He will use everything at our disposal to teach us. Some times we may not want that lesson, because it normally involves things you didn’t have in mind. That is how He broke through to them. usually God gets our attention best when we are at the limit of our own resources. Then he can break through and teach us and test us and He can encourage us and draw us closer to Himself as we gain new insights about Him. Now, it goes on to say, “The next day the crowd that stood on the other side of the sea saw that there was no other small boat there, except, and that Jesus had not entered with His disciples into the boat, but that His disciples had gone away alone. There came other small boats from Tiberias, near to the place where they ate the bread after the Lord had given thanks. So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor His disciples, they themselves got into the small boats and came to Capernaum seeking Jesus.”

So, some of the crowd came over when they heard about the miracles and they up from the Northwest from Tiberias and then seeing that Jesus and His disciples were not there, they headed over toward Capernaum. In the account that we have, we will see Jesus having a discourse in the Synagogue of Capernaum. Look at verse 59 of chapter six, where it mentions this. “These he said in the synagogue as He taught in Capernaum.” We could call this discourse, verses 25 through 58, the ‘bread of life’ discourse, just like you have the ‘upper room’ discourse and the discourse of the Sermon on the Mount. This is the ‘bread of life’ discourse.

It is a very important one because we gain insight as to what He is about. “When they found Him on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, ‘Rabbi, when did you get here’?” Now, Jesus immediately responds. They are hoping to pursue Jesus and they want to see what He is going to do next. In verse 26, Jesus answers, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me not because you saw signs because you ate of the loaves and were filled.” So, immediately He rebukes them because He is essentially telling them they are seeking Him for all the wrong reasons. They are looking for the gift and failing to grasp the nature of the giver.

It is very similar to the way He dealt with Nicodemus as well. He struck at the root of the materialistic assumptions of these Galileans. Their belief in Him, really, was an unbelief because it was based upon a complete misunderstanding of the miracle that He had wrought. He is trying to use that miracle to reveal truth about Himself, but they just want another handout. So, they failed to see the meaning that lies beneath it all.

They have no sense of the problem of sin and no have no longing for a higher form of life. He tells them, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to the eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on Him the Father, God, has set His seal.” He is telling them not to work for things that perish, but to work for the things that won’t perish. Remember, Jesus said to the woman, “You want to have a drink, but I am going to offer a drink, that if you ask for it, you will never thirst again.” It is similar here; living bread and living water. It is the fulfillment of both.

Now this is a very important section, these next two verses, and I want you consider them carefully. “Therefore, they said to Him, ‘What shall we do so that we may work the works of God’?” If you didn’t read the next verse, what do you suppose that He might have said? This is a very critical question; “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?”

In other words, what work should we accomplish? This is where religions come into play because religious systems are essentially work systems. ‘Tell us what we need to do in order to get where we need to go’. It is usually a ‘works’ idea; if you pray this way, or you say this and do that, and they are sets of ‘do’s and don’ts’. Surprisingly, Jesus answers and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him who He has sent.” The one work you can do is the work of belief. It is a work of faith and not a work you accomplish. It is something that is given to you and this is where the idea of grace come in. So, like most people steeped in religious tradition, they thought they had better do something to merit eternal life and Jesus is telling them that the only work necessary is believing in Him.

This reminds me of Ephesians 2:8-10. Turn there because I would really like you to keep this passage in mind. These are some of His best known verses, really, when He says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.” So, it is this grace of God that makes it possible and it is our faith that lays hold of grace.

Faith, really, and as we know is of trust. It is not intellectual assent. It is trusting in a person. “That is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God,” even the gift of faith, “it is not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” So, we have this incredibly important answer. It reminds me of a story I sometimes tell, of a woman who got a job in a textile factory. When she began to work the foreman instructed her on how to work a certain loom. She practiced and had it down well enough and he said if she had any problems with this loom to please stop. Don’t try to fix it yourself. After a couple of hours everything is going well and all of a sudden a little problem surfaces. But, it is of such a small nature that she figures she can handle it.

You can guess what happens. Her trying to fix a small problem leads to another and another and another. After about an hour of trying to fix it, she works up an emotional involvement and then the guy shows back up. He said, ‘I told you if you had a problem with the loom to call me’. She snapped back, ‘I’m doing the best I can’. He said, ‘No, your not. The best you can would have been to call me’. You see the idea? I think most people try to fix the looms of their lives themselves.

But God would answer, ‘Your best will not suffice’. The best thing you can do is to call upon the name of the Lord and lay hold of grace by faith. So, this is the one work that we must do in order to do the works of God. Now, back to John verse 30, “So they said to Him, ‘What then do you do for a sign, so that we may see and believe You’?”

Now, what we have here are people who are part of a congregation and as we move into the synagogue there are going to be some people who have not seen His sign that He performed the previous day. They are raising the questions of what they can see and what work dies He perform. “Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, He gave them bread out of Heaven to eat.” They were wanting to know if He could give them that kind of sign. The interesting thing here is that the Jews expected what they called a ‘treasury of manna’ to be actually descending upon them.

In the inter-testamental writings they discuss this and there was an oral tradition about this treasure. Actually, in an early Jewish commentary on the book of Exodus, it said, “As the first redeemer caused manna to descend,” and who is the first redeemer, here? It was Moses. Then, “So will the latter redeemer cause manna to descend.” They were expecting that the new redeemer would feed them and cause manna to descend upon them. Actually, they had the physical kind of manna in mind.

It reminds me, also, of Deuteronomy 8:3, “He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.” What Jesus, then, is showing them is that He is giving them bread that is more than physical bread. I am giving you bread that comes from the hand of God Himself. So, rather than have the duplication of the miracle of manna, Jesus is basically saying here that you must seek something more substantive than that.

Again, I fear that what often takes place is that people seek His benefits more than seeking Him. They see Jesus as a means or as a utility for having a more comfortable life. But, He is the one who tells them that there is more to it than this. Jesus tells them, in verse 32, “Truly, truly I say to you that it is not Moses who has given you the bread out of heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread out of heaven.” It wasn’t even Moses who did that, it was the Father who did that. “For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world. Then they said, ‘Lord, always give us this bread’.”

Again, I think they are thinking only of the physical. Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life, he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in me will never thirst.” This is the first of the ‘I am’ statements in the Gospel of John. They are found only in the Gospel of John. “I am the light of the world,” He will say in chapter 8 verse 12. He will say, “I am the doer of the sheep,” in chapter 10. He will say, “I am the good shepherd,” also in chapter 10. He will say, “I am the resurrection and the life.” He will also say, “I am the way, the truth and the light,” and finally He will say, “I am the true vine.” In each of these seven ‘I am’ statements He reveals a little something about His character, His mission, and His nature.

So, this is a powerful picture here for the need for us to come and to receive and to believe. It is not a personal asset, but a personal reception. “He who believes in Me will never thirst.” That is the Gospel, essentially; coming to Him and trusting in Him. You transfer your trust from your own work; ‘I’m doing the best I can’, to His grace and work. “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him who He has sent.”

It is the Father who sends down this manna, this living bread, that causes us to live. So, in verse 36, then, He tells them, “I see that you have seen Me, and yet do not believe.” He knows those that are His own. He is saying that many of them have seen Him but still refuse to believe. “All that the Father gives me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out.”

The success of His efforts depends entirely upon the Father. This is something that the Father gives Him and what we have here is an important discourse that concerns the sovereignty of God. In the sovereignty of God we see a mystery, a mystery of how God will accomplish His purposes and how we are still required to respond.

I find that the only solution to the mystery, as I have said several times before, is to embrace the tension and to acknowledge that whosoever will, will come to the Father, and at the same time the Father chooses those who are His. It is not a determinism or fatalism, but rather it is a matter of a synergy between divine sovereignty and human responsibility. He honors our choices, but a choice must be made. And so, He goes on to say, “All that the Father gives me will come to Me.”

He is saying that I can hold them in my hands in such a way that they will never be cast out. That is a wonderful word of assurance. If you have been called to the Father, then He will not cast you out. You are His. Jesus goes on to say, in verse 38, “I have come down from Heaven not to do my own will but the will of the One who sent Me. This is the will of Him who sent me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the Last day.” That is His assurance and that promise, by the way, is what gives me confidence in the world. Frankly, if I were depending on my own good works and performance I would be in serious trouble.

But instead, He is saying that once you come to Me, which is the work of God, I will hold you in My hand. This is even more clearly seen in John chapter ten. He goes on to say, “This is the will of my Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him, will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.” That particular verse, verse 40, is a powerful picture of the message of the truth. My Father’s will, that anyone who beholds the Son and trusts in Him, will have the possession of eternal life and in the future that person will be raised up on that last day. That is the assurance; that they will have a new position, they will have a new destiny and they are given assurance, the security and assurance that they will be raised up on the last day, to enjoy resurrected life with the Father and the Son. In verse 41, “Therefore, the Jews were grumbling about Him because He said, ‘I am the bread that came down out of heaven’.”

This is natural because some of the people knew Him from His youth. They were thinking, ‘isn’t this Jesus, the son of Joseph and whose father and mother we know? How can he now say that he has come down from heaven’? So, they despise what He is saying because it doesn’t make a bit of sense to them. They and wondering how He could make such a claim. “Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day’.”

What He is saying here is the you do not have the power to come to the Father. That is something that the Father must grant to you. At the same time, it does not eliminate the idea that all who come to Him, He will receive. The idea of believing and the idea of being called are two sides of the same coin. “It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught of God’. Everyone who has heard and learned of the Father comes to Me. Not that anyone who has seen the Father, except the One who is from God; He has seen the Father. Truly, truly I say to you, he who believes has,” and again, present tense, “eternal life. I am the bread of life.” There is a parallel to the early statement, “Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and they died. This is the bread which comes out of heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.” Now, we are introduced to a new dimension in this verse. First of all, we saw that He moves from the obvious.

Bread on a hillside; that is the obvious. The next level is the symbolic; “I am the bread of life.” He is now saying that the manna that comes down from heaven is, in fact, Me. I am the living Manna. I am the living bread that comes down from the hands of the Father. Just as it was the Father who gave you manna in the wilderness, My Father is now giving you living bread so that now if you eat of this you will never die, in the ultimate sense. You will be raised on the Last day. Now, we go from the obvious, the bread on the hillside, to the symbolic, “I am the bread of life” and now we go to the third dimension, a dimension further in.

This will alienate even some of His own disciples when He says this. This is the spiritually mystical. You must eat my flesh and drink my blood. Now He is saying this bread must be consumed. First it was the literal bread. Then it was the spiritual bread, which comes down from Heaven, but now, in the third dimension, He is saying you must consume this bread. By the way, it is in the ‘aorist’ tense, which means a singular event of appropriation; you must take this and eat.

It is the imagery of receiving Christ. “I am the living bread that came down out of Heaven, and if anyone eats of this bread he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” You can imagine how they received that. Sounds almost like cannibalism. “Then the Jews began to argue with one another, saying, ‘How can this man give us His flesh to eat’? So Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves’. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day.

For My flesh is true food and My blood true drink. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me and I in him’.” He is saying here, and of course He is not talking about cannibalism in the literal sense, but it is an image of eating and drinking, which is one of consuming, it is one of receiving. And so, when we think about the Lord’s Supper, we have an idea, an image here, of consuming.

It is a sacramental picture of what it means for us to receive His life, by feeding on Him and drawing our life from Him. “As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats of Me, he will also live because of Me. This is the bread which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live forever.” These things were said in a Synagogue, while He taught in Jerusalem. You can just imagine the uproar that would have taken place.

One of the things that helped me, when I saw The Gospel of John, was that the visual caused me to see the tensions and the resulting opposition much more clearly. Several times you see them literally picking up stones to stone Him. You could just see the tension that was involved when He was communicating these things to the people. As a result, this is going to alienate people. In fact, many of His own disciples, as it says in verse 60, thought it “Is a difficult statement and who can listen to it?”

You see, the people wanted to follow Him to get the handout and now Jesus sharpens the edge of His teaching when the crowd gets too large. He is not looking for a big crowd. What He is looking for is people who will be followers of Him and take Him seriously enough to pursue Him.

In verse 61 we see, “But Jesus, conscious that His disciples grumbled at this said to them, ‘Does this cause you to stumble? What then if you should see the Sin of Man ascending to where He was before’?” You see, full glorification is a composite. It is a composite of three things. It is a composite of Jesus’ death, which is the Cross, the Resurrection and the Ascension. So, the Glorification includes not only the Cross but then His resurrection and ascension to the right hand of the Father. So, He says, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.”

It is an image, here, of drinking Him and eating Him, and it is an image of receiving Him by receiving the Spirit. The idea of the spirit of God, then, is that we receive the life of the Son by means of the power of the Holy Spirit after we put our trust and faith in Him. But He goes on to say, “’There are some of you who do not believe’. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who it was that would betray Him. And He was saying, ‘For this reason I have said to you, that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him from the Father’.” I must be honest with you, Jesus said things that do not actually draw a crowd.

I promise you, if people preached this way today, they would have empty churches. Just stop and think about it. He was not trying to please or entertain. He was, in fact, teaching in such a way that He knew that many people would be divided. He also knew this, and this is the important thing, that no one is going to be able to grasp this mysterious truth unless the Father reveals it.

You have to understand that this is a major theme. ‘They are called by My Father and they can not grasp this mystery unless My Father reveals it’. So it is with us. If you really analyze the mystery of the Gospel, you have to realize that it really is quite strange. You are putting your eternal destiny in the hands of a carpenter who lived 2,000 years ago. It sounds totally absurd and preposterous.

And then if we think about the idea of feeding from Him and living with Him, and we think about the unique doctrines that He claims, that it is not a matter of your works but it is a matter of His work for you and that you can do nothing but offer up empty hands to receive this free gift. That is a hard thing and it goes completely contrary to human nature because it is our natural disposition to say, ‘what can we do for you’? ‘What can we do in exchange for that’? Everything He says, everything He teaches, is contrary to our own expectations and it was contrary to the Jewish expectations.

Every time He speaks they are thinking of Him on the material level and He is speaking on a different level; a spiritual and, indeed, a mystical level because when we stress what Christianity is about we discover it is dealing with incomprehensibles. It is dealing with things that the mind can not really grasp. It is dealing with revelations and God, in dealing with revelations, always carries us beyond the ceiling of our own comprehension. It is not irrational, it is of a higher nature.

It reveals the mind of God and I claim, therefore, that only if God reveals this to us can we receive that revelation, just as the Scriptures are revelations from God, so the Spirit of God must break through into the human heart and give us the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. The other breakthrough you are going to have is that the eyes of your heart are enlightened, as Ephesians one shows us. Only when that happens, when you get a spirit of wisdom and of revelation, will you grasp the spiritual truth. This is not stuff where you can just read the Gospels and suddenly know.

It requires more than that. It requires an openness to the Spirit of God and a willingness to receive what He has for us. That open heart, then, enables us to be in a position where the Spirit of God can speak to our spirits and reveal and illuminate that truth. It is not something that you and I can pull off. That is why, by the way, when I share the Gospel the pressure is off.

It is off because I am not responsible for the outcome. I have to tell you that I used to have the idea that unless a person signed on the dotted line that I failed when I witnessed to someone. It put tremendous pressure on me. A lot of people just did it out of guilt, of course, and wanted it for pride, like having spiritual scalps on their belt. But, my thinking is that I discovered that evangelism is really a part of a larger process. Only God knows who was involved in your conversion.

But, I promise you it is more than you may think. People that you don’t even know have prayed for you and they will never know the impact that they had. There are people involved who prayed for us and some shared with us and some manifested a quality of life to us. One might plant and another might water, but God is going to be the One who is causing the growth. When I realized that, I was free to be myself and share the good news when I have the opportunity and not try to club them over the head.

Then, I look to God for the outcome because, to be frank with you, we are utterly impotent to change another person. I can’t even change myself and if I can’t change myself, how am I going to change another person? Never make it your agenda to change another human being. It is the power of God that makes it possible.

But, what I see here is the mystery; the mystery that surrounds the life of Christ. He is saying that all the things that I do, whether it is the miracle of the wine in Cana or the miracle we see of the new birth that Jesus describes to Nicodemus, or the healing of the nobleman’s son, or the miracle of the living water that He was offering, or the idea of taking a person who has been paralyzed and making him walk by giving an oral command, it is impossible to comprehend it all.

Remember what He told that man to do? “Take up your pallet and rise.” The point is that you can’t rise. Yet that very word, that very command, had the power of fulfillment. So it is, as well, here, with the feeding of the multitudes. All these things, in their various ways, point to the true mystery, which is the incarnate God; the God-man who fulfills all the old messianic prophecies and the One who is “the way, the truth and the light.” He is all these things and He has a unique message. It is not just a message of God but it is a message that He is the way to the Father. His message is always related to Him.

I sometimes quote this sermon that Ghana gave, at Christmas of 1930, “Even if it was found that Jesus of Nazareth never lived, the Sermon on the Mount would be true for me.” While that might sound all pleasant and nice, it is actually utterly false. Even on the Sermon of the Mount Jesus talks, unabashedly, about Himself. He can not separate Himself from His teaching. If He never existed, or wasn’t who He claimed to be, it would be false. It would not be true for me.

When people say they like the Sermon on the Mount and it is a beautiful passage, I think to myself, have they read it lately? It is a frightening passage. Actually, it reveals things about Jesus that are terrifying in many ways and causes us to recoil. He is saying that “many will call to Me on that day.” The worst words you could ever hear from Him would be, “Depart from Me, I never knew you.” The worst words you could ever hear Him say would be, “I never knew you.” Just as the very same Jesus says that the best words you can hear are “well done, good and faithful servant and enter into the joy of your master.” He Himself is saying that the best and worst words you can ever hear have to do with your relationship with Me. That is pretty strong stuff.

Now, the disciples, as we conclude, struggle and wrestle with this. In fact, in verse 66, we see, “As a result of this many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore.” Remember that they had these different levels. You had the ‘curious’, on the one hand, those who wondered what was He going to do next, and then you had the ‘convinced’, and they were certain He was who He claimed to be and then there were the ‘committed’. You could still have that intellectual conviction without being personally committed to Him. The issue of commitment is illustrated here with Peter’s response.

So, many of them were not walking with Him any more and He said to them, “You do not want to go away also, do you?” Simon Peter answered Him and this is one of Simon Peter’s greatest words, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life.” In other words, he is saying he has no other option. That, to me, may well be a motive that you many have to come to.

When everything else is stripped away, once you came to Christ you admitted that everything else was bankrupt. When you admit that, even though you don’t feel you can understand Him or things are falling apart, you realize you have no other place to go. Sometimes, that is the only thing that keeps us there. Now, may I invite you to believe that Peter was no more aware of what Jesus meant than many of the people who actually left? I think he was confused by this word, too.

The difference between Peter and the twelve, and the many who left, was that they were so committed to Him that they saw no other way. They didn’t understand Him, but they would still follow Him. Frankly, that is what God wants us to do. He is more interested in us committing to Him and following Him than He is in our understanding Him. There will be a lot of things that He teaches and shows us that we will not understand. We are dealing in the realm of pure mystery here in many ways.

So, Peter goes on to say, “We have believed and come to know that You are the Holy One of God.” It is interesting because in the Synoptic Gospels this phrase, “the Holy One of God,” is actually used describing demons who acknowledged His authority and position.

It is an Old Testament title, ‘The Holy One of Israel’. Peter is given a revelation of Jesus’ identity. Remember earlier he said something like that? What did he say? He said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” Now he says, “You are the Holy One of God.” So, God the Father revealed these things to him. Jesus answered, “Did I Myself not choose you, the twelve, and yet one of you is a devil?” He meant Judas, the son of Simon Escariot, because he was the one of the twelve who was going to betray Him.

So, as we tie this chapter together, we realize that there are going to be times when you have no other options. It may be the only thing that keeps you there. There will be other times when we are motivated by love or gratitude, or by our identity in Jesus Christ, or by our perspective or purpose. All these are good things. Sometimes, though, it will be this negative one that holds us there.

As we conclude, we can ask ourselves, how are we fed by God? The whole thing is an imagery of being fed by Him. Feeding on Christ, to abide on Him, to rest in His presence, to walk by the Spirit, to practice His presence, all these are dynamic images of a process to invite us to practice His presence and to draw our life and our sustenance from Him on an ongoing basis.

(Q)(A): Yes, when the miracles stopped, or when He started talking about hard things, they weren’t interested in that. They weren’t interested in the giver. They were only interested in the handouts. In a very real way, I fear that we can do a more sophisticated number on that; we can call ourselves Christians but we can actually use these things for our own particular agenda. We create our own image and then we want God to baptize our plan. When He doesn’t show up in the way we have in mind then we get upset with Him. There is this way of trying to feed on the wrong thing. Clearly, without the signs, none of these people would have been following Him. By the way, that is the reason why Jesus commits Himself to a small handful. It is His focus that He has a small band of people that He really spends His time with, not a large crowd. In fact, as the Gospels go on, as you know, it all narrows. He goes from less and less public discourse to more and more of His time dedicated to small numbers, especially in view of His mounting opposition. When He knows He is going to die, He knows His mission is going to be in the hands of these few and so He focuses on the few rather than the multitudes.

This is part 9 in a 23-part study on the book of John.  Below is a modified transcript.

Ken Boa’s spiritual study series brings you a teaching journey through the gospel of John. This is chapter 7.

Let’s begin with a prayer. Thank You for this evening and we ask, Lord, that You would guide our thoughts as we look at the life of Your Son in whose name we pray. Amen.

We’re up to John 7 and in our discussion of John; some commentators actually say that the order should be originally, that it switched, from chapter 5 and 7 because of the intricate connection between chapters 5 and 7. They feel the other material could’ve been put between in there. I’m not so sure about that but there is a very real connection between what happened in John 5, in a sense, when Jesus healed the paralytic.

I’ve said before in the gospel of John, there’s a very real connection between the various feasts and festivals of Israel in the life of our Lord. John is not accidental in doing that. For example, in John 5, we saw that it centered on the Sabbath and in violation, in their minds, of the Sabbath law. Jesus didn’t violate the Sabbath but human traditions concerning it.

John 6 was organized around the Passover. The idea then of the Passover, the bread and the wine imagery were there of the body of Christ and particularly because of the healing of the multitudes. You recall He said, this is the true manna, which comes down out of heaven. (John 6:58 a) He was then talking about His body and of course that divided Himself from the crowds and even many of His own disciples weren’t following Him anymore. It was a hard statement.

John 7 concerns Tabernacles. There were Tabernacles that the male Jews needed to go to on an annual basis.

The first one of these was Passover. That was associated with the idea of the beginning of the grain harvest in the spring.

The second Tabernacle was Pentecost seven weeks later. Pentecost was a celebration at the end of grain harvest in the summer.

More festivals came in the fall. Actually four of Israel’s feasts were associated with the spring and three with the fall. In the fall, Tabernacles was the third of these festivals that every male Jew was required to attend. It was also called Booths or Ingathering because it was associated with the autumn harvest especially of trees and vines. During that time in the autumn you had to protect that crop and thus they established these succoths or booths that were temporary shelters in the fields. Theologically it would also remind them of the temporary shelters they had during their wilderness experience.

For these festivals then, it was necessary for the people to come up-at least that was the theory. We don’t know how it worked in practice. Jesus and His family because of their fidelity to Jewish law and worship would “go up” to Jerusalem.

I’m mentioning this because you cannot understand John 7 without understanding the Tabernacles.

There are two things I want you to associate with Tabernacles- one is light and the other is water. The association with light is because at this time of the year, it coincided with the autumn equinox. Equinox is where the length of the day is the same as the night. Then from that point on the length of the night would continue to get longer relative to the length of the day. In the spring equinox it switches that around. It was a Jewish ritual practice, which they described as the dying of the sun. There were festival ceremonies of light-the hallmark of the passing of seasons. Light was associated with this.

Water was also associated with Tabernacles because the idea that you had the early and then the latter rains. We’ve all heard that expression-the latter rains. The early rains would come in the spring and then the latter rains were necessary in the fall to restore the parched ground. The ground couldn’t be renewed without water. It was another set of symbols. There was a prayer that was always associated with Tabernacles for the water to come, the latter rain to replenish the country. There is a spiritual symbolism as replenishing it spiritually as well. It would certainly be a sign as it is used here as well – a symbol of the Spirit of God. There is a connection with all of that.

You have this teaching structure around the feasts. In John 7:1-13, you discover that that takes place at the beginning of the feasts. That feast was a seven-day feast. It was a ritual of agriculture. It would blend the images from agriculture and climate to theological history reminding them of their desert wandering.

In the middle is John 7:14-24.

Then the last day of the feast is mentioned in John 7:37 and goes on into John 8. You want to connect that chapter with this imagery as well with the claim of light. When Jesus makes the claim that He is the light of the world it is no accident that He refers to it at that point. When Jesus offers Himself as the water, the living water, at the end of John 7 it is not an accident either. The image of water and light is definitely connected in His offer. He’s deliberately doing something that may be under the surface and the Jews might not understand the point.

Threaded throughout this document are a series of questions that are presented as opposed to Jesus as well as a number of reactions to Jesus as we’ll see- the Jews and different groups of people who question Jesus about these things. In fact it turns out there were three groups of people that were going on.

One of these groups is the Jews. That is John’s term for the religious leaders, not all Jews. It’s one of the reasons people suppose John might be anti-Semitic which is bizarre since he’s Jewish and he talks about a Jewish Messiah. The point is the Jews he’s referring to are not all the Jews but they were specifically the Jewish leaders. They were opposed to Jesus.

Secondly, there was the multitude, the crowd. It mentions them in several places. The crowd would come to the feast. They weren’t aware that anyone wanted to kill Jesus. They weren’t from that area. There’d be thousands of extra people coming up for the feast so Jerusalem would be flooded with extra people like it was during Passover and the Pentecost because the people had to go up at that time.

The third group was the people of Jerusalem. They were aware of that tension going on.

This also is the last period in Jesus’ life because in the following spring, He knew that He’d be in Judea and that’s where His hour would come. He would be offered up. It would be associated not with the Feast of Tabernacles but with the Feast of the Passover. After John 7, He never goes back up to Galilee. He stays in this are of Judea. He stays hidden and kind of under radar because of the mounting opposition which is incredible, as we’ll see. I’m going to mention a few of the verses, which describe this kind of thing.

In understanding this then, the Temple area was illuminated at night, which was a reminder of the pillar of fire at night. The Tabernacles were also an anticipation of the coming kingdom of the Messiah Himself.

Let’s consider the opposition. John 7:1 b, “the Jews were seeking to kill Him.” The Jews were the religious leaders. John 7:19 b, “Why do you seek to kill Me?” John 7:25b, “Is this not the man whom they are seeking to kill?” John 7:30a, “So they were seeking to seize Him.” John 732b, “sent officers to seize Him.” John 7:44a, “Some of them wanted to seize Him.” That’s a lot of repetition of that theme. This is not some trivial thing. People are out for blood and they’re waiting for their opportune moment to do so. We see this intensification of opposition and their desire to eliminate Him and it was the religious leaders who wanted to because He so challenged their ideas about what they should be and challenged their whole system.

If we go back to our text here we look at verse 3. “Therefore His brothers said to Him, “Leave here and go into Judea, so that Your disciples also may see Your works which You are doing.” You see it says after these things Jesus was walking in Galilee because He was unwilling to walk in Judea because the Jews were seeking to kill Him, which is exactly what is happening there in chapter 6.

John 7:2-5, “Now the feast of the Jews, the Feast of Booths, was near. Therefore His brothers said to Him, “Leave here and go into Judea, so that Your disciples also may see Your works which You are doing. For no one does anything in secret when he himself seeks to be known publicly. If You do these things, show Yourself to the world.” For not even His brothers were believing in Him.” They were basically saying that Jesus could go ahead, if You want to make Yourself this Messiah then go ahead and show Yourself. This is a good time to do it. There’s a kind of skepticism here. In spite of all that close contact with Jesus, they were still unbelievers. The reality is that a prophet is not welcome in his own hometown. We often find that kind of reception among people we were raised with. His brothers were basically saying from the world’s perspective, “You want to get a following, here’s the way to do it.” There’s an earthly wisdom versus a divine wisdom that they’re talking about here.

James 3:14-17 discusses two kinds of wisdom- the wisdom that comes from above and the wisdom that comes from below. The wisdom that comes from above is peaceable, righteous and bears good fruit. The wisdom that comes from below is a shrewd kind of craftiness, guile, a cunning approach and that form of earthly wisdom though is natural, earthy and demonic. He’s saying that kind of wisdom doesn’t come from God. What we see in this world here is that you have two different sets of rules we can play by- the earthly versus the divine. The difference between seeking the applause of the crowd as a celebrity and the true success of servant hood is a parallel here with the temptation in Matthew 4. Satan said, Go ahead and show yourself- throw yourself off the Temple- all the kingdoms of the world were shown before Him. Remember that idea there. Satan said if You will bow down before me, You will be worshipped and have all of this. It’s the way that we’re all going to be tempted from time to time- to compromise our convictions.

Our Lord, then, clearly knew that His time had not yet come. He knew that He’d come not to be served but to serve and to give His life away as a ransom for many. Let’s take a look then. He was sensitive to the Father’s timetable. Listen to these verses. In John 2:4b, Jesus said,” My hour has not yet come.” In John 7:6, we hear it again, “My time is not yet here, but your time is always opportune.” John 7:8, “My time has not fully come.” John 7:30, “His hour had not yet come. John 8:20, “His hour had not yet come.” So they weren’t able to seize Him.

But by contrast if you jump over to John 12:23 you hear this word. “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” So now the hour has come. In John 13:1, “Jesus knowing that His hour had come, that He would depart out of this world to the Father.” Finally, John 17:1, “Father the hour has come.” So Jesus was exceedingly sensitive to His Father’s timetable.

I fear that most people I work with and myself included is that our timetable is not the same as God’s. I don’t know if you’ve noticed yet but our timetable is always some how different from His. We have different ideas than God does about what we want to see happen. It’s always He’s later than we want Him to be. It almost never happens that He shows up sooner. He may surprise us in various ways. He’ll do things differently than what we had in mind as well. It always seems that way. Just when you think you had this big vision then He takes it away and says it’s not really what it was. There’s something else. Actually it will be better at the end but often we don’t see that. We get stuck in our ways.

Remember the paralytic in John 5? Jesus says, “Do you want to get well?” Do you really understand the implications of that? If you really do get well, you can no longer come and expect to be receiving the welfare and the gifts of people and depend upon it. You’ve crafted an identity based upon that.

The poet, W.H. Oden, put it this way, “We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die.” It’s a good couplet, a good four lines from Oden. It’s very perceptive. We would rather be ruined than changed. Isn’t that an interesting idea? I think people are terrified of change. That’s really what He’s after. I think that’s one of the main reasons people resist coming to Christ. In fact if we look at John 7, it’s a paradigm of the fact that people are in a rebellion against God’s purposes and the various responses to God’s Son illustrates that. It would be naïve to suppose that if you present the gospel clearly that people will respond. That’s not the case. There is a need for this supernatural breakthrough. So Oden said we’d rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment. He’s saying that there’s a cross of the moment if you wish to be made well. We then climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die. So when Christ asks, “Do you want to be made well?” He’s also saying do you prefer your pain to the possibility of change? Some people prefer their pain to the possibility of change because they’re afraid of change.

Where you seek meaning, are you willing to be changed by that meaning? Where you seek understanding, do you really want to find the truth behind the understanding? When you look for help, are you willing to receive instruction as well as the help? When you seek healing, are you willing to be transformed?

It doesn’t come so easy. What we want is a quick fix and God says that’s not the way I work. I have something more profound than that in mind for you. You must respond to that. It’s exactly the same thing we see here each time He presents Himself. There’s a radical implication. I don’t think that our true response comes out until there’s a risk involved. For example, the idea of truly responding to Jesus will involve the risk of public affirmation of Him in spite of the fact that there can be some real conditions where we can be rejected or spurned or hurt by our friends for standing firm in our commitment to Christ. It’s always going to be against the culture. Everybody wants to homogenize everything and say all religions are equally true in spite of the fact that other religions don’t even agree with that. The idea here is that religions aren’t equally true.

I want us to see the need there is for change and the price we’ll be paying for being committed to this truth. It’s not going to be something popular. It’d be a lot easier to say everything is equally good and everybody is going to make it in the end and everybody is going to be happy. That’s not an option we have speaking biblically if we’re going to be faithful to the truth. There’s going to be some real impact that it has on our lives. If we continue on then what we see from His brother’s perspective then is that they were offering the world’s perspective.

John 7:7, “The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me because I testify of it, that its deeds are evil.” That’s why the world hates Me.

John 7:8, “Go up to the feast yourselves; I do not go up to this feast because My time has not yet fully come.” He’s using an interesting word there. There’s an ambiguity. The word “to go up” is a word that can also mean His ascension. So there’s anticipation of the fact that that when He goes up to Jerusalem it will be associated when He fully manifests Himself with the completion of His death, burial, resurrection and ascension. When the Son is glorified, now the Son is glorified- He’s associating that with the cross but also beyond that with the resurrection and ultimately the ascension. He’s using it in that way.

Misunderstanding often takes place in this gospel. We see a misunderstanding becomes a typical Johannine theme to express how Jesus’ self-disclosure is really beyond the way people can imagine. It’s beyond human imagination. We often have as we’ve seen before, Jesus communicating one thing on one level and people are perceiving Him on a literal level and not grasping what He really as to say.

There are three questions that pop up in the middle of the festival as we move on in v.14 and following.

The first one is- where did Jesus go to school? (v.15). In other words, how has this man become learned having never been educated? So Jesus answers them- heaven. He says His teaching is not Mine but His who sent Me. (v.16) He says, I picked it up from another source, not an earthly source.

The second question they’re going to ask Him in verses 25-27 is, where did You come from? Is not this the man whom they are seeking to kill? Look! He’s speaking publicly and they’re saying nothing to Him. However, we know where this man is from; but whenever the Christ may come, no one knows where He is from. Jesus says, actually, I’ve come forth from God and so He cries out and says, I know where I’ve come from and I have not come of Myself but He who sent Me. (v.28) So again His answer to the question- Where do you come from? - Is answered.

The third question, as we’ll see, is in verse 35 where these people are going to be saying- where is He going? When He said, where I am, you cannot come- they wondered where is He going to be going? His answer is going to be the same answer He gave before. It’s going to be heaven. He does not fit their categories at all. They ask these questions and they cannot really grasp fully what He’s talking about.

The Jews question His authority. So they were seeking Him at the feast and saying, “Where is He?” There was much grumbling among the crowds concerning Him. Some were saying, “He’s a good man.” Others were saying, “No, on the contrary He leads people astray.” No one was speaking openly of Him for fear of the Jews. So because of the fear of the Jewish leaders, they had to be private and quiet about this. The point is they were looking at contrary opinions. They were divided over this matter. Some said He was a good man and some said He led the people astray. The debate initially centered on Jesus’ character. Was He a good man or a deceiver?

The debate then shifts to doctrine. In v.14 in the middle of the feast, He begins to teach. He goes up into the temple. In v.15, the Jews were astonished and they asked, “How has this man become learned, having never been educated?” In other words, what’s Your qualification? Have You been ordained? Did You go to rabbinic school? What’s Your authority for Your teaching? You must understand concerning the word, rashooth that was the idea of authority. No one possessed inherent authority. It was always secondary and indirect. That’s where authority came from. It was passed down and conferred from Rabbi to Rabbi at ordination. The concept would be then that it would be secondary and indirect. Jesus is claiming a different kind of authority. He’s claiming a rashooth from heaven. He’s claiming to be a prophet. He’s claiming to have a direct understanding from God that does not need the rabbinic tradition. He didn’t need to go through that process in order to have this kind of authority. So they challenged Him. His answer was, “My teaching is not Mine but His who sent Me.”(v.16) “If anyone is willing to do His will He will know of the teaching, whether it is from God or whether I speak for Myself.”(v.17)

Now this is a very important verse because Jesus is saying there is a moral and spiritual prerequisite to entering into spiritual knowledge. You don’t enter into spiritual knowledge like the way you’d enter into historical or mathematical or scientific knowledge. You don’t do it that way. You could study a textbook. I remember studying differential equations and now I go back to my notes and I can’t follow them any more. I haven’t used them much lately. I can remember studying those and there was no moral or spiritual preliminary to learning that. You either did the work or you didn’t. It’s the same with physics, history, art, music or anything like that. There’s a matter of learning the material and disciplining yourself to learn it. But when it comes to spiritual truth, that’s another question entirely.

You don’t approach spiritual truth like you approach intellectual truth or some kind of a textbook. There is a moral willingness to receive. There are two key words here- humility and honesty. They are absolutely essential for gaining spiritual truth. You must be moving in this direction of grasping your true condition in this world and then honestly dealing with it. That is to say to be willing to receive God’s word for us and to be honest about our condition and then to be open to the truth that we would receive. If we come to the truth with the humility of willingness, that is to say if anyone is willing to do His will, He’s referring to His Father’s will, then he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God or whether I speak from Myself. (v.17) You see He’s saying then that this willingness is a critical issue. If I am willing, if I say, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief, which is that great line, at least you’re expressing an openness and willingness. You don’t understand it all. That’s not the requirement. You’re not going to understand it all. But if you’re willing to move in His direction, then you will know the truth and the Father will bear witness to it and then you will understand so that idea is a reciprocal relationship between knowledge and obedience.

Let me read Colossians 1:9-10 to illustrate that idea. In Colossians 1 is one of these great prayers that I encourage you to pray, one of these four life-changing prayers that Paul has offered. The others are found in Ephesians 1 and 3 and in Philippians1. Paul says, “For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.”

So you have this idea of knowledge but this knowledge that he’s referring to is not an ordinary form of knowledge. It’s a form of experiential or relational knowledge. This experiential knowledge will actually affect your very walk. It goes back to the idea of being pleasing to God. What we’re seeing here is a reciprocal relationship between knowledge and obedience, between our attitude and our actions, between belief and behavior. We see here we must experience the authority of truth by personal commitment to it. You’ve got to be committed to Jesus as your source of truth and then you can go from there. I promise you that pure skepticism will never open up the way. There comes a point where I have to, in humility, acknowledge my limitations, my weakness and then to say, Jesus, I don’t understand all that You’re offering but I want to know You. So in humility and openness I wish to receive that gift of the life that You give me and approach You in that way, as a little child I come then in that kind of trust.

John 7:19, “Did not Moses give you the Law, and yet non of you carries out the Law? Why do you seek to kill Me?” He’s putting Himself in the position that He’ll be comparing Himself to the new Moses who offers you something more than the Law. But even here with the Law, you cannot keep it.

John 7:20, “The crowd answered, “You have a demon! Who seeks to kill You?” Now this is the crowd, this is the multitude; it specifically calls it the multitudes of crowds, not the Jewish leaders at this point. They’ve come up to the feast. They have no idea about what was going on about the Jewish leaders wanting to kill Him. So they say, you’re nuts, in other words, You have a demon and the man’s crazy to think that. He must be paranoid.

John 7:21-22, “Jesus answered them, “I did one deed, and you all marvel. For this reason Moses has given you circumcision (not because it is from Moses, but from the fathers), and on the Sabbath you circumcise a man.” He’s referring to John 5 and the healing they wanted to get Him for doing because He healed the man on the Sabbath. Jesus then uses the argument of the lesser to the greater. In other words the actual law was this even though it’s a Sabbath, the circumcision is a higher thing. On the eighth day, you would circumcise the male child and if that happened to fall on the Sabbath, so be it. Jesus is using this analysis in verse 23. In other words if there is a partial healing that goes on here, why would you be objecting to a full healing that I did also on the Sabbath? He argues there from the lesser to the greater.

John 7:24, “Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.” Jesus is saying that He is using the very Law of Moses to refute His accusers. He knew that they wouldn’t listen because they’re going to use the wrong standard of judgment. It always comes down to this. People, by our nature, judge on the basis of outward appearances. Do we not? We judge in accordance with appearances. We cannot always know the hearts and motives of people. We think we know. In fact, we think we know it real well. I’m guilty of this as well as anyone else. I’m often in danger of attributing bad motives to people that they may not really have. I don’t even know my own motives. Paul says in I Corinthians 4, “How can I judge the motives of another?” He’s right. The fact is only Jesus knows our full motives and that will be revealed on the day of Christ. It would be well for us to realize though that we can judge and make wrong conclusions based on surface appearance, God knows the heart.

That’s why what appears to be secular work becomes spiritual if the focus of your heart is the eternal. Consider what your work might be- an architect, a teacher, an accountant, engaged in some specific craft, whatever your activity, your arena of influence-if you’re doing it to be serving and pleasing to God then it is as pleasing to Him as if a sermon or teacher does a good job before God. Do you see my point? That’s as spiritual as going to church is. So it’s not your work that’s the issue, it’s the focus of you heart and the audience to whom you play. That’s the issue.

Now by contrast what appears to be spiritual can be secular when the focus of your heart is the temporal. For example, if a person is ambitious and wants to let’s say become the biggest in his arena of influence- whether that be education, his denomination, his mission organization-guess what just happened? He appeared to be doing spiritual work didn’t he? After all, he’s in the ministry and yet actually what appeared to be spiritual just became secular because the focus of his heart was the temporal.

Now here’s the problem. You and I don’t see that. You see this guy and he’s a man of the cloth, he’s one who is in ministry- then here’s another person who is a person working in a factory and we naturally suppose- Oh, this one’s spiritual and this one is secular. Guess what? That has nothing to do with it. It’s the focus of your heart that makes the difference. We judge on the wrong appearances. Similarly, we hear a person say some things and we sometimes say, you know, I don’t believe I would’ve said that or we feel like this guy needs to grow and become more mature but the real issue before God is where he is with what he knows, not how much he knows. God’s more interested that you respond to what you know than He is in how much you do know. You see the difference again. So one person who knows a great deal may be less obedient than a person who knows a lot less but is good in application.

That’s why Rahab, the harlot, was included in the hall of faith in Hebrews 11. I promise you, Rahab didn’t know a lot but what little she knew she applied. The Pharisees, they knew a lot but they weren’t good by the way of application. Here’s another example of how this woman, Rahab, this Gentile woman, who had formerly been a harlot actually is more pleasing to the heart of God than a person who is a religious leader who knows 10 times as much spiritually. The issue is what are you doing with what you know rather than how much you know. Appearances can be deceptive.

Question: inaudible

Answer: They don’t really care how much you know until they know how much you care. I think it was Dwight Moody who said that but I’m not sure. It’s certainly that idea. It’s not a question of how much you know. That’s why Paul says knowledge puffs up but love builds up. He’s not against knowledge. In fact, his desire is that we grow in the real knowledge. His point is that knowledge without love is going to lead to arrogance. Love without knowledge can lead to sentimental slush. You want to have a combination of both not either or. You don’t want to be all head and no heart or all heart and no head. There’s a third one- all hands. I’ve seen images of all three. I’ve done this before but this is an illustration I’m fond of. Here’s a picture of a man with a big head and almost no body- they’re all cerebral. They’re like a cognitive machine. Then there are some people with a little pinhead but they’ve got this giant heart. Some people are really strong in the heart. Then there are other people who have these massive hands. My view is that it’s good to have all three there although some of us will naturally have a disposition toward one or the other. Even so, it’s good. That’s why you need the body of Christ because there are going to be people attracted to doing, being and to knowing. There’s a knowing element, there’s a being element and there’s a doing element. All three are there and there’s a purpose. We don’t want to go to extremes. There’s a balance going on. I’m suggesting then that you need to have the commitment to the authority of truth. Let me continue where we left off.

So Jesus then uses the Law of Moses to actually refute His accusers. In other words they’re saying- we know where He comes from- Jesus of Nazareth- we know. The assumption was that when the Messiah comes He will come surprisingly and we won’t know whom He is.

John 7:27-28, “However, we know where this man is from; but whenever the Christ may come, no one knows where He is from. Then Jesus cried out in the temple, teaching and saying, “You both know Me and know where I am from; and I have not come of Myself, but He who sent Me is true, whom you do not know.” In other words, He says, I know Him because I am from Him. He sent Me. It’s My answer to where do I comes from. It’s heaven. I came from the Father.

John 7:30, “So they were seeking to seize Him; and no man laid his hand on Him, because His hour had not yet come.” That’s the second time His hour is mentioned in this chapter.

John 7:31a, “But many of the crowd believed in Him.” This is an interesting image here. We have this conflict, a division, within their ranks. There were some who believed and some who did not. It’s a division we see throughout the gospel. Some express openness to Jesus where as others express a tremendous hostility. They either deny Him or hold Him at arm’s length. In the end, you cannot be completely indifferent towards this One.

John 7:31b, “”When the Christ comes, He will not perform more signs than those which this man has, will He?” You had the opposite of extremes- those seeking to kill Him or to say if the Christ comes, will He do more than this Man did?

John 7:32, “The Pharisees heard the crowd muttering these things about Him, and the chief priests and the Pharisees sent officers to seize Him.” If you look in John 7:44-45, you will see they heard Him speak before they were supposed to seize Him and they actually left empty-handed. This doesn’t happen. There must’ve been a power, an authority, in Him and they saw it as stated in verse 46.

John 7:33-34, “Therefore Jesus said, “For a little while longer I am with you, then I go to Him who sent Me. You will seek Me, and not find Me; and where I am, you cannot come.”

John 7:35, “The Jews then said to one another, “Where does this man intend to go that we will not find Him? He is not intending to go to the Dispersion among the Greeks, and teach the Greeks, is He?” That’s the one place where the Jews would not go. They would not be among the Greeks especially if they were orthodox Jews. They figured that the one place where He could go where they can’t go is there. He’s saying again, it’s that misunderstanding, an illustration, that unaided human understanding cannot grasp the mystery that He’s revealing.

John 7:36, “What is this statement that He said, “You will seek Me, and will not find Me; and where I am, you cannot come?” The idea here is that Jesus would answer that the one place that I can come is going to be in fact, to My heavenly Father. It’s interesting that He said, “ Where I go, you cannot come.” What does He say to His men later on in chapter 14? I go to prepare a place so that where I am there you may be also. These people however who are unwilling to respond to Him will never be able to go where He goes. If a person wishes to know Him then He will prepare a place. There’s that contrast again. It comes down to the heart’s desire.

John 7:37, “Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.” The last day is the seventh day of the feast. During the Feast of the Tabernacles, each day they would carry water and there was the Gihon Spring, which flowed into the spring of Salom. A priest would go to that pool and fill a golden pitcher of water and then chant Isaiah 12:3, “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.” Then that water would be carried up the hill to the watergate. They’d be followed by crowds and the crowds would have in their right hands tree branches that were reminiscent of the desert booth and in their left hand they would hold citrus branches that were reminiscent of the harvest. They would then shake them and sing psalms, 113 to 118. Those psalms were the Psalms of the Ascent. When the procession arrived at the temple where it would end, the priest would climb the altar steps and he’d pour the water on the altar. The crowd would encircle him and continue to sing. Now on the seventh day, the last day, where we are right now, they wouldn’t do this just one time but they’d do it seven times- seven processionals like this.

Judaism saw the water ceremony on several levels. On the one hand it was a plea to God to send rain, the latter rain. It was also a source of symbolism. After all, where did

God get water in the wilderness? What’s one of the most dramatic moments? They got water from the rock. Paul later tells the Corinthians that the rock is Christ. That’s why; remember Moses was told to strike the rock. The second time, Moses was told not to strike but to speak to the rock because only one sacrifice is needful. Here, water was flowing from the sacrificial altar of the Temple and the imagery from Zachariah and Ezekiel would be water going out from the Temple and forming a river. We have this imagery here that you’ve got to keep in mind.

Ezekiel describes a temple in the kingdom of God and it’s a different temple than the ones we had in the first and second temples and even the third temple, in my view this is the fourth temple. There’s a wall outside and it measures the temple. In fact the details are so great in Ezekiel 40-48 that you can actually do an architectural rendering of this. But if you look at chapter 47 there is water flowing from under the threshold of the house toward the east- this is the Temple- the house faced the east and water was flowing down from under the right side of the house from the south of the altar. Similar is the idea of the water being poured on the altar.

Ezekiel 47:2-5, “He brought me out by way of the north gate and led me around on the outside to the outer gate by way of the gate that faces east. And behold, water was trickling from the south side. When the man went out toward the east with a line in his hand, he measured a thousand cubits, and he led me through the water, water reaching the ankles. Again he measured a thousand and led me through the water, water reaching the knees. Again he measured a thousand and led me through the water, water reaching the loins. Again he measured a thousand; and it was a river that I could not ford, for the water had risen, enough water to swim in, a river that could not be forded.”

You have this picture of this bank of the river in Ezekiel 47:7, “Now when I had returned, behold, on the bank of the river there were very many trees on the one side and on the other.” Does that sound familiar to you? It ought to because if you go ahead it goes on to describe it one more time. Ezekiel 47:12, “By the river on its bank, on one side and on the other, will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither and their fruit will not fail. They will bear every month because their water flows from the sanctuary, and their fruit will be for food and their leaves for healing.” Now turn to the last chapter of the bible. Revelation 22:1-2, “Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” See how that is taken directly from that imagery in Ezekiel 47 and it’s also related to the imagery of what they’d do at Tabernacles.

Here’s the point. When the final day takes place, as the seven water processions are taking place and as they’re pouring the water at the foot of the Temple to symbolize all of this, Jesus makes His proclamation, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.” This is no accident.

John 7:38, “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, “From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.” The image of water coming from the throne is water that’s alive. In fact it turns the Dead Sea into a fresh water body of water so that now fish can be there. People can actually fish there. You sure can’t do it now. This imagery of living water is like an artesian well. It keeps bubbling up and moving. Living water is water that keeps moving and is not stagnant. So He’s saying from his innermost being will flow rivers of living water. But that water is used of the Spirit.

John 7:39,” But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” The Spirit would be given after Jesus was glorified having ascended to the Father after His death, burial and resurrection. Then it was needful for Him to ascend to the Father and then 10 days later what would happen? Pentecost. So then fifty days after Passover, Pentecost would take place. The gift of the Holy Spirit would be sent and it was necessary for Christ to ascend to the Father so the Spirit could come thus fulfilling the symbolism in these feasts. Do you see this beautiful picture of how from the very innermost being this water will come?

John 7:40-41a, “Some of the people therefore, when they heard these words, were saying, “This certainly is the Prophet.” Others were saying, “This is the Christ.” Those are on the positive side. On the negative side- John 7:41b, “Still others were saying, “Surely the Christ is not going to come from Galilee, is He?” That’s based on a misunderstanding. The supposition is that the Messiah was going to come from Bethlehem and because it was Jesus of Nazareth they didn’t understand or were not aware of the fact that He actually was born in Bethlehem. We have this picture here of how He really does fulfill it but they didn’t understand it.

John 7:42-43, “Has not the Scripture said that the Christ comes from the descendants of David, and from Bethlehem, the village where David was?” So a division occurred in the crowd because of Him.” That division was based in part because of their ignorance.

John 7:44-47, “Some of them wanted to seize Him, but no one laid hands on Him. The officers then came to the chief priests and Pharisees, and they said to them, “Why did you not bring Him?” The officers answered, “Never has a man spoken the way this man speaks.” The Pharisees then answered them, “You have not also been led astray, have you?”

John 7:48, “No one of the rulers or Pharisees has believed in Him, has he?” There’s arrogance here. If they were really educated and knowledgeable, they would understand. These people are just a bunch of country bumpkins!

John 7:49-52, “But this crowd which does not know the Law is accursed.” Nicodemus (he who came to Him before, being one of them) said to them. “Our Law does not judge a man unless it first hears from him and knows what he is doing does it?” They answered him, “You are not also from Galilee, are you? Search and see that no prophet arises our of Galilee.”

Actually it turns out that prophets did arrive out of Galilee. There were two- Jonah and Naaum. They did come from Galilee. The search should’ve been on their part.

It reminds me of Jesus when He says, “You search the scriptures (in chapter 5) and you think you have eternal life.” What you hear in these verses is the argument that important people did not believe in Him which is the same pressure today. The desire for social, academic and religious respectability causes many to stumble. Matthew makes it very clear.

One of my very favorite texts in all the bible is Matthew 11:25-27, “At that time Jesus said, “I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight. All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.” This is exactly what Jesus was saying in John 6 where He was saying, look, if my Father has called you, you will come to Me, but you cannot come to Me unless My Father draws you.” There’s this understanding that you do not have the power to come to the Father unless the Father first draws you. Similarly here, unless you come to Him as a little child and that only if it’s been granted then. No one can know the Father except the Son and anyone whom the Son wills to reveal Him. Now you have this two-sided coin, which we cannot fully grasp- namely on the one hand it’s needful for us to be responsive and open and humble before Him but on the other hand we also must be drawn. There is a mystery of how those go together.

Then Jesus says these great words. Matthew 11:28, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” In other words, the person who comes to the understanding of their desperate need and know of their need for rest and of healing- then they will take His yoke upon them and learn from Him and discover the rest for their souls.

As this text concludes then we see that the rejection was one where they overlooked the claims of this One who is right before them. It’s so easy for this to happen. You can have this reality of people rejecting the very One who comes to them, even the religious leaders. I wonder in our own churches-it’d be interesting to see the degree to which we’d be more abiding by our traditions and our experiences than we would if Jesus came and challenged us again. It’s easy for us to judge at a distance. But you wonder- if Jesus really came, you know He’d be radical- you know He’d be different from what you’re accustomed to. We have a way of wanting to reduce Him down to categories. I’m simply saying this- it’s needful in our own lives as we respond to His movements in our life to be walking in humility, child-like openness and basic trust and to be willing to do His will because as we walk in obedience to Him then the way of knowing Him is enhanced.

Question: Inaudible

Answer: There’s a bit of a danger- I’ve actually seen people witness out of pride. Some people witness out of guilt. But some people want to have more spiritual notches on their bible. There’s a danger here in thinking that they’re doing it. All we do is show up and we participate in a mysterious process. We are totally impotent to make any outcome unless the Spirit of God is at work. We can witness. We can communicate. We can share. But it is God who must do the work. Our arguments won’t work either. Our life should be a consistent life and it should be consistent with the message. At the end of it all, I’ve got to depend on God.

Remember I’ve talked about three things, the intellectual barrier, the emotional barrier and the volitional barrier. The way you overcome the intellectual barrier is by helping them think through some misconceptions and turning objections into opportunities to sharing the gospel. The way you overcome the emotional barrier is by building a relationship with people. Do you know the only way you’re going to overcome the volitional barrier is prayer? Only the Spirit of God can break through that. There’s a radical dependence. I can’t even change myself, let alone another human being. How am I going to raise them from the dead? That’s what the idea of conversion is. It’s more miraculous for a person to come to faith in Christ than for a person to be physically raised from the dead, if I understand the gospel correctly.

Question: Inaudible.

Answer: That’s why I say I don’t really know what a person’s motive will be and there’s all kinds of unique situations to them and their temperaments, experience and background. I may not understand but He knows the heart. He judges according to the heart, not according to outside appearances. We judge according to appearances but God knows the heart.

Question: Inaudible.

Answer: It may rub me wrong but in fully understanding that and that’s where I have to be careful because it’s easy for me to project and say well, now I know where he is but I don’t always know where he is. There’s this idea of pride that often enters in and keeps us really from receiving truth. There’s a complexity to this. In our lives, there are all kinds of things that can keep us away. God knows that. Frankly, it’s our pride or unwillingness to change. Again and again there can be an intellectual understanding or there can finally be the point where the issue is not intellectual at all, it’s volitional. I’ve had both cases where people said if someone could show where Jesus rose from the dead would they then believe? They would answer no. Now you’re dealing with more than an intellectual rejection. There’s always more to it. Human beings are exceedingly complex. You know this. You don’t even understand yourself. It’s the will. The most important thing about you is your will. This is your greatest source of power apart from the Spirit. Apart from the divine, your greatest power is the power to choose. That is your greatest source of power that you have in this world. Apart from God’s power that is the thing and your life will be shaped by the choices you make in the large and small arenas. In fact your large choices will generally be composed of the results of the small choices you’ve made. With this I’ll close- If any man is willing to do His will, he will know the truth and if he’s not willing to do His will, he will not know the truth. It comes down to the issues of the heart.

Father, we thank You for this time and we pray that we would be willing and I pray that by Your grace, You would give us a willing heart and spirit to respond to Your overtures in our lives to respond to the next stage in our journey and to be on a daily basis to be ready to listen and to receive that which You have for us each day. We pray in Christ’s name.

This is part 10 in a 23-part study on the book of John.  Below is a modified transcript.

Lord, we thank You for our time to study together and to think and reflect on the marvelous and timeless truths of Your word. We ask that we would be people who apply the word and not merely hear it and also live and listen with a view to applying it and understanding it. May we be a people who come to know Jesus a little bit better tonight. We pray in Christ’s name. Amen.

We are looking at John chapter eight tonight and we are going to make some comments about the initial portion of it, which, as you may know, is a disputed text because in John 7:53, through John 8:11, if you have a New American Standard Bible you will see the text is in brackets. Others will put it in parentheses and others won’t even mention it.

The reason, of course, is obvious because it is absent from all major Greek manuscripts that would bear strong witness to John’s original text. The early patristic writers are somewhat the same as well. However, there is some ‘story’ evidence. That is to say there is enough tradition and enough ancient evidence that there is some authenticity to this account. For example, Ambrose mentions this account, and he died in 397 AD. Also, Augustine mentions it, and he died in 430 AD. When Jerome began to work on the Latin Vulgate, in the 4^th century, he included this text in the Gospel of John. By doing that, what took place was that the Vulgate made it mainstream. There were hints that this existed and people knew about this account very early on.

For example, Eusebius, who was the first historian of the Church, tells about learning the story from Papias, who lived from about 60 AD to about 130 AD, and was a very early writer. There is enough warrant to include this as a legitimate Gospel account. That is to say, it appears to be a fragment of authentic Gospel material. However, it was evidently not in John’s original and it has much more in common with the Synoptics than it does with John’s work. For example, it mentions the scribes and John doesn’t focus on that but the Synoptics do.

It also mentions Jesus going up to the Mount of Olives, which the Synoptics do as well, but John does not do. In the Synoptic Gospels you have a very clear picture of the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, as He was going in and out of Jerusalem, where would He go at night? He would go up to the Mount of Olives, probably with His dear friends, Martha and Mary and Lazarus and then He would come early in the morning to teach and in the evening go back to the Mount of Olives. The text also seems to break up the flow of the narrative, which has to do with the festival of tabernacles and if you went from John 7:52 and skipped to chapter eight, verse 12, the tabernacle motif is continuous, and this portion seems to be kind of a tangent. In some early manuscripts, this was even thrown in as an addition to Luke’s Gospel. So, how are we really to handle this account?

One of the reasons I think this was left out of very early editions was the very surprising approach Jesus took with this woman who was caught in adultery. Sexual sins were looked upon with particular disdain, as they often are today, and the idea that there was no real punishment, and that He actually forgave her after saying, “Go, and sin no more,” would not actually fit that ambient background. So, I have to stress, as there is today, but certainly back then, kind of a double standard really, between men and woman. Even today there is a little more latitude offered to men than there is to women. This would be very characteristic of that account.

So, we have this reason why it might not have been originally included. But it really fits, in my view, a typical Synoptics conflict story, where people would try and put Jesus to the test and put Him on the horns of a dilemma. If He does this, He’s in trouble, if He does the opposite He is also in trouble. This is very clearly a dilemma text, in which they are trying to test Him. The point that I am trying to stress here is that in spite of all this I believe we have a story here that is true but simply did not have a home for a while. I will say, also, that in the history of the Church, this text has had a huge impact and the Spirit of God has used it in powerful ways.

So, from that standpoint and my own approach to it, that it wasn’t in John’s original text, nevertheless I believe it is an authentic event that did occur. Because of that we are going to take a quick look at this portion of the text and I want to say that in these first 11 verses what we have is a contrast.

In this case the contrast is between law and grace. It reminds me a great deal of Inspector Javert and Jean Valjean in Les Miserable, where we have an example of someone being so consumed by the requirements of the law that he basically digs his heels in to find Jean Valjean and does everything until he finally finds him. He discovers, though, the grace that is involved and he can not handle that kind of grace, the grace of forgiveness. Consequently it is more than he can bear and ultimately he commits suicide.

But the reality of the grace that Jean Valjean experienced, when he stole the silver from the Bishop, when the Bishop said, “Actually, you forgot to steal this as well,” referring to the candlesticks, was a lifesaving action and it made all the difference in the world. It was so overwhelming to him that it made him a marked man. He never forgot that moment and from that point on it was his own ambition to become a harbinger of grace, a manifestation of grace. What we will see here as well is that when we forget our true condition, before we knew Christ, when we forget the condition of sin, when we can forget what we are capable of doing, that grace also diminishes in our lives.

The contrast we have, between the self-satisfied religious police on the one hand and the idea of a woman who recognizes her true condition, is the contrast between those who will accept or reject Christ. We see that people who have an experiential grasp of their needs are the same people who will grasp grace. People who do not understand their true condition or after a while become smug and self-satisfied and don’t understand grace are people who often won’t give it as well. We become a people who are so focused on our self-righteousness that we can no longer focus on our own condition. I think, in that regard, this is an illuminating story.

Let’s look at the first few verses. What we see is Jesus going up to the Mount of Olives and “Early in the morning He came again into the temple, and all the people were coming to Him and He sat down and began to teach them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery, and having set her in the center of the court, they said to Him, ‘Teacher, this woman has been caught in adultery, in the very act’.” There are a couple of problems that we have in this. They pushed the woman into the midst of the crowd and according to the law we have a problem. What does the law require when both parties are caught in adultery?

Both parties are also to be condemned, the man and the woman. So, where is the guy? They basically violated the law by not bringing him before Jesus and they also violated the law when they set up a trap in the first place. In either case, they are so concerned with the law that they are ready to violate it in an attempt to trap Jesus. In the end, when we think about it, we get all these encrusted traditions and suppose God is really concerned about all of it. We ‘major in the minors and minor in the majors’, don’t we? We get our priorities inverted.

So, this trap was set to put Him on the horns of a dilemma. Here is the problem. If Jesus condemned her to be stoned, what would that have done to His message? It would have made Him look uncompassionate and ungraceful and also that He was no longer someone whose message of forgiveness could be taken seriously. What is the opposite extreme? What if He set her free? Then it would be a violation of the law. So, here is what they are trying to do; they are pitting Jesus against Moses.

Typically, this will be a ploy that they use. Next week, when we look at A Man For All Seasons, you will see a similar trap used in trying to trap Thomas More. When people want to make it happen there are a variety of ways they can use to make it happen. Even when it is not true, there are ways of accomplishing it. So, in looking at our text, then, they are saying this to Jesus: “Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women; what then do you say?” You can almost see that smug, satisfied look on their faces and “They were saying this, testing Him, so that they might have grounds for accusing Him. But Jesus stooped down and with His finger wrote on the ground.” That is a very intriguing little text, isn’t it, the idea of writing on the ground?

There is a tradition about this, Jeremiah 17:13, and it was this verse which Jesus wrote on the ground, “Those who turn away from You on earth will be written down, because they have forsaken the fountain of living water.” Another option that some people think He may have written is Exodus 23:1: “Do not join your hand with a wicked man to be a malicious witness.” Others think He was writing a portion of the Law and the idea would be, from Exodus 31, that He was reminding them about the Ten Commandments. How were they originally written?

Remember what it says in Exodus about the Ten Commandments? They were written by the finger of God. So, it was with His finger that He was writing in the sand and it would be an allusion to that imagery. It would be an indirect, but visual, claim to His deity. These are all possibilities and we can’t know for sure. He never wasted a motion and there was something going on there but the text chooses not to reveal it. 2,000 years later we can enjoy our speculation, just as we always wonder what was Paul’s ‘thorn in the flesh’. They are fun to speculate about. The point is this; instead of passing judgment on this woman we see that He turns it back on the judges. “But when they persisted in asking Him, He straightened up and said to them, ‘He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her’.”

Now, what He is really doing here is looking at Deuteronomy 17:7. Flip back with me and look at Deuteronomy 22:22 first and there you will the mosaic requirement. “If a man is found lying with a married woman, then both of them shall die; the man who lay with the woman and the woman; thus you shall purge the evil from Israel.” That was the situation and here they violated that very text. Yet, they are asking Jesus if He is going to be following the Law. You see the idea there? Now turn to chapter 17, verse seven, and it says, “The hand of the witnesses shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people.

So you shall purge the evil from your midst.” What Jesus is saying is that if they are claiming to be the witnesses then, they must be the first ones to do it. So, they are applying the Law to the woman but are not applying it to themselves. He is trying to show them that they are hardly different from the woman in this regard. The case was more difficult because she knew she had a problem and they did not.

This reminds me of Matthew chapter 21, where we have a passage that refers to this very dilemma we are facing here. In Matthew 21:31 we see Jesus saying, ““Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly I say to you that the tax collectors and prostitutes will get into kingdom before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him; but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did believe him; and you, seeing this, did not even feel remorse afterwards so as to believe him”.” That is a very strong statement. He is telling these very righteous people, and they are from an external point of view, that they are behind the tax collectors and the prostitutes.

It was really quite a claim. You can’t really get lower than that. The tax collectors were really the scum of the earth. They were regarded as sell-outs against their own people, actually making a profit in collusion with the Romans as they charged their own people. You know, we can contain Jesus; we’ve heard these stories and we are used to them, but I promise you that if He came into our midst today and said things to us, I think we, too, would struggle with Him. But do understand that His message appeals to those who grasp their true need; people who really nothing to fall back upon.

So, it would often be the people who were the outcasts and not in positions of power and influence. They had nothing to lose and everything to gain. You see the idea? These were the people who would more often be receptive to His message. The religious leaders had a great deal to lose. He was threatening their own interests. So, we see this extraordinary and radical nature, as so many facets of Christ’s life are. When He gives attention to people in great need, what kind of attention does He give them? It is undivided attention.

I love the fact that He completely reduces His world to their needs and focuses on them, while His disciples are interested more in moving on. This is to me a very important reality because it illustrates, too, that you and I are the recipients of God’s love and attention. It is not easy to grasp how God can even notice and be concerned with our very deepest needs and worries and fears and so forth.

Yet, He has all the time in the world to focus on you as well as each and every other person because for God a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years is also like a day. In a very real way, then, He has all the time necessary. Do you ever think about that? When you are in a large church and all the people are praying and doing the silent intercessory prayers? How on earth does He take it all in?

Well, He has an eternity in every moment, and you see where I am going with that. However, the other side of the coin is that eternity is also only a moment to Him. It is a deep mystery. But, the point here is He is deeply focused and concerned about our needs. Now, our text continues, in verse eight, and “Again He stooped down and wrote on the ground. When they heard this statement that He made, they began to go out one by one, beginning with the older ones, and He was left alone.”

So, one group after another would drop their stones and quietly leave until finally they were all gone. “He was left alone, and the woman, where she was, in the center of the court. Straightening up, Jesus said to her, “Woman, where are they? Did no one condemn you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “I do not condemn you either. Go and from now on sin no more”.”

So, Jesus is not really minimizing the sin or contradicting the Law. For Him to forgive her is not a cheap thing at all. If we grasp the nature of Jesus’ forgiveness, and this is implied, it means that He would have to pay for her sins Himself. In order for the Father to be satisfied, and remember one of the great tensions points in Paul’s theology in Romans was that God must be just when He justifies sinners.

Now, how can He be just and at the same time declare those opposed to Him to be righteous? The only way He can do that is to take the cost upon Himself. Basically, He is underwriting the cost of the human condition. Now, forgiveness is free, but it is not cheap. Someone must pay the price. Certainly John 3 makes it clear; “He so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” Also, 1^st Peter 3:18 is a central passage on this whole motif on what it required, this awful cost, that was necessary; “Christ also died for sins, once for all; the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.”

So, Peter also makes this very clear; the just died for the unjust so that He could bring us to God. Otherwise, His offer of forgiveness really wouldn’t be meaningful. Then, in 2^nd Corinthians 5:21, there is this well known text, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” The awful price of forgiveness, then, is Christ underwriting that and making it possible for us to receive it.

So, we see a clear picture of God’s provision. The Law was given to do what? What did the Law communicate to us? Paul makes this clear in Romans 3. It wasn’t to save us from sin but to reveal our sin. Romans 3:20 reveals that, “Because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin.” The Law reveals the condition and drives us to grace. No one in the Law was saved by keeping the Law because no one could satisfy the requirements of the Law.

Instead, the Law drove them to grace and that is why David, in his marvelous repentant Psalm, Psalm 51, essentially says that it is by grace and through faith in You, and Your mercy and compassion, that it is possible to have the right knowledge of You. Remember when he says, of his sin; “Be gracious to me, O God, according to Your loving kindness. According to the greatness of Your compassion blot out my transgressions.” The superscription of the Psalm is very specific. By the way, the superscription of the psalm, in Hebrew, was actually the first verse. Our numbers are actually one number off.

But, the superscription says, “For the choir director. A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came to him, after he had gone into Bathsheba.” We have no ambiguity here; we know what the context was. But you see what David is appealing to? It is not to his righteous life, it is to God’s loving kindness, to His ‘chanan’, and that word means ‘mercy’ and it means ‘loyal love’. “Because of the greatness of Your compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. Against You, You only, I have sinned and done what is evil in Your sight, So that You are justified when You speak and blameless when You judge.” Clearly, we see a man who grasps his problem and he is thinking if there were an option for me to do it, if I had a sacrifice, I would offer it.

That is why he says, in verse 16, “You do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it; You are not pleased with burnt offering. The sacrifices of God”-are what, who remembers how it goes? “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit.” And, “Blessed are those who”-what? “Are poor in spirit.”

So, “A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” David comes to God in the humility of conviction. So it is with us as well. The worst thing we can do is rationalize our foolishness and our sin and cover it up. God will know our heart and so when we come to Him we are understanding that it is the Law, God’s righteous revelation of Himself, in the Old and the New Testament, when we see His Commandments, and it is impossible for us to satisfy them, apart from His grace and power. And so, conviction must always precede conversion. So it always is; a person must first become aware of their sin.

I believe, and I am hoping this will be the case, that Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ can have a similar impact on our own times. From all accounts it seems that it will have a very powerful impact. There is always a cultural warfare going on, isn’t there? We see it today and surely we see it in this text. If you wanted to look at the Gospel of John just in terms of spiritual warfare it would be a very creative and interesting study. It is in every chapter. You see the polarization that Jesus brings with those that would be willing to humble themselves and come to Him in the obedience of faith with the humility and transparency that is needful.

By contrast, it is the self-assured, smug people, who will resist His claims and offers. The one thing you can see with Jesus is that the more time people spend with Him the less they can ignore Him. You can not spend much time with Him without accepting Him or rejecting Him. To ignore Him is not an option. He polarizes the crowds and He does it in every chapter. Moving back to our text, then, we see that He does not diminish the sin but He offers gracious forgiveness. It is not an excuse to the sin.

The second contrast we see in this text, and remember that the first was between law and grace, and grace does not eliminate the Law, it satisfies it, you see the difference there? Jesus, by fulfilling the Law, makes it possible for us to enjoy the grace of God. So, we see the next contrast in verses 12 through 20 and this contrast is between light and darkness. Again, there is a lot of polarization in this Gospel.

This brings us to the second great ‘I-am’ statement. “Then Jesus spoke again to them, saying, ‘I am the light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life’.” So, the interruption we just looked at, in Jesus’ tabernacle discourse is now picked up again because I believe what we have, if you look at verse 37 of John 7, and remember that there was beginning of the feast and a middle and then, “On the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, ‘If anyone is thirsty let them come to Me and drink’.” Now, after making these claims, when He talks about offering rivers of living water and He referring to the Spirit of God, then I believe the contest would also be continued of we go from chapter seven, verse 52 to chapter eight, verse 12, without this story in between. He is still on the last day of the feast.

Remember that the tabernacles were associated with the provision of water and also with provision of light as well. What you have in this idea of tabernacles is four huge bowls and stands in the area of the temple and these golden bowls were filled with oil and apparently they would use the garments of the priests that were worn out as wicks for them. When they would light them, and my feeling is that they did this every night, imagine Jerusalem at night because as the rabbis said, ‘All Jerusalem was illuminated’, and this in a city that did not have public lighting after dusk. You have to understand this; it is difficult to think of a city without public lighting. Imagine, also, Jerusalem’s yellow limestone walls illuminated by these massive, golden bowls of oil.

It must have been a spectacular thing that could be seen from many miles off. It would have been a marvelous thing and on the final day, with Jesus teaching in the court of the women, where both men and women could give offerings, you have to imagine, as that lighting takes place, you have Jesus saying, “I am the light of the world.” He is saying that He is more than just the light for Jerusalem, He is the light for the entire world. The theme of light, of course, is huge in the Scriptures, isn’t it? What is the first thing God creates? Light.

Think about the motif of light, where “The Lord is my light and salvation, whom shall I fear?” The light was what led them in the wilderness. These lights in Jerusalem were reminiscent of the pillar of light and the fire and the clouds and the imagery would all be associated with this. And the idea of Psalm 119:105 where, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” “The light comes into the world,” in John chapter one and “The darkness does not illuminate it.” So, this motif of light and darkness is very, very evident, particularly in John.

So, He is making a very strong and very clear claim here and in doing so, in this ‘I-am’ statement, He is comparing Himself, in effect, to the rising sun. These wilderness images are used effectively in this text-the manna, the water from the rock and the pillar of fire-in chapters six, seven and eight. “He who follows Me,” He says in verse 12. What does it mean to follow Him? Essentially, if we put all the texts together, it means simply to put one’s trust in Him and to put one’s hope in Him. This is what results in life.

Again, I have to stress that mere intellectual assent is not the issue. It is a personal reception. I have worked with people before and I am thinking here of one person in particular, and he was a classic example of a person who was logical from the get-go and continued on. He started off in a kind of strong agnostic position and then he was a soft agnostic and then he moved into a ‘maybe a possibility of a being’ position and then he moved toward theism. And then his issue was about Jesus. Was Jesus who He claimed to be? Eventually he came to believe in the deity of Christ and that was when he said, ‘Now I have a problem’. He couldn’t go the next step on an intellectual level. It had to be a heart level. He understood the issue. He understood that now it wasn’t just a matter of believing, but that he had to accept Him or reject Him, if Jesus was who He claims to be. You understand that issue?

The thing that brought him over the edge, as it turned out, was a book by Peter Kreeft that was a summary of Pascal and titled Christianity for Modern Pagans. The book had an impact because it focuses on that very issue which Pascal raises, which is the difference between propositional and personal truth; the difference between believing in a proposition and believing in a person. He understood, finally, that it was not a leap into the dark but a step into the light. I remember when he made that step and the amazing thing about this guy was that he was such a logical machine and then he was faced with ‘what do I do to grow’?

It is a wonderful story but for most people it is not that logical. I have a book called Philosophers Who Believe and the intriguing thing about these philosophers, who are all strong academics and also believers, each says that it actually wasn’t the intellectual arguments that really did it for them. It was some experience, some encounter, some matter of the heart, that brought them there. Then they began to think through the logical implications of their new world view. The point is that this idea of belief and trust, what ever launches that, that is what sustains our lives.

Looking now at verse 13, “So the Pharisees said to Him, ‘You are testifying about Yourself; Your testimony is not true’.” This is kind of going back to the story of John 5. Remember how He actually has more than one witness? He said that John the Baptist witnesses to me, that God witnesses to me, and “So, also, My works bear witness of Me.” Moses even bears witness.

If you believe Moses, “you would believe Me, because he wrote about Me.” He is kind of having to review that old territory again. “He answered and said to them, ‘Even if I answer and testify about Myself, My testimony is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going; but you do not know where I come from or where I am going.” Here is the interesting point He is claiming here.

He is not just saying His words are true because of this external authority. His words are true because of His origin. The very fact that He comes forth from God gives authenticity to his words. This is a radical concept because He is telling them that, “You judge according to the flesh; I am not judging anyone. But even if I do judge, My judgment is true; for I am not alone in it, but I and the Father who sent Me. Even in your law it has been written that the testimony of two men is true. I am He who testifies about Myself, and the Father who sent Me testifies about Me.” Now, the light, by its very nature, has a way of bearing witness to itself, doesn’t it?

Have you ever been in a situation where you were in a completely dark area, maybe a cave? Merely a pinpoint of light is enough to illuminate where it is going. You don’t need a lot of light in a completely dark area for you to follow that light. It has its own self-attestation. The light overcomes the darkness. The darkness can not comprehend it. It will lead you safety. Well, His own witness, His own word, is His Father. The experts of the law, ironically, didn’t know their own messiah, even as He stood before them.

Now here is the point. No one can know the word of God without knowing the God of the word. You can know the word of God intellectually, but not in a meaningful way unless you know the God of the word. It is needful for us to have an encounter with God because it is the Spirit of God who illuminates the things of the Spirit in the word of God. There are many people who are theologians who do not have a relationship with God at all.

They know about Jesus but they don’t have a relationship with Him. Just as it is possible for you to be a churchgoer for decades and never know Him. You can quote the Creeds and still not know Him. You see the importance difference? So, there is a huge difference and a huge distance between them. So we see this contrast, and, “They were saying to Him, ‘Where is Your Father’? Jesus answered, ‘You know neither Me nor My Father. If you knew Me you would know My Father also’.” This is another strong claim. “These words He spoke in the treasury as He spoke in the temple and yet no one seized Him because His hour had not yet come.” Again, we have that motif of ‘His hour’ not coming.

Now we move on to a third contrast in verses 21 to 30. It is a contrast between life and death. In verse 21 He said, “’I go away and you will seek Me, and you will die in your sin; where I am going you can not come’. So the Jews were saying, ‘Surely He will not kill Himself, will He, since He says, ‘Where I am going you can not come’?” Remember earlier, in chapter seven, they thought He was going to off to the Diaspora among the gentiles?

Now they think He is going to kill Himself. “And He was saying to them, ‘You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. Therefore I said to you that you ‘will die of your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins’.” The ‘He’ in your test should be in Italics because it is not in the Greek and it is very important that you grasp this. Just as He said ‘I-am’ in verse 12, He is making a very direct ‘I-am’ claim here. He is saying that unless you believe ‘I am’, ‘ego-ami’, “you will die in your sins.” He is claiming here to be the ‘I am’ that ‘I am’.

Those who were true would understand that. That is why the leaders said to Him, “’Who are You’? Jesus said to them, ‘What have I been saying to you from the beginning’?” So, there is this tremendous claim here. But the difference in their destinations was the difference in their origin. ‘You are from below, I am from above. Because I am from above I have a different destination.

If you are from below, you have a different destination than I do’. This is what He is telling them. Now, in the mystery of the Gospel, what takes place is all of us, as we are born in this world, are from below, are we not? We are born in Adam’s line.

So, for you to be reborn in the line of Christ is for now you to be changed in your very derivation. That is to say you have a new origin. No longer is your identity found in the line of Adam. Now your identity is founded on a new line, the line of Christ, a life that has no beginning and no end. If you have a new origin, and it means you have come forth from the Father, where are you going? You are going back to the Father. Before, you were going to be separated from Him. In fact, we were separated in our trespasses and sins. We were dead there, Ephesians chapter two tells us. So, the radical transformation means that we actually have a new origin. We have a new heredity.

This new heredity is what makes it possible for you to have a new destiny. So, in effect, you come from above if you are in Him because that is your new identity. Many other texts tell us this as well. Colossians 2 and Romans 6 are two of the texts that talk about our true identity in our spiritual lives now, with Christ’s death, His burial and His resurrection and ascension to the right hand of the Father.

Let’s continue on in our discussion, then, and He is saying we have a new citizenship, a new destiny, as we see in verse 23, “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.” This is a very, very strong claim, indeed. It has been well said that those who have been born once will die twice; those who have been born twice will die once.

It is an important distinction. The second birth means that you only have one death. The strong statement continues as we move to verse 28, where we see another claim, but, before that, in verse 25, “So they were saying to Him, ‘Who are you’? Jesus said to them, ‘What have I been saying to you from the beginning? I have many things to speak and to judge concerning you, but He who sent Me is true and the things which I heard from Him, these I speak to the world’. They did not realize that He had been speaking to them about the Father.

So Jesus said, ‘When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He’,” and this term, ‘lift up’, has a dual meaning. We have seen it before. ‘Lifting up’ speaks of crucifixion, but it also speaks of exultation. So, the hour when Jesus is ‘lifted up’, He is lifted up on the Cross, yes, but it also refers to His exultation and His ascension to the right hand of the Father. The two are part and parcel.

And so, it was through His death, burial, resurrection and ascension that Jesus would be revealed to the Jewish nation. The Old Testament predicted both the sufferings and the glory of the Messiah, as we well know. So, Jesus said, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that ‘I am’, and I do nothing on My own initiative but I speak these things as the Father taught Me.” It is always what the ‘Father teaches Me’.

Now again we have to say that we often don’t identify with the Father very well because we think of that almost like an Old Testament God. But you must understand something. Jesus never did a thing unless it was something His Father showed Him, or taught Him or showed Him how to do. Understand that if you come to love Jesus, you’ll understand that Jesus is the manifestation of the life of God and that Jesus is, so is the Father.

You must not make a disconnect between the two. It is very, very important for you to grasp that the Father has a deep and profound concern over you and He wishes to display His love to you and cherish you and there is a very real connect here and the more we know about the Son, the more we learn about the Father. And so this powerful ‘I-am’, then ‘you will know I am’, as we saw in verse 24, we see again and He does nothing on His own initiative. In verse 29, “And He who sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him.”

Now, I must be honest with you, I can not say that. I would like to say I always do the things that are pleasing to Him but I then be totally deluded. I will say this though; He has given me a new appetite. I do desire, in my deepest self, to do the things that are pleasing to Him. So, I occasionally do not, but I like to think of myself as one who aspires to be pleasing to Him and you should see yourself that way as well. And so, “As He spoke these things, many came to believe in Him.”

Again we see John’s motif; many rejected and many believed. So we have that contrast again. Now we have a fourth contrast, in verses 41 through 47 we have a contrast between freedom and bondage. There is a very clear contrast between freedom and bondage. In verse 31, “So Jesus was saying to those Jews who believed Him, ‘If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine’.” There is this imagery in John of “abiding in His word,” allowing it to dwell in Him and you, and then, “You will know the truth and it will make you free.” That is the well-known text from John 8:32 You will be set free.

But the Jews responded, though, “We are Abraham’s descendents.” My own suspicion is that, going back again to the religious leaders, although He was speaking to the crowd, the religious leaders get the center stage and challenge Him at every step.

They say, “We have never yet been enslaved to anyone.” Are you kidding me? These are the same people who were enslaved by the Egyptians, by the Assyrians, by the Babylonians, by the Persians, by the Greeks, and now by Rome, and they think they have never been enslaved? It may have to with the Jewish concept of being physically enslaved but not spiritually enslaved. Even those who died in Masada said, “We will be no one’s slave.” It may be this symbolic understanding. Clearly, though, the worst kind of bondage is a bondage that the person doesn’t recognize. The idea is that Jesus is saying He wants to turn their condition. He says, “I say to you , everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin.”

I believe that is true. If you get into the bondage of sin you discover that it begins to form a slave out of you. It will enhance it appetite and become an addiction. He continues, “The slave does not remain in the house forever, the son does remain forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” He is offering to turn them from slaves to sons. Only as sons can they be guaranteed a future.

Frankly, a slave can be sold off. But if you are God’s son, no one can sell you off, you are secure. The true security, then, is the acceptance. We all know what it is like, in our experience, to not be in fellowship with our parents. It didn’t mean that you were not your parent’s child, but there were times that you might as well have not been, in terms of your relationship with them.

Still, it did not change the reality that you were a member of that household. That is the concept. There will be times when the fellowship is not there but the relationship still exists. So it is with our relationship with God. Of course, and better than any earthly parent, He is always there to welcome us when we return.

Again, the best Biblical image I have of God’s welcoming grace has got to be in the parable of the prodigal son. That is just the paradigm for me. Again, if you haven’t read Henri Nouwen’s book by that name, you just need to read it; The Return of the Prodigal Son is such a rich portrait and it would be such an encouraging reading for you because he not only looks at the ‘prodigal’, he also focuses on the father. It says we all are prodigal sons, but we also have something of the elder brother in us. Then he says we are called, actually, to become the father, to become people who mediate the grace of God with our own lives as well, so there is a maturity and development that takes place there. I think that is a very helpful insight.

Let’s continue on. We see this theme, then, between slavery and freedom and it is a tremendous contrast. Jesus goes on to discuss this in verse 37. “I know you are Abraham’s descendants; yet you seek to kill Me, because My word has no place in you. I speak the things which I have seen with My Father; therefore you also do the things which you heard from your father.” Again, this is a very strong statement. “’If you are Abraham’s children, do the deeds of Abraham. But as it is, you are seeking to kill Me, a man who has told you the truth, which I heard from God; this Abraham didn’t do. You are doing the deeds of your father’.

They said to Him, ‘We were not born of fornication, we have one Father: God’.” So, their insult, of course, is to say that He is a bastard. That is basically what they are saying. He was born of fornication. That is your father. “Jesus said to them, ‘If God were your father, you would love Me, for I have proceeded forth and have come from God, for I have not come of My own initiative, but He sent Me.”

In other words, He is saying that if you really love God, you would also love Me, because the two of us go together. Why don’t they understand what He is saying? Because they don’t hear His word. They don’t have the capacity. Now He makes this very strong claim: “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father.” This is the clearest description of Satan we can think of, in terms of his true, intrinsic nature, when He says, “He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

May I parenthetically tell you, that in the spiritual warfare, you are vulnerable to the degree in which you believe the enemy’s lies. If you do not believe his lies, he has little power over you. It is only through his lies and deception that he will cause you to believe and he will seduce you in that way. Usually, it is by a little bit at a time. You can disguise, for example, a pint of poison in a lake of truth.

Frankly, he is a lot more cagey than we might suppose. He is actually going to be a spiritual counterfeit. He tries to use religiosity rather than use something clearly in his own territory. So, I think that his most effective ploy is to be that of an angel of light and to disguise himself in that way. There is a deception that can take place and to believe his lies is to really believe a false idea about who you are and where you came from and where you are going.

So, when we refuse to believe his lies, and we allow the Father to define us, then we can stand against him. Note the order of this; submit to God first, then resist the devil. Do not try resisting the enemy without first submitting to God. That would be a very big mistake.

The sequence is clear. Jesus goes on to say, “Because I speak the truth you do not believe Me. Which one of you convicts Me of sin? If I speak truth, why do you not believe Me? He who is of God hears the words of God; for this reason you do not hear them, because you are not of God.” This is a theme He developed earlier in chapter six. “The Jews answered and said to Him, ‘Do we not say rightly that You are a Samaritan and have a demon’?” There is the great ‘two-fer’, not only are You a Samaritan, but you possess a demon as well. This was more than a double insult because calling Him a Samaritan was about the worst thing they could call Him. The Jews had no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus answers, “I do not have a demon; but I honor My Father, and you dishonor Me.”

When I was on my way over here tonight I was wondering, what are the ways we can honor Jesus? And, what are the ways we can dishonor Him? I was thinking about certain philosophies, and things in literature that dishonor Him and then other things that do honor Him. Then I was thinking about our own lives as well. T

here can be very subtle things by which we dishonor Him. For example, when we make the overt claim to be followers of Jesus, then we do not pay our bills when people expect us to pay them. How is that honoring to Christ? I was talking to a believer who has been consistently manipulated by people who presume to his grace by not paying him, even though they had contracted to do so.

That to me is as dishonoring to Jesus as are more overt kinds of activities can be. There are subtle ways in which we can be dishonoring to Him and we want to be pleasing to Him and to honor Him in that regard. The problem of slavery to sin, then, is one that Jesus discusses and deals with and then we have this contrast between honor and dishonor. So, in verses 48 to 59, the contrast here is between dishonor and honor.

The Jews accused Him of being a Samaritan and having a demon and Jesus answered, “’But I do not seek My glory; there is one who seeks and judges. I say to you, if anyone keeps My word, he will never see death’. The Jews said to Him, ‘Now we know you have a demon. Abraham died and the prophets also; and you say’, ‘If anyone keeps my word, he will never taste of death’. Surely you are not greater than our father Abraham, who died? The prophets died too; whom do You make yourself out to be?

Jesus answered, ‘If I glorified Myself, My glory is nothing; it is My Father who glorifies Me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God’.” He makes it very explicit there. If they were wondering about who His Father was, He makes it clear to them right there. Jesus continues, “You have not come to know Him, but I know Him; and if I say that I do not know Him, I will be a liar like you, but I do know Him and keep His word.”

I must tell you, Jesus doesn’t mince His words. He is being very forthright in the things He says to them. “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.” That would be an outrageous thing to make a claim about. “So the Jews said to Him, ‘You are not fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham’? Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, ego-ami’.” This is ‘ego-ami’ for the third time; verse 24, verse 28 and now in verse 58. Before Abraham was born, ‘I am that I am’.

It is the claim of Exodus chapter three, the One before whom Moses stood at the burning bush. That is an awesome claim and they understood what He was saying because, “Therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him, but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple.” How He did that I am not clear on, especially when He was surrounded by such a huge crowd. But clearly the reason He could do that was that His hour had not yet come.

I want to tell you something; your life is immortal until God’s purpose has been fulfilled in your life. There is no force that can take you out until God’s purpose is complete. Understand that; your hour has not yet come. God alone knows your hour and you must work while you can still work.

Use your time and your opportunity. Some people often say, ‘He is so heavenly minded, he has no earthly good’, but actually the more heavenly minded you are, the more you will treasure the opportunity of your present time because you know right now does count forever. Or, to quote our pal, Maximus, from Gladiator, “What we do today echoes in eternity.” There is a truth in that.

What we do right now does reverberate and it does have an impact. So, we want to treasure the opportunity and to honor the Father as the Son honored the Father. He who honors the Son honors the Father, and so we want to be people who pursue that, allowing God to define us, then we discover true security, true significance, and true worth.

(Q) (A): Actually, the intellectual thing would have been a barrier for Him. It required the power of an encounter, and I think a lot of these people who were philosophers, actually by their own testimony, it would have been their pride that kept Him from going that way. So, often He comes up and surprises us. It is not to denigrate the value of the mind, but it is to say that the mind and the heart need to work together because we are holistic beings. Let me close in a prayer. Father, we thank You that you care for us and that Jesus has manifested You to us and that He was lifted up and because He was lifted up we are also now transferred from being slaves to being Your children. I pray that we would walk in that and revel in that and be people who truly walk in the genuine security and satisfaction and significance of persons remade in Your image and conformed to Your Son. We pray in His name. Amen.

This is part 11 in a 23-part study on the book of John.  Below is a modified transcript.

Let us begin, as we always do, in a prayer. Lord, we thank You for our time together and we ask that You would guide our thoughts as we reflect upon Your word and we pray that we would be people who would not only hear Your word but also apply it in our lives. We pray in Christ’s name. Amen.

We are up to John 9, which is one of my favorite chapters in the Gospel for various reasons, and one of the reasons is because it is dramatic dialogue at its best. It is a great overview of terrific dialogue and understanding about the way the presentation of Jesus becomes more and more evident as we see it. Through His titles we see progressive revelation about the person of Jesus. In a very real way, through the eyes of this blind man, we are also forced to see Jesus and decide how we will respond to Him.

There is a progressive development in the revelation of this one. Now keep in mind that this is continuing the narrative that was previously found in John chapters seven and eight, namely, the feast of tabernacles. We are still at the end of the feast of tabernacles. It is a seven-day feast that is going on and on the last day they would light up these huge lanterns.

In fact, they had these four gigantic stands and each of these stands had four golden bowls and these bowls were filled with oil. This sounds bizarre, but the wicks that they would use came from the undergarments of the priests. These 16 lights were in the courtyard of the women so they all had access to that. It was said that when they lit them up at night, all of Jerusalem would be ablaze. You have to keep in mind that there were no streetlights. All they had were candles, so this would be a brilliant thing for them to see.

The festival of tabernacles related to two themes; one was to water and the other was to light. As we have said before, in John chapter eight, John uses the imagery of Jesus being the light of the world and so we see this theme being picked up also in chapter nine. Look at chapter 8, verse 12 and, “Jesus, again spoke to them saying, ‘I am the light of the world. He who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life’.” So, if you contexturalize that, it is very, very clear that Jesus is in fact using what is physical around Him at this period in time, on the last day of the feast, to show that He Himself is a greater light than Israel has yet known. He is the light that shines out in the darkness.

It is an image from John chapter one as well. Remember the light would shine in the darkness and the darkness could not comprehend it? Themes of light and darkness run all through John’s Gospel, as indeed it does throughout the entire Scriptures. You can do a wonderful study, going from Genesis through Revelation, focusing on the motif of light and darkness and how it all ties together. But this claim that we have here is that He is the light of the world. Now what we are going to see are four revelations of Jesus.

In verses one through 12 we are going to see Jesus as a man who is called Jesus, and that is all that the blind man knows about Him. Then we are going to him learning more about Him. He is going to realize that He is a prophet, beginning in verse 13 and going to verse 23. Then he is going to acknowledge that He is a man of God in verses 24 through 34 and finally he comes to regard Him as the Son of Man and worships Him at the end of the chapter.

There is a progressive development in the theme of the titles of Jesus. Listen to these titles that spill over each other, creating a message for the study of this Gospel. He is called a rabbi in verse two. He is called Jesus in verse three and is called the ‘Light of the world’ in verse five. He is called the ‘One who is sent from God’ in verse seven and He is ‘from God’ in verse 16.

Then He is ‘prophet’ in 17 and then He is called ‘Christ’ in verse 22 and the ‘Son of Man’ in 35 and then ‘Lord’ in verse 38. So there is a developing theme, a motif, of whom this Jesus is. This is extremely important because John, in doing so, was really forcing us as readers to discern where we stand with regard with this Jesus because if you go ahead to chapter 20 you will see John’s purpose statement, where he says that, “These signs I have selected are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ.”

Now remember the word ‘christos’ really referred to ‘the anointed one’. It would be ‘mashiyach’ in the Hebrew and it meant the one who was anointed. That is a title and term laden with implications because of the fact that the Jews understanding, in the Hebrew Bible, was a progressive revelation of the power and authority of Christ, the Son of God, who was also the Son of Man and by believing you may also have life in His name.

These double meanings become particularly evident in this dramatic story because the double meaning will be the theme of light and darkness. Those who claim to have light are actually in darkness. The one who is born blind is believed to have been born blind because of something his parents had done or he was just born in sin.

In that way the spiritual leaders are saying that this man has no spiritual discernment or any visual acuity. The two go together. The irony, of course, will be at the end when Jesus is telling them they are the ones who are blind. They claim to see but actually do not; they are still in their sins. There is an ironic turn to this, just as there was, as Jesus faced His accusers and turned it around and actually began to accuse them of their hardness of heart.

In fact, we have a lot of parallels between these chapters. In chapter five there is a man who is healed on the Sabbath. The temple leadership raised questions about this. Similarly, here in chapter nine, a man is healed of his blindness and it again occurs on the Sabbath. They are more concerned about that than they are about the fact that the man was healed from his blindness.

So, we see a theme of questions and then in both cases Jesus finds the man and encourages that man and then He enters into an extended debate with Jerusalem’s theologians about the meaning of His authority. Both chapters have this kind of structure. One of the Synoptic structures that we find is that you have a healing account followed by a narrative of discourse and other confrontations that take place with it. Of course we know that this theme of Jesus healing blind people is quite common in the Gospels and it seems to actually be disproportionate, doesn’t it? There are reasons for that.

It is a kind of hallmark to His ministry and you will see Him healing the blind man in Jericho and then two blind men in Galilee and then a blind man without speech, possibly in Capernaum, then a blind man in Bethsaida and one more in Jerusalem following the cleansing in the temple. So, it is quite intriguing that we have all of these. What we see, as well, as we see in other chapters too, is that our Lord performs miracles to meet human needs and as a proof of His Messianic claims, but also as a means of conveying spiritual truth.

None of His signs were de-contexturalized from His claims or from His life. All His signs had a purpose. They just weren’t thrown in for fun. The greatest miracle in this chapter is not the opening of the blind man’s eyes but the opening of his heart. In understanding this thematic development, let’s take a look at the first seven verses, which is the actual account of the man who has been blind from birth and now becomes healed.

And so, after verse 59, when they picked up stones to throw at him and Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple, you recall that He made the claim that before Abraham was, ‘He is’. Before that He said, “Unless you believe that ‘I-am’ you will die in your sins,” so we have very, very strong claims along these lines. The claim of ‘ego-ami’, and the Jewish leaders understood that because if in fact He was not who He claimed to be, then it would have blasphemous and they would have been warranted to actually stone Him.

By the way, the Gospels are masters of understatement, it just says, “He hid Himself and went out of the temple.” That is no easy task when you are surrounded by hundreds of people. In any case, He did this and, in chapter nine, verse one, “As He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind’?”

This is a very important question and Jesus’ response to this will have a great bearing on the issue of the problem of evil and suffering. “Jesus answered, ‘It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him’.”

There is a bit of a struggle here. Many of our translations don’t get this right. There is a purpose clause that begins with the Greek word ‘hina’, which would mean ‘so that’. That purpose clause can actually be related to what follows or it can be related to what was previous. My view of this is that it relates to what follows. If that is correct, here is how you translate it. It would be something like this, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but so that the work of God might be displayed in his life, we must do the work of Him who sent Me while it is still day.” You see the difference? It is big. It is not saying that God made this man blind and therefore I am now going to use it.

He is saying that in order for the work of God to be displayed in his life, we must do the work of God while it is day, because I am not going to be here on this planet doing these things for a long time. I argue this: evil and suffering are clearly the consequence of a fallen world.

That consequence relates to a number of things and one of them is the spiritual warfare that is all about us. In that spiritual warfare we discover, then, that there are forces of evil at work. There are also forces of evil within our very lives because we are born in the context of sin.

Psalm 51 makes it very clear, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity.” So, from the very beginning David acknowledges that. In other words, we are born into this world and the solidarity with our progenitor, Adam, means that we are now people who carry on that fatal disease from generation to generation.

The problem that we have is that while we have biological life we do not have spiritual life. And so, the need for the good news of the second birth, the spiritual birth that gives us spiritual life, is really underscored by the evil that we see in this world. In a disease and death environment, because things are not as they were created, we are not as we were created.

We have changed ourselves. That Genesis 3 account is exceedingly central. To understand what human nature is about, in relationship to God’s intention, you have to understand how Genesis 1 and 2 precede Genesis 3. We are not now as we were originally. We have changed ourselves and as a consequence, then, we are no longer what God would have called “Very good.”

So, there is a distortion and from that point, then, it was needful for God to launch a program and a process in which the Messiah Himself would be the One who would come. The mystery of all mysteries was that God Himself would underwrite the cost of human sin in this world. It is a deep and profound mystery; that God would actually take it upon Himself is very unique.

Again, I have stressed this before but I will do it again; only in the Biblical vision do we see a God who suffers for His people, who sacrifices for His people and who so wants us that He Himself will suffer and take upon Himself our own sin. This is utterly unique, and the world, not being the friend of grace, will always try and turn that thing around and it is the one thing that is going to be utterly set apart from human endeavors to arrive at religious systems.

All human endeavors always work out to be a system by which we somehow achieve, or hope we can achieve, being pleasing to God through our own efforts. It is what I call ‘bootstrap theology’; you are trying to lift yourself up to heaven by reaching down and pulling on your bootstraps.

So, the Scriptures emphasize a very different orientation. But Jesus, I want you to notice, doesn’t answer the question head-on does He? He says, “It was neither that this man sinned nor his parents.” That is an interesting thought. How could he have sinned if he was born blind? Is it a pre-incarnation kind of thing? Is it his parent’s evil? No, the answer is always this; we are never right to blame a specific disability on a specific sin. We have to very careful here about that sort of notion.

We are often tempted to say, ‘this is because of that’. We do not know. In the economy of God it is not so simple. That is a simplistic understanding. We must understand that all physical problems in this fleeting world are consequences of the fall and of spiritual warfare and rebellion, but ultimately we look ahead and realize that He will take away every tear from your eyes, that death will no longer be, that pain and suffering will be removed and He will make all things new. The older I get, the more I treasure that hope.

I will be honest with you; I am getting to the point now where I have to finally admit I am more than halfway. I should have admitted that a long time ago. The fact is that if my hope were not in that, and I am wired in such a way that I can’t help but think about these questions, I would really be in a despairing situation.

What Pascal described as distraction and indifference are the two strategies of the human race. He predicted this in the 17^th century and it is truer now than ever before. The basic strategies that I see people following, especially in our culture, are these two things. Distraction, and boy are we good at that or what? It is called entertainment. It is called mindless entertainment and deception and indifference, a posture of indifference. It is almost kind of an assumed skepticism. And so, we are forced in this Gospel, then, to really be confronted with the fundamental issues of life.

Jesus does not answer this question and the material on evil and suffering that can be derived from the Biblical materials help us understand some things about this. I will say simply that God Himself, though, is never accountable for the idea of committing an evil. He does create the conditions under which there are free agents that do choose evil. While God is the ultimate cause, He is not the secondary cause.

That is to say, He is never accountable for evil, though He allows it to happen in this world. He underwrites the cost and ultimately He will overcome it.

(Q): Is blindness evil?

(A): Blindness would be evil, in a sense, if you described it as a lack of a good thing. For example, it is not an evil thing for a creature that is sightless, or a stone or a vegetable but if we are dealing with a human being who has eyes for a purpose, then for them to have that deficiency would be a sign of evil in the sense that there is a lack of a good thing. It would be a deficiency of a good thing. So, the idea here is who sinned? They are immediately connecting it with sin. We must understand that in the new creation, there will be no blindness. No one will be lame; no one will be in a position to have physical deficiencies.

(Q)

(A): What we are saying here is that a blessing will be shown. He is blind, but Jesus is about to do the works of His Father and that will manifest a blessing. But, it depends upon how you translate that text. As I say, if we said, “So that the work of God might be displayed in his life, we must do the work of Him who sent Me,” then there is not that immediate connect.

As I go on here, Jesus says in verse four, “We must work the works of Him who sent Me as long as it is day; night is coming when no one can work.” What He is alluding to is that we have a short window of time. We must recognize the very short window of opportunity that we have on this planet. I am fond of saying to people that there are many things we will do in heaven but two of the things we will never ever be able to do again is share the Gospel with people who do not know Christ and secondly to help people in desperate need. We will never have that opportunity again.

So, it is important to realize that you have an arena of influence and an opportunity now to become a manifestation, an agent, an ambassador, of the King and to be one who is a “harbinger of reconciliation,” as it says in 2^nd Corinthians five. Jesus goes on to say, “While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” Again, it is that same theme we saw in chapter eight, verse 12, “I am the light of the world.”

We can imagine at this point, then, the whole festival, focusing on light, is something He is really leveraging and using. Continuing, “When He had said this, He spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle, and applied the clay to His eyes.”

I have a couple of thoughts on this. One thing is that blindness was a good deal more prevalent than you might suppose. They didn’t cures and they didn’t have treatments that we have today and also it would be easy to contract a disease through dirty water and pollutants. Blindness, then, was much more prevalent than it is now, but secondly, it was also much more debilitating.

Today, if a person is blind there are resources. You have Braille, for example, and other things to be used that can help them, seeing-eye dogs for example. In that culture, however, you did not have work, you did not have a position and it was almost like an assignment of death. You were worse off than if you were a paralytic. It was an awful condition in that culture. You had to be completely dependent and, in this case, with his parents. So, Jesus takes this spittle and applies it to His eyes.

I find that to be interesting because this spittle was actually associated, by the way, with renowned people. There was enormous superstition surrounding the spittle of a renowned person. It was regarded as having magical properties at that time. There was a lot of superstition. Think about this. Without any medical aid, it would be easy to form superstitions about which a person could be healed, especially if you could find something that was an authenticated healing like this can be authenticated.

He spits down on the ground, made clay from that spittle and applied it to His eyes and then, in verse seven, “Said to him, ‘Go wash in the pool of Siloam’, (which is translated, Sent).” This is significant here because Jesus, by the way, is described as the One who is sent by God. Chapters four, five, seven and eight all say, “Here is a man sent by God.” So the One who was sent sends him to the Sent.

You see the idea? He sends him to the place called Sent. There is a play on words going on here. A blind man is told to wash in a place called Sent by the One who was sent by God. The point is that Jesus is the source of his healing, not the pool. This pool of Siloam, by the way, was the only internal spring of water that they had in the city of Jerusalem and it was made possible after Hezekiah redirected the Gichon spring, which was outside the city wall at that time.

They dug this tunnel, Hezekiah’s water tunnel, through into the city. It was almost a mile long, which was an amazing feat. Has anyone ever gone through that tunnel? It is a very strange experience. I have been there myself. I didn’t like it. One time was enough. The tunnel is not big and sometimes you have to crouch as it really narrows. In any case, this was a brilliant undertaking because it made it possible for the people of Jerusalem to withstand a long siege. A water supply was absolutely critical in that kind of culture.

So, we have this portrait, then, of a man who goes and it says, “He went away and washed, and came back seeing.” Now remember that he hasn’t even seen Jesus yet. “He went away, washed and came back seeing.” It reminds me of the story of Naiman and Elijah. Remember that Naiman comes down and Elijah didn’t even bother to come out and meet him. Instead, he sends his servant out there and tells him to dip in the Jordan River seven times. The guy was outraged. He was a powerful captain of the Assyrians. Naiman at least thought Elijah would come out and wave his arms around and heal him as if by magic.

Here is the point. The servant merely told him to try it out. Can you imagine the first time he dips himself? He probably felt like a fool. Even the fourth, fifth or sixth times, too. Nothing happens, but the seventh time he comes out and his skin is like a baby’s. He then goes back and tries to pay Elijah for healing him. Elijah refused, of course, and told him, “Grace can not be purchased.”

And so, there is an analogy here. Here is a man who at least went away and did as He said. That is the first part of the narrative, then, the healing of the blind man. Then the second part of the narrative is found in verses 8 through 34. This is the interrogation and here we see four basic moves. In verses 8 through 12 their neighbors are involved. Then in 13 through 17 it is the Pharisees and then the parents are called in, in verses 18 through 23. Then, after his parents, we go to the man himself and he is interrogated before the Pharisees. Again, each of these things makes the case stronger and stronger.

The natural question would be, is this the same guy that was born blind? Secondly, was he really blind to begin with? His parents authenticate this. Who is this Jesus? After all, He healed on what day? The Sabbath, that’s right. If He were of God, why would He heal on the Sabbath? Actually, as we have seen, that was not a violation of Torah. It was a violation of human tradition. But they were so wrapped up in their human traditions that they virtually elevated that above grace and were more concerned that He violated their particular tradition than the fact that a man was healed. We have seen this before in the Gospels, where He is challenged again and again.

Chapter five is reminiscent of that discourse. Let’s take a look at the neighbors, by going back to verses 8 through 12. “Therefore the neighbors, and those who previously saw him as a beggar, were saying, ‘Is not this the one who used to sit and beg’?” It is a question of identity. Is this the right guy? We have seen him all his life. “Others were saying, ‘This is he’, still others were saying, ‘No, but he is like him’. He kept saying, ‘I am the one’.” You can just see the doubt; is this a setup here? The poor guy kept saying, “I am the one,” but they are completely ignoring him. “So they were saying to him, ‘How then were your eyes opened’? If you are the one, how could your eyes have been opened? You were born blind, how could it be that your eyes were opened? “He answered, ‘The man who is called Jesus made clay’.” At this point that is all he knows about him. Remember that he has not seen Jesus yet. All he knows is the name. “He made clay, and anointed my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash’; so I went away and washed and I received sight.”

I would have loved to have been there. Wouldn’t it be great to see a man who was born blind and suddenly could see? We have heard about people who have lost their sight and regained it, but here is a man who has never seen at all. It reminds me of the Mark chapter eight healing. Turn back to that for a moment and we see a two-stage process that took place.

Really, in a way, it would require two miracles. “When they came to Bethsaida,” in Mark 8:22, “they brought a blind man to Jesus and implored Him to touch him. Taking the blind man by the hand, He brought him out of the village; and after spitting on his eyes,” and here we have that spittle imagery again, “He asked him, ‘Do you see anything’? And he looked up and said, ‘I see men, for I see them like trees, walking around’.”

That is the first stage. Actually, it is quite possible because if a man were truly blind, he would be able now to see, but his problem would be his cognitive perception. The brain has not been attuned to see and shape those forms. It would be simply chaotic. So, there is a second stage in this miracle. “Then again He laid His hands on his eyes and he looked intently and was restored, and began to see everything clearly. And He sent him to his home, saying, ‘Do not even enter the village’.”

I know of one ophthalmologist who came to faith by reading that text because there is no way the ancient world would understand that two-stage procedure. What are your thoughts about that? Do you find it to be intriguing? I just find it to be astounding. In any event, this is a marvelous image that we have, the miracle is not only of the ability to see, but then there is the cerebral functioning that is required to make sense out of what you are seeing. That is exactly what happens.

So, going back to our text, “They said to him, ‘Where is He’? He said, ‘I don’t know’.” He has no clue as to where Jesus is. The first thing that we see here is that they are asking the wrong question. Instead of ‘how’, it should have been ‘who’. Who is this One? They were focusing more on the manner of the healing and missing the message of the healing. You know, Jesus did it in different ways. He healed two blind men by touching their eyes and on by putting spittle on his eyes. Though the healing power is the same, He can vary His message and methods. God has a way of doing things in unique ways.

Let’s continue on to the next part and look at what the Pharisees say. “They brought to the Pharisees the man who was formerly blind.” Now John raises this point, “Now it was a Sabbath on the day Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes.” That is their focal concern, the violation of their particular law. “Then the Pharisees were also asking him again how he received his sight.

And he said to them, ‘He applied clay to my eyes, I washed, and I see’.” He is giving the same answer over and over again. “Therefore, some of the Pharisees were saying, ‘This man is not from God, because He does not keep the Sabbath’.” So, we see that there is going to be a division here. “But others were saying, ‘How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs’? And there was a division among them?”

In other words, if this man were a sinner, God could not do such an amazing thing. The question now becomes, is this the right guy? Was he certifiably blind and if so, how can we authenticate that? Now, “They said to the blind man again, ‘What do you say about Him, since He opened your eyes’? That is an interesting thought isn’t it? People were divided among themselves so they asked him what do you conclude? So, “He said, ‘He is a prophet’.” First He was a man called Jesus.

Now he concludes he is a prophet. In other words, there is no way that a man who is a sinner could have done what He did. Now, they didn’t go for that either, but the point is that it was an upsetting and challenging concept to the religious leaders but they were blinded by their bias and they sought to discredit the miracle, assuming that somehow Jesus had switched beggars.

And so, it goes on to say, “The Jews did not believe it of him that he had been blind and had received sight, until they called the parents of the very one who received his sight.” Now they want to prove that this is not the real ‘McCoy’ and “They questioned them saying, ‘Is this your son who you say was born blind? Then how does he now see?” His parents were smart enough to know that they were being put into a box because they are afraid of being thrown out of the synagogue if they say something that is displeasing to the leaders. “His parents answered them and said, ‘We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind.” You notice how cautious they are? These are irrefutable statements. “But how he now sees, we do not know. Ask him, he is of age, he will speak for himself.” So, they put it right back on their son, because “His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone confessed Him to be the Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue.”

You see the problem we have in the Scriptures again and again is the problem of fearing other people. Isn’t that true? Go back with me to chapter seven, verse 13. Look at that verse, it says, Yet no one was speaking openly of Him for fear of the Jews.” Then jump ahead to chapter 12 and verse 42 and you will see this same motif: “Nevertheless many even of the rulers believed in Him, but because of the Pharisees they were not confessing Him, for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue.” So, there was a tremendous power that they wielded over people, the power or the authority to more or less ex-communicate them and bar them from fellowship in the religious community.

You know though, as Proverbs 29:25 says, “The fear of man brings a snare.” I love Jeremiah chapter 17 because there it tells us that, “Blessed are those who fear the Lord, but cursed are those who fear men.” Those who fear men will stumble. It is a good thing to fear God, and that is why I tell people that you can not seek to be pleasing to God and impressive to people at the same time. You see what I am saying? You will either play to an audience of one, or you will play to an audience of many that are invisible. So, we are called to decide the audience to whom we play.

It makes all the difference in the world. If you are doing it to be pleasing to God, and that is your fear and that is your hope, that will be a far, far more powerful thing because the focus of your heart is on the spiritual need and the eternal. But, if you are doing it to impress people, the fear of man will snare you and you will live just for the present moment and you not have the fear of God.

The problem we have, and let’s be very frank about this, don’t we in practice often have a greater concern about what people will think if they caught us doing something than in what God would think? Think about it. We look around before we do something stupid. The fact is that at least we gave intellectual lip service to the idea that God is omniscient in the present and knows our thoughts through and through.

But, we don’t act upon that. That is why there is a power, by the way, in the idea of confessing your sins to one another, or having accountability. There is something powerful about that because if a person invites another to hold him or her accountable and they have given that person freedom to do that, there can be a greater concern about that because at least that is visible and palpable.

That is why accountability can be an effective thing.

(Q) A): Yes, it keeps coming back to the man’s testimony at the end of the day. But, here is the important point. The Pharisees are now at the point where the parents have demonstrated the truth and they can no longer say he is a look-alike. They can not also now say that this guy was not always blind. Now it is certifiable and now they have the problem of putting it back on him and he will give testimony and he will not deny what he knows. In spite of the fact that there is a great fear, the man will stand firm on what he knows to be true and not waver.

But, that was a test for him. Here is the thing; when you commit yourself to Christ there will be potential consequences of persecution and so forth. Jesus makes this clear in John 15. So, there is always going to be, in your life and in mine, a period of testing to see if we will confess Him before other people. That is part of the idea. He stands firm and will not deny what he knows to be true.

The point is that the Pharisees can no longer write this off; now they can’t just say the guy was a sinner and couldn’t have been a prophet. Let’s continue in our story. In verse 24, “A second time they called the man who had been blind, and said to him,” and this establishes the fact that they have the right guy and that he was blind, but here is what they do. They put words in his mouth: “Give glory to God; we know that this man is a sinner.” In other words, agree with us. This is what you must confess. In other words, if you don’t say this, you are out of here. You see the point? They were effectively asking him to deny this man.

I love his response. “Whether He is a sinner, I do not know; one thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” That’s great because what can they say? He knows this for sure. They can’t write it off because he is standing there telling them. But, they were not satisfied with that answer. “So they said to him, ‘What did He do to you? How did He open your eyes’?”

Hadn’t they already asked him this before? Now he says, “I told you already and you did not listen; why do you want to hear it again?” He doesn’t exactly endear himself to them with that. But, he goes on, “You don’t want to become His disciples too, do you?” That is a great line. How come you keep asking me this question? “They reviled him and said, ‘You are His disciple but we are disciples of Moses’.”

As if that would mean, therefore, that if you were a disciple of Jesus, you couldn’t be a disciple of Moses. That is a big mistake. The reality is that Jesus came to fulfill the Law of Moses. And so He did. I promise you that Moses, as Abraham did, saw that day and Moses would have responded to Jesus. You see the idea?

Frankly, it is not an either-or. That is why it is rather sad, in Israel for example, that you will be denied citizenship or not be allowed to be regarded as Jewish if you confess Jesus. If you claim to be a Messianic Jew, they will not allow you to be considered Jewish. You can be an atheist. I find that strange. A person can be an atheist and still considered to be a Jew. But, if you confess Jesus, you are no longer a Jew. That ought to tell us something, shouldn’t it? That is always the cutting edge, what we do with Jesus.

At the point in which we say He is just a good man, a prophet, that sort of thing, that is one thing. But, as soon as we acknowledge something more about Him, that He is the Messiah and the Son of the Living God, we have another story entirely and that will be something that will divide people. He knew that He would come and that people would be divided over Him.

So, we go on in the story. “We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where He is from.” Now, I truly like his response. He is getting the upper hand on them. “The man answered and said to them, ‘Well, here is an amazing thing, that you do not know where He is from, and yet He opened my eyes.

We know that God does not hear sinners, but if anyone is God-fearing and does His will, He hears him. Since the beginning of time it has never been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, He could do nothing’.”

Now he is teaching them. Now, he was a man called Jesus, then He was a prophet, and now what is He? He has come from God. You see the development in his illumination and his own reflection and insight. Now he knows He has come from God. If He did not come from God He could do nothing. What was their response? “’You were born entirely in sins, and are you teaching us’? So they put him out.” Now we don’t know how permanent that ‘putting out’ was, it may have been for a short period or it may have actually been permanent.

Now that term, ‘putting him out’, by the way, in verse 35 is the same term put forth in chapter ten, verse four, where he puts forth his sheep. He had to pay a price but he made the right choice. Now, here is what happens. He learns something more about Jesus after they put him out of the synagogue. “Jesus heard that they had put him out, and finding him, He said, ‘Do you believe in the Son of Man’?”

Now we are at the next level, aren’t we? He was a man called Jesus, He was a prophet, He has come forth from God, and now He is the Son of Man. At this moment, the man has never seen Jesus. He hears that voice, though. The voice sounds familiar, but he has never seen the face of Jesus until now. Notice that Jesus sought him out, just as in chapter five He sought out the paralytic. He sought him out and wanted to bring closure because the physical healing is not the point. That is trivial compared to the spiritual healing and that is John’s theme.

It is one thing to heal a man physically, it is another matter entirely for there to be a healing of the heart. That is the much higher miracle. Continuing, then, “He answered, ‘Who is He, Lord, that I may believe in Him’? Jesus said to him, ‘You have both seen Him and He is the One talking with you’.” Using that phrase, ‘seen Him’, to a man who was born blind is very meaningful. He has both seen Him and now He is the one who talking with him. In other words, you have already seen Him in a spiritual sense, but now you are looking at Him. His response, and He doesn’t waste a second, was, “’Lord, I believe’, and he worshiped Him.”

Just a few thoughts about this. The Good Shepherd cares for His sheep and Jesus sought him out after they put him out of the synagogue. He knew His voice but had not seen His face. Now he can see Him. But it is not enough that he believe He is a man called Jesus, or a prophet, or even that He is a man of God, he professes the truth that Jesus is the Christ, Son of the Living God. For it is this purpose, as it says in John 20, that this Gospel was written.

Do you know, in a very real sense, you and I are in that very same place. We have not yet seen Him, but we will. “Though you do not see Him, you believe in Him and greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible in ‘glory’, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your soul. You will see Him face to face.” And so, I think about that image in 1^st Corinthians 13:12, “For now we see in a mirror dimly,” and what does he say? “Face to face.” In 1^st Peter chapter one, verses 8 and 9, “We don’t see Him now, but we still rejoice and will see Him.” Revelation 20:2-4, “They will see His face.” So, we will see Him and that is a glorious hope and a very comforting thought. By the way, I will add this: when you see that face, you will realize that is the wellspring of pleasure you were looking for all your life. You will realize it is that face you were looking for all your life. You didn’t fully know it, but when you see Him, He will be the summation of all pleasures and all beauty and all truth and all goodness all wrapped up into one because He is the author of the true, the beautiful, and the good. Somehow we will see Him in His resurrected body and see that fullness. It is a great and glorious thought and we might want to reflect upon that.

So, the beggar admitted his need, and his eyes and heart were both opened. In another point, “he worshiped Him,” which, of course, is evidence of His Deity. Turn with me to Acts 10:25-26. This is very, very evident here. “When Peter entered, Cornelius met him,” who, by the way, was the Roman Centurion, and “fell at his feet and worshiped him. But Peter raised him up, saying, ‘Stand up; I too am just a man’.” In other words, don’t worship me, I am just a man.

And look also with me to Acts chapter 14 and in verses 11 through 15, Paul is in a situation where he has been demonstrating the authority of God, and, “When the crowds saw what Paul had done,” after he has raises up this man who had never walked before, and he stood and walked, “they raised their voice, saying in the Lycaonian Language, ‘The gods have become like men and have come down to us’. They began calling Barnabas, Zeus, and Paul, Hermes, because he was the chief speaker.

The priest of Zeus, whose temple was just outside the city, brought oxen and garlands to the gates, and wanted to offer sacrifice with the crowds.” They thought these were two of the great gods come down in human form. “But when the apostles, Barnabas and Paul, heard of it, they tore their robes and rushed out into the crowd, crying out and saying, ‘Men, why are you doing these things? We are also men of the same nature as you, and preach the Gospel to you, that you should turn from these vain things to a living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them’.” And so, again they can not accept worship.

Then we turn to Revelation 19 and see a similar picture, this time with an angel. In verse nine, “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he said, ‘These are the true words of God’. Then I fell at his feet to worship him. But he said to me, ‘Do not do that; I am a fellow servant of yours and your brethren who hold the testimony of Jesus; worship God. For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy’.” Worship only God; no angel will accept worship, unless it is the angel of the Living God. I am reminded, of course, when Thomas said the same thing. Who did he say to worship? He said to worship “My Lord and my God.” Jesus didn’t say don’t do that. In fact, He said, “The Son of Man has come.”

Go back to chapter five for a moment and look at verse 23. Jesus says, “So that all will honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the father who sent Him.” That word, ‘honor’, speaks, really, of the kind of honor that one would give to the Living God, and He is saying the same honor is to be given to Me as well. These are powerful claims, and so Jesus did receive that worship. He said, in these words, “For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, those who see may become blind.” There is a remarkable irony there.

That is to say, those that admit their need are those who will see, those who refuse to see will then remain blind. It is this idea, then, of seeing, and a person can see and still not ‘see’, and fail recognize their need. The Passion of the Christ will debut on the 25^th of this month, on Ash Wednesday and the speculation is going around that it will be the Jews who will made responsible and that will be the theme of the film.

But, my belief is that you will leave the film realizing that all of us did it. In fact, the point is that unless you admit you are the one who did it, you will never be in the position to receive Him. The whole point of the narratives is to represent that it was the Jews, and the Romans, and Herod, and Pontius Pilate; all of them were implicated, because all of us were there. That is why in Rembrandt’s wonderful painting of Christ on the Cross-, what do you see Rembrandt doing? He is up there and he is one of those who is crucifying Jesus. He sees himself as one of the guilty. It is a self-portrait of himself as one who would have done the same thing. It is this idea that ‘we’ were there.

And so, understanding that, then, there are two options you have; one is that you do not ‘see’, of course, because you are simply blind, but there is another form of blindness and it is those who refuse to look. That is where we go into people where there would be a kind of true apostasy. A true apostasy is where a person has heard the Gospel and finally says ‘no’, and says ‘no’ too many times. There are examples of those in our own time. That is why I like C. S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce, because, as you know, he describes a busload of people who come up from hell to Heaven to check it out and see if they want in.

They all opt to go back except for one. But the point is that the roster of tourists has as many intellectuals as it does debased heathens. The fact is, hell will have more than its share of thoughtful theologians. And so, the idea is that a lot of people reflected hard but rejected Jesus. It is one thing to reject Him outright, but it is another thing to just refuse to acknowledge Him and bow the knee before Him.

So, the man was put out of the synagogue and then Jesus has his discourse with him. He found him and he worships Him, “And Jesus said, ‘For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind’. Those of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these things and said to Him, ‘We are not blind too, are we’?” Then follows one of Jesus’ great statements. “If you were blind you would have no sin; but since you say, ‘We see’, your sin remains.” That is a pretty strong and powerful refutation. I don’t know how they responded to that, but I am sure they were not happy. The fact is that if you acknowledge your spiritual blindness, then your sin problem will be done away with. But, because the said, ‘we see’, and refused to see the light they had been given, their sin now remains.

There is a price to be paid. So, this is written by a disciple of Jesus, who now comes to a full understanding of Him and now he responds as he should in the illustration of a man whose physical blindness is now overcome and now he is also capable of seeing in his heart. Those who should have seen the truth blinded themselves to it. All this occurred on the last day of tabernacles, the festival of light.

So, there is a double meaning in that. But you, the reader, are forced to now react, ‘what do I do with this Jesus’? Do I align myself with Him? Am I willing, for example, to confess Him before people who are skeptics and who would deny Him? That is the issue we have to raise. Any closing questions? I just love this chapter because of the wonderful narrative drama.

(Q) (A): Here is what we have on that. If we go back to chapter three for a moment, in verse 19, “this is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world and men loved the darkness rather that the Light, for their deeds were evil.” In fact you can regard our chapter tonight as a commentary on that verse.

Earlier He said that, “He who believes in Him is not judged and he who does not believe has been judged already.” In other words, they are putting themselves in position of judgment because He goes on to say, in verse 20, “Everyone who does evil hated the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.” The point is this: He has come to provide an option. He did not come to condemn the world, but to give them an opportunity for life. But if they reject that option, they have judged themselves. Then they will have One who will judge them. Again, in Revelation, we now see Jesus as coming in authority, majesty and judgment. He comes now as the Judge of the earth.

(Q) (A): Yes, if you connect these verses in chapter nine with the verses in chapter three, you see that John chapter nine is a commentary on John chapter three, verses 17 through 21. That in turn follows, if you go back to John chapter one, verse eight, speaking of John, “He was not the Light, but he came to testify about the Light.” And in verse nine, “There was the true light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man.”

Of course, in verses four and five we see, “In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” The idea here is that you have a darkness that can not understand the things of God and rejects those things because the deeds are evil. Those who, by the grace of God, respond to His offer, then acknowledge, and here is the point, acknowledge their darkness and blindness before they see the Light. If you say you ‘see’, your sin remains. So, the commentary on the Pharisees is a commentary as well on the reader. Next week we will do the great chapter about the ‘Great Shepherd’ and it has some very interesting implications. I am sorry to say that one of the passages is used all the time by the ‘new-agers’, and it is the one about the idea of being ‘all gods’. We will see why that is a misuse of that text. At the end of the day, it always comes down to the person of Jesus.

Let us start this evening with a prayer. Lord we pray this evening that we would meditate upon and reflect upon and learn from our Lord Jesus and discover, again, more about His identity and about how we respond to Him as the Good Shepherd and the adorer of the sheep. We pray in His name. Amen.

We are continuing in our study of the Gospel of John and we are looking at chapter ten and we want to pick up from the theme here that we have seen in John’s Gospel a number of festivals, sermons and controversies, especially since chapter five, where you had the festival imagery of the Sabbath and then also at the Passover at the tabernacles, and now it is at Chanukah. This is the only New testament mention of this festival in the experience of the Jews, in the experience of Chanukah, which I will describe in just a moment, was related to the marvelous restoration of the temple and the festival of lights that is associated with it.

So, I will make a comment about that in just a moment but, really, I see this contrast that John is using, and he is using images of feasts and using images of festivals, and the contrast of what Jesus was doing and what the religious leaders were doing, to illustrate the identity of Christ. It is a way of revealing the identity of Jesus Christ. My own view of this, and there are some difficulties in the text, is chapter ten, verses 1 to 21 is either associated with the end of chapter nine or it is all a part of what takes place at Chanukah. My own belief, when it says, “at that time,” in verse 22, “the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem,” it is referring back to this because there is a unity of material, especially with the shepherd and sheep imagery.

At the same time we have this idea that there is a literary unity that really looks back to what took place in chapter nine. In any event, it all takes place around the month of December, as opposed to the autumn when the festival of tabernacles was taking place, in chapters seven through nine. Now it is a winter festival. The major idea I want to stress is that the coming of Christ once again divides the world because we see again that Jesus, in His coming, will divide people and He will divide them according to their response; whether they come to Him in belief or whether they choose to disbelieve Him and resist His word. If you go back to chapter three and verse 19, we see, “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world and men loved the darkness more than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.” Then if you look also to chapter nine verse five, Jesus said, “While I am in the world, I am the Light of the world.” So, there is this theme, this motif, of Jesus being the Light to which people must respond. We saw that also in chapter one, that “He is the Light and the Light shines in the darkness, but the darkness does not comprehend it,” and there will be those who receive it and those who will reject that Light. It all has to do, then, with their own disposition as to whether they are willing to come to Him on His own terms.

We now have this theme of Him calling Himself ‘the Good Shepherd’ and that He is also calling Himself the ‘door’. When we look at these two great ‘I-am’ statements, we see Him as using this marvelous image of sheep and shepherds, which is a classic Hebrew idiom of leadership. It is an image in the Old Testament, really, of God, who shepherded Israel. It is a portrait of leadership and a portrait of the way God led His people. In Isaiah 40:9-11, for example, it says, “See, the sovereign Lord comes with power…and He tends His flock like a shepherd. In His arms He will gather the lambs and carries them in His bosom; He gently leads those who have young.” It is a beautiful image of intimacy, isn’t it? It is an image of the personal attention that God gives to His people. I find that to be very attractive. May I again say that it is rather unique? You only see this in the Judeo-Christian image of who God is. We do not see that elsewhere, God being One who cares for, and protects, and preserves, and pursues and, in fact, sacrifices for the good of His people. It is an image that is really unique to the Scriptures in this regard. Shepherding became a helpful image as well of spiritual and practical leadership and there were those who were good shepherds of the people of Israel, but there were also false shepherds who would come along.

In Ezekiel 34, which we will see in just a moment, really illustrates that very theme of false shepherds. Now, let’s go back for just a moment to the theme of the Festival of Dedication, and ‘dedication’ is what the word Chanukah really means. It means dedication. What is that referring to? It is referring to the dedication of the second temple. What had taken place, then, was when the temple was built, over time it was being used with fidelity but then the Greeks conquered, and since that time, in 332 BC, the influence of Alexander and his followers was Hellenistic. To Hellenize a culture meant to bring them under the influence of Greek culture and Greek ideas and Greek thought and really Rome, who effectively conquered Greece ultimately was a Hellenistic culture as well.

So, the Jews themselves were now struggling with their own identity because through this Hellenistic influence, which so pervaded that time, many Jews became Hellenistic Jews. There was a great contrast between those who succumbed to that and those which chose to be faithful to the tradition and the Scriptures and who refused to allow that image to take place. In fact, the Hasadeen were people who were in opposition to the Greeks and to that kind of culture.

There were false priests who even came in for a period of time that were not part of the Aaronic priesthood, Jason for example, and others mentioned in 2nd Maccabees, where false priests were not even part of the Aaronic tradition. What would eventually take place, then, was the Seleucids, and particularly Antiochus Epiphanes, one of the real nasty ones, whose coming was predicted in Daniel, was a man who was involved in the desecration of the temple in the period around 170 BC. It wasn’t until around 165 BC, under the Maccabean revolt, and under Judas Maccabaeus, they finally were able to reclaim the temple and to cleanse it and purify it and sanctify it and to rededicate it to God. Now, the tradition is this: Judas Maccabaeus had only one day’s supply of oil, which God made to burn for eight days. And so, what you have then is that the Chanukah Menorah has eight candles symbolizing those eight days. Whereas, the temple candelabra, the lamp stand, has seven candles.

The Chanukah Menorah celebrated those eight days and so you have a feast that relates to lights as well. Now, the theme that would take place, especially in regard to Chanukah, would be this idea of failed shepherds and false leaders and what have here is, how could they have allowed themselves to be so corrupted that they would lose their national identity and allow their temple to be desecrated? If you will turn with to Ezekiel chapter 34 for just a moment you will see one of the texts that was actually read during this time. In the winter festival associated with Chanukah, this is one of the passages they would read. In verses two through ten, "Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel. Prophesy and say to those shepherds, ‘Thus says the Lord God, woe, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding themselves. Should not the shepherds feed the flock? You eat the fat and clothe yourselves with the wool; you slaughter the fat sheep without feeding the flock.

Those who are sickly you have not strengthened, the diseased you have not healed, the broken you have not bound up, the scattered you have not brought back, nor have you sought for the lost; but with force and severity you have dominated them. They were scattered for lack of a shepherd, and they became food for every beast of the field and were scattered. My flock wandered through all the mountains and on every high hill; My flock was scattered over all the surface of the earth and there was no one to search or seek for them. Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: ‘As I live’, declares the Lord God, ‘surely because my flock has become a prey, My flock has become food for all the beasts of the field for lack of a shepherd, and My shepherds did not search for My flock, but rather the shepherds fed themselves and did not feed My flock’. Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: Thus says the Lord God, ‘Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will demand My sheep from them and make them cease from feeding sheep.

So the shepherds will not feed themselves anymore, but I will deliver My flock from their mouth, so that they will not be food for them’.” That is what they read during Chanukah. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that Jesus should use the metaphor of Him being the good shepherd. This is not accidental. Again and again we see Jesus leveraging, and John emphasizing this, using the images of that time and the festivals and the feasts to really communicate the truth about His true identity and to reveal very progressively who He really is and in that progressive revelation, there would always be the response.

Some people would believe and others would reject.

So, you have this motif running throughout John’s Gospel. There is no accident about this. You see, a good shepherd would be involved with protecting the sheep and often the sheep would be near the desert and you don’t have to go very far east of Jerusalem and there you are in this desert area. In certain parts of the year a great deal of foliage would come up but in other times the sheep would have to be led through dangerous places and there were all kinds of predators and all kinds of dangers that would abound. There would be a lack of food and water, unless they had a shepherd to guide and protect them and carry them along.

As you know, being called sheep is not exactly a compliment in Scripture. You know this don’t you? They are really totally dependent creatures. They are cute little things but they really aren’t very bright. They constantly get themselves lost, they move away from the shepherd if they are not careful, they are vulnerable, they can’t defend themselves, they muddy-up their own water, and there is a wide variety of things that a shepherd has to do. In fact, it is no easy task to be a faithful shepherd. The shepherd had to do several things for the sheep. He not only had to feed them, he had to protect them and he also had to guide them.

These are wonderful images, really, of God and his relationship to us. He feeds us and protects us and guides us in our own journey on life. As a good sheep, you need to learn to listen and discern the voice of the shepherd. The best thing you can do is practice and learn to listen to the true voice, because there is leadership that really be treacherous and there is a false leadership that can move us down the wrong paths and there are predators who abound and there are false shepherds who would try, for example, to not go through the gate but climb over the wall. Typically, in those areas, they would have a small stone wall and it would be about waist high and then you put some thorny bushes on top of that. This was designed to protect the sheep from the predators. There would be one gate only to allow you to come and go and there would be a doorkeeper, because often you would have more than one flock.

So, the doorkeeper would either cover that up with brambles or the doorkeeper himself would actually be right there in the door to protect the sheep from these predators and false shepherds. What would happen would be that when the doorkeeper recognized the true shepherd, he would allow him through and the true shepherd would then call his flock. What they would often do, and you can still see it to this day, the shepherds would sometimes have a short flute and they would play the same little tune again and again. Their own sheep will raise up their heads and will follow that sound. The interesting thing here is that they are not driven, they follow the shepherd.

So, if you have several flocks in there, one shepherd will call and his own sheep will follow him and the others will remain. There is all this imagery here. Knowing the voice of that shepherd is very important. I want you to also notice the reciprocal imagery here. There is a tremendous personal devotion. A good shepherd would be devoted to the well being of his sheep. He doesn’t drive them along and the symbol that Jesus uses to describe it, for example in verse six, “This figure of Speech Jesus spoke to them,” this figure of speech of the shepherd to the sheep, and ‘paroimia’ is the word used here and it refers to a figure of speech usually applied, in the Synoptics, to the Kingdom of God, but in John’s Gospel, these figures of speech refer to the identity of Jesus. “Truly, truly,” starting now with verse one, “I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, he is a thief and a robber.”

So, immediately we have this idea here of a legitimate shepherd versus one who does not enter by the one door. “He who enters by the one door is a shepherd of the sheep,” because he would be recognized as such. “To him, the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.” This is just as I described it to you before. This is exactly what you see, even now, in the ancient Near East. I have seen this happen before. I have seen flocks in abundance and sometimes you will see a shepherd there in the wilderness and he will call and his own sheep will follow. It is quite remarkable to see. They know him, he knows them, and he knows every one of them.

So, there is this mutual understanding between them. They follow him and the wiser sheep follow closer to him. Now the problem with sheep is that there are different sorts.

Some follow the shepherd. Others follow the sheep that are following the shepherd. They follow the followers and that is the dangerous thing. Others are on the perimeter and define what it means to be in that particular flock. Those are the ones who are not wise because they are the ones who can be picked off by predators. They can get lost and they can get downcast if they fall into a ditch and they can’t turn themselves over, in a matter of a few hours their abdomen will fill with gas and they will actually die, especially on a hot day.

So, when a shepherd realizes one of his sheep is missing, it is a dangerous situation and he will go to find him. Again, they are not very bright, and they get themselves on their back and they can not get up again. This is the imagery that we have, but I want you to notice the tremendous love and devotion and care that evolves in this. “When he puts forth all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.” This is the picture we see. “’A stranger they simply will not follow, but will flee from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers’. This figure of speech Jesus spoke to them, but they did not understand what those things were which he had been saying to them.” Now, He is going to amplify that in just a moment.

There is this imagery here and there is a portrait of one who is a shepherd in the doorway to the sheep. We see, in verse seven, when He says, “I am the door for the gate of the sheep,” He is now emphasizing something, something that is so narrow that only one person can go through and it is the door of prophesy. The more you discover about Old Testament prophesy, in the Messianic texts, the more specific you find it to be. In fact, when you really read the text concerning Messiah’s first advent, you discover a remarkable specificity about the thirty pieces of silver, piercing His hands and His feet, not a bone of Him will be broken and they will pierce His side and so forth.

There is enough imagery there, and Isaiah 53 is particularly explicit about this, where His grave would assigned to be with the robbers and then with a rich man in His death and all these things were remarkably and surprisingly fulfilled. Many of them fulfilled in one day. And so, we see a tremendous degree of specificity. We know that the Messiah had to come from the House of David, we know that He would be born in Bethlehem, and Micah 5:2 makes that very clear. The more you put together these prophesies, what do you discover? The door gets smaller and smaller and finally there is only one person who can fit through. He had to be born at the right time and at the right place and in the right household and all those other details as well.

So, I use the door of prophecy as a metaphor as well. As the ‘door’, then, He delivers us from bondage and leads us into freedom.

So, if we take a look at verse seven, when He says, “I am the door of the sheep, all who came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them.” He may be referring to false Messiahs or false leaders that they have had before. “I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.” I suspect He is referring a lot to the Pharisaical side of things because of the conflicts He has had, again and again, with the Pharisees who had, in their legalism, had elevated human tradition above the Law of God.

So, we have that constant conflict, that they are out to kill Him, and on more than one occasion.

So, He says, then, “I am the door, if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved and go in and out and find pasture.” There is this idea here of the abundance that this sheep will provide. It is an image of a flock of sheep in a very threatening environment, a threatening desert, and that they are vulnerable. These, though, are well-fed sheep; they go in and out and find pasture. They are well fed and well watered as long as they are with the true shepherd. And, I see the picture of Psalm 23, which so beautifully illustrates this. When we think about the idea that “The Lord is my shepherd,” all the needs of the sheep are provided in that Psalm and it is a very comforting Psalm, because even there, in the midst of the valley of the shadow of death, I will not have to fear because He is going to take me through and that valley of the shadow of death is an image of How He will bring them through the canyons in order to being them to the high table.

There would be predators on the two sides, but if you followed hard on the shepherd you would be safe and He would carry you through to the right place and the right land and there you would be constantly taken care of and, really, He would give His life for the benefit of those whom He was protecting. There is intimacy. Psalm 18:20 also describes this gate. “This is the gate of the Lord, which the righteous may enter.” So, He is the gate, or the door, of the sheep, and so we see the wonderful picture here of the Good Shepherd and that word ‘good’, or ‘kalos’, refers to the quality of His character that is utterly trustworthy. He lays down His life for the sheep. And we see in verse 10, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” Once again, in this image, He is speaking of having Zoë, or eternal life. It is the idea of the life that God offers here, and it is not the life we are all born with, He is offering not biological life that we are all born with, but Zoë, or spiritual life. He is saying that He is going to give them life, but also an “abundance,” a quality of life, and He is going to be the wellspring of life that flows in us and through us.

So, Christ now becomes our life. And so, He goes on to say, “I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.” So, He is not only the door, but also the fourth ‘I-am’ statement shows that He is the good shepherd. He is the door of the sheep but He is also the good shepherd. This good shepherd does a variety of good things for us. Unlike the false shepherds who do not love the sheep, and exploit them and use them, like the shepherds we saw in Ezekiel 34, this good shepherd dies for the sheep.

So, if you look with me at verses 11 through 13, He “lays down His life for the sheep.” The word ‘for’ is important. ‘Huper’ is a word that appears 13 times in John’s Gospel and 11 of them refer or imply sacrificial death. ‘For’, ‘on behalf of’, He lays down His life. This is a very explicit description of that. He says, “He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who is not the owner of the sheep,” so He is saying He is the owner of the sheep, by virtue of the fact that He lay down His for them, but the one who is just hired, who is not committed to them, “Sees the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep and flees, the wolf snatches them and scatters them.

He flees because he is a hired hand and is not concerned about the sheep.” In contrast, He is saying He will never be indifferent, He will care for My own. “I am the good shepherd and I know My own and My own know Me.” Now we have an extra dimension here. We have this idea of mutuality. Before, they recognized his voice. Now it says, “I know My own and My own know Me,” so there is a picture of tremendous intimacy’ a profound relationship that is reminiscent of Matthew chapter 11. This is one of my favorite texts of Scripture, Matthew 11, particularly verse 27, reveals something about this. When Jesus, having said that it is a good thing, and pleasing to God, that He conceals things from the wise and the intelligent and reveals them to infants, He then says, and this is a very profound verse, “All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.”

I’ll let you think about that verse, but the implications are nothing less than astounding. These are not the words just some ordinary teacher, or ordinary prophet, could make. These are not just the words of a humble carpenter from Nazareth. They are incredible in their implications. The implications are that He has been given divine authority and He is the One who reveals the Father. In addition to that, unless the Father reveals Him, no one will know the Son except the Father and so there is this mutuality. You are not going to recognize Me unless it has been granted that you recognize Me.

They are still culpable if they choose to reject Him because there is a choice that is being made. The Scriptures never eradicate or eliminate human responsibility. That is why, in verse 28, He gives this offer, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” So, He describes in Matthew the fact that He offers them rest and in this metaphor He describes the fact that He offers them guidance and provision and protection and care and intimacy. There is a portrait of that intimacy that He enjoyed with His Father and that He is offering to us. Jumping ahead for a minute, turn to John 17:21 and there we will see something of that; His prayer on our behalf is “That they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they may also be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.” One of the deepest mysteries in all of Scripture is that Jesus is desiring that we will enjoy, somehow, the fellowship that is already being enjoyed among the persons of the Trinity. Just as the Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father, but they are not each other, so Christ, the Son, is in us and we are in the Son, but we are not each other. There is that mystery, and so it is also, that the Father makes His dwelling in us, and so does the Spirit of God, as we see in John 16.

So, there is a deep and abiding and profound intimacy that we are invited to enjoy.

So, as I see it then, this intimacy is something that actually pervades the Scripture. You see it, for example, in the bridal mysticism of God, and the image of the Lord and His bride, the Lord and Israel, although Israel was an unfaithful bride, then you see it of Christ and the Church, His bride. By the way, when people say, about the DaVinci Code, what is wrong about Jesus being married to Mary Magdalene? Well, a lot. Among other things, it is quite contrary to very explicit teachings in the Scriptures. Turn with me to Ephesians chapter five to see this portrait of Christ’s intimacy. When he speaks about the idea, in verse 25, Paul describes “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her; having cleansed her by washing of the water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.”

The church is the bride of Christ. He is married, then, to the body of Christ, the bride of Christ, which is the body of true believers. It would be nonsense, and silly, to actually suppose that it therefore okay if He married a particular woman. Actually, it is quite heretical, among other things as well. Of course, it goes on to say He had these kids and then He just went off and died. But, this mystery is great, and I am speaking of Christ and the church, and then if you want to more about that, you turn to Revelation 19 and you see the wedding feast of the Lamb. That is His bride. Revelation 19 tells us about that wedding. His wedding is a unique one and He is now preparing a bride for Himself, and when she is spotless and perfect, that is when the wedding and the consummation is complete. Let’s move on, though, to the text using this imagery that He is expanding and contrasting Himself with a person who is not committed, but He is committed to us.

So, He says, “I am the good shepherd, I know My own and My own know Me, even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep.” This intimacy is developed further in chapter 14 and especially in chapter 17. He has come for this very purpose. “I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice and they will become one flock with one shepherd.”

We see very clearly that this is the first indication of what will become more obvious later in the Gospel, namely the opening of the Gospel not only to the Jews but also to the Gentiles. The Son of Man has come for the lost sheep only from the house of Israel, but then how does He end His earthly ministry? What is the commission He gives? Go to all of Israel? No, go to all the world. He tells them to make disciples in all the nations. And so, what we have then, as Paul develops in Romans 11, where he says the rejection of the people of Israel as a whole actually makes it possible, now, to show mercy to all. Paul also goes on, in Romans 11, to say that the hardening of Israel is only partial and temporary.

Partial, because there have always been faithful Messianic believers and temporary because the time will come when that darkness, that veil, will be removed and they will be able to see once again. The point here is that we see a profound portrait of how that which was formerly separate is now made one, and Ephesians two makes this very clear. Those who are far off, those who are alienated from the life of God are now brought near and enjoy the marvelous blessings of the new covenant, a covenant that was promised to the people of Israel in Jeremiah 31, and we now enjoy the blessing aspect of that covenant.

It is a covenant now offered to all people. By the way, I have had people, usually new-agers, who will say that these other sheep are references to extra-terrestrial beings. Talk about being exotic, there is no warrant for that silly idea at all. In any event, in verse 17, Jesus says, “For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again.” This is a very important thing that we must understand. First of all, Jesus stresses here, “I lay down My life,” and He will take it again. That is to say, Jesus is not a victim of human conspiracies. We must understand that this was something that was planned even before the foundation of the world. In verse 18, “No one has taken it away from Me.” This one of His strongest claims and you must remember it. “I lay it down on my own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father.”

Remember when they taunted Him on the Cross? What did they say to Him? Save yourself. Come down and then we will believe you. He says that He has all these legions of angels that I could call to my disposal but that He does not choose to do that, because it was not the nails that held Him to the Cross, it was love. That is what held Him to the Cross. He could have come down anytime. He elected not to do so. “Was it not for this purpose that the Son of Man came? So, the double meaning that John uses, that the Son of Man will be glorified when He is lifted up, is the imagery of being lifted up on the Cross, but also the imagery beyond that, of being ascended to the Father. It is a double meaning and thus it relates to His glory.

The Cross, really, is the preface to His glorification. It is the way, in fact, and we know, that before honor comes humility and so it always has been. And so, the way to glory is that we see the Cross precedes the Crown and as we look at our own lives, is it not true that all of us have a cross to bear? Who of hasn’t got some pain in our lives, or broken dreams, or shattered hopes? The fact is we all have a cross. If it is not one cause it will be another.

It may be in a significant relationship. It may be in regard to your health. It may be in regard to your finances, or to your career, or to the dreams that you had of what might have been and now you see it will never be so in this world. The sorrow of lost possibility, or of unrealized potential, and there are many kinds of sorrows in this world. My conviction is that if it is not of one sort it will simply be of another, because in this world we are not ready yet for the sinless and painless world of the next until we are made fully into the image of Christ. God uses the pain of this world to draw us to Himself and causes us to be surrendered to His will. Abandonment to divine providence is God’s vision for us. As we pursue Him, a book I recommend along this line is Larry Crabbe’s book called The Pressure is Off. I would like you to read that book, because there he draws the contrast between what he calls the old way and the new way. I am sorry to say that the old way is still very commonly practiced in Christendom. The old way is to approach God for any perceived blessings and benefits He may have to offer us.

We try and use God as the utility to a better life. The new way is the realization that there aren’t any promises of that sort and the reality is that God calls us to pursue a better hope, not a better life. What I mean by that is that we think we get to define what life ought to be and if we do our part He is obligated to do His part and we will be blessed in certain ways and then we get very, very angry with God or disappointed when He doesn’t deliver in the way we had in mind. We often come with good hopes, perhaps godly children, but you didn’t get them. You read several books that said if you raise kids this way, this is how they will turn out. Then you discovered it didn’t work that way. There is no assurance of that, and I am not saying you don’t follow certain Biblical principles, but there is no guarantee things will turn out your way. You don’t come to Jesus simply for better kids. You don’t come to Him to have a more successful business or great wealth. You don’t come to Him for physical well being.

You come to Him for Himself. Only that is the ‘new way’. If you go the old way the pressure is on. You have to perform and do your part and we are back to pharisaic legalism once again. And so, the absolute surrender to Him, for Himself and not for His benefits is the real issue because He wants to be wanted and He waits to be wanted. He is not some kind of cosmic bellhop to satisfy our wishes. There is more to Him that that. There is a transition and all the pain and suffering and shattered dreams will be used. God, I believe, will use shattered dreams as a means to cause us to die to good dreams so He can give us an appetite for the better.

As long as you are clinging on to a good thing you will not have an appetite for the better. Then there is the desert, with periods of aridity, where He seems not to be present and then when it is the right time you realize there is a better thing to be revealed to you and you discover that. There is a process of waiting and trusting and, yes, not fully understanding. The point that He is saying is this: in the life that he is offering us a quality of abundance that still exceeds anything that the world can know. Because we think we are abundant when we have position and possession and power and actually we ought to know better. Yet we succumb to the same delusions of the world and we find ourselves listening to the wrong voices.

So, we would do well to train ourselves to listen with an ear cocked to that voice. And not to any other that would cause us to be deceived by another and to find only a mirage.

So, Jesus, then, offers Himself and says He has the authority to lay it down and to take it back. In verse 19, “A division occurred again among the Jews,” and we see yet another ‘division’ image in John’s Gospel. And the reader, too, is forced to make a decision, which side do I come down on? Because one thing about Jesus, you can’t remain indifferent to Him. You will either come to Him or you will avoid Him, but to ignore Him is not an option. Continuing on, “Many were saying He is a demon and insane. Why do you listen to Him?” Well, we have heard that before. In chapter eight they thought He was a Samaritan and a demon possessed. In chapter seven they said He was demonized as well. The point here is that, “Others were saying, ‘These are not the sayings of one demon possessed. A demon can not open the eyes of the blind, can he’?” This is a connection back to the earlier miracle that would still be remembered only a few months later. It occurred in the same city, and He healed a man who was born blind.

So, I want to stress, before we go any further, that Jesus knows His sheep very well. He knows us through and through. He knows your name, He knows your nature, and He knows your needs. In fact, I want to tell you that He knows you better than you know yourself. You think you know what is best for you? Only the Good Shepherd knows what is best for you. He is committed, ultimately, to your highest good. Let’s continue on in our text, and in verse 22, we have this portrait of Jesus now having a conflict. After the reaction of the crowd there is a controversy that is going to intensify. In this controversy we have Jesus’ final disclosure of Himself to the people. In John, this is the final public disclosure of Himself. After this He is going to go away into the desert and He will not manifest Himself until the time comes, in the following Spring, when His hour now has come. Remember, the theme in John is that His time has not come, His hour has not come. In verse 22, then, “At that time the Feast of the Dedication took place at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple in the portico of Solomon. The Jews then gathered around Him,” and it is almost like they circled around Him. They were longing to finally get a showdown, either tell us now directly or don’t. We want to know, who do you claim to be.

So, in verse 24, “The Jews gathered around Him and were saying to Him, ‘How long will you keep us in suspense? If You are the Christ, tell us plainly’. Jesus answered them, ‘I told you and you do not believe; the works I do in My Father’s name, these testify to me. But you do not believe because you are not of My sheep.” Remember that imagery that He uses again. He is saying, “If you are not of My sheep,” you will not understand this message. “My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of My hand.” From the human standpoint, then, we become a sheep by believing. But, from the Divine standpoint, we believe because we are a sheep. You see how both are true? From a human point of view you have become a sheep because you believed. From the divine side of the same coin, you believe because you are one of His sheep. There is a mystery.

There is also another side to this: these are some of the most important passages in the New Testament concerning the security of the believer in Him. Continuing, “My Father, who has given them to Me,” and here you must understand that the follower of Jesus is actually a part of the gift that the Father has given to the Son. It is rather a wonderful idea, that you are part of the gift that the Father has given to the Son. “My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.” Try and snatch them from the Father by violence? Good luck. You will not achieve that; nothing can do so. He says, “I and the Father are one.” So, there is this profound security that they are in His grip. You are in His grip and the Father’s grip, and no force can snatch you away. It reminds me a good deal of Romans chapter eight. You remember that very well known text there, that no one can really separate us from the love of God? Paul says, “Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, Nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Now, I believe that the rest of the Epistles also will confirm this, that there is a great deal of difference between those that ‘profess’ and those that ‘possess’. Those that possess Him, that know Him, those are people who can have that assurance, because there is a three-fold relationship to a sheep.

Number one: there is a loving relationship and it is a loving one because, after all, He died for His sheep and love demonstrates its veracity, not just by words, but by action as well. Number two: there is a living relationship and it is a living relationship because He cares for the sheep. There is this idea of intimacy. But, the third one is: there is a lasting relationship and this is not temporary, it transcends all the trials of this world, including the valley of the shadow of death and brings us to the other side. One of my favorite verses is in Colossians chapter three, where it says, “When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.” There is a tremendous idea. There are two thoughts, which are very powerful. Christ is our life, and secondly, you have not been revealed until you reveal with Him in this context of great glory. Nothing can keep that from coming to pass. What God has begun, He will complete. And so, we see this beautiful picture of the completeness in our confidence in Him. Jesus goes on to say, “I and the Father are one,” in verse 30, which is about as plain an answer as you could give. They are one in essence and They are one in unity.

But, they are not each other. Remember that famous picture of the Trinity. It originated with Richard of St. Victor, who died around the year 1174 AD, and when he spoke about God and tried to describe the Trinity in this way, “The Father,” he said, “is God.” He also said, “It is equally true that the Son is God. Furthermore, it is equally so that the Holy Spirit is God.” But, he went to argue and to illustrate that the Father is not the Holy Spirit, the Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Holy Spirit. In that one diagram, Richard of St. Victor gave us a very, very explicit portrait of Trinitarian theology. They are not each other but they are all God.

Now, I don’t claim to understand it fully, but it is to say that there is a unity and diversity, that there is a community in the GodHead. It is this divine Trinity, this divine community, where they are all God but not each other, where we have this deep, unique portrait of how it is possible, therefore, for there to be an utter, absolute basis for unity and diversity, the One and the many, for love and being loved, and the ‘I-Thou’ relationship, for other-centeredness, for communication and for communion. All of those are the things we most treasure in life. Would you agree with me on that? Relationships are really what we most treasure. The ultimate foundation for relationships is the Trinitarian truth that we were created, also, in God’s image. And so, it is being in the Father and having the Father in us; in Christ and having Christ in us, and in the Spirit and having the Spirit in us.

Somehow, there is the idea, though, that we are not absorbed, in the Eastern vision, where we would be absorbed into the ‘All’. In the ‘All’ there is no ‘I-Thou’, there is just an ‘I-it’, and there is just an ‘It-It’. An ‘It-It’ really isn’t much of a relationship at all, if you really analyze it. Instead, there is a personhood and a personal reality that we are invited to enjoy. And so, He says, “I and the Father are one.” The Jews picked this up. They actually had a clearer theology than most liberal theologians have today, where they try to water down the claims of Christ and reduce His Deity to just claims that they say were put in His mouth by the early church writers and early church fathers. I will discuss that at a later time, when I discuss The DaVinci Code, although I have already discussed the issue of the reliability of the Bible. Now, in verse 31, “The Jews picked up stones again to stone Him.” This is the third time they tried to do this. Again, His hour has not come and they are not going to be able to do it.

Again I stress; you are a mortal until the will of God is fulfilled in your life. You must understand that you have been given a certain amount of time by the Father in this world. Until that purpose is finished nothing can take you out. That, by the way, is why Jesus was never in a hurry. He knew He had been given just enough time to accomplish the Father’s will. And so have you. Now, “Jesus answered them, ‘I showed you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you stoning Me’? The Jews answered Him, ‘For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God’.” Now, Jesus does something very interesting here. We know the big issue here is the root problem of unbelief.

What we have is a quote from Psalm 82:6. Let me read you Psalm 82, verses five to seven. “They do not know nor do they understand.” This is a critique, by the way, of Israel’s failure to respond to God. Jesus is using this Psalm, which reflects the reality that He Himself is experiencing. Now, “They walk about in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken. I said, ‘You are God, and all of you are sons of the Most High. Nevertheless, you will die like men and fall like any one of the princes’.” What He is referring to, by the way, is this idea of ‘elohiym’, or you are all gods. It is the word that is used in Exodus 22:8-9, speaking of the judges. It says the judges would be ‘elohiym’.

Not that they were God per se, but that they were representatives of God and therefore if God called human judges ‘gods’, why should they stone Him for applying the same title to Himself. It is an argument from the lesser to the greater. He is saying, as well, that “If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture can not be broken),” and Jesus, by the way, had a very high regard for Scripture. The Scripture can not be broken. “Do you say of Him, whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world,” and by the way, that word, ‘hagiazo’, meaning sanctified, is very reminiscent of the word used of the sanctification of the temple in the feast of Dedication under Judas Maccabaeus when they cleansed it of the idols and the blood of pigs. They cleansed it and then sanctified it. It is no accident here that He is using that idea.

So, “Whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, you are blaspheming, because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?” Here He just comes right out and says, “I am the Son of God.” This is the clearest communication of who He claims to be. “I am the Son of God.” He didn’t directly say it before, but now He does. It is what He has been implying all along. I want you to notice, by the way, the progressiveness of the revelation of Jesus. As He reveals this to them, and this is His last public declaration, He is saying whether you have a lot of light or a little light, the issue is going to be whether you respond to that light or reject that light. It always comes down to the central issue of whether we have a will to know Him or a will to reject Him.

And so, He goes on to say, “If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; but if I do them, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me and I in the Father.” So, He refers to the works He has done and He refers to the fact that He has authority by virtue of the works. He has also talked about that in John chapter five. In verse 39 we see, “Therefore, they were seeking again to seize Him and He eluded their grasp.” Now, how He did that we don’t know. Again, the Gospel writers are masters of understatement. He hid Himself in one case, and in another He walked out of their midst. You don’t generally do that in a mob crowd. He did that, though, because He had authority and His time had not yet come.

You remember there is a great little scene in Ben Hur, where Ben Hur is being beaten and sent off to the galleys? Remember that? You recall that there is a scene where the Centurion lets them stop and drink, but the Centurion says, “Not that one.” Judah Ben Hur is being singled out for special abuse. And so, he is in despair as the Centurion says, He can’t have any water.” There is that moment when Jesus appears, and in the film you never see His face, but Jesus appears and you see Him coming and taking some water and offering it to Ben Hur and the Centurion is about to whip Him and he looks Him full in the face and he meekly backs down because there was that power He has that the world does not know. It is a good scene because it reveals that the powers and the princes of this world have nothing on the Prince of God Himself, of the One who is, in fact, the ruling One.

God’s power is the sort of power that the world does not understand. It is the same idea, as well, when you recall the garden in Gethsemane. Remember, and we are going to see this in John 18, they sent this large cohort of people to come and take Him away. Remember He asked them, “Whom do you seek?” And they said Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus said, “Ego ami.” When He said ‘I-am’, they drew back and fell to the ground. That, again, is an understatement. They were pinned to the ground. He could literally have walked over those soldiers and gone His own way. But, He did not use that power because the Son of Man is to give up His life.

Another illustration is, “No one takes My life from Me, I lay it down of My own initiative.” It was not a martyrdom and He was not a victim. He came for this very purpose. “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. The Son of Man has not come to be served but to serve and to give His life, a ransom for many.” Finally, in the last three verses, “He went away again beyond the Jordan to the place where John was first baptizing, and He was staying there.” See what John is doing now? He is bringing us full-circle, right back to where it started, in chapter one. John was baptizing in the wilderness and he is bringing us back to that desert motif. He was keeping Himself out of the public eye.

This, then, was the last public visitation He gives and He reveals Himself as the Son of God to those who will receive it. Now He turns away from them and for these last few months, He spend that time nurturing and building into the lives of the handful of disciples that has been given to Him by His Father. “Many came to Him,” and I want you to notice something interesting, “Many came to Him.” In other words, now the people who respond to Him aren’t the people in the city of Jerusalem, those that were there for the religious feasts. Who are they? They are those who pay the price of going out into the desert to seek Him out. Those are ones who go now to seek Him. “They were saying, while John performed no sign, yet everything John said about this man was true.”

So, we go back to this theme that John was a voice crying in the wilderness, the motif of John witness to Jesus. Though he did not perform a sign, all that he said was true. And so, it goes on to say, “Many believed in Him there.” Even there it continues. As we conclude, then, just a couple of final thoughts. We have to ask ourselves this question: what voices do we recognize? To whom do you and I go for shelter in this wilderness that we call a world? There are many spiritual predators and false shepherds have actually infiltrated John’s own churches. You recall that the one who writes this Gospel also had that very concern.

If we turn to 1st John chapter two and read verses 22 through 26, this is obvious. “Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son.” He says, “These things I have written you concerning those who are trying to deceive you.” There will be false teachers and there will be false shepherds. I am stunned by the Epistles, and how much of the material is dedicated to refuting false teachings. If you look especially in Galatians and Colossians and in 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, 1st and 2nd Peter, many of these are dealing with the problem of false teachers. 2nd Corinthians does the same thing and a good bit of Judah is very specific about that as well.

So, we have this problem of false teachers and we have to ask ourselves, how do we respond to that? I want to say just three things as I conclude. There are three things we need to respond to, as we listen to this verse. First of all, understand the perilous environment of your life. Understand that you are not in a neutral environment and that spiritual predators surround you. The world is no friend of the Gospel. You get to choose the voice you listen to. You would do well to be very, very careful about what you expose yourself to and what you think and meditate upon because it really starts in the mind.

Then it manifests itself in action. We need to recognize at all times our desperate need for guidance. We need to be people who learn to listen to His voice and the way in which we do that is by developing a skill, number three, of telling the right voices from the wrong voices. I have had people who started reading a book and soon think, ‘there is something wrong with this book’. Even if you have no sophisticated theology, you can quickly discern that it is not the voice of the shepherd. It is good to become familiar with His voice and the way to do it is with the Scriptures and by hearing it taught and preached faithfully and in a context of community.

It is then able to protect us, and guide us, and nurture us, and lead us safely home. Let me close in a prayer. Father we thank You for the goodness of the Shepherd, that He is the doorway of the sheep and He is the gate. He is the One who lays down His life for us. We are owned by Him. May we hear His voice more and more distinctly. Give us the grace of discernment and holy desire and to respond with surrender and submission to Your loving and gracious overtures, so that we would become people who follow closely upon Him. May we find our life, find our pasturage, and find our nourishment in Him, so that He will lead us safely into the Father’s Kingdom. We pray in His name. Amen.

Let us begin in a prayer. Lord, we thank You for our freedom and privilege that we enjoy in Christ, the privilege, as well, of knowing Your Son, of gathering together to discuss the things of His word. We thank you for this revelation which communicates real truth to us about who You are and it is a love letter that You give us, inviting us into intimacy with You. We thank You for these truths. Amen. We are going to look tonight at John chapter 11 and this is a particularly important chapter because it marks a literary divide in this Gospel. The ‘book of signs’, as it is sometimes called, includes chapters one through twelve. In those 12 chapters there were seven signs and this seventh sign is the most powerful sign of all, the raising of Lazarus from the dead.

So, there is a cumulative build-up here.

But, chapters 11 and 12 are different from chapters one through ten. In chapters one through ten what you had was Jesus’ signs and ministry and discourses associated with the various festivals and institutions of Judaism to show that Jesus was the fulfillment of all that was anticipated in those festivals-the festivals of Passover, the Sabbath, tabernacles and even Chanukah. All these things show truths about Jesus and we can speak of those as interpretive vehicles for Jesus’ self-revelation.

So, we see that picture here. Then, at the end of chapter ten, you might call it a closing frame where it kind of ends and goes full cycle because it ends where it began, across the Jordan river, where John had been baptizing. As we saw in the beginning of John’s Gospel, so in chapter ten after this last discourse He now retreats, knowing that the in the following Spring His hour would come; knowing that it would be at the Passover that it would be all fulfilled.

But, the Passover symbolism would be fulfilled in the life of Christ. Christ would be sacrificed on that day when the Passover would take place. Knowing all this then, we have a very different orientation. What you have here is a new and significant step in the work and the life of Jesus. We look here and see, in these two chapters, John 11 and 12, that they deal with the theme of death and life.

There is the theme of Jesus having authority over death and over life and that Lazarus’ death and resurrection, or resuscitation in this case, is really a foretaste, a kind of portrayal of Jesus’ own death, but His resurrection. Lazarus, as you know, was resuscitated, but he died again. It is strange, the idea that he would have a second death. The point is that Jesus, though, once having died, once for all, death never again would dominion over Him because His death was the ‘death of death’.

So, we see in the life of our Lord, then, the One who is in fact not just the One who brings resurrection, or brings life, but He is the resurrection and the life. This is a dramatic claim. The first would be astounding enough, but to claim ‘I-am’, which is the fifth of seven ‘I-am’ statements in John’s Gospel, and we will see it in this chapter. When He makes that claim, “I am the resurrection and the life,” He has a unique claim to an authority that He is the One who bringing life and that He has the power over life and death. Recall, and this is one of themes that you want to keep in mind when you see a film like The Passion, that no one took His life.

You have to understand, Biblically speaking, although everyone was culpable, no one really killed Him in the sense that it was some kind of martyrdom. He said, “I have the authority to lay My life down and the authority to take it up again. This authority I received from My Father.” If it had not been His willingness to do so, no one could have captured Him. No one would have been able to kill Him. It is very important that we keep that in mind. Furthermore, the death of Jesus was not a tragedy, but, in fact, a great victory, because it was the beginning of His Glorification. Now the Son of Man is being lifted up; now He is being glorified. That is associated, as well, to His ascension to the right hand of the Father. All of this, then, His death, His burial, His resurrection, and His ascension to the Father, is all the glory of God being manifested in human history and actually a paradigm in the life of the believer. In Christ, now, in the new covenant, we have a very real identity that is associated with Christ’s death, His resurrection, and ultimately His ascension. All of these, spiritually speaking, are already true of the believer in this life and more fully in the next.

So, this is a very significant chapter, and it begins, “Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany.” By the way, that is a shortened form of a very common name. It is from the name ‘Eleazaros’. It was a common name, and some compare it with the narrative in Luke chapter 16, the parable about Lazarus and the rich man, but there is no reason to think this is a retelling of that parable. It was a specific parable showing the need to respond to the work of God, whereas this particular story is not a parable but a historical reality that demonstrates, in fact, the authority of the Son of Man over life and death. Continuing, “Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped His feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.” That is an interesting word because we don’t see that happening until the next chapter. This is an intimation here that John actually assumes people were already familiar with that narrative from the Synoptic Gospels. He assumes that people have already read that. This is really a supplemental Gospel in that regard. We well know stories about Mary. We see Mary in the Gospel of John three times at the feet of Jesus and I will comment on that later.

But, Mary and her sister Martha and Lazarus were, in fact, very, very deeply beloved of Jesus. In fact, Jesus used that location, Bethany, as His point of departure in His Judean ministry, just as He use Capernaum as His point of departure in His Galilean ministry. “So, the sisters sent word to Him, saying, ‘Lord, behold, he whom you love is sick’.” Now, here we have a surprise because in verse four, when Jesus heard this He said, “This sickness is not to end in death, but for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by it.” By the way, you will see a parallel here with John chapter nine. You recall they asked a question about the man blind from birth and said, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was neither that this man sinned nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him.

We must work the works of Him who sent Me.” It is not the idea here that God is responsible for diseased and death-filled world in which we find ourselves, because we are the ones who change the world in a very real way. We are not as we were created. We were created perfect, but we have distorted that, and that virus of sin has been transmitted generation to generation and it has affected the whole of the created order. Still, we see though, that there is nothing in this world that can separate us from the power of God and His power will not be thwarted by any force, either in heaven or under the earth, neither angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nothing will be able to separate us from that work of God.

So, Jesus says, “This is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by it. Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.” The same word, by the way, that is used here and only here, the only other place this is used is of the disciple ‘whom Jesus loves’, so it shows the tremendous intimacy that He had with this family. It was probably and extended family.

We don’t know that they were living together in that same house. They may very well have been married. In those days people had extended families much more than we do today. They were often on an intimate basis with first and second cousins and it was a very natural thing. It was very communal in that regard. Our idea about the extended family is rapidly diminishing because of the modern conditions. Furthermore, we are also losing the intergenerational connect as well, and that is a tremendous loss because the wisdom of the elderly is now relegated to nursing homes. We farm them off to retirement city rather than being imbedded within the contest of the family where they can nurture and give wisdom to the children. It is a great pity that we are seeing in our own time.

So, the text goes on to say, “When He heard that he was sick, He then stayed two days longer in the place where He was.” Now, that is quite surprising. The disciples probably didn’t question this at first because if He went up to Jerusalem He would be in big trouble. As you know, Bethany is only about a mile and half east of Jerusalem. He couldn’t go to Bethany without word getting out in Jerusalem. Recall that there had been an awful lot of trouble beforehand. Think about the whole imagery here of the controversies that Jesus had and the growing tensions that He experienced. At the autumn feast of the tabernacles the authorities tried to arrest Him. Recall also that at one point a crowd tried to stone Jesus. A few months later, at Chanukah, they tried to arrest Him again and there was also a threat of stoning.

So, His disciples thought it was good judgment that He went east of the Jordan River. But, they had no clues as to what was going to really happen. So, He stayed two days longer where He was.

Now, from our point of view, such an action would seem to contradict the love of God, wouldn’t you say? Did you ever have an experience where God’s action in your life seems to go against the love that we would expect from God? God’s love, we must remember, is not a pampering love but a perfecting love. God understands, as we need to understand, that love and suffering are not incompatible. That is most clearly illustrated in the life of Christ. This suffering in the present time really is one of the ingredients that God uses to prepare us for our eternal citizenship in heaven. We have to understand, then, that the way it ends really determines whether it is a comedy or tragedy. Of course, the way it ends, it ends well.

So, God uses that as the material to draw us to Himself and that is exactly what each person needs. I have often said we need to be more committed to obeying God than to avoiding pain. That is a very important principle for us to pursue. A pain-avoiding strategy is an end in itself and only leads us away from God and not toward Him. It will cause you avoid obedience and trust. The problem is that we are often more concerned about our comforts than our character.

So, we go to what Larry Crabbe calls the ‘line of linearity’, which supposes that if ‘I do my part, God has to do His part’.

So, we use God as kind of a cosmic slot machine. When you go to a vending machine, what do you do? You don’t embrace the machine, you put your money in and you pull the knob and you get whatever and you go off and enjoy it. You only go back when you need some more. He is not a vending machine to be used in that way. The contrast is between the pursuit of the life of blessing rather than pursuing a life of hope. The path of blessing, we suppose, is better than the path of hope and intimacy.

So, there is a tremendous contrast between the two.

But, God’s desire is for us to pursue intimacy and in doing so cause us to be broken enough so that we pursue Him for Himself and not for His gifts. That is a process that we go through again and again.

So, when we are confronted by disappointment, disease and death, as we will be, we have to put our hope in the character of God and not in the promises of this world, but rather in His promises that flow out of His character. I think it is in those trying times that we have to embrace and walk by faith and not simply by sight. In any case, Jesus stayed two days longer, but there was purpose for that. “Then after this He said to his disciples, ‘Let us go to Judea again’.” I figure that it probably took about a day for the messenger to go and find Him. Mary and Martha, somehow, knew where He was. Then He waited two days after receiving the message and it would another day to travel back. By that time Lazarus would have been in the tomb. In fact, it would have been at least four days. It means, then, that Lazarus actually died soon after the messenger was sent out.

So, going back earlier would not have made a difference. In fact, His waiting longer does make a difference. By waiting longer He will demonstrate that this is not just some mere resuscitation. The Jews, you see, had this notion that it was possible for a person to go back into the corpse. Only on the fourth day, when there was decomposition beginning would they conclude that the soul was not returning.

So, He waited until the fourth day so that no one could claim this was only a near-death experience. That is why there is that famous sentence from Mary, in the King James Version, “Lord, by this time he stinketh.” I love that line; “he stinketh.”

So, when Jesus said, “Let us go to Judea gain,” it was a big shock to the disciples. They probably wondered why He waited for two days and they said to Him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone You, and are You going there again?” We saw that in the previous chapter and in the chapters before that. “Jesus answered, ‘Are there not twelve hours in a day? If any one walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of the world’.” He is making it very, very clear here that He is, in fact, the Light of the world as He claimed in chapter eight verse 12 and also in chapter nine verse five and that in fact the ones who walk with Me will not stumble because “I am the Light of the world.” And, “If anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the Light is not in him.” He then said, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep but I go, so that I may waken him out of sleep.” Again, John is giving us a double meaning. The word ‘sleep’ is often used as a euphemism of death. The point here is that there is imagery that Lazarus was dead, Jesus delays because He is living on a fine timetable and the things that He has in mind are of a very different orientation than the things that we would normally suppose. Because of the delay there would be a greater authenticity to the miracle. In verse 15, in fact, He says, “I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, so that you may believe; but let us go to him.”

So then, The disciples were alarmed about this and said to Him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover.” They thought he might just wake up. “Now, Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought He was speaking of literal sleep.

So, Jesus then said plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead. I am glad for your sakes we were not there, so that you may believe; but let us go to him’.” Death of the believer, in Scripture, is compared to sleep. Look at Acts 7:60, concerning the martyrdom of Stephen. “Then falling on his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this against them’. Having said this, he fell asleep.” This tells us something. In Corinthians 15:51, it also uses this image. Corinthians chapter 15 is a great chapter on the resurrection of the dead and we learn more from this one chapter about the resurrected body than from anywhere else in Scripture. In verse 51 Paul adds this thought, “Behold, I tell you a mystery.” Now, ‘musterion’ is something that was formerly not known, but is now made manifest. It is now revealed.

So, mystery, in that sense, is something that has never been revealed but is now made known. Here is the mystery; “We will not all sleep.” Up to that time only two people escaped physical death. You know their names. Elijah was one and Enoch was the other. Those are the only two people who have not died, in the whole history of the world. And so, when we think about death we think of that awful reality, if we have no hope without Christ, of the certainty of the grave that is coming up. Then Paul gives us this word, that actually we are not all going to die. He goes on to say, in fact, that we will all be changed, “In a moment, in a twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound.”

What it is saying here that there will some who will be alive when Christ comes from for His own and they will never see physical death and that is actually explained further in 1st Thessalonians chapter four. Paul is writing to believers who are concerned because their loved ones have died and they weren’t sure when, or if, they would ever see them. Paul writes, “But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are,” and what is the word he uses? “Asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope.” I want to interject here that grief is natural and there is good grief and there is also bad grief. He is not talking about not grieving; he is talking about the kind of grieving that still has hope. Do you see the difference? I have been to funerals and seen both kinds. I have been to funerals where there has been a hopeless grieving and I have been to funerals where the grief was only because of our missing the person, but the reality was that it was actually a celebration. It was their coronation day and that was understood. Do you see the concept there? That is a grief, but a grief that is, really, animated by a hope that there is a life after this that goes on and on and on. “If we believe,” Paul writes, “that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.

For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.” What he is saying there is that those who have gone on before us, they will receive resurrected bodies and then he goes on to say, “We who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.” I connect this with Paul’s statement earlier, that we will not all sleep and not all be changed. You see the idea? Those who are alive, and frankly I think it perfectly legitimate to pray, ‘come quickly, Lord Jesus’, it would be a better way to go. Frankly, if you had your choice, wouldn’t you like to go out the way Elijah did? He died with real panache, with those fiery chariots and so forth. Enoch walked with God for 365 years and all of a sudden God took him. He was just a kid. The average age then was around 900. The point here is that there is this tremendous hope that we have that is associated with the promises of God that are manifested in the work of His Son, Jesus Christ. It gives context to our lives.

So, returning to the text, Jesus goes on to say that, “We are going to go to Him.” But, “Thomas, who was called the twin, said to his fellow disciples, ‘Let us also go, so that we may die with Him.” Now, there are two ways of looking at this. Is he just being a ‘doubting’ Thomas, as we see later on, in which case he would have said, ‘we’re all going to die’. That is one way of interpreting it. Others might say that it actually shows his commitment to Christ, but his lack of understanding as well.

But, there is a sense that he is saying more than he really means. He is anticipating something, just like Caiaphas, later on at the end of this chapter, will say something but it will have more meaning than he himself understood.

Sometimes God will do that. He surely did that with the Prophets. Many times the Prophets had no clue as to what they were writing. Daniel, for example, in chapter ten, wants to know, ‘what on earth does this mean’? It says, “Go your way, Daniel, the book has been closed for those in the end times.” You will not understand it.

So, the Prophets who came earlier were seeking to understand what these things really were.

So, sometimes God will speak with a word and sometimes we will say something more than we knew. In any case, Thomas was willing to die with Him.

Now, in verse 17, “When Jesus came, He found that he had already been in the tomb four days.

Now, Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off; and many of the Jews had come to Mary and Martha, to console them concerning their brother.” Again, we have this image of the extended family here. “Martha therefore, when she heard that Jesus was coming, went to meet Him but Mary stayed in the house.”

So, after His encounter with the disciples, now He has an encounter with the two sisters, first with Martha. It seems evident that Martha was the older of the two because we see in the parallel passage in Luke chapter 10 that she seemed to have authority over the house. She comes to Him and says, Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.” Now, she is not chiding Him, but she is just saying that He could have healed him if He had been there.

But, she says, “Even now I know that whatever You ask of God, God will give You.” However, I don’t think she is expecting Him to raise him from the dead.

But, “Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again’.” That would make her think of the general Jewish understanding of a resurrection, which the Pharisees affirmed, but the Sagistees denied. You had this notion of some kind of vague understanding that there would be a general resurrection from the dead at the end of days. That is what she thought He meant when He said, “Your brother will rise again.” But, “Martha said to Him, ‘I know he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day’.” Then Jesus hones in more closely and makes her think about something new that she has not see. He says to her, and here is the fifth ‘I-am’ statement, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” There are different interpretations of this, but it seem to me that the phrase, “everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die,” may again refer to that mystery Paul would later talk about. No matter how you understand it, we do know this, the power of Christ has the authority over life and death; an authority over the grave; an authority over disease and sickness and sorrow and suffering.

Now, Martha’s response was, “Yes, Lord, I have believed that You are the Christ, the Son of God, even He who comes into the world.” This is a very strong affirmation. She had a good understanding of who He was in that regard.

So, she makes a statement not unlike the one Peter makes in Matthew chapter 16, where he says, “You are the Christ.” By the way, one thing I want to point out about Mary and Martha is that Jesus was their Rabbi and teacher and that was unique because in those days no Rabbi would instruct women.

So, it transcends those boundaries. “When she said this she went away and called Mary, her sister, saying secretly, ‘The teacher is here and is calling for you’.” He wanted to meet the sisters before He got into the town and before all the din of confusion and turmoil would take place. “When she heard it she got up quickly and was coming to Him. Now Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met Him.”

So, He is waiting for her to arrive before He will go and accomplish what He knows He will do. “Then the Jews who were with her in the house, and consoling her, when they saw that Mary got up quickly and went out, they followed her supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there. Therefore, when Mary came to where Jesus was, she saw Him, and fell at His feet.” It is interesting to me that each of the three times she is mentioned in all four Gospels, she is at the feet of Jesus. In Luke chapter ten, she is at the feet of Jesus, and what is she doing? She is learning from Him. She is receiving truth from Him.

Then, in John chapter 12, in verse 3, that is where she washes His feet. It is interesting that she sat at His feet to listen to His word, she fell at His feet to pour out her pain and sorrow, and then she washes and anoints His feet. That is the idea. We now see this same question here, this same comment that Martha makes, as well, “Lord, if You had been here my brother would not have died.” It is the exact same statement. “When Jesus, therefore, saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping,” and the word for weeping there is ‘klaio’, and it is a word for loud lamentations. In the culture of the times, grief would be expressed very loudly and openly. There would be flutes as well, and it was quite an emotional event.

So, she was actually wailing in this regard. The Jews who came with her were also weeping. You had quite a din of confusion. It says He was “Deeply moved in spirit and was troubled.” But, this particular word is more than simply ‘troubled’. ‘Tarasso’ is a word that actually means ‘angry’. It means, in fact, that He was outraged. It is the image, then of fury and anger. What is this anger about? In part, I think, it is because of the disbelief of the people. He is not angry with Mary and Martha, but there is the idea, that He is “the resurrection and the life,” and He is right before them and they do not see Him, and He sees His enemy, death, and He sees the affect it has on Him and He also sees that which He has come to overcome. And so, Jesus is angry, or troubled, in His spirit, and He says, “Where have you laid him?” They said to Him, “Lord, come and see.” The mystery of the incarnation is great. On the one hand, He knew right away that Lazarus was dead.

But, then He has to ask where they laid him. He has knowledge which is really and intimation of omniscience, and yet there are times He has to be told. Then comes the shortest verse in the Bible. In verse 35, “Jesus wept.” Now, it is significant in that verse to note that He was actually stirred and the idea of His being grieved here, of His weeping, is that it was a different kind of weeping than we have with Mary and Martha. It was a more quiet weeping, where he was more deeply stirred in His spirit. It could be that the Spirit of God was stirred in this context, but we see also, and I have to stress this, Jesus’ solidarity with the human condition. He understands what it is like to suffer and have loss and pain and grief. That is why He is a faithful high priest who can minister to us because it is not that He is simply on high, but that He became one of us. He understands.

So, “The Jews were saying, ‘See how He loved him’.

But some of them said, ‘Could not this man, who opened the eyes of the blind man, have kept this man from dying’?” Once again, even here, we see the different reactions. On the one hand, some would wonder why He didn’t keep this man from dying? He could have if He had wished to do so. When we think about this, the fact that he accomplished a miracle from a distance before, in chapter four, why didn’t He do that here? You see the point? He could have healed him from a distance, just as He did the nobleman’s son in chapter four. Why didn’t He do this? So, they were wrestling with this.

So, “Jesus being deeply moved from within, came to the tomb.

Now, it was a cave and a stone was lying against it.” Now, just so we know something about that idea, in those days you had tombs that were actually cut out of the rock. The formal mourning in Israel lasted for seven days. It commenced immediately on the day of burial. The Jews would quickly bury the dead. They would usually bury them on the day they died. One of the differences we have in our own lives is that we have taken death and made it something that is sanitized and we no longer have an immediacy with that. People a hundred years ago, it was very rare to find someone who hadn’t seen someone die. They would typically die at home and then they would prepare the body.

Now, we have removed that from our own experience. Now we put them in oversized jewel boxes. This amazes me. In fact, a lot of people look better dressed in death than they ever looked in life. It is a strange, strange thing that we do because we don’t know what to do with them. All throughout human history there has been mystery associated with human death because people just don’t have a clue as to how to handle it. Without the hope of the resurrection, it is just a mystery that they want to be with; a lot of mumbo-jumbo and a lot of avoidance. The only window of vulnerability is at the funeral service where we finally have to acknowledge the reality of what is before us. That window, typically, doesn’t last long.

But, during that window our defenses are overcome and we well recognize that life is, in fact, short. Ultimately, it is an intimation of our own destiny. (Q) (A): My own view is that I am against cremation. I have my own reasons for that. I can’t go into it here, it is really a whole subject in itself. Cremation has to do, symbolically, I think, with an avoidance, or a failure to recognize, the imagery of the resurrection from the dead.

Now, I am not saying that it is wrong to do it. I am just saying I personally lean against it. It is convenient and sanitary but there is also a hint of secularization. In any event, let’s return to the text. Regarding the burial cave, they had these horizontally cut burial slabs and there was an open area inside the tomb. It was around 10 feet by 15 feet, and that is where they would prepare the body. The body was prepared using various linens and spices.

It was a very elaborate procedure and then they would put the body in a ‘kochim’, which was about six feet deep. They would leave it there for about a year. At the end of the year they go and collect the bones and they would put the bones in a bone box, called an ostuary. That is how the Jews did it then. In fact, Caiaphas, who we will see in a moment, his ostuary has been found and we know this because of the markings that were on it. It is in the Israel Museum. In any event, they had these caves in this manner and then you would have this circular stone that was rolled into a trench in front of the opening. Once it was locked into that trench you could not push it over. It would take several men if you wanted to roll it back out.

Some of these caves, with the actual stones are still around.

So, Lazarus had been wrapped up and placed inside the tomb and he had been there for four days.

So, “Jesus said, ‘Remove the stone’. Martha, the sister of the deceased, said to Him, ‘Lord, by this time there will be a stench, for he has been dead four days’.” She was right. He was now decomposing. “Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not say to that if you believe, you will see the glory of God’?” Go back to verse 27, and she says, “I believe You are the Christ, the Son of God, even He who comes into the world.” Now, she believed, but she surely didn’t believe He was going to do what He did, or she would not have made this objection. It is important for us to realize that Jesus was glorified by waiting those two extra days, so there would be no question that the glory of God made this possible. “So, the removed the stone.

Then Jesus raised His eyes and said, ‘Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. I knew that You always hear me; but because of the people standing around I said it, so that they may believe that You sent Me’.” He has already made His prayer and knew what He was going to do, but He says this publicly so that His disciples would hear it. “When He said these things, He cried out in a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come forth’.” Now, the word, ‘kraugazo’, that is used there, is used six times in John’s Gospel. It is also used for the crowds on Palm Sunday in chapter 12, verse 13, and four times again from the crowd calling for Jesus’ crucifixion. It indicates a very loud noise. The idea is that He raised His voice with the voice of authority and power and said, “Lazarus come forth!”

Some people have quipped that if He hadn’t of said ‘Lazarus’, the whole place would have emptied out. We know, though, that something surprising happens because it says, “The man who had died came forth,” but then it goes on to say, “bound hand and foot with wrappings, and his face was wrapped around with a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him at let him go’.” Do you ever wonder how he got out of the tomb? They rolled the stone away, of course, but it says, “he was bound hand and foot.” How did he come out? Did he roll out? Did he hop out? No one knows and I find it to be exceedingly strange. I’ll let you mull it over.

But, it is one of those understatements of the Gospel that makes you wonder what was going on. Moving on, “Therefore, many of the Jews who had come to Mary, and saw what He had done, believed in Him.

But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them the things that Jesus had done.” Here is the point. John emphasizes again and again in his Gospel that the issue comes down, not to the evidence, but to attitude. It depends upon a man’s willingness. If a person is willing to know the truth, he will know the truth.

But, if a person is unwilling to know the truth, then, in fact, instead of finding the truth they will find their own ways of explaining it away. And so, we always have this dual motif of people reacting in one way and some in the other way. Although, we have a reverse motif in the other sense. In the first six signs you have this pattern. You had sign, discourse, sign, discourse.

But, here you have discourse, sign. It is reversing the pattern. Jesus gave His discourse and then He performed the sign. The thing I want you to notice, though, is that His words and His works authenticate each other. You see Him say, “I am the Light of the world,” and then you see Him give sight to a man born blind. He says, “I am the resurrection and the life,” and then He raised a man from the dead.

So, His words and His work are authenticated. You see a miracle not just done as a raw miracle, but contexturalized in revelation. That is a very important thing for us to understand. The experience must also be understood, from a theological stance, so that we can contexturalize how they work. Explanation and sign go hand in hand. I must stress, again and again, that propositional revelation, which Scripture is, is exceedingly important. Having said that, I also want to stress that proposition itself does not lead to personal revelation.

So, the propositional truth, which is true, and is warranted historically, must lead to personal truth. It must lead to a relational truth. It is not a matter of having it in the head, it must also respond in our heart. It comes down to the issue of will I believe, or will I choose not to believe? You can not ignore this One. If you were there, I promise you that you would have to either believe Him or reject Him. You can’t be neutral about a man who just raised someone from the dead like that. You see the point here? The same is true with a man born blind. He caused the division that we see, and one of the things that always bothers me when others accuse Christians of being anti-Semitic is a failure to grasp that Jesus actually divided His own people.

The fact is that some of the Jews embrace Him and others did not. The issue was not anti-Semitism. How can you be anti-Semitic when Jesus was a Jew? All the disciples were Jewish and the entire New Testament was written by Jews, except for Luke, so how can you possibly be consistently anti-Semitic when your Lord was a Jew? I don’t understand that. The whole New Testament is a Jewish document written in the context of 2nd century temple Judaism. It amazes me. In any event, many of the Gentiles rejected Him as well. He divides, He does not unite. “I came to bring a sword.” That sword divides and there will be those who embrace Him and those who do not. That is really the final point of departure. The person who seeks will find, but the person who is a skeptic and chooses not to seek will, of course, find ways of rationalizing it away, just as they managed to rationalize this obvious miracle.

Now, in verse 47, we see, “Therefore, the chief priests and the Pharisees convened a council.” They are terrified. Whether they believed it or not is not the point. They understood the implications and the implications were frightening. They were saying, “What are we doing? This man is performing many signs.” There were other Messianic claimants who would come and it put them in a dangerous political situation. “If we let Him go on like this, all men will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” Now, again, they saying more than they knew. This would, in fact, happen. From the years 66 to 70 AD, the Romans would put Jerusalem under siege. For just a short time, only two months, the siege was removed and that gave the believers who listened to the Olivet discourse the opportunity to leave. Those who believed Him fled. Then the siege continued and the ultimately destroyed the holy temple, the palaces and the walls. Everything was destroyed.

So, they were terrified about this situation because there was an uneasy political alliance. “But one of them, Caiaphas, who was a high priest that year, said to them, ‘You know nothing at all, nor do you take into account that it is expedient for you that one man die for the people, and that the whole nation not perish’.” Those were amazing words, because, “He did not say this on his own initiative, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation.” And John goes on to add, “And not for the nation only, but in order that He might also gather together into one the Children of God who are scattered abroad.” Remember when He says, “I have other sheep who are not of this fold”? It is an intimation of the Gentiles as well. I might point out that Caiaphas ruled the Sanhedrins from the year 18 to the year 36 and Pilate was the ruler of that area from the years 26 to 36.

So, the last ten years of Caiaphas’ rule was associated with Pilate and they had sort of an uneasy truce for political expediency.

Now, when Pilate was forcibly removed from office, Caiaphas immediately lost his control on the high priesthood and both of them were out in the same year. (Q) (A): Certainly the idea here is that he is prophesying and in that position it is something that would not normally be done. The high idea of human sacrifice was anathema and yet now we have this whole idea that it points to a voluntary sacrifice. He had to be God for His sacrifice to really be efficacious. Otherwise it would merely just be the death of a man.

But, He had to be a man in order for it to be a real sacrifice. That is the emphasis. The Eastern Church emphsizes more the resurrection and the Catholic Church emphasizes more the crucifixion. That is just the nature of it.

So, as we look at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, actually, the Orthodox don’t call it that; they think of it as the Church associated with the resurrection.

So, there is little bit of a different theology there. The early theology was more of a ‘Christ’s victor’, the idea of the victory of Christ. He was called the ‘Ponto Chroctor’, the ‘ruler of all’. When you visit the earliest Basilicas and see the mosaics, that are the emphasis you have. The emphasis of the crucifixion, as almost an end in itself, became more and more characteristic in the Western Church.

(Q)(A): Yes, Caiaphas was the ruler of the Sanhedrin from the year 18 to the year 36. Pilate was in office in Judea from 26 to 36, so that lasted 10 and when Pilate was forcibly removed, that was when Caiaphas lost his connection and he was no longer high priest.

(Q)(A): Here is the thing. Nobody understood when Christ came that that would be His agenda. Remember earlier in the Gospels you see Him saying, “I have not come for the Gentiles, but for the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Now, as rejection begins to mount and rejection by His own people is certain, and when I say His own people I am particularly referring to the leadership. When that becomes certain He then makes the Gospel available for all because that is why the great commission says, “Go into all the world.”

So, because of the rejection by His own people, and if you want to study this, Romans 11 is a good place, it is possible for us to be in a position to receive God’s favor. No one knew it in advance, but God knew it well before hand. Here is the point that Paul makes, in Romans 11:25, “For I do not want you to be uninformed of this mystery,” and there is that word again, mystery, something that has not been known before, “so that you will not be wise in your own estimation-that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; and so all Israel will be save.” This hardening, by the way, is partial and it is temporary.

But he goes on to say, “For just as once you were disobedient to God, but now have been shown mercy because of their disobedience, so these also now have been disobedient, that because of the mercy shown to you they also may now be shown mercy. For God has shut up all is disobedience so that He my show mercy to all.” He is saying that in the wisdom of God, He had a plan that nobody could have guessed or anticipated in advance. Indeed, the Jews had to struggle with these two images of the Messiah, one a suffering servant and the other a reigning king. How could it possibly be that the two could be one and the same?

So, they looked for the reigning king, just as we would have, too. The natural bent of human nature being what it is, if you had a choice between being healed of cancer or Jesus saying your sins are forgiven, most people would choose the former. The visible takes precedence over the invisible. Yet, being healed of cancer is nothing compared to being healed of your sins. The greatest miracle is not the physical resurrection, but the spiritual resurrection of a new birth in Christ.

That is an amazing understanding. As we conclude I want to make a quick comment about ho we are to handle this rich teaching, and I must say that our graveside experience is not to ever be trivialized. We do have a very real and present tense experience of the power of Christ because we can understand that death is not a terminus, it is a passageway. If we understand it that way then we realize that this life, compared to eternity, is as a moment in time. I am fond of using this analogy: My firm belief is that if you could spend an hour in the presence of the living God, and the pleasure that would be, and then He tells you to go back to earth and suffer loss and pain for another 80 years to spend another hour with Him, would you do it? You see where I am with that? Actually, you would do it. Because once you have experienced that glory, the 80 years would seem as nothing compared to an hour in His presence. I want to tell you though, the obvious difference is that the 80 years is as nothing and the hour is as everything. It is not an hour, it is eternity.

So, the point here is that God does not overwhelm us yet. We are in the kindergarten of life. We might get into first grade before we die, but we sure won’t understand His higher math. In this life the best we are going to get is just a hint. The real life and the real joy is in the life to come.

Let me just close in a prayer and if you have any questions you can see me afterwards. Father we that You for this glorious passage that you have manifested your glory in Christ Jesus and He, the resurrection and the life, then, is our hope. At the end of the day it is a person that we want to see and not just a principle and that it is a person at the end of our journey that we wish to see. You have given us that hope. Here is the person that in fact dwells within us and we entrust our lives to Him. I pray that if there is anyone here who has not transferred his or her trust to you that they would do so, knowing that only the things we entrust to You are truly safe. We pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Let us begin with a prayer. Lord, we thank You for this evening. We thank You for the goodness, the grace, the glory, the marvelous loving kindness that You have manifested to us in this world and for what You are promising for us in the next. I pray that we would be a people who celebrate that truth with a heart of gratitude. We pray in Christ’s name. Amen.

Let’s continue our journey through the Gospel of John, and we are in chapter 12 this evening and as we look at this Gospel, we see that this is the last chapter in what is referred to as the ‘book of signs’. The ‘book of signs’, chapters one through twelve, focuses in a very clear structure around seven miracles and responses as well as narrative discourses. Usually the responses are afterwards, although in chapter 11 we noticed that John reversed the order and had the discourse before the raising of Lazarus. The important thing to note is that when Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life,” and then He follows that up with the resurrection of Lazarus, that is an important power. When He says, “I am the light of the world,” and gives sight to the man born blind, when he makes these claims He always verifies them and backs them up. These are not just claims that are empty. One of the things about Jesus’ life is that His words and His works were perfectly congruent. There was a complete integrity between the two.

So, His claims and His credentials actually reinforce one another. That is why I always say that belief in Christ, when we look at the real evidence, instead of the deconstructionism among many liberal theologians today, which is not warranted by history, by the manuscript evidence or by the early Church. All these are later and modern theories imposed on the text and you have to basically deconstruct the text and then rebuild it according to your own opinions. That leads to total subjectivity. My argument is actually a simple analysis of the Gospels as primary historical documents demonstrates that belief in Christ is not a leap in the dark, but a step into the light. A step it is, though, and it is not going to just be automatic.

A step is required, as we will see in this material. In John chapter 12, in fact, Jesus is going to have a discourse at the very end and it is His last public words. It is an exhortation, and appeal to the people to respond because after that, beginning in chapter 13, as you know, and through chapter 17, we have Jesus only with His disciples in the Upper Room and then after that the narrative completes the story with the Passion and the Resurrection and the post-resurrection appearances of our Lord. That is the general structure of John’s Gospel. It is highly selective material. Let’s look at chapter 12, then, and beginning there, remembering that it is important to know that these chapter divisions are generally good, but not always the best. There is an integrity between one verse and the next. They were not, originally, divided into either verses or chapters. In fact, they didn’t even have punctuation.

Now, “Jesus, therefore, six days before the Passover, came to Bethany where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. So they made Him a supper there and Martha was serving; but Lazarus was one of those reclining at the table with Him. Mary took a pound of very costly perfume of pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped His feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the fragrance of perfume.” Let me stop here for just a moment. I have just argued that there have been many correlative witnesses and truths throughout, but Mary is seen as the culmination of Jesus’ message. What is significant here is that this woman demonstrates greater understanding of the mission of Jesus than did His own disciples. His disciples did not really grasp or understand what He was really about. Jesus made it clear to them that only after the resurrection did they “Understand the things He had told them.” Then they understood how it all connected. The idea of what He was really intending to do was so radical that really no one on this earth could have made it up. That is why there is no other religion that has the idea that God suffers for us. That is because it is too radical for a person to make up. In particular, there is no religion that says there is grace through faith and not by any merit or attainment of our own but it is a gift of God. These are unique things because they are products of God and not human imagination. In fact, that uniqueness is, in my view, one of the evidences for the truth of Christianity. There is nothing like it in all the world. This is not something people would have made up. That is why His own disciples misunderstood His mission. It was more radical than anyone could have imagined at that point.

But, my view here is that Mary seemed to have a deeper understanding. To some degree it may have been a bit like Caiaphas, who, you recall, made a proclamation that it was necessary for one man to die for the sins of the people.

But, he did not know, as high priest, that God actually spoke to him and actually gave more truth than Caiaphas knew at the time. Similarly, there may be some degree to which Mary’s action of preparing Him for His burial was an action that was a little bit more than she fully understood, because what she was really doing was preparing Him in advance. Let me go back to a thought before I continue in the text. I want to stress that the John 14 image, that we are going to come across in a couple of weeks; the image of Jesus being ‘the way’ and ‘the truth’ and ‘the life’ is significant. As I see it, there seem to be three primary crises in the Gospel.

The first is that many disciples no longer walked with Him. The point here is that He is the way and He is the truth and He is the life. As to ‘the way’, many of His disciples would no longer walk with Him especially when He sharpened the edge of His teaching. In John chapter six, “He divided many people.” As ‘the truth’, “Many people refused to believe in Him,” as we see in chapter 12 verse 37. ‘Though He performed so many signs before them, yet they were not believing in Him,” although He was the truth. And though He is the life, they wanted to put Him to death. They sought to crucify Him. And so, we see in one witness and proof after another and the point is that He was rejected by His own, as John 1:11 tells us. Ultimately, beginning in the next chapter, we are going to see that He focuses on His own disciples.

But, the interesting thing with Mary anointing His feet, and we know from the parallel Gospels that she also anointed His head, is that it is an interesting moment for several reasons. One of them is that she fulfilled Jesus’ words, that we ought to wash the feet of one another, even before He uttered those words, in the next chapter. There is a clear and evident parallelism here that we are invited to see. Let me make a comment. The other Gospels mention they were at the home of Simon the leper. Chances are that might have been the home he owned but it doesn’t say he was actually there. It is also possible that might have been Martha’s home and that she was the hostess for this event. It is difficult to say, but we do know that Martha is fulfilling her customary role here where she is busy serving and Mary is worshiping. The three times we see Mary with Jesus she is at His feet.

That is a very significant thing. And so, we see again this image here and while Martha was serving Mary was worshiping, but we can not demean Martha in this regard. They are sisters and both work and worship go together. The active and the contemplative lives ought to be joined, so we can not demean that role of practicality. It is to be in word and deed. It is to be in truth but also in our lives. (Q)(A): That is a different account and in a different context. No, it is a different occurrence all together. It is a separate incident and it is in Luke 7:36-38. It is a different setting and a different woman. The thing I want you to keep in mind as we look at this material here is that the mounting opposition is such that the Sanhedrin, or the temple authorities, are going to be so opposed to Jesus that they are going to want Him to be killed. The deeper story behind all this is that the work of the Sanhedrin will actually propel Jesus to greater glory and not less.

So, He will use them, ironically, for the purposes of God and this is always how He works. Everything will fulfill and accomplish His purposes, even when people choose to reject Him. Going back to the text we have before us, there are parallels, especially between Mark 14 and John 12, but as I mentioned before, Mark 14 gives us some evidences that we don’t have here. One of them is that it mentions an alabaster jar and that she broke the jar. We don’t have that here. By breaking the jar, it really meant that the seal was broken on top of the jar. When it says, “Pure nard,” nard is a very important thing because it is a very rare and precious spice. It actually came from northern India and typically it was mixed with its own root to increase its own weight.

That kind of impure nard was about a 100 denari for a pound, but she bought the best available and spent 300 denari. This is somewhat extravagant and I will comment on that kind of extravagance in a moment. I define it as extravagance with abandon. Figure out the actual cost. She is blowing almost a year’s wages on this perfume. As you know, this offended Judas and then the other disciples caught on and also objected. The interesting thing is that in John’s commentary here, “Judas Iscariot, one of His disciples, who was intending to betray Him, said, ‘Why was this perfume not sold for 300 denari and given to poor people’?” He said this, John tells us, “Not because He was concerned about the poor but because He was thief and as he kept the money box, he used to pilfer what was put into it.” I think part of the reason John is saying these things is that he knew Judas for three and half years and walked with him, but none of the disciples ever realized this fellow’s treachery.

If they had, they would have realized it at the Last Supper. Even when Judas got up and went out, they just figured he was going for provisions. They never caught and ht on and John is making an extra effort to understand that and to look back and give us reflection as to why all this happened. I might mention, by the way, that the blessing of Mary’s deeds spread around the world, as we see from Matthew and Mark. The whole world remembers this and even tonight we talk about an event that happened 2,000 years ago. There is a ripple effect of a good deed.

So, the contrast between Judas and Mary could not be greater. “The memory of the righteous is blessed, but the name of the wicked will rot,” Proverbs 10:7 tells us. “A good name,” it says in Ecclesiastes 7:1, “is better than a good ointment.” Mary had both, a good name and great ointment. And the fact is, we don’t name too many of our sons after Judas. We name them after David and Paul and Matthew and Mark and so forth. The point is that kind of thing is a fulfillment of this very issue.

Now, Jesus said to Judas, “Let her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of My burial.” Again, I don’t think they grasped, not did she fully grasp, what was going on.

But, the fact is this extravagant work, where she at first anointed His head and then it flowed over His garments, filled the entire house with its pleasant odor. By the way, we it had a smell like gladiola, so it had a sweet scent and also a red color. My suspicion is that He smelled like this for the rest of the week.

So, the symbolism is that it was the last good smell He would have. The point here is that she is, in effect, showing her devotion to Jesus before it is too late. If you look at Mark 16:1, you will notice who went to prepare the body. “When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary, the mother of Salome and James, bought spices so that they might come and anoint Him.” The interesting thing here is that Mary of Bethany was not among them. Why is that? Because she had already anointed Him. You see the concept here? She showed her devotion to Jesus before it was too late and I must tell you that this is one of those things that grips me about our own lives and how we need to be people who show our devotion before it is too late. I watched the film, Waking Ned Devine, recently and there was a great moment. As you know there is the story of how Ned Devine wins this fabulous lottery. In fact, it is so great that he dies of a heart attack on the spot. His friends bury him, but they also know that the people from the lottery won’t give any money if he is dead.

So, they decide to set up a guy who will pretend to be Ned Devine when they come. The whole village had to be in on it and there was one woman who didn’t along with it and was going to tell on them. She was actually moving in that direction and she was in this phone booth when, of all things, a truck knocks the phone booth over a cliff and the opposition is, well, eliminated. The lottery man comes in to make sure things are legitimate and he is about to leave when he hears some music from the church. He goes to see it and it is the funeral for Ned Devine.

But, here is what happens. Just before they use the name ‘Ned Devine,’ every one turns around and sees him, and they change it right at that moment. Here is what he says to the fellow playing Ned Devine: “Michael O’Sullivan was my great friend, but I don’t remember ever telling him that. The words spoken at a funeral are spoken too late for the man that is dead. What a wonderful thing it would be to visit your own funeral and to sit at the front and hear what was said and maybe even say a few things yourself.”

Now, he is still looking at his friend, and he continues, “Michael and I grew old together. In the times that we laughed we grew younger.” Isn’t that a nice image? “If he were here now, if he could hear what I say, I’d congratulate him on being a great man and thank him for being a friend.” Isn’t that a great line? I think it is lovely because it is an illustration of what we ought to do, in a very real way. Why do we wait for a funeral to tell people we are thankful for them? We should tell them directly. You see the point? If we could do for our friends what Mary did for Jesus, we would speak our love, our gratitude, and make sure that all things were well between us. Because, really, who is so presumptuous that we think we will see a person another time? Many has been the time I have recalled the last time I was with somebody and it was actually the last time.

But, I didn’t know it was the last time. I knew it with my mother and father. I knew it for sure and I had my closure with them. I did not know it with many of my uncles and aunts. In a way, I would have liked to have been able to see them.

But, thankfully, I had already shared what they meant to me. I shared my gratitude and I shared my love, so I had no regrets, but I would have liked to have had more time. You see the idea? There is such a finality on this planet and it forces us to remember our last time with a person and what the relationship was like. To me there is a wonderful implication and there is wisdom to doing this in our relationships with other people. Continuing on, Mary would not give to Jesus what cost her nothing. If you looked up 2nd Samuel 24:24, that is exactly what David says. I will not receive this for free. I will pay for it because I am not going to give to God something that cost me nothing. I am not going to be cheap that way. And so, the blessing of her deed has, indeed, as Jesus predicted, spread throughout the whole world.

Now, Judas started the criticism, as I said, and the other disciples picked it up but I want to say that the Gospel sets affairs right. Jesus goes on to say, “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have Me.” There is an interesting implication for this. Have you ever been in a situation where there was a great cathedral, or very nice church, and it was fairly ornate and they put in this magnificent pipe organ? The complaint often is that it is too extravagant and they think they should give the funds to the poor instead. I am not saying in every case that is a good thing, but I am saying there are some forms of extravagance that are pleasing to God. When they were extravagant, and they were, with those cathedrals, my view is that poor actually benefited from them. That is the glory of God that they saw that they never saw anywhere else in their lives. At that time the average person had nothing in the way of luxury at all.

So, when they saw these magnificent cathedrals, and they could see them from miles away, it was unique. The Ely Cathedral in Norfolk, as you drive toward it, you will see it from 20 miles away.

So, the people would come on a pilgrimage to these glorious places, and what would they see? They would see the story of the Gospel made evident in the stained glass windows. It goes from Creation to the Fall and to Redemption and finally the work of Christ and the Last Judgment. All this could be seen, and don’t forget, these were people who could not read.

So, that became their book. They saw the marvelous vaulting, the flying buttresses, and the heavenly- oriented vaults, and they marveled at that and they felt they were getting a hint, an intimation, of the city of God. Indeed, they were. It was the most glorious thing they had ever seen. In my view, we have never equaled the gothic cathedrals of Europe. I don’t know of any building made in that 200 years that can even touch them, in terms of esthetic beauty and quality and excellence. (Q)(A): Yes, David got all the equipment together, but Solomon built it. The point is that it was extravagant. You have to use a balance.

It doesn’t mean, though, that you can only build great things and ignore the poor. That goes to far the other way. If you look at the text here in John, in verse eight, “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have Me.” That is very emphatic. He is saying they only have Him for a short time. In verse nine, “The large crowd of the Jews then learned that He was there; and they came, not for Jesus’ sake only, but that they also might see Lazarus, whom He raised from the dead.” Remember, the Jews sought signs. The Greeks always looked for wisdom. They were always looking for something.

So, they were looking for Lazarus, who by this time had become something of a local celebrity. “The chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death also; because on account of him many of the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus” There was a resurgence of belief. A combination of two things were going on here. In the last chapter He has just raised Lazarus from the dead and the word got out very rapidly. Secondly, you have to understand that the population of Jerusalem, which may have been 50,000, would burgeon to 100,000 during the Passover, because all male Jews were required to go up to Jerusalem for the Passover.

The point is that the whole place would be filled with Jewish believers, but also certain Gentiles, called ‘God fearers’. Remember Cornelius was called a ‘God fearer’ and the Centurion was a ‘God fearer’. We are going to see Jesus encounter some of these Greek 'God fearers' and it is a very important thing that we see as John concludes at this point. The point I am making here is that Jesus is now bringing things to a head and for the very first time He actually allows them to exalt Him, because it is a Messianic implication and claim. Of course, they also wanted to put Lazarus to death as well, because many of the Jews were moving away and believing in Jesus.

So, what they want to do is put him back in the tomb. They can’t accept the evidence, so they have to get rid if it. Lazarus, at this point, had a good deal of confidence about the tomb, knowing that it didn’t have the last word. In the text, now, we have a sudden shift from a quiet dinner to a public parade and in verse 12, “On the next day the large crowd who had come to the feast, heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem.” Now, my view is that this dinner took place on a Saturday, right after the Sabbath. This crowd “Took the branches of the palm trees and went out to meet Him.” These date palms, by the way, had tremendous significance. They were used to illustrate Jewish nationalism in the Maccabean period. What they are trying to do is identify their national aspirations with this Jesus. They are hoping He is going to fulfill something that they want Him to accomplish.

So, the whole situation here is that they are awash in political fervor. But, I want to put it this way; the crowd was cheering a fantasy. They were not cheering the real Jesus. They were cheering an image, a fantasy. We often say, how could it possibly be that those crowds would turn on Him? I will tell you why, because when they saw what was going on later, they realized He was not the one they were looking for after all. In other words, it wasn’t that they were so much believing in Jesus as it was that they were believing He was a political liberator. Hence, the date palms and so forth.

So, you have all these tensions and all these themes working together simultaneously. “They began to shout, ‘Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel’.” So, they quote that Psalm, Psalm 118 verse 26.

But, then they add this extra phrase, “Even the King of Israel.” It is reminiscent of John chapter six, when they wanted to proclaim Him King. Then John makes sure that we don’t miss the illusion. “Jesus, finding a young donkey, sat on it; as it is written, fear not, daughter of Zion; behold, your King is coming, seated on a donkey’s colt.” This is a fulfillment of Zechariah 9:9. It was a specific prophecy. He would not come on a powerful steed, in glory and honor; He would come in humility, on a donkey.

But, Revelation 19 gives us another image. There, He does come in power and glory and you see Him on a white horse. So, there is a very different image here.
 
So, what we have is an open announcement that He is, in fact, the promised Messiah. I think, in effect, He is forcing the hand of the leaders, and how the Sanhedrin would act during the Passover. The Lamb of God had to give His life for the Passover lamb being slain. It is critically important that all the details must be graphically and literally fulfilled. And, so it was. When Jesus died it was on the Passover, when the temple lambs were being slain. It was not an accident. It is not an accident, either, that when the Holy Spirit came, He came on the day of Pentecost. (Q)(A): What you have there, in John’s parallelism, is he is showing the two responses once again, that of belief and that of unbelief. That is why, on the Cross, you have the two thieves flanking Him, symbolizing two responses. When one thief said, “Lord, remember me when you go into Your heavenly Kingdom,” Jesus responds, “This day you will be with Me in paradise.” But, the other thief continues to mock Him.

Now, in Mel Gibson’s film, he has a crow plucking out the eyes at the point when he is mocking Him. What that does is symbolize spiritual blindness, and the idea here is that he has reached the point of no return. He is now hardened in his heart. Let us continue.

So, it tells us then, “His disciples did not understand at first.” Now, it is very important for you to see this. These Spiritual truths must be spiritually revealed. You will not know Spiritual truth unless it is Spiritually communicated. The Spirit must make these things known. “They only understood it when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things were written of Him, and that they had done these things to Him.”

So, at the moment it was happening, they were till fairly clueless. “So, the people who were with Him when He called Lazarus from the tomb and raised him from the dead, continued to testify about Him.”

So, John is explaining that for this reason, the people went and met Him, because they had heard He had performed this sign. As He is coming from Bethany, He has to go through the Kidron Valley, which would have been swollen with the tents of those who had come to Jerusalem for Passover. There were tens of thousands of people there and they see the parade and everyone wants to join a parade. Many of them, perhaps, didn’t know what they were doing, but many of them did. And so, there was a swell of anticipation. Word traveled fast about the sign He had performed.

So, the Pharisees were extraordinarily frustrated with it. Thus, again, it is another of the many emphases in this Gospel, that the time of His rejection, the time of His Passion has come.

Now, we go on to the next scene and we have here the Greeks who seek Jesus. In this scene there were some Greeks who were going up to worship at the feast. I might mention, Sepphoris was capital city of Galilee and it was a Gentile city of about 20,000. If you have ever been to Israel, it is well worth visiting to see the ruins of Sepphoris. There were many ‘God-fearers’ in that area and they were welcome to come to Jerusalem to celebrate that feast. However, they were only allowed to go to the Court of the Gentiles. They could not go through the dividing wall and into the Court of the Women or into the Court of the Jews.

So, it is significant, in Ephesians 2:14, where Jesus overcame the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile and it is referring to that barrier right there. In any case, these Jews “Then came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida of Galilee, and began to ask him, saying, ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus’.” Now, I have been preaching from pulpits where they actually have that on a plate. It actually has engraved on it, “Sir, we would see Jesus.” Now, it tells us, “Philip came and told Andrew; Andrew and Philip came and told Jesus. And Jesus answered them, saying, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified’.” Now, this is extremely important for us to see because the motif of the ‘hour’. Before, it was His ‘hour had not come’, His ‘hour had not come’. But, with the rejection of His own people it is now imminent.

Now, in this symbolic movement toward the ‘God-fearers’, who were wanting to see Jesus, it shows He is not a person just for the nation of Israel, but for persons of all the world. Christ came to save the whole world, and this message would be available to all who would receive.

So, that is why it tells us, “The hour has come.” He was there in the city where He knew He would be rejected because of the mounting opposition.

Now, it goes on to say, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies it bears much fruit.” Many of you know that occasionally I do a great book where I synthesize that, and I was speaking at the Wilberforce Forum last weekend, and Chuck Colson has this ‘Centurion’ program, where they are training them in various worldviews. I was asked to do two workshops, on worldview and literature. I illustrated how The Brothers Karamazov, in my opinion the greatest novel ever written, could actually be leveraged and used to show a Christian motif. Among other things,

I argued that university courses invariably get it wrong and miss the whole point of the novel. What they do is focus on Ivan’s story of The Grand Inquisitor. Dostoyevsky, in his own notes said the rest of the novel is my refutation of that. He uses the three brothers, in a Paulathonic way, to actually end their suffering and to demonstrate, through their suffering, that each of them will come to faith. One brother, Dmitri, representing the body, another, Ivan, representing the mind, and the third brother, Alyosha, representing the soul. Those three parts of the personality are divided and the ‘Karamazov nature’ is a symbol of the Fall.

So, instead of having one hero, you have a composite hero, and in each composite suffering is involved and it is through suffering that redemption takes place. I mention this because this verse reminds me of the verse Dostoyevsky himself placed on the dedication page. When he dedicated the book to his wife, underneath the dedication it said this: “Truly, truly I say to you unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Dostoyevsky’s own suffering is what brought him to faith, as you know. He was sent off to Siberia and was going to be executed. He was with a radical group of insurrectionists, but his sentence was commuted at the very last minute. You can only imagine, waking up in the morning absolutely convinced you are about to be executed.

Then, at the very last minute, if you learned your sentence was commuted, what would you think? You would realize that you are on borrowed time. It would change your whole view. He suffered four years of hard labor and another four years of exile, and that, combined with his reading of the New Testament, is what bought him back as a man of faith. Each of his books has a particular point that he wants to stress, vis a vis the idea of the Christian faith. Even in Notes From the Underground, he was furious with what he called ‘that swine of a censor’, who got rid of the Christian elements. My point is simply this; suffering is what God will often use to drive us to Himself. When a man or a woman has everything they need, or suppose they have, they are really not in a position to come to faith.

But, even if they seem to have an abundance in this world, are they really happy? Is there any trouble in their life? You have to pick up on those issues of suffering. God leverages and uses suffering.

But, Jesus goes on to say, “He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal. If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him.”

So, He is using the idea of not only believing in Him, but also of following Him in terms, clearly, of discipleship.

So, my point is this; there is a contrast between loneliness and fruitfulness, between losing life and keeping life, between serving self and serving Christ, between pleasing self and receiving God’s honor in this text. In the life of God, the seed has to be buried, as you know, before it can fulfill its purpose. Unless it is buried it will not sprout. The life of God can not be fulfilled unless we yield ourselves to God and permit Him to plant us. You see the idea? There is a sort of death. We die of the self so that we can live to God. We see this in Romans six and in Galatians 2:20.

So, Jesus’ willingness was to be conformed to the Father’s will and we this struggle. We don’t have the retelling of the Gethsemane account, but we do have this struggle that is illustrated in the next verses, when Jesus says, “Now my soul has become troubled,” and that word, ‘tarasso’, we saw earlier with Lazarus, and we will see it again when Judas betrays Him. “What shall I say, ‘Father save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour.” So He says, “’Father, glorify your name’. Then a voice came out of heaven: ‘I have both glorified it and will glorify it again’. So the crowd of people who stood by and heard it were saying that it had thundered; others were saying, ‘An angel has spoken to Him’. Jesus answered and said, ‘This voice has not come for My sake, but for your sakes’.” Now, I want to stress, then, that if we pursue our own comfort, we will never be planted.

But, if you understand that God’s desire is to cause us to bear lasting fruit, then we will be willing to submit our lives to Him rather than protecting them. My view here is that our idea of protecting our lives is actually moving us away from protection. The only thing that is safe is what you give to Him. In your quest to protect your life from God’s sovereign demands, actually those are the things you will never have. It is the things that we finally surrender to Him that ironically become our own. “Now judgment is upon the world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out.” The fact is that judgment, life and death, salvation, all of it has already begun. Waiting for the end times has already begun. The hour of judgment for the world, and for the adversary, “The ruler of this world will be cast out. And I, if I am lifted up from this earth, will draw all men to Myself.” He uses this euphemism of being lifted up, and He is speaking not only of the Cross, but beyond that to the ascension.

All of that is part of the glorification of Christ. His death, His burial, His resurrection, and His ascension really form a seamless unit and all are related to the glorification God has. We now see, “But He was saying this to indicate the kind of death by which He was to die.” As you know, the Jews would stone someone to death. The Romans are the ones who invented this particularly cruel form of punishment and torture and death. It was a very, very vicious thing, indeed. To be frank with you, the Gibson film pretty much had it right. I would have liked a few more flashbacks, but he certainly was not exaggerating what happened. It was gruesome and almost beyond belief. The point here is that He is indicating the kind of death, and it will be on the Cross.

So, “The crowd answered Him, ‘We have heard out of the Law that the Christ is to remain forever; how can you say, ‘The Son of Man must be lifted up’? Who is this Son of Man’?” What is happening there is they are confusing the son of David, the coming king, with Messiah, the son of Joseph, the suffering servant. Naturally, they are going to hope for the former and not the latter. “So, Jesus said to them, ‘For a little while longer the Light is with you. Walk while you have the Light, so that darkness will not overtake you; he that walks in the darkness does not know where he goes.”

So, He is giving them this urgent appeal. “While you have the Light,” because you won’t have it much longer, “believe in the Light, so that you may become sons of Light. These things Jesus spoke and then He went away and hid Himself from them.” John’s commentary in verse 37 is very telling, “Thought He performed so many signs before them, yet they were not believing in Him.” Remember Jesus’ words when He said, “If they don’t believe Moses and the Prophets, neither will they believe if someone rises from the dead.” So it so.

A person is responsible for the life they have and no one is in complete darkness. God is illuminated, even in the general revelation. Where ever we are, the reality from the heavens, and the study of human nature, from the study of the exquisite design in this world, it points beyond itself to God, and our human hearts can not eradicate it, try though we might. When people use the problem of evil to condemn God, the ironic part is that they are appealing to condemn an absolute. The only way you can logically condemn Him is to appeal to Him. They can not get away from their self-refuting worldviews. Their promises are self-defeating. They can not believed and they don’t make coherent and logical sense.

So, they did not believe in Him through His signs and it is now a matter of will. The signs were there and they saw them and still chose not to believe in Him. Going back to The Brothers Karamazov, because it is so fresh in my mind, at the very end of ‘The Grand Inquisitor’, you recall that the stranger had come to the city of Seville during the height of the Spanish Inquisition and when the Cardinal sees him raising the dead and healing people, he orders the man to brought in and arrested. He says, “Is it thou?” Then he says, “Don’t speak. Whether it is ‘thou’ or not, you will be burned tomorrow. You must see that the Church is built on miracle, mystery and authority. You have turned away from that. We have brought it back. That way we can give people what they want and have a sense of power. If you continue to do what you are doing, you will challenge our religious establishment.” What is interesting is that when he gives him an opportunity to speak for himself, the stranger does not say anything. We know it is Jesus. Instead, he comes to the Grand Inquisitor, kisses him on the mouth and the Grand Inquisitor is so stunned by this act that he says, “Get out of here,” and lets him go free.

At the end of the story, Ivan is asked, by Alyosha, “What happened to the priest?” He answered, “The warmth of the kiss remains in his heart, but he has clung to his ideas.” Isn’t that a powerful image? So, the warmth was there, but he refuses to change his heart. He had pretty well made his decision. There is frightening thought, where a person can reach a point of no return. They can harden their heart so many times that God begins to do it in addition. That is the reality and that is why He says you have you have the opportunity to believe. Continuing, “This was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet which he spoke: ‘Lord, who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed’?” In other words, in Isaiah 53, “Who has believed our message? To whom has the arm of the Lord,” which is His miracles, his message and His miracles have been rejected by the people, as Isaiah predicted. For this reason, they couldn’t believe. Isaiah said again, “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, so that they would not see with their eyes and receive with their hearts and be converted and I heal them.” Ultimately they are held accountable for their actions. “These things Isaiah said because he saw His glory and spoke of Him.” The glory that he saw, of Messiah, when did he see that glory? It is in chapter six, when he saw the Lord lifted up in the holy temple.

So, “Nevertheless, many even of the rulers believed in Him, but because of the Pharisees they were not confessing Him, for fear they would be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the approval of men rather than the approval of God.” We do discover, though, that two of them do come out of the closet after the Crucifixion. Who were they, these two rulers, and members of the Sanhedrin? Joseph of Aramethia and Nicodemus.

So, they do come out, but this is an important point, “They loved the approval of men rather than the approval of God.” You can’t play to both audiences. In verse 44, “Jesus cried out and said, ‘He who believes in Me, does not believe in Me, but in Him who sent Me. He who sees Me sees the One who sent Me’.” Strong words are these. “I have come as Light into the world, so that everyone who believes in Me will not remain in darkness.”

So, He concludes this theme, this motif, that goes throughout the Gospel, light and darkness; life and death; belief and disbelief; knowing the Father, rejecting the Father. All these motif are woven together. “If anyone hears My sayings and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world.” This is an allusion to the commentary in John 3:17-18. “He who rejects Me and does not receive My sayings, has one who judges him; the word I spoke is what will judge him at the last day.” You will be accountable for the word that was spoken to you. “For I did not speak on My own initiative, but the Father Himself ho sent Me has given Me a commandment as to what to say and what to speak. I know that His commandment is eternal life; therefore the things I speak, I speak just as the Father has told Me.”

So, as we conclude this chapter, then, Jesus makes this last appeal. I have spoken to you; I have manifested the Father, when you believe in Me you are actually believing in the Father. When you see Me you are seeing the Father. When you entrust yourself to Me, you are entrusting yourself to the Father. When you are obeying Me, you are obeying Him. These are radical claims. Because, ‘I’ and the ‘Father’ are One. Again, I have to stress the mystery of the Trinity that is so utterly unique. I will give you a classic chart, that was created in the 12th century by Richard of St. Victor, and remember that we know when we look at God we see the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and that the Holy Spirit is God. The Father is God. The Son is God.

But, we also see that the Father is not the Holy Spirit and that the Father is not the Son. The Son is not the Holy Spirit. That is a wonderful portrayal of Trinitarian truth. They are not each other, but they are God. It is not like you take a pie and divide it into three parts and then say each one is the pie. It is that each one exhaustively fulfills what it means to be God and not each other. I can not understand that, nor can you.

So, don’t even try. The point is that this deep mystery of the Trinitarian truth is the ultimate foundation for unity and diversity, for the One and the many, for the lover and the beloved, and the love that flows between them, for other-centric service, for being co-equal and co-eternal. We have this deep and profound mystery, where He has revealed the Father, and what is going to happen after revealing the Father, in John 14 and 16, He will talk about how now the Holy Spirit will come and will speak and point to Him.

(Q)(A): Remember that most of His disciples didn’t fully understand what was going on. The real issue back then is the same issue now. We have more light, but we are accountable for the light we have. They had less light, but were still held accountable for the light they had; not for the light they didn’t have, but only for the light they did have. The issue is the same but the light is different. My view is that God knows the heart and He knows the light it has received. Clearly, God is not going to give us more illumination if we don’t respond to that we have already received.

*Please note: the source recording for this lesson was damaged. So the file will end at about 42 minutes.

Let’s begin this evening with a prayer. Lord, we give thanks for this day and for Your word that instructs us and gives us guidance and counsel. I pray we would be a people who would be receptive to it and to apply what we hear. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen. Well, we approach, now, the second major portion of the Gospel of John. The first portion of John’s Gospel was the ‘book of signs’ and that was chapters one through twelve.

In the ‘book of signs’ we saw where there would often be a discourse followed by a miracle, or a miracle followed by a discourse. Typically, you would have this theme of the act itself, often Jesus would present Himself and then there would often be a discourse. The point is that these signs and Jesus’ interpretation of the signs go together. His claims and His credentials match up with one another. That was the idea; the claims and credentials were consistent and both point beyond themselves to His true authority. The uniqueness of Christ, then, is not merely a matter of what He claimed, but also what He was able to accomplish. So, in chapters one through twelve, what we see there is the climax of His ministry and being rejected by the religious leaders of Israel at the end of chapter 12. This was the public aspect of His ministry.

So, these were signs to the public. Now we have the ‘book of glory’, as we might call it. This covers chapters 13 through 21. This is really to His disciples. It is private. What has taken place, then, is the final, or official, rejection of Jesus, ‘Yeshua ha Machiach’, by His own people, takes place. He has made His final appeal to them at the end of chapter 12, when He says, beginning in verse 47, “If anyone hears My sayings, and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. He who rejects Me and does not reject My sayings, has One who judges him; the word I spoke is what will judge him at the last day.

For I did not speak on My own initiative, but the Father Himself who sent Me has given Me a commandment as to what to say and what to speak. I know that His commandment is eternal life; therefore the things I speak, I speak just as the Father has told Me.” But, we know that the people rejected Him. In fact, if you go back to verse 37, “Though He had performed so many signs before them, yet they were not believing in Him.” This is the fulfillment of the text in Isaiah that talks about the fact that the Messiah Himself would be rejected by His own people.

So, He has now completed His signs and because He is rejected by His people and in view of the mounting opposition, the ‘book of glory’ will take place. When I say glory, what I mean by that is now the time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Actually, you need to understand that the crucifixion is part of that glorification. You must understand that Jesus’ death was not a tragedy. It is not a martyrdom but, rather, recall that He said earlier, in chapter ten, “No one takes My life from Me. I have laid it down on My own initiative and I will take it up again. This authority I received from My Father. Furthermore, “Was it not for this hour that I have come?”

So, that is why He says, “Father, glorify My name.” Clearly, His intention was to fulfill the work of the Father, and that is the reason why He came. (Q)(A): Yes, it is very clear in the film. Recall, the text in John 10 is quoted. Also, at the beginning of the film it actually quotes Isaiah 53. It is contextualized there.

So, the idea here is that it is not a martyrdom and it is not a matter of focusing so much on who killed Him because the answer is that all of us did. Remember two of Jesus’ purpose statements, where He summarizes His mission? The Son of Man has come to do what? One of them is to seek and to save that which is lost. That is part of His purpose. His understanding of what it would take to seek and save was really one of great sacrifice. He knew the purpose for which He had come. The other purpose statement was the Son of Man has not come to be served, but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for the many. There is a very important verse in Galatians chapter two that relates to this matter. Paul, in dealing with the nature of the Gospel, wants to be very, very clear in the application of the Gospel. Verse 20 is very well known, and it says, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in Me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who love me and gave Himself up for Me.” However, it is the next verse I want us to focus on, “I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly.”

Do you all catch the implications of that? If there was any way in which people could some how earn their way to God, by any form of works, then it would not have been necessary for God to have done such a desperate act, such a radical act. What this does, then, is condemn every works-based system. It says the reason why the works systems do not work is precisely because God’s Holiness is a lot greater than we suppose. Any time you suppose you can work your way up to heaven, or to earn your salvation, is to either bring God down to our level or raise us up to His level. Either we minimize sin or we minimize the Holiness of God. Actually, a grasp of grace causes you to realize both simultaneously and, in fact, it is my own conviction that the more you come to understand the difference between God’s Holiness and our sins, the more you come to understand grace, because that is what covers the difference.

But, what happens is that as you grow, you come to understand a higher, or deeper, level and so your understanding of grace will increase. The idea here is that the more you grasp the disparity between the nature of sin and the Holiness of God, the more your grasp of grace will be, and the great Saints always became aware of these two aspects of knowledge, the problem of the human condition and the Holiness of God, and that is why whenever a person encounters God, what will be their first response? When God manifests Himself in a very vivid way? Say, for example, Daniel or Isaiah in Isaiah six, what would be the response these people would have? Well, they would say, “I am undone,” or “Woe to me.” They would be aware of their own sins. They would be undone, even John, when he sees the resurrected Christ, he is overwhelmed, and though it actually takes God to reach down and lift us up, the point is that when people really encounter God in this real way, they are overwhelmed by that knowledge.

So, this understanding, then, must include that He came for this purpose. So, I want to stress certain things about this. In verse one through five we see Jesus’ humility and His relationship with His Father. In the ‘book of glory’, one of the themes we will observe is the issue of the hour. If signs were obvious in the first twelve chapters, the theme of the hour, and its fulfillment, is evident here. I might mention, by the way, that on Sunday Jesus entered Jerusalem, when we put the Synoptics together with John, and on Monday, that was the cleansing of the temple. On Tuesday, it was a day of conflict for the religious leaders. On Wednesday, none of the Gospels provide any information. It is a day of silence. Thursday we have what we are dealing with here, the Upper Room. There are some commentators who argue that John can not be synced with the Synoptics and claim that this is really not a Passover meal. I will not get into that because it is a little technical. However, my own view is that this is the Passover meal and it takes place on Thursday night. One of the things that we know is clear is that Judas betrays Him in the Gospel and he betrays Him here. He did not do it twice. In that context, then, we know it was the Passover meal. There is good warrant, then, to say that these can be fit together. Some continue to challenge this in an effort to refute the Gospel of John because it is such a powerful and clear Gospel. I want to look at verses one through five and I want to speak about Jesus’ humility. This is His relationship with His Father.

Now, I want to stress something. What we have here in John’s account is unique to John. I must tell you, these chapters are extremely pivotal in the understanding of the Christian faith. In chapters 13, 14, 15, 16, and then in the high priestly prayer of chapter 17, we have the essence of the Christian faith encapsulated and these chapters contain the seeds for all the key doctrines that are developed in the Epistles. We have the essence, in these chapters, of what it means to live the spiritual life. This is extremely important for us, and John supplements the other accounts by giving us this insight that the other Gospels do not provide. In understanding this, then, we must remind ourselves that Jesus knew the hour had come. Knowing that, then, within 24 hours He would be glorified through His crucifixion, understand that He took this as His last opportunity to share His thoughts, these closing words, with the ones whom He loved most. It is very important for us to grasp that. Again, you have to imagine, yourself, that you had only 24 hours to live, but you have enough strength to gather your family and friends together and say some parting words. Ask yourself this question: what would you tell them? It is an interesting mental exercise. What would you want to share with them? Chances are pretty good you would be talking about very fundamental issues. He knew this was His last opportunity.

So, we have the key words, a farewell speech. We saw other farewell speeches, in the Old Testament, for example, and one of them is Moses’ farewell speech in Deuteronomy, where he gives a very clear farewell to the people and gives them clear exhortations. He comforts them, but also warns them. We have Joshua’s farewell speech as well, in Joshua 23 and 24, where he knows that the time has come, he is going to die at the age of 110, and he calls all the key leaders together and give them his reflections. Recall, too, this contains that famous passage, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” He says you have to choose whom you will serve, because you serve someone. That is where Bob Dylan got that line, ‘you’re going to serve somebody, maybe the devil, maybe the Lord’.

But, you will serve somebody. He is absolutely right. You will serve something. Either you will serve the creator or you will serve an aspect of the creation. The latter is idolatry because it is beneath what you were called to be. So, we have Moses, we have Joshua, and also in Acts chapter 20, we have Paul’s farewell speech to the Ephesian elders. Again, in each of these cases, we have a very clear sense of urgency, and of encouragement, but also of exhortation.

So, let’s take a look, then, at these verses and in verses one through three we have what the Lord knew. This emphasizes what our Lord knew and I want you to listen to these verses carefully because this is a very, very important text. “Now, before the feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He would depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.” Let me pause right there. “He knew that His hour had come,” chapter 13, verse one. By the way, that theme of ‘My hour’, in chapter two verse four, it was, “My hour has not yet come.” In chapter seven, verse 30, it was, “His hour had not yet come.” In chapter eight, verse 20, it was, “His hour had not yet come.” Three times this theme is developed about the timing because God’s work, as you know, must be done on His time as well as in His way, and, as well, in His power.

So, you can do a good thing at the wrong time. In all these things, the theme of ‘His hour’ is critical because one of the key ideas in the Gospels is Jesus always doing the will of the Father, always listening to His Father’s voice, and always speaking what His Father has commanded Him to speak. This is a message of radical dependence upon Him. In the same way, you and I are called as well to be people who are radical dependent upon Him, and listening, as you make decisions, for His voice, and seeking to get God’s counsel and perspective, and seeking to serve Him in every aspect of life, because everything matters. I want to stress that again; everything matters, if I understand the Scriptures correctly. There is no area that might be secular and another one spiritual. Everything matters, and the difference is, what is our source of empowerment, of energy, that draws us to God? So, He knew that His hour and come and then in chapter 12, verse 23, for the first time it says, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” When He thinks about that hour, He is thinking about the glory, and this may seem strange to us, but it is the glory that is associated with the Cross and not just with the resurrection, because, “The Son of Man is going to be lifted up.” That was in chapter 12, verse 23, and then we see it repeated in chapter 13, verse one, “He knew that His hour had come.” Then, if you jump ahead, to chapter 17, and verse one, “Jesus spoke these things; and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, ‘Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You.” Now, from the human perspective, this hour meant suffering.

But, from a divine point of view, it meant glory. Look with me at some verses later in our chapter, verses 31 and 32, to get this perspective. “Therefore when He had gone out, Jesus said, ‘Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him; if God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself, and will glorify Him immediately’.” There is a very strong emphasis here.

So, we see the idea of Jesus being called to fulfill a purpose and if you look ahead, again, to the John 17 text, Jesus stresses this in verse four, “I glorified You on the earth having accomplished the work which You have given Me to do.” I have said this before, but when the servant of God is in the will of God, He is immortal until that work is done. Nothing can take Him away from God’s purpose. When the servant of God is seeking to do the will of God, God will accomplish His purpose. Whether it takes many years or a very short time.

So, understand, then, that you are called on a divine mission. Every one of you has a mission. Every one of us has a purpose. It is important for you to identify, and prayerfully seek, what that purpose might be. All of have a universal purpose of evangelism and of edification; that is to say to help people to come to know Christ, and then to make Him known. You see the idea? So, you come to know Him and then you help people develop in Him. As people come to faith in Christ, then they must grow in Him. I think all of us have some purpose in that and in regard to our own arena of influence. In our geographical influence, in our vocational influence, and, third, in our biological influence, namely our family.

Then, fourth, there is the social realm of influence; people you do things with and have things in common. God has sovereignly given you, then, these four realms of influence. Some are larger than others, but my point is God has given you particular gifts, and He has given you a particular realm of influence and my conviction is that as you seek to steward those gifts in that arena of influence, you are really moving in the direction of God’s purpose for your life. I am reminded of Ephesians 2:10, “We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” Paul is saying here that God prepared us for good works and we should walk in them.

Now, the interesting thing is that we are His workmanship, but now having been created, we are now to create and form good works that are pleasing to the Father.

So, I want to stress this, and I would invite you to consider prayerfully what your personal life statement is. It would be a good thing for you to consider what that might look like. What would be your personal statement? If you had to have a purpose statement, maybe about business, you should have one for your personal life as well. I encourage you to move in that direction. I discuss ‘purpose’ in three places in Conformed to His Image. It is an important issue. Jesus was very, very clear about His knowledge of the purpose of God. In verse two, it also tells us something else He knew. Not only did He know His hour had come, but He knew that Judas would betray Him. “During supper, the devil having already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, to betray Him.” Go back to chapter six and look at verse 64. Let me read, again, this understanding. “’There are some of you who do not believe’. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that did not believe, and who it was that would betray Him.” He knew from the beginning. It is really a remarkable concept when we understand that.

Then, if we look ahead to John six, verses 70 and 71, “Jesus answered them, ‘Did I Myself not choose you, the twelve, yet one of you is a devil’? Now He meant Judas the on of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was going to betray Him.” One can ask, how did Jesus have fellowship with him, knowing that in His heart? I can only say there is a divine, sovereign issue here, where Judas had an accountability, which I will discuss a little bit later.

So, He knew that Judas would betray Him, and now let me stress that verse three is particularly key, He knew three things about his own identity. I want to stress this. First of all, He knew who He was. Secondly, He knew where He came from. You can guess where the third one is going to take us. He also knew where He was going. Knowing these three things is absolutely essential to what we are about to read.

So, He knew, then, His identity. He had come from God and He understood, as well, that all things were given into His hand, and that He was going back to God. That is what it tells us. “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come forth from God and was going back to God,” and that is really a sense of His security.

So, He knew His dignity, He knew His identity, and He also knew His destiny, that is to say, His ultimate glorification. In other words, He grasped who He was. The same thing is true of us. We have a grasp of our identity, if we come to understand that where we came from is no longer from Adam, but from God. Turn to John chapter one, verse 12, and you will see, and this is one of many texts about the followers of Jesus, “As many who received Him,” speaking of Christ, “To them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name.” That means that when we come to know Him, we become children of God and that is where we come from. You see the idea there? We are no longer from Adam, but we now have that tremendous dignity and sense of our identity. 1st John 3:2 also develops this theme. There it says, “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.”

So, these are very important understandings of our identity. Let me tell you about our dignity. We also know who we are. In a deep sense we have tremendous dignity, because God has given that to us as a gift. That is to say, in Ephesians chapter one, for example, you will discover in verses three to six, “The Father has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons to Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.” That tells me, then, that we have tremendous clarity about our identity. We are people who have been gifted and called by God. That tells me about our dignity as well. Regarding our security, I would use Romans chapter eight to tell us where we are going.

But, many texts tell us that. It tells us about glorification. In fact, if you wanted, this very next chapter of John even tells us about that, because Jesus says, “It is needful for Me to go away so that I can come back to you.” And then, “Where I am, you may be also, so I am preparing a place for you.” That is where we are going. His desire is for us to be with Him for all time. That is clearly a theme in the John 17 prayer, His desire that we would have intimacy with Him. Intimacy but not absorption. I stress the difference. It is not absorption, but it is immersion. You are immersed in the Trinitarian life, but you are not absorbed in it, because there will always be the 'Creator-created' distinction. This is unlike the religions of the East, where you do have that. The Scriptures emphasize, in a balanced way, the transcendence of God and the imminence of God. It emphasizes both distance and nearness.

So, we understand that we are creatures, but nevertheless are called to be children as well. So, knowing these three things, then, is critical to our understanding to what He will do. So, verses one through three tell us what He knew and verses four and five now tell us what He did. We see now, in verse four, “He got up from supper and laid aside His garments; and taking a towel, He girded Himself. Then He poured water into the basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded.” Now, what He knew helped to determine what He did. In fact, I want to argue that because He knew who He was, He was secure enough to serve other people. You must understand how very, very humiliating such an act would seem to be. It might be analogous to Queen Elizabeth coming to your house and sweeping the floor. It just wouldn’t seem right. Although in various services, in the Orthodox Church, often you will have priests wash the feet of the poor. It would become a symbol of sacrificial service. Here is the embarrassing bit about this. Go back to the other Gospels and you will discover there were a couple of things about these disciples that make, and underscore, the theme. If you go back to Mark, chapter ten, in verses 35 to 45, there you see the disciples were squabbling about their place in the Sun. In verse 35 of Mark 10, “James and John, the two sons of Zebedee, came to Jesus, saying, ‘We want You to do for us whatever we ask of You’.” That is a great prayer, isn’t it? As if He is ever going to agree to that kind of prayer. Whatever it is, You do it. Of course, His answer was, ‘“What do you want Me to do for you’? They said to Him, ‘Grant that we may sit, one on Your right and one on Your left, in Your glory’.” They weren’t asking much, just the first and second positions forever. This is a bit ambitious. We have this interesting tension because the other disciples kind of wanted those places as well.

So, Jesus asks them this question, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” Their answer is humorous. They said, “We are able.” They are clueless as to what He meant by that. “And Jesus said to them, “’The cup that I drink you shall drink; and you shall be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized. But to sit on my right or my left; this is not Mine to give; but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.’ Hearing this, the ten began to feel indignant with James and John. Calling them to Himself, Jesus said to them, ‘You know that those who are recognized as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them; and their great men exercise authority over them. But it is not this way among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant; and whoever wishes to become first among you shall be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many’.” This provides context. This was few weeks before and so we have that theme. I want us to go now to only a few days before. Yes?

(Q)(A): He is saying yes. He is saying you will be baptized with that kind of death. In other words, you will suffer martyrdom, as they did. The only one who escaped that was John, and even of that we are not completely sure.

(Q)(A): Yes, it is the baptism of suffering, as I see it. In a very real sense it is an immersion into an identification with God.

So, they are saying they are willing to do something, but have no idea what it means. The cup is something more and another aspect. Some people see the Eucharistic image there. I think it is more than that. I think He is telling them they will get more than they bargained for. The cup was a cup of suffering. Remember Jesus says to the Father, “Take this cup from Me.” There is an image there of suffering on our behalf. Let us go now to Luke 22.

Now, this is after the squabble in Mark 10. Here is another argument that they have. You have to admit that this is further evidence that these Gospels are truly authoritative, because people wouldn’t normally tell on themselves like this. They really don’t make themselves look good at all. If they were in collusion, they would have made themselves look a lot better than they did.

But, if you look here at verses 24 through 27, “There arose also a dispute among them as to which one of them was regarded to be greatest.” Isn’t that great? This is what they are fighting about, and Jesus has just told them the Son of Man is going to be betrayed. Instead, they’re fighting over this. What does Jesus say to them? It is something very similar to what He said in Mark 10. “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who have authority over them are called ‘Benefactors’. But it is not this way with you, but the one who is the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like the servant. For who is greater, the one who reclines at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at the table? But I am among you as the one who serves.” By the way, in the context of Luke, the chances are excellent that statement was made just before this visual parable. This is what it is, a visual parable about service.

So, Jesus is among them as one who serves. In the Greco-Roman world and also in the 1st century Jewish world, many of the Jews adopted the Roman triclinium. It was a U-shaped affair.

So, the people would sit around the outside of the table and in doing this, they would recline on their left elbow and eat with their right hand. Their feet would be away from the table and that is why it is evident that Mary could wash His feet, as they were away from the table. They were not under the table. The idea was that Jesus was in a place of prominence and we know that John was on His right, as the disciple whom Jesus loved. That is why, when John is leaning on his left, all he had to do was lean on Jesus and ask Him, “Who is it?” It is possible that Judas was on the left, in a position of honor, because he had to be pretty close to Jesus because Jesus was able to take that flat bread that they used, dip it in a bowl that had some food in it, and present it to Judas. He didn’t have to get up to do that, so my impression is that Judas was very, very close. The point is that in this situation, what would be required before they sat down and reclined? Their feet would have to be washed. All the roads were dusty and everyone wore sandals.

So, part of the theme, then, would be that the feet would be washed and there would be kind of a ceremonial dimension to it as well. I will comment on that in just a minute.

So, who would do the washing of the feet? Usually there would be a servant there for that purpose and the servant would be on their hands and knees and the people would come in and there would be a small basin of water. The servant would be girded with a towel and after washing the feet they would wipe them with the towel. That is why Jesus said to the Pharisees, “You didn’t wash My feet.” In other words, they didn’t show Him even that minimum hospitality.

So, here is the problem. What have they been fighting over? Who is going to be the greatest. What is the last thing they want to do? There is no servant there to wash their feet and the last thing they want to do is wash anyone’s feet because that would indicate they aren’t the greatest. See the point here? Even though, again and again, He told them that it is not for you to lord it over people but the one who is the greatest is the one who serves. They just couldn’t get that into their heads because it was so counter-cultural.

So, Jesus does something that stuns them. I have a suspicion, that when they sat down they were uncomfortable because they were violating the oriental tradition. Their feet had not been washed and they sure weren’t about to do it.

So, when Jesus got up and took off His outer garment and put on the towel and took a basin and began to wash their feet, they were overwhelmed. Normally, it would be an act of great devotion and the idea was that it would be the person who was regarded as a higher authority whose feet would be washed and not the lower. Yet, Jesus says, “I among you am One who serves.” I find it to be quite stunning. I think that this issue of humility, this visual parable of humility and servanthood, is in great contrast to the disciples, and in a very real way I believe you and I are called to what we might call ‘the order of the towel’. What I mean by that is the idea that we are called to do what Jesus did in our own arenas of influence as one who serves. Humility, and the concept of servanthood, go together.

Certainly that is developed, as well, in 1st Peter 5:5; “Clothe yourself with humility to one another.” I think it may be a throwback to this imagery of clothing yourself with humility and take on the towel of a servant. We see this is Philippians chapter two as well, where He humbled Himself. I want to stress something about this humility. Humility was not born out of poverty. It was actually born out of riches. Jesus was the sovereign, but He chooses to take the place of the servant. Jesus was the Lord, but He chooses to die on behalf of the people. No one takes that away from Him. He had all things, yet He picks up a towel. He is our Lord and Master, yet He served His followers. You see what He is doing there? He is showing that, in the same way, you must also serve one another.

But, what we have here also is a theme that relates to their fellowship with Him, but that fellowship is to be manifested in their love for one another. So, it is my conviction that true humility grows out of our relationship with the Father.

So, if it is our desire to do the Father’s will, then we are free to serve others. You see, it is when we know that our needs are met in Christ, when we know who we are, when we know where we came from, then we know where we are going. The better you know that, not just in your head, but in your heart, as you meditate upon those truths, the more likely you will be having the power to serve rather that to be served. If you do not know who you are; where you came from and where you are going, you will not be secure enough to serve. Instead, you will be tempted to manipulate people to get your needs met.

So, a follower of Jesus comes to relationships out of a sense of fullness. Their humility is not born, then, of lack. They know who they are and they have nothing to prove. They are no longer having to manipulate people, nor are they really down to people’s expectations and opinions. They are free to serve and secure enough to serve other people. You see, then, why verse three is so critical to our understanding of this. I believe we have been given that same power. Let us move on. In verses six through eleven, we have the theme of Holiness. This has to do with Jesus and Peter. As you know, Peter often spoke very impulsively, often out of ignorance, and had to be corrected by Jesus. “So He came to Simon Peter. He said to Him, ‘Lord, do you wash my feet’? Jesus answered him, ‘What I do you do not realize now, but you will understand hereafter’. Peter said to Him, ‘Never shall you wash my feet’. Jesus answered him, ‘If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me’.

Simon Peter said to Him, ‘Lord, then wash not only my feet, but also my hands and head’.” He goes from one extreme to the opposite extreme. Then Jesus has to correct him on that one, too, “’He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you’. For He knew the one who was betraying Him; for this reason He said, ‘Not all of you are clean’.” Significantly, He washed the feet of Judas. That is a very significant show of honor and possibility, even there, it was not too late. In any case, there is a distinction between the word ‘nipto’, which means ‘to wash’, and ‘louo’, which means to be bathed. In verse 10 Jesus says, “He who has bathed need only wash his feet.” You see the idea? Now, what is going on here is that when a person trusts in Christ, he or she is completely bathed. Their sins are washed away and they are forgiven.

Titus 3 would be a good example of this. It is one of my favorite texts in Scripture. By the way, for that affirmation of who you are, why you are here, where you came from, again I recommend ‘Morning Affirmations’, and you can get on Reflections Ministries website. You can download it under miscellaneous texts. God’s desire is for us to be redefined in this way. In any case, look at Titus chapter three, verses three to seven. “We also were once foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another. But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”

So, you have this image of washing and regeneration. That is when you have bathed. The whole person is bathed in that regenerative act.

Now, my conviction is that, now having been bathed, and having been washed, and having been made clean, then when we do sin, it is not necessary to be bathed all over. Rather, the defilement needs to be cleansed and that is where we are called to keep our feet clean, in other words. Our union with Christ is settled, but our communion is another matter. See the difference? We have our new identity in Christ, but that doesn’t mean our fellowship is what it ought to be.

So, the communion aspect, the fellowship aspect, depends on our keeping ourselves unstained by the world, as James 1:27 puts it. You see, when the an Old Testament priest was consecrated, he was bathed all over, as Exodus 29:4 shows us. The whole body was bathed and then after that experience it was never repeated.

But, instead, in his daily ministry he had to wash his hands and feet at the brass laver in the courtyard, according to Exodus 30. So, at first, when they were consecrated, the whole person, and then after that only the hands and feet. So, we have this analogy as well.

So, our cleansing is by the blood of Christ and the application of His word to our lives and God’s provision for this cleansing is always there. 1st John chapter two, verses one and two is a clear a passage as we can get on this. “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation,” and that word means satisfaction, “for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.”

So, he is saying there is a provision that when we do stop walking in the light we can return back to that. So, if we acknowledge our sins and thank Him for His forgiveness, we move back into the sphere of forgiveness. As we move on to the next section, verses 12 to 17, what we now see here. Yes? (Q)(A): What it is saying is that God has washed you by His blood and has actually adopted you into His household before the foundation of the world. It is hard to undo that. Forgiveness is a gift that you can’t give back. Grace is a gift, which was given to you, not because you merited it, but because it was given to you.

But, then people, from a human perspective, always suppose, ‘Ah, but you don’t know me’, I am worse than most people. I want to tell you, you can not out-sin the grace of God.

Now, on the other hand, if a person, having professed to being a believer, has no evident change in their life, then James chapter two invites us to see that they may well be in a position where they need to reconsider whether they really have the faith.

But, what Paul also says in chapter 13 of 2nd Corinthians, ‘Test yourself to see if you are in the faith.” The idea here, as I see it, is that if it is a faith that is alive, it is a faith that will work. The works are not the condition of the faith, but they are the by-product of it. There is a difference between profession and possession. That is why I stress so many times that there a people who go to church, recite the creeds, believe the orthodox position, and still don’t know Jesus. There, you can have profession without possession. (Q)(A): The difference is that there, I believe, He is referring to Judas because He knew the one who would betray Him. Peter denied Him, Judas betrayed Him. There is a big difference. Similarly, Peter was repentant, Judas was remorseful. There was a different response as well.

So, as I see it, then, He is saying that not of all them were clean because Judas was never bathed. He never really was there. What happened was you could see a progression in his hypocrisy. You reach a point of no return. One of the clearest literary examples of this is in the ‘Space Trilogy’ by C.S. Lewis. There you see a character by the name of Ransom, but there is also Weston and another character, named Devine. One of those characters is killed in Perelandra, but the other, knowing that he is about to die, realizes he is going to die without God, but he has reached to point of no return. He chooses to continue as he is.

It reminds me of this great line from Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, which is a glorious novel, perhaps the finest ever written, and what is fascinating about this work is that you have a composite hero, made up of the three brothers, Ivan, Dmetri, and Alyosha. Together they form the ‘Karamazov nature’, which represents the Fall and a lack of unity. All three of them, through pain and sorrow and suffering, come to an end themselves and come to faith. The point is this, that the three brothers are Dostoyevsky’s answer to the ‘Divine Inquisitor’.

At the end of the ‘Divine Inquisitor’, a stranger comes, who is clearly Jesus, at the height of the Spanish Inquisition. There, on the streets of Seville, he begins to raise people from the dead, heal the blind, and raise up the lame. The Cardinal gets wind of it and knows who it is. He has him arrested. He has him brought to him and asks, “Is it Thou? Even if it isn’t Thou, you will be burned tomorrow. We can not afford to have you around.” In effect,” he says, “you rejected, when you overcame the tempter, three key things that people desperately need, miracle, mystery and authority. Our job is to overcome your work.” The people needed, according to the Cardinal, miracle, mystery, and authority and he thought they were providing that. This stranger never says anything to the Cardinal. And when he asks again to respond, the stranger does something that is a visual parable, he comes to that wizened Cardinal and kisses him on the mouth.

The Cardinal is so overwhelmed by this action that he says, “Get out!” In other words, he chose not to kill him. The stranger goes out and then Alyosha asks Ivan, “What happened to the old man?” Now, this is the mark of no return. Ivan answers, “The warmth of the kiss is still in his heart, but the old man clung to his ideas.” You see that point? He had reached a point of no return. I think Judas progressively did that. Remember A Man for All Seasons, and Richard? At the beginning of the film he was a man, although flawed, really wanted to do the right thing. Then he takes the next step and the next step and finally he moves to the point of no return. Each action makes the next one easier until finally he betrays the one he wanted to be with.

So, you have this profound picture, here, of change and we have Jesus and the disciples together. In verses 12 through 17, and I call this ‘happiness’, in a way, because of the sense of Joy Jesus is actually offering, “When He had washed their feet, and taken His garments and reclined at the table again, He said to them, ‘Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for I am. If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I gave you an example that you should also do as I did to you. Truly, truly I say to you, a slave is not greater than his master, nor is one who is sent greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them’.” What He is doing here is showing that you discover real joy when your true source of joy is serving others in the name of Christ.

So, He is saying that, “You are blessed if you do them.” By becoming a servant, the Lord lifted each of us up. He dignifies sacrifice and service. I want you to see that. Jesus gave dignity to sacrifice and service. Therefore, we have a need for leaders who will serve and a need for servants who will lead. The blessing in 3:17 doesn’t come from knowledge or motion, but from application. James 1:25 tells us that, “Blessed is the man who applies these things.” I need to tie the chapter together because we are almost out of time.

In verses 18 through 35, what we now have is Jesus and Judas, and this section we can call ‘hypocrisy’, because we have a man who was not a true believer. If you look back to chapters six and twelve, and then ahead to 13:29, we have a number of texts that tell us that these things that we understand he was not a true follower of Jesus. “Some were supposing, because Judas had the money box, that Jesus was saying to him, ‘Buy the things we have need of for the feast’; or else that he should give something to the poor.” Here is the treasurer, which is usually an esteemed position, and Judas would pilfer the money regularly. The amazing thing, though, is that the disciples still didn’t get it. Even when he went out they just thought he was going for provisions, or in a Passover tradition, to give alms to the poor. The disciples never caught on until after the fact, but Jesus knew what Judas would do.

He didn’t compel him to do it, in spite of his exposure to the truth, and this is the important point, you can have so much truth that you reject. God alone knows where that point of no return is. I believe it very possible for a person to reach the point where they reject the Gospel only so many times and the next time is it. They are incapable of receiving it. God knows that point of no return. We do not. You can reject the Light only so many times.

We have this theme of light and darkness. If you will look with me, again, at verse 18, “I do not speak of all of you. I know the ones I have chosen; but it is that the Scripture may be fulfilled, ‘He who eats my bread has lifted up his heel against me’. From now on I am telling you before it comes to pass, so that when it does occur, you may believe that I am He. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who receives whomever I send received Me; and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me.” We have this portrait of Jesus telling him that this is something that had to come to pass. “When Jesus had said this, He became troubled in spirit,” and the word ‘tarasso’ is used again, “and testified and said, ‘Truly, truly I say to you that one of you will betray Me’.

The disciples began to look at one another, at a loss to know of which one He was speaking.” That is the incredible thing, this Judas was good, and none of them caught on. The amazing thing is that he had over three years in Jesus presence. He had a lot of opportunity to get the Light. You see how incredible this is? Is it possible, then, for us to hear it and hear it and hear it, and not get it? Of course, the answer is yes. “There was reclining on Jesus’ bosom one of His disciples, whom Jesus loved.” Again, John would be at a place of honor on Jesus’ right. As he is leaning on his left elbow, then, all he had to do is lean back and ask Him who it was.

So, Simon Peter gestured to him, and said to him, ‘Tell us who it is of whom He is speaking’. He, leaning back thus on Jesus’ bosom, said, ‘Lord, who is it’? Jesus then answered, ‘That is the one for whom I shall dip the morsel and give it to him’. So when He had dipped the morsel, He took and gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot.” Luke’s Gospel tells us that Satan entered into him at that time. “After the morsel, Jesus said to him, ‘What you do, do quickly’. Now no one of those reclining at the table knew for what purpose He had said this.” Now, in verse 30, “So after receiving the morsel, he went out immediately; and it was night.” We know it was night, but John is using it as a double meaning. He is stressing that Judas was of the darkness. It is the theme of the children of light and the children of darkness.

Now, I want to stress that this is a theme that is developed all through this Gospel. In chapter one, “The Light came into the world and the darkness did not comprehend it.” In chapter three Jesus makes this statement, “The Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness more than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.” That is why many people can come to intellectual belief about Jesus but not be willing to place their trust in Him, because of the implications it might have for their lives. I have been with many people who finally grasped it, their objections were answered, and they came to say maybe it’s true.

Still, they chose not to accept Him. It was no longer an intellectual issue, it was a volitional issue. They realized it would mean a loss of control and a change in their life. Clinging to the darkness will allow you to eventually reject the Light. After Judas had left, the atmosphere had cleared and Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him. God will also glorify Him in Himself, and will glorify Him immediately. Little children, I am with you a little while longer. You will seek Me; and as I said to the Jews, now I also say to you, where I am going, you can not come. A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”

So, Jesus is now instructing the disciples and that is when the Eucharist takes place. He begins to instruct them and prepare them for His crucifixion and His ultimate return to heaven.

Now, in verses 34 and 35, Jesus’ love for His own must be reflected in their love for one another. 1st John 3:16 underscores this theme. “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” So, our love is the true evidence that we belong to Christ. That is to be the manifestation; your love, your sacrifice, your service. That becomes the evidence of the in-Christ relationship.

(Q)(A): I forgot that there was a verse concerning Judas that I want to give you because it might be relevant. The verse is in Matthew 26:24, “The Son of Man is to go, just as it is written of Him; but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed. It would have been good for that man if he had not been born.” Here is the point. That man had a choice. It underscores the need for human responsibility. That is why, as I see it, we have a picture of how God has a plan. We see this in Acts 2:23, “This Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to the Cross by Godless men and put Him to death.” Do you catch the balance there? On the one side, He was delivered over by a predetermined plan.

On the other hand, it does not eliminate their culpability for nailing Him to the Cross and putting Him to death. See how both are true? Divine sovereignty never eliminates human responsibility. We can make our choice and God is not responsible for the commitment of evil. His purposes will be accomplished, but we will be accountable for what we do. If Judas had not betrayed Him, He would have been betrayed by another, but I have to balance that with John 6, that He knew from the beginning he was the one who would do it. It is amazing because Jesus was with this man for years, sharing His truth and loving him. I don’t know that Judas knew he would betray Him. It is interesting, going back to Lewis’ Perelandra, the character Weston actually becomes possessed by Satan and it is no longer that Ransom is wrestling with a man, he is wrestling with someone who is inhabited by the enemy. By giving himself over to the darkness, he put himself in the position to be taken over by that darkness. I think he rationalized his actions. Perhaps he was trying to force Jesus’ hand.

(Q)(A): I think he thought that he wasn’t truly betraying Him. Of course, he was selling Him for 30 pieces of silver and you can’t entirely get around that.

(Q)(A): What I am saying is that when we have a relationship with God, when we are His children, we can not out-sin His grace. I think we can, though, reject His grace before we receive it. Judas chose to reject it. He did not embrace Christ for Himself because he had an agenda. As Jesus said, “It would have been better if that man had never been born.” One side of it is that he was remorseful, but the other side I can not eliminate, “woe to that man,” and also, Satan had entered him. There are two sides to it.

(Q)(A): It certainly was important because he was the one who used to pilfer from the money box. It may well be that he felt, in his definition of Messianic Messiah, if Jesus’ hand were forced, He would put Himself in a position to show Himself as the true Messiah and deliver His people. Keep in mind that the Jewish expectation of the Messiah was one of a reigning King, not a suffering servant, even though you have the suffering servant motif throughout the Old Testament. The idea that it could be one and the same is not something anyone conceived. There are a lot of factors involved and it is not simple. It is subtle.

For him to have been with Jesus that long is very profound to me. It deals with the issue of evil and the mystery of evil and the mystery of why some people respond to the Light and others reject that Light. I have to say it is the grace of God. I have no other answer for it. Let me close in a prayer. Lord, we thank You for this opportunity to reflect together on the meaning of sacrificial love and service, the meaning of our love, our dignity, and our security, the implications of that security, and dignity, and identity, for how we are to serve other people. You have given us such a security that we can now serve and do not have to manipulate.

I pray that we would go into relationships with that understanding; a growing grasp as we pray that You would open the eyes of our hearts and that You would give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of You. We pray in Christ’s name. Amen.

Let’s begin with a prayer. Father, we thank You for this time and we ask that You would guide us and help us to clearly learn some things from John’s Gospel that will enable us to see You better as we look at the life of Jesus and these parting words that He offered to His disciples. We pray in Christ’s name. Amen.

We are looking at John chapter 14, and we started last week looking at the Upper Room discourse and that discourse goes from John 13 to John 17 and in looking at this particular chapter, we have to go back a little bit. We have to go back to verses 36 through 38 of chapter 13, where we see “Simon Peter said to Him, ‘ Lord, where are you going’, because Jesus has just told them He is going to a place where they can not follow. In fact, look at verse 33, “Little children, I am with you a little while longer. You will seek Me, and as I said to the Jews, now I also say to you, Where I am going you can not come.”

That would be a very disturbing concept to them, because they had totally cast their lot in with Him for the last three and half years. They still did not grasp what He meant when He said the Son of Man is going to go up to Jerusalem, where He will be betrayed and where He will be executed and where He will suffer and where on the third day He will rise again. They didn’t want to hear this and basically tuned it out. Whenever He talked about the Kingdom, they enjoyed that.

But, whenever He talked about His sufferings, that was another story. So, they are not really fully grasping this. Then He gave them this new commandment, “That you love one another, even as I have loved you,” and remember that new commandment is actually based on the fact the old commandment says, Love one another as you love yourself,” although it doesn’t say it quite that way. Why is this new a commandment? Because it was a higher standard than the original.

Now, we are to love one another as He loved us. I want to tell you that God loves you more than you love yourself. He chooses better for you than you would choose for yourself. How many times have we shot ourselves in the foot and made stupid decisions and so forth? God’s love for us is His steady intention for our highest good. We sometimes, out of selfishness or pigheadedness or pride or revenge do dumb things. His love for us, then, is actually a better love than we have for ourselves. Now Jesus says, “I want you to love one another as I have loved you.” That is an impossible love, it is the love of ‘agape’, the love of choice, or of the will. And that love can not be attained by human endeavor. That is a love that requires divine enablement. There is the issue of true love, and He is the exemplar.

So, Jesus tells them, “By this all men will know you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” And so, Peter asked Him where He was going. Jesus answered, ‘“Where I am going you can not follow Me now; but you will follow later’. Peter said to Him, ‘Lord, why can not I follow You right now? I will lay down my life for you’. Jesus answered, ‘Will you lay down your life for Me? Truly, truly I say to you, a rooster will not crow until you deny Me three times’.” Those were very troubling words, not only for Peter, but also for all the disciples. Can’t you just imagine the scene here? Something is ominous. Something is terribly wrong and they don’t fully grasp it, but they know something is about to happen and it is not on their agenda.

So, their hearts are painful. They are troubled. He is telling them He is going to leave them, and that they can not follow Him now. So, it is not surprising, then, that the next verse would say, “Do not let your heart be troubled.” Here is one of those places where we would have preferred the chapter division to be at verse 35. As you know, the chapter divisions and the verse divisions were not inspired, they were put in many centuries later.

But, I want to connect these together, because we see their heart’s were troubled and Jesus knows this as well. So, He announces to them the good news that He is about to communicate, but they can not grasp it now, but will understand it later. This passage kind of opens and ends with these words. “Do not let your heart be troubled,” in verse one, and then look at verse 27, “Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.” They are troubled for several reasons. As we said, Jesus had announced that one of them was a traitor. They still did not get the idea that it was Judas, even though he went out of the room. He warned Peter that he would deny Him three times. If brave Peter denies Him, what hope is there for the rest of them? You see the idea? Peter did have tremendous courage.

But, more than any of this was the realization that Jesus was going to leave them. That was really the thing they could not get out of their minds. As I said before, Peter wanted to know where his Lord was going, and Jesus said, “One day you will follow Me.” What He means by that is follow Him to the Cross. Look ahead with me to John 21, and we will see Jesus’ prediction of what will come to pass in Peter’s life. When Jesus speaks to Peter in John 21, verse 18, He says, ‘“Truly, truly I say to you, when you were younger, you used to gird yourself and walk wherever you wished; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will gird you, and bring you where you do not wish to go’. Now this He said, signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God.

And when He had spoken this He said to him, ‘Follow Me’.” This is His word to Peter. If you go with me to 2nd Peter, to hear Peter’s own testimony, in chapter one, verses 12 through 15, Peter says, “Therefore, I will always be ready to remind you of these things, even though you already know them, and have been established in the truth which is present with you. I consider it right, as long as I am in this earthly dwelling, to stir you up by way of reminder.” What is this ‘earthly dwelling’? Of course, it is his body. “Knowing,” he says, “that the laying aside of my earthly dwelling is imminent, as also our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me.”

He is actually recalling what Jesus said in John 21. As I have mentioned, Peter did not see himself as worthy of being execute in the same way as his Lord. When he was going to be crucified, he requested that he be crucified upside-down. Tradition indicates that is exactly what took place. In addition, He says, “You will follow Me in My death, but you will also follow Me to My Father’s Kingdom.” In other words, he will also be in the place I am going to describe to you now.

So, I want to give you six assurances that surface in this marvelous chapter. It is one of those chapters you can read and meditate on with tremendous profit, because it is so rich. There are six assurances that He gives His disciples. The first of those is the assurance of heaven. This assurance of heaven is really reminding his disciples that heaven is a real place. It is not just a figment of His imagination.

Here is how He puts it: “Believe in God, believe also in Me.” Right there is a very radical claim, if you think about it, because He is saying as you believe in the Father, so you believe in Me; attribute the same trust as you have in the Father to Me. “In My Father’s house,” He says, “are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you, for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, you may be also.” Jesus, right now, is seated at the right hand of the Father, to use the imagery of Revelation, and heaven is an eternal kingdom, according to 2nd Peter 1:11. It is also an “inheritance,” in 1st Peter 1:4. Heaven is also a country. In fact, it is called “A better country,” in Hebrews 11:16. And it is also called “A city,” in Hebrews 11:16, a home they are looking for. It is a “Home,” here in John 14:12.

So, it is a kingdom, and inheritance, a country, a city, and a home. When we look at this understanding, then, it reminds me of something that Robert Frost said. He said, “A home is a place, that when you arrive there, they have to take you in.” You see, we are not home yet. You need to understand that you are not home yet. If you become too comfortable in this world, you fail to grasp that you are an alien. If you are in Christ, you are no longer a citizen of this world. You are a citizen of the next. “Our citizenship is in heaven,” Paul says in Philippians three, “from which, also, we eagerly await for a Savior.” A Savior who will transform this mortal body into a body of His own resurrected power.

So, you are not home yet, and instead, according to the Scriptures, you are an “Alien,” an “Exile,” a “sojourner,” a “wayfarer,” a “pilgrim,” and a “stranger.” In other words, you are not home. There are many, many, pleasant Inns in this life, but don’t mistake them for home. And so, if we understand that, we walk in anticipation and realize there should only be two days on our calendar, as I often like to tell you. The day we will see Him and today. Every today ought to be lived in light of that day.

So, instead of saying that we are so heavenly-minded that we are of no earthly good, actually, the more heavenly-minded we are, the more we relish and cherish the opportunities of this present time. You then see that every day is filled with ‘kairos’ moments. I have told the idea of a ‘kairos’ moment versus a ‘chronos’ moment. ‘Kairos’, you recall, is opportunity time and ‘chronos’ is clock time. There is a huge difference. ‘Chronos’ you put in your planner or PDA. However, you can never plan ‘kairos’. Those are opportunities that God provides and you never know what it will look like. It may be any number of things that might surface. Those become opportunity times.

So, we make the most of the ‘kairos’ opportunities because the days are short. Understanding that, then, heaven is a place of love, it is a place of tremendous joy, and, may I stress, it is a place of relationship. Ultimately, in my assessment of this world, the most joyful thing on the planet is a quality relationship, the only context in which you have an ontological basis for quality relationships. By ontological, I mean that which exists in reality. It is the doctrine of what is real. You see the idea? When I say, then, there is an absolute, ontological basis for relationships, it the unchanging Triune God, because there you have relationships in the One God, the tri-personal God. Because of that, because God is a relational being, when he created us in His image, male and female, and there is unity in diversity.

So, that unity and diversity is a reflection of God’s own character. Thus, in the body of Christ we have a tremendous diversity, but also there is a unity. In that context, then, we see the image of marriage, we see the image of friendship, we see the image of the Church, all those things are pointing beyond themselves to a context in which the two are greater than the sum of the parts. There is a synergism that takes place and it reveals divine truth.

Therefore, the most enjoyable things and, indeed, the most significant things, are quality relationships. The most painful thing is a broken relationship. That is just the nature of things. Check out any Country and Western song and you know right away it is true. You’re the Fingernail Scrapping on the Blackboard of My Heart, and all those kinds of songs like that. When the Phone Don’t Ring, You’ll Know it is Me; How can I Miss You if You Won’t Go Away; I Don’t Know Whether to Shoot Myself or Go Bowling; all kinds of wonderful songs of that sort. I have told you this before, but my favorite is I’m so Miserable Since You Left Me, It’s Almost Like Having You Here. The fact is, though, those songs capture the joy and the pain of relationships. Relationships, then, are the most wonderful and also the most painful things on the planet and it depends on what animates the relationship, whether you are walking in the Spirit or walking in the flesh.

If we understand that, then He is telling us that heaven is highly relational. It is, in fact, interpersonal. It is also an interdependent, not co-dependent, environment where we enjoy interdependent relationships and where there is a context of community, a corporate dimension. That is why the image of heaven is other-centered love. There is the idea, then, of actually enhancing forever, by knowing one another more and more through other-centered love, the intimacy that we enjoy with one another.

One of the things I see in heaven is that it is not a dynamic-static process, but rather it is an on-going process of change and transformation. I think I have told you this before, but it bears repeating, that when a loved one dies, someone you knew intimately, part of you dies with them. When my dad died, part of me died, because there was something he brought out of me that no one else could bring out. I have friends who died and there was something that only they could bring out of me. You see where I am going with that?

Now, it would be a rather a depressing thing unless we understood that actually we will be layered by new relationships. Not only in the maturation of old ones, but also, may I stress, in the new relationships of millions of people you haven’t met yet. Some of whom have been gone for thousands of years. That is an intriguing notion; that there have been people, long ago in space and time, who will become more intimate with you than anyone you have known on the planet. The greatest moment of intimacy you have known on this earth is only a shadow of what will be true of all relationships there.

So, it is really going to be better than you suppose. Understanding that, we actually have a picture, in Revelation 21 and 22, of this love and this joy that is even beyond John’s symbolic descriptions there because he often talks about what it is not. If you look at chapter 21, verses four and five, he says, “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away. And He who sits on the throne says, ‘Behold, I am making all things new’.” That is exactly what He said to His mother in the Passion, “Woman, I am making all things new.” Continuing, “He said, ‘Write, for these words are faithful and true’.”

So, it really doesn’t describe what it is, but it describes what it isn’t. Do you notice that? There will no longer be this, that, or the other. I want to tell you, if He did tell you what it would be like, you wouldn’t have the capacity to process it. We do not the imagination now, or the cognitive categories to imagine it. Remember what is says in 1st Corinthians? “No eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the imagination or consciousness, the things that God has prepared for those who love Him.” We do not have sufficient understanding to grasp what He has in store.

But, I will say, it will be more than worth your while. That will be home. So, going back to our text, He says, “In My Father’s house are many dwelling places.” The word ‘mone’, from the word ‘meno’, doesn’t mean mansions, like the King James Version mentions. You get crazy ideas this way. Some people see Manor Houses and some see cottages. However, it is the same word that is translated as ‘abode’, in verse 23, “My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our ‘mone’ with him.” See the idea? It has only to do with abiding. It is not talking about various sizes of anything. Instead, each place will be beautiful. During His earthly life, what was Jesus doing? He was a carpenter. Now He is building a home for His earthly church in heaven. He is the One who builds. He is also the bridge builder.

So, He says, “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, you will be also.” Recall that in first century Israel, the custom was going to be that the betrothed would go off to his father’s house and there he would prepare a ‘meno’, or dwelling place. It might be a separate place or simply a special room. That is where he would bring his bride.

So, he would go off and prepare a place and then he would come back and receive her to himself. You see the idea? Part of the fun was that he would come at a time she would never know. It would often be in the middle of the night and he would often bring his friends with him. There would be the shout of a trumpet and she would come out and it looked almost like a sanctioned elopement. I believe that is why He is using this imagery because the Church is the bride of Christ.

So, His passion is this: He is preparing a place for you and He will come again and He will receive you to Himself. What is His intention and deep longing for us? “Where I am, you may be also.” That is a pretty big deal. He is saying He wants intimacy with you. That is a very, very major thing, indeed. He goes on to say, “And you know the way where I am going.” But then Thomas says, “Lord, we do not know where You are going. How do we know the way?” Jesus’ response, this idea of heaven being a real place, and a loving place, is also a place that doesn’t just happen to anyone. This is where the doctrine of Christ being the only way, the One way, is offensive in our culture.

But, the Gospels have always been offensive in every culture. Scripture has always been, and will always be, counter-cultural. You have to decide what your authority is. You can decide, ‘I don’t like this verse’, for example, in answer to Thomas’ question, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through me.” Now, I can’t get around that. And if I look at another text, as well, 1st Timothy 2:4-6, it says something quite similar. “God desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” Though He desires all to be saved, not all will be saved, because they must desire to know Him. Many will freely elect not to know Him. Continuing, “For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all, the testimony given at the proper time.”

God, then, has made the way available to all, but not all will elect to know Him. There are those who seek Him and there are those who seek to avoid Him. At the end of the day, we can try and say, ‘is there another way’, but every other religion I know is a work system of salvation. That is to say, they have the illusion that God is not as holy as He is, or we are better than we are. The only way I can figure for you to earn your way is for God to ‘dumb it down’ in His holiness or for us to have the illusion that we are utterly holy beings.

Last time I checked, my motivational structure just wasn’t that way. The point is that you have to think that God is going to grade on the curve. The context we use is comparing ourselves with other people and we figure we are better than most, so He has to let us in. That is a dangerous way of thinking. If God is as holy as Scripture reveals, then the only way to be saved, apart from Christ, is by being perfect in thought, word, and deed. He will not abide a presence that is inconsistent with His own character.

Now, that is why He offers us a way, and that is why, by the way, Jesus had to die. If there was another way in which people could have a right relationship with God, then Christ died needlessly. That is too dramatic; then Jesus’ death, Galatians 2:21, was needless. It took that radical a step for us to be able to do it. My conviction is that God holds us responsible for the light we have, not for the light we do not have, but if we respond to the light we have, He will respond to the light we need. It will always be done through Christ, and how much we have to know I will leave up to Him. The Scripture never speculates about those who have never heard. You understand that Idea? So, I am not going to go beyond that. Instead, it always focuses on our need to get the message out. I am going to trust God for the outcome. Surely, if He provided this offer, at such a great price, and He surely knows the human heart, He will make the message available to those who wish to know Him.

But, just suppose, He says everybody gets into heaven. Actually, that would not be heaven. It would be hell for those who don’t want to be with God. We sometimes suppose He’s a Universalist, and everybody gets there. If a person doesn’t want to God in this life, the presence of God in the next would be pure hell. Heaven, in a way, is an acquired taste. It is not something that we naturally pursue.

It really is the presence of a person rather that simply an enjoyable place. A place it surely is, but it is more than that. It is the presence of a person who transforms it. If God were simply just, then no one would enter into His presence. You have to understand, from His point of view, no one should come. If He were just, we all fall short of the glory of God. All have sinned and all fall short of the glory of God. God is more than fair. He is gracious. He extends better than our due, but only if we want that.

He will not cram it down our throats. There is a response that we must make. The assurance of heaven, the assurance of being with Him, after this life is over and then seeing His face, you will realize that was the joy you were looking for all your life. I want to tell that can give you joy in the midst of obstacles and battles on the way to the true home. In Hebrews 12:2 and especially Romans 8:18, where, “I consider the sufferings at this present time not worthy to be compared to the glory that is to be revealed to us.” We all will suffer. All of us have suffered in some ways. Some have suffered more than others. I do not claim to understand why that is. Some do suffer more than others.

But, live long enough, and the suffering will continue. That is just the nature of it. But, Paul tells us that the sufferings of the present time, and they are short, are not even worth comparing with what He has got in store for us. With that perspective, you can be more than a conqueror.

Now, the second assurance we have, is the assurance of knowing the Father. You can know the Father right now. We don’t have to wait to enter heaven to know Him. Jesus is the One who reveals Him. So, going on in the text, “If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him.” Now, I like Phillip’s response, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Actually, that was not something that He did, but it is a good thing to desire to know the Father. That should be our burning desire. The word ‘know’, by the way, is used 141 times in John’s Gospel.

But, there are four levels of ‘knowing’ in this Gospel. The first level of knowing is just knowing a fact. The second level of knowing is understanding the truth behind that fact. The third level of knowing is believing in a person and that moves us into the relational dimension.

But, the fourth level of knowing is the one that John stresses and the one Paul had in mind when he said, “That I may know Him in the power of His resurrection.” It is also what Jesus had in mind in our verses 19 through 23, that we see in a moment. It is the knowledge of a deep union with another person. It is union and communion with a person. That union, then, is the real ‘I-Thou’ relationship that will truly satisfy us.

To know and see Jesus, He says, was to see the Father. “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Phillip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” Imagine the implications of that claim. “How can say, show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words I speak to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves.” He is saying here, in effect, that the better we know Jesus, the better we will know the Father.

We have not come to see Jesus in the flesh. Look at 1st Peter 1:8, “Although you have not seen Him, yet you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory.” The point is this; these people were privileged to see Jesus. We don’t get to see Him in this life. What is faith now will turn into sight then. A claim to be God, then, is a strong claim. But He is saying that if you know Him, you will know His Father. The assurance we have, then, is that the Creator of the universe is our own Father. That knowledge can really comfort our hearts. As many of you know I do a Powers of Ten presentation, and today I made an edit to it.

There was something about the end that didn’t quite get to me. We are looking, as you know, from the microcosm to the macrocosm, and you get to the level of seeing galaxies, and then you see clusters of galaxies, and you begin to see the large structure of the cosmos, with some 200 billion galaxies. It becomes virtually overwhelming.

Then, I make a comment about this idea that God created it, but I have now added John 1:1 at the end because I want people to understand that there is an earlier verse than Genesis 1:1. We think the Bible begins there, but there was an earlier beginning, John 1:1. In Genesis, it says, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” In John it says, “In the beginning was the ‘logos’, the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” That word ‘logos’ means that He is a personal intelligence. He is an intelligent designer who spoke creation into being. Then I go on, as well, and look at some verses that talk about this and here is one of the verses I use and it is John 14:20, “In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.”

Here is the amazing thing; the One who spoke it into being is in you. He is both transcendent and imminent. The Scriptures affirm that He is both. I have to tell you that I really can’t quite grasp that. I can’t put the two together. So often we reduce God to our own framework and we almost trivialize Him in the process. The more you are impressed by the greatness and the vastness and the intricacy of the created order, the more you are impressed by the fact that this One wants to know us and, in fact, in-dwells us. It is quite remarkable and only Scripture affirms these things. We have a unique understanding here of a relational being, and just as God is a relational being, He wants us to enter into that Trinitarian community. Regarding that community, we also have another privilege, another assurance. There is the assurance of prayer.

What He means by prayer, of course, is an ability to have a communication with the Father; where you can share your deepest concerns, your deepest longings, and your heartbreaks as well as your joys. Prayer is merely communication, but it is that we commune with God in our deepest selves, and it is an opportunity for us to really know Him. So let us look, now, at verses 12 through 15. “Truly, truly I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father. Whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it. If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” When He says, by the way, “Greater works than these He will do,” I don’t believe He is saying that they are greater in quality, because a slave is not greater than his master, but they are greater in scope and quantity. You understand the difference? There has never been a person since Jesus who has accomplished the miracles that He accomplished. They will be greater in scope and quantity.

That is what I think He means by “greater works.” A lot of people have the mentality expressed in the plaque, “Why pray when you can worry?” The issue is that worry doesn’t do us a shred of good. Most of the things you worry about never happen, and if it is something that can happen, your worrying can’t solve the problem. It will only make it worse. And so, worrying is totally counter productive. “Do not be anxious in anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication and thanksgiving, make your prayer known to God. The peace of God, which transcends all comprehension, will guard your mind and soul in Christ Jesus.” What is that verse? Exactly. Philippians 4:6-7.

She has memorized that because it has been a very meaningful verse for her, with all she has gone through. That’s an awesome verse, because He is saying, ‘I am going to turn anxiety into peace’. If I had a machine to do this, I’d be a billionaire. Imagine having a machine that would take anxiety and transmute it into peace. Yet, that is exactly what he says. When he says, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything let your prayer be known to God,” he is saying that you have a privilege. You have to pray in faith, he says, by believing in Him, but faith and works always go together, because it is faith that releases the power of God in our lives. The works must be done in His power, so the two go hand in hand.

So, we see the two connected. I am not down on works. Please understand that no one is saved by works, but we are rewarded as we grow though works. Works imply obedience and if it is a faith that is alive, it is a faith that will work.

But, don’t put the cart before the horse. Works don’t produce it, they are the product of it. When I say faith, when I say believe, I mean trust. I am not talking about just something in your head, I am talking about a person you trust. See the difference? A person you have welcomed in by an act of your will, and you ask Him to come into your life, thanking Him for forgiving you your sins, and giving you His presence. Once having trusted Him, then, now we really begin the journey, because the journey will go on forever and it will grow. It is the kind of faith, then, where we realize He is the One we must turn to, and it must be done in His name.

So, this isn’t a magic formula that means anything you want, or that is selfish or stupid, He is going to give to you, but what He is saying is “Ask in My name.” That is really a submission to His will. Any request that doesn’t glorify God’s name should not be asked for in His name. It has got to be done in His will, 1st John 5:4-15.

Now, to verse 15 in our text, “If you love Me, you will keep my commandments,” it means we have to pray in faith, we have to pray in Christ’s name, and we have to pray in loving obedience. This loving obedience is this; when you love someone, you honor his or her name. When you truly love somebody, you seek to honor that person, and love, by the way, is to see the best in a person, rather than the worst. You get to choose how you view your friends and your spouse. You can choose to focus on the negative, and we all have those warts, or you can choose to focus on the things that are meaningful and good. You see where I am going with that? You get to choose how that will be. If you choose to honor the other person, then, the loving thing to do is to treat them with real regard.

Now, the fourth assurance we can say we have is the assurance of the Holy Spirit, which John is going to develop more in chapter 16, but we have the assurance of the comforter. We will call Him the comforter, and when you think about it, this is exactly what we need to hear, when He says, “Don’t let your hearts be troubled,” He is saying He is not going to leave them as orphans. In verses 16 through 18, then, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world can not receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you.” I don’t believe we can live the Christian life as God would have us live it under our own power. It is impossible.

But, it is only when the Spirit of God empowers us to manifest His life. ‘Another helper’, ‘parakletos’, is the word He uses. ‘Para’ means ‘along side of’, and ‘klatos’ means to ‘call’. When you put the two words together, you get ‘to call along side of’. You see the idea here? He comes along side you. Also, ‘comfort’ is a word often used to translate. He is the ‘comforter’. The ‘paraklet’ is also the ‘comforter’.

Now, that comes from two Latin words, ‘com’ and ‘forte’, so it means, then, ‘with strength’. True comfort, then, strengthens us to face life bravely. He says, “I will give you another comforter.” ‘I have been a paraklet, I have been your comforter in this life’. Was He not? Didn’t He go along side of them, and didn’t He provide comfort all this time? Now, He is going away, but He will send another helper. There are two Greek words for ‘another’, ‘allos’ and ‘heteros’. We have the word ‘heteros’, which means ‘another of a different kind’, but ‘allos’ is ‘another of the same kind’, and that is the word He is using here.

In verse 17, He says, “That is the Spirit of truth, whom the world can not receive because it does not see Him or know Him.” The world is not able to see Him because that is something that is Spiritually revealed, but, “You know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.” He was not in them yet, because in the Old Testament economy, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit was quite selective and it was also temporary. Remember how the Spirit of God departed from Saul, in 1st Samuel 16:4? Remember how David prayed, “Do not take Your Holy Spirit away from me?” That can not happen now. In other words, now that He is in you, He is there to stay. That is a radical thing that happened after Pentecost.

So, the believer’s body, according to 1st Corinthians 6:19-20, is now the temple of the Spirit of God. So, in your deepest self, that is where the Spirit is. Your spirit communing with His Spirit, in the deepest component of yourself. To me, that is a great and profound mystery, but we can enjoy that relationship.

Now, we have been changed and He does not abandon us. He will say, In John 16, that it is necessary for Him to go away, because if He didn’t go away, He couldn’t send us the other ‘comforter’. He says, “After I go to My Father, I will send the comforter, but I also will be with you, and I will come again and receive you into Myself, that where I am, you may be also.”

That makes me think of something that I didn’t mention before, and if you go back to verse three, when He says, “I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also,” I take it to be like something He said to Martha in chapter 11, verses 25 and 26, in that great ‘I-am’ statement, “I am the resurrection and the Life.” He goes on to say, “Everyone who lives in Me and believes in Me will never die.”

I think He is talking about two kinds of people. Those who die before He comes, and those who are alive when He comes. Those people who are alive when He comes never see physical death, but, as I go to 1st Corinthians 15, Paul says, “I tell you a mystery, We will not all sleep, but we all be changed.” Not everyone will die. Up until now that is a mystery because, so far, one out of one has died. You see the problem here.

But now he says, the mystery, something not yet revealed, is that if we are alive when He returns, he says, “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.” In other words, in the fastest increment of time, we will be changed, and 1st Thessalonians 4:13 unpacks that, as well, when he says, “I do not want you to be uninformed about those who are asleep,” which is euphemism of death, “so you will not grieve as the rest who have no hope.” By the way, I don’t think it is right to say we don’t grieve. We do grieve.

But, we grieve as those who have hope. There is the difference. The worst funeral I ever went to was for my next door neighbor in Oxford. He was an atheist and it was an incredibly depressing funeral. It was utterly full of hopelessness and actually embarrassing to those people because death was an outrage to them and they didn’t have any way of dealing with it. Some of them wrote silly poems and it was simply awful, and painful for everybody. What I am saying is that I have to funerals where they have been celebrations of homecoming, and I have also been to funerals where they have been morbid and morose, and the difference is the issue of where they are going.

So, we grieve, sure, because we are going to miss them, but that is only a temporary separation. We will be coming back with one another, and that is a great joy and comfort to me to know that. (Q)(A): Yes. If you look with me at John 7, he will even anticipate that. He says, in verse 38, “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water’.” That is like an artesian well, it has no limit. “But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive, for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” It is necessary for Him to be glorified before the Spirit can be given.

The Scripture predicts this. His glorification included His death, His crucifixion, as well as His resurrection and ascension to the Father; then, ten days after the ascension, the coming of the power on high, the gift of the Holy Spirit. Clearly, He is saying that also here in John 7, that there is that radical difference. Going back to 1st Thessalonians 4, Paul speaks about this, “If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.” What he is saying is that all those who have gone before us, Jesus is going to bring them back with Him. “For this we say to you, by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. The Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.” The image of rising is for your spirit and soul to be joined to a new body.

The dead in Christ will receive a resurrected and glorified body, “Then we who are alive will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore,” he says, “Comfort one another with these words.” It is, indeed, a great source of comfort, and we can see that death is not the end, it is the door to the new life. It is an opening door, and so we see that this is not a finality. I don’t know about you, but as I get older, it would be more and more difficult for me to cope in life, realizing that this is all there is. I am not a person who can avoid thinking about these things. Many, many people have the ability to go for decades without ever thinking about that reality. They act as if they are going to live forever.

So, they embrace entertainment, distraction, and indifference and that characterizes their lives. For me, none of those would work. I would need heavy medication. My point is that I can’t not think about these things.

So, if I live with this understanding of hope, then, again, to use this analogy I use often, life on this earth without the hope of a resurrection is like, “A bird who flies though the window of a banquet hall, and then flies right out the other window.” You life is comparable to those few seconds, and then you’re right back in the inky darkness. You see the point? Your life, without Christ, is a little episode, a little blip, between two eternities. You’re here, and you’re gone. In fact, the whole nation is that way, a blip on the scale of history. Look at the Romans, look at the Greeks before them, look at the Persians before them, look at the Babylonians before them, look at the Assyrians before them, they all have ruled and they are all gone. They are all, literally, history. Not one is with us. All we see is the wreck of those civilizations.

Now, whole civilizations are like that, and given enough time the whole human race will be that way. Friends, the universe will not live forever. Ultimately, left to itself, the universe would not be able to sustain life in its simplest level. The point is, regardless of what your scale is, this is all temporary. Nobody will be left to hear our music and our poetry. It will be all gone. When I read The Time Machine, when he goes into the future, he then decided to set the time machine as far ahead as he can. He sets it for three million years into the future, and he arrives, and what does he see?

Not a thing that is alive except for some moss, and there is no sound except for the surf. Apart from that, everything else was gone. You do understand that 99.99 percent of the species on the planet are now extinct? Of all the species that have ever lived, 99.99 percent are gone. There is no way to replace them, because there are no new genes. People estimate that about 2,000 species a year are gone to extinction. I just bought a book containing wonderful painting of extinct animals. It is both depressing and beautiful. How wonderful and marvelous they were, but they will never come back.

But, let’s return to the text. The fifth point here is that we can enjoy the assurance of the Father’s love. This is a remarkable truth. We have the assurance of the Father’s love. I have often spoken to you about this. Many of us have never experienced love from our fathers. We experienced conditional love, or rejection, or distance, and therefore it is hard for such people to transition to the real Father. They keep projecting that horrible image upon God. That is a complete distortion of the image. The best father on the planet, by contrast, is only a feeble reflection on the Fatherhood of God, who is the best Father.

If you have had that experience, then, it is needful for us to revisit and renew our minds and realize that here is One who wishes to hold us, and embrace us, and give us the blessing of His love and presence. That is powerful stuff, because we need that love and He has wired us for that love. When I look at verse 19, and He says, “After a little while the world will no longer see Me, but you will see Me; because I live, you will live also.” See how this balances His earlier comment, that He is “Going off to a place in which you can not go, but will come later”?

His life is the basis for our life. “In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.” To be honest with you, nobody understands that verse. What does that mean? You see, it is a mutual co-inherence. The best I can do is to say ‘you in me’, that is to say, ‘me in Christ’, is my position and ‘Christ in me’ is my practice. You see the idea? But, to be honest with you, we can only scratch that surface. It is going to very profound.

Can there be a greater intimacy than for you to be in Him and Him in you? I can’t think of anything like that. It is very powerful and may I say, by the way, that is even more powerful, by far, than the greatest sexual experience of union, which is only a far, distant shadow of what God has in store for us. He goes on to say, “He who has My commandments, and keeps them, is the one who loves Me.” In other words, if you love Me, you will keep My commandments. “He who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and disclose Myself to him.”

That is a very strong verse where, in effect, He says, it is important to realize that if you love Me, you will do as I ask you to do. If you know Me, you will know that what I ask you to do is in your best interests. When you do what you want to do instead of what He wants you do, it always turns out bad. At least in my experience it does. I have never regretted any time of obedience to Jesus, but I have sure regretted it every time I disobeyed Him.

So, “Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, ‘Lord, what then has happened that You are going to disclose Yourself to us and not to the world’? Jesus answered and said, ‘If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make our abode with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me’.”

So, it is the second time, in verse 23, like in verse 21, “If he keeps My word, My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make Our abode with him.” Do you see what He is saying? Who is the ‘We’? It is Jesus and the Father. You understand what that means? In addition to what He has just said about the Holy Spirit, who is going to in-dwell us, He is saying that the Father in-dwells us, as well as the Son. You are in dwelled by the Triune God. That is a deep and profound mystery. It can not be made up. Who would have dreamed it? It goes beyond what anyone can imagine. Let me now close with the sixth assurance. In verses 25 to 31, you also have the assurance of God’s peace in this world.


We well need that peace, do we not? Let’s look closely, now, at verses 25 through 31. “These things I have spoken to you while abiding with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you,” which is a promise about the inscripturation. “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.” I read recently a wonderful definition of sin. It is a ‘culpable disturbance of shalom’. Again, sin is a ‘culpable disturbance of shalom’. I define shalom as ‘wholeness, completeness, health, and security’. When sin is described in that way, it means this: that it is an alienating dimension that takes what should have been whole and divides it because of selfishness.

So, sin is really proof of alienation. Shalom is the opposite of alienation. It is wholeness and union. You see the idea? Relationships, then, need to thrive on other-centeredness. Frankly, the world bases its peace on its resources. God’s peace depends upon relationships. Catch the difference? We think we can be peaceful if we have a lot of resources. God says you will never be peaceful until you have relationships. See the difference? The world depends upon your personal ability. The follower of Jesus, however, depends upon the spiritual adequacy in Christ.

Now you are confident. He has given you the confidence you need through, and in, Him. To accomplish something that will be pleasing to Him will last forever. Unbelievers enjoy peace only when there is an absence of trouble. Followers of Jesus, however, enjoy peace in spite of trials, because of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. One is merely the absence of trouble, the other id the presence of a person. That is an important distinction. People of the world walk by sight and depend on the externals; believers walk by faith and depend on the internals and the eternals. There is a big difference between them.

So, the Spirit uses the word of God to give us His peace, His love, and His joy. Notice what Jesus is talking about in all these chapters. He is talking about love, joy, and peace. What is going to happen to Him in a matter of a few hours? Does He know this, that He is going to be betrayed and killed? Very clearly He does, for “this is the very purpose for which I came.” What more can He give them than minister on love, on joy, and on peace? He understands there is a purpose for His being here and it will overwhelm the stronghold of sin, and of ugliness, and of death and of alienation.


Finally, “You heard that I said to you, ‘I go away, and I come to you’. If you loved Me, you would have rejoiced because I go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. Now I have told you before it happens, so that when it happens, you may believe. I will not speak much more with you, for the ruler of the world is coming, and he has nothing in Me; but so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me. Get up, let us go from here.” They go out of the Upper Room. What were the two enemies He just described? He described the devil and the world. Jesus overcame both. Satan can get no foothold in your life unless you permit it. The way he gets footholds is when you believe his lies. He never speaks the truth.

So, if you believe his lies you are in danger, but if you choose to believe the truth, which is found in Scripture, then you will have a source of power. I believe that Christ alone can yield true peace in this world.

Again, let’s review the context we are dealing with. First of all, there was the ‘Book of Signs’, in chapters one through twelve, in which there were seven signs that were used to reveal Jesus’ identity and also to communicate that responsive acceptance on the one hand, and rejection on the other. By the way, this was beautifully interposed in the context of the crucifixion, when you saw the two malefactors, one who represented that acceptance and another who represented that rejection. Those are the only two options you’ve got; to ignore Him is tantamount to rejecting Him.

So, those are the only options we can have. Although, in our own day, as you well know, more and more people are trying to eliminate those two options and get around it. Their end-run attempt is simply to re-define Jesus. That is really the whole philosophy of our own time; everyone wants Him on his or her bandwagon, everyone wants the Jesus they want, not the Jesus who is.

So, they will either criticize the Gospels and say they have to pick and choose, or they want to reinterpret them in such a way that makes them more livable. People will say they really like the Sermon on the Mount and they have no idea what they are talking about. Have they read it lately? It is a scary document.

But, the fact is that the Jesus of the Gospels is utterly and completely unique in all the world. There is no one like Him. No one has made the claims He has made and no one has had the credentials that backed up those claims. That is really part of the purpose of the ‘Book of Signs’, in chapters one through twelve, to demonstrate those claims and those credentials. For example, He would say, “I am the Light of the world,” but what would He also do? He would give sight to a man born blind. He would say, “I am the resurrection and the Life,” and then He would raise Lazarus from the dead. So, the words and the works went together.

So, the idea of Jesus as being One who will require a response is part of that theme in this Gospel and then the rest of the Gospel, chapters 13 through 21, we can call the ‘Book of Glory’, because glory has to do with Him being raised up and part of His glorification, which might seem surprising to us, is being raised up on the cross and then ascending to the Father. In so far as that was His intention and His purpose, He came to give His Life in exchange for ours. That is the point at which He could truly say, “Father, glorify Your name.”

So, we see in the next section, then, the ‘Book of Glory’, that we have His Upper Room discourse in chapters 13 through 17, and then in chapters 18 through 21 we are back to the narrative account of the Passion of the Christ. That is the narrative that ends up with the resurrection and His various appearances.

So, to contexturalize this, we saw in chapter 13 that Jesus was working with His disciples in the upper room and He performed, as you recall, a visual parable in which He washed the feet of His disciples, including those of Judas. Then He said, “Just as I have done to you, you must also do to one another.” The fact is that a teacher is greater than His students and yet He was the one who washed their feet and therefore it was needful for them to do the same. As I have so often told you, Jesus never invites us to do something for others that He has not already done for us.

So, if he asks us to serve one another, He has done it first. If He invites us to wash one another’s feet, it is because He has done it first. If He asks us to obey the Father, it is because He did it first. If He asks us to love one another, it is because He did that first.

So, we have, really, in these incarnations, a God who manifests His intimate care by becoming one of us. In that solidarity of the human condition, He now can identify with the human plight. He understands all those things that we really go through, not merely by intellectual apprehension, but by actual personal experience. In Hebrews chapter two and chapter four, we are invited to go boldly before God because we have a high priest who really cares for us. This contextualizes that. I think I see, in this section, a remarkable picture of intimacy.

At the same time, they are troubled, are they not? By the end of chapter 13, it is beginning to dawn on them that what He said before, about His coming crucifixion, really was going to take place. They weren’t sure about that crucifixion, but they were sure He told them, “I am going to a place you can not go. You can follow Me later, but you can not come with Me now.” This led to tremendous pain and that is why in chapter 14 He had to tell them not to be discouraged, that it was needful that He go to the Father, and then He could send them the power of the Holy Spirit, so that they would have this intimate communion, the deepest communion conceivable, namely something that is illustrative of the communion of the Father and the Son. Just as Christ is in the Father, and the Father is in Him, now we are in Christ and Christ is in us. Then He says His Father will come to them and make His dwelling.

So, we have a Triune God actually indwelling the believer. I find that to be quite extraordinary and quite unique. There is a profound intimacy and imminence in the portrait that is found in the New Testament, about God’s relationship with His children, and yet at the same time it never eliminates that magnificent transcendence. It never eliminates the glory and power and majesty and mystery of God.

So, there is this deep mystery; how God is imminent and close to us and at the same time He is awesome and unknowable in His deepest self. So, there is this tension that we embrace, because both are confirmed in Scripture.

Then, at the end of chapter 14, we saw that Jesus, in sharing these important words, tells them, in the last verse, “Get up. Let us go from here.” Just before He said that, He said, “So that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me.” I take it that it implies Jesus was now inviting His disciples, at the end of their meal, to get up and go up to the valley of Kidron and the garden of Gethsemane, where they would often gather. In doing so, I imagine Jesus telling this parable, this allegory, of the vine as they are moving through the vineyards in that ancient world.

So, what is seen in the world around them comes always illustrative of the spiritual world. Many of you know that I am working on a whole series of visual presentations that I call the ‘Stop and Wonder’ series. My friend Bill Ibson and I are working together on this. We are working on several areas; spiritual formation, apologetics, literature, film, and also nature. In nature, we have about a dozen ideas for things we will do.

So, I told Bill, God loves you, and I have a wonderful plan for your life. The reason why I am a big believer in nature, in terms of teaching, is by helping you see, and you can use anything in the created order, from beetles to rocks, it will teach spiritual truth about the living God. It points beyond itself to spiritual truth. The way I have thought about is this: In Romans 1, we realize there is a limited knowledge we can have about God from His created order. The problem is that you need something more than a general knowledge about God. You need to have special revelation, because you would never know from Romans 1, that is to say from the created order, that the God who created it all is also a God who loves us. Indeed, He suffered and sacrificed for us. You would never know that. My point is that having come to understand that from special revelation, now we can go back to the general world and see though attributes revealed in special revelation illustrated in the natural world and that is what I am doing.

So, one of our series will be diverse things like diatoms, and sea horses, and jellyfish. Why did I choose that? Bill and I were blown away when we went to the Chattanooga Museum and saw the sea horses and the jellyfish. For us it was a time of worship. We were stunned by the glory and the beauty; almost a profligate beauty, overwhelming us with the variety, ingenuity, and creativity of God. Our presentation will try and communicate a little bit more about this so that you will walk away and be amazed at these marvels. Then our question will be, what three things do you learn from studying jellyfish? What three things do you learn about God? What do learn about God studying diatoms? Diatoms are pond scum. It is not really on the highest level, but when you magnify them the architecture of these diatoms is more exquisite than anything an architect has ever been able to design. It is extraordinary.

Now, going back to the text, we see Jesus using a vine and its branches as one of those analogies, as He so often did in His parables. This is an allegory. “I am,” He says, “the true vine and My Father is the vinedresser.” This imagery of the vineyard is really a basic Biblical motif because we can look at the idea of the vine in the past. In the past the vine really illustrated Israel. Turn to Isaiah chapter five, and it illustrates how Israel was seen as a vine. God cultivated it and gave it every opportunity, but it produced wild grapes.

So, in Isaiah 5:1-7, we see, “Let me sing now for my well-beloved a song of my beloved concerning His vineyard. My well-beloved had a vineyard on a fertile hill. He dug it all around and remove its stones, and planted it with the choicest vine. He built a tower in the middle of it and also hewed out a wine vat in it; then He expected it to produce good grapes, but it produced only worthless ones. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between Me and My vineyard. What more was there to do for My vineyard that I have not done in it?

Why, when I expected it to produce good grapes did it produce worthless ones? So, now let Me tell you what I am going to do to My vineyard: I will remove its hedge and it will be consumed; I will break down its wall and it will become trampled ground. I will lay it waste; it will not be pruned or hoed, but briars and thorns will come up. I will also charge the clouds to rain no rain on it.

For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel and the men of Judah His delightful plant. Thus, He looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, a cry of distress.” Instead of producing justice, then, it practiced oppression. Instead of producing righteousness, it produced unrighteousness and cries of distress from its victims. In spite of God’s chastening, they would not respond. This reminds me of Jesus’ parable of the vineyard in Matthew chapter 21. In verses 33 to 46, you recall the image of the son of the vineyard owner, and he comes and they cast him out and they kill him. This clearly is a portrait of God’s people rejecting the One who is coming for them.

They rejected Him and, frankly, this was predicted before, in the Old Testament Scriptures and their Hebrew Bible. As to the past, then, we see clearly that it was really related to Israel. As to the future, there is also a vine. In the future we see the vine of the earth, in Revelation 14:14-20. This is a context in which the Gentile world system is being ripened for God’s judgment, and so the idea is that it will be crushed and the image of profound judgment is what we see, especially in the Gentile world system. The time of the Gentiles will come to an end and then the righteousness will come from Jacob and thus all Israel will be saved.

We go on to the present tense, though, of the vine, and in the present tense what we see here is that it is us. It is God’s people. That is to say, in the present tense it is Christ and the branches. As the true vine, then, He is the original, of which all others are copies. As believers, we do not live on substitutes. What we have in Christ, then, is a living union because it is an allegory of something that is truly alive. It is not inert. You have to be alive to bear fruit. It is also a loving union in so far as we are invited to enjoy Him and to find our life in Him and find Him as the source of our deepest pleasure. It is also a lasting union. It is lasting because we do not need to be afraid. He is the One who has overcome the world and this is going to go on forever. It is going to endure and last forever, and that makes it truly significant.

So, if we continue and look at this image of the vine and the branches we see what He says in verse two, “Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit.” You see, Ezekiel 15 makes it very clear. It says there that branches are good either for bearing fruit or for burning. They are not good for building. They can not produce their own life, the branches actually bear the fruit of the vine itself and they receive it and display it.

Now, if a vinedresser prunes the branches, what is the purpose of it? So eventually it produces more fruit. Frankly it always bothers me when Karen prunes her roses. It just seems too far to me, and they will never come back.

But, every year I see a better plant than the year before. It is quite glorious. If it were up to me, I would just let the thing continue what it was doing and eventually it would be big, all right, but it wouldn’t really bear much beauty, would it? So, there is an analogy in nature, about horticulture, that illustrates spiritual truths, and Jesus is using it here.

Now, I want you to note the famous progression in this chapter. In verse two He says, “Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit.”

So, first of all, there is no fruit. He takes away branches that do not bear fruit, so then there is fruit. That is the first dimension. He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. You know further down He will say, “Much fruit,” and His desire here would be for us, in verses five and eight, “I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit.”

So, you have these four different levels of fruitfulness. They go from nothing to abundance. Obviously, the desire would be that the Father be glorified, as in verse eight, “That you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples.” Now, pruning involved the cutting away of dead branches, but also the cutting back of living branches to enhance the quality and the quantity of the crop.

The worst thing God could do would be to let us alone and let us have our own way. Just like it drives me nuts to see kids who have never been disciplined, and they just have their way. Frankly, the mother is in terror of the kid. Anything he wants, he gets, and after a while he becomes a monster. Kids often need a good switching, and I remember my grandmother taking a switch. It was actually a symbolic act. She would let me go out and I would actually choose my own instrument of torture. I would cut one off and bring it to her, and she would whack it. Of course, it was harmless, but it sure did sting. You see point there? I never forgot it.

So, I had a tremendous respect for that woman. The fact is that I needed it very badly. A kid has to test the limits. If they see them a bit mushy, what will happen? They no longer have security. They want to see the point where there is some validity and consistency. And so, without that, you can see the obvious analogy. We, too, need that validity and consistency. We, too, need to be disciplined by the living God. So, He prunes us. Frankly, the process does hurt.

But, it is the only path to more and better fruit, so we often call those severe mercies of God. It is a mercy that He does this, so that we would actually be driven to Him. You know why? Because there is really no spiritual growth in our lives, apart from our experiential awareness of our condition of profound need. We are all a desperate and needy people, but we are often not really in touch with that condition. So, God has lots of ways of getting us in touch with our bankruptcy and our need, to drive us to our dependence upon Him.

Now, I may say also, that sometimes God cuts away good wood, so that we may then enjoy the best. That is what He is looking for; He always wants what is best for us. In verse three, He goes on to develop this theme, and says, “You are already clean because of the words which I have spoken to you.” Now, God uses the Word to convict us, but also to cleanse us, according to Ephesians 5:26:27; it cleanses us and also He prunes us by chastening. If you studied Hebrews chapter 12, in verses 1 through 11, there you would see God’s woodshed, the divine woodshed, where He gives us a little bit of discipline. I love how the authors of Hebrews describe this.

There is a bit of an understatement here. He speaks of discipline, and frankly, if you are without discipline you are illegitimate children and not sons. He also says we had earthly fathers and we respected them, and “Shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness.” Now, here is the understatement. “All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful;” that is surely an understatement, “but sorrowful;” and here is the key, “yet for those who have been trained by it.” You see, discipline is not punitive, it is instruction. You see the difference? It is not to punish, it is, in fact, to teach and instruct us in the way of righteousness. “To those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.” There is the image of fruit once again. It yields that peaceful fruit of righteousness.

Now, frankly, as I often like to say, there are many courses in the university of life that we would not take as electives. But, sometimes God says these are required courses, whether you like it or not. They are painful, and we would not have chosen to do them, but when people go through them and are driven to a more intimate fellowship with Christ, they will say they wouldn’t have traded it for anything. They wouldn’t want to go through it again, but they also wouldn’t trade it for anything. There is a benefit that accrued through the pain that took place.

So, God uses sorrow, indeed, suffering in this world, but suffering can be redemptive. Perhaps my favorite verse on this is 1st Peter chapter five, verse ten: “After you have suffered for a little while.” How long will you suffer? What does he say? “A little while.” I want to tell you that the most you can possibly suffer in a few more decades. After those decades, there will never be any sorrow, or pain, or tears, or death, or mourning. ‘The former things will be passing away and, behold, all things will be new’. You have a very limited time to go.

That is why Paul said, “I consider the sufferings of this present time not even worth comparing to the glory to be revealed to us.” He goes on to say, “After you have suffered a little while,” that “the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.” In the alchemy of God’s grace, God transmutes suffering into glory by means of His grace. Suffering becomes glory. And so, we will look back on that pain in our lives and realize that God actually turned our pain into something greater than in would have been, and He can even take the evil intentions of people and turn that for good. You may have meant it for evil, but God meant it for good, as we see in Genesis 50.

Let’s continue on, then, and in verse four, the key concept is ‘abide’. He says, “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch can not bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.” This word, abide, is ‘meno’ in Greek and ‘meno’ is used 11 times in verses 1 through 11 in this chapter.

Now, what are the evidences we are abiding in Christ? ‘Meno’ with Him is to draw your life from Him and to make Him your place of habitation and to practice His presence and to commune with Him and to realize, in real ways, that where ever you go, there He is. Where ever He is, there you must go, also.

So, you have this mutuality of co-inherence. This co-inherence is described as ‘you in Me, and I in you’. There is a mystery of that communion, and it reflects an even deeper and more profound mystery, which is the co-inherence of the divine Trinity. God invites us, then, to abide in the Son. He goes on to say, then, “A branch can not bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine.” One of those evidences of abiding in Him would be that you bear fruit. Another, second, evidence that you are abiding in Him is that you are going to experience some pruning. A third evidence of abiding in Him is found in verse seven, that there will be answered prayers and a deepening love for Christ in other believers is found in verse 9, 12, and 13. Also, verse 11 tells us that if you abide in Him you will also experience joy. These are the results of abiding in Him. Frankly, they are good things to pursue.

So, we have this Biblical concept, then, of union and communion. Think about some of those metaphors. We have the body of Christ. We have another image of the bride. With the body of Christ, and Christ is the head, we are the bride and He is the bridegroom, and then the sheep and the shepherd.

So, in these images here there is an abiding metaphor. The reason for that is because what happens with a body when a member is cut off? What happens to that member? It dies; it can not be sustained, because it needs the vitality of the body, just as a branch needs the vitality of the vine. You see the point here? It can not live in and of itself.

So, for example, you had a hand or a toe or a finger amputated, that thing could not live. Here is another image; think about marriage and it creates a union, but it takes daily love and devotion to maintain the communion. You see the difference? You have a union, but it is also an ongoing process by which there is a communion. You see the point? Union is there, but there is also another process and these are process images. What about a sheep and the shepherd? Well, the shepherd brings the sheep into the flock, but the sheep must follow the shepherd in order to have provision and protection. So, all of these are process images to illustrate what it means to abide in Christ.

So, it really demands spiritual discipline to abide in Christ, and it is not likely to happen if you are not involved, to some degree, in meditation on God’s word and talking with Him. There is also a measure of worship required and perhaps some sacrifice as well; sacrificial love for the good of others. All of these release the presence of Christ in our lives and bears fruit. Look at verse five, and Jesus says, “I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.” That is a rather humbling concept. You can do nothing at all, but we well know we can do things as the world would define them. What can you do? You can build a company. You can build a building.

But, you can not do anything that is going to last. You can create widgets, but you can not form life. Therein lies the difference. You don’t have factories that make things come alive. You have arms that nurture something that is already alive, but you can not create fruit. That requires, actually, the Spirit of God in us. Frankly, we can do nothing of lasting worth apart from Christ. That is where I am trying to position this, and as I look at the vine and the branch, keep in mind two fundamental truths about this. On the one hand, you will not actually create life in yourself. You are a branch and the branch never creates life. Would you agree with that? A branch’s job is to receive life and not to create life. Secondly, what is the product of that life in the branch? It is fruit, and fruit, by the way, the branch does not need to have, but fruit does two things. What are the two things that fruit does? It contains the seeds of its own reproduction. What is another thing the fruit does? It is for another to eat. You see the idea? It bears a product that feeds and nurtures other people.

So, not only does it feed people, it also creates reproduction of life. That is the perfect image, then, of the process of evangelism, which is the reproduction, and edification, which is the nurturing and feeding. Those are the basic elements found in the whole idea of nurturing.

(Q)(A): It does. It transmits the life, but what I am saying is that it never creates the life. It is a conduit. What I am saying here is that a lot of people live as if they are creating the life. I am saying it is not your life, it is Christ in you. You can not create this life, it is Christ in you. There is a difference there, and you must receive it, not try and create it. Furthermore, when you bear this fruit it leads to something that lasts. It is something that lives and is something that will go on into eternity and that is what we long for. Don’t you long to accomplish something that will endure forever? We long for the significance and satisfaction of accomplishing something that will have ripple effects for ever and ever. It will be tragic if all our works in this world were totally destroyed.

The fruit of God will live on forever. Going on to verse six, now, this is a tough verse. A lot of people have used it, I think, incorrectly. “If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them and cast them into the fire and they are burned.” There is always fruit where there is life, and where there is no fruit there is a need for divine discipline. This passage, however, does not deal with the eternal destiny of believers. It is interesting to note that it says, “they gather them.” The interesting thing about ‘them’ is that it is a neuter word.

So, the ‘them’ apparently, are the dead works that are thrown into the fire. In verse seven, “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you.” So, we have this profound promise.

But, you must always remember that this relates to other texts that relate to answered prayer or otherwise you might suppose you have some law of linearity, where if you do your part, God is obligated to do His part. There are a variety of other things involved and whenever you do a study of prayer, you would do well to compare Scripture with Scripture. You would do well to let the clear text interpret the unclear text. It is important for us to see that there are some conditions for answered prayer, but the primary one here is abiding in Him, because that will actually be the source of power that will animate the other conditions; of praying in His name, of not praying selfishly, and so forth.

So, this mutual abiding, then, leads to the product of answered prayer. In verse eight, “My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples.” I love that verse because it tells that real Spiritual fruit can actually honor and please and glorify God. You and I can bless the Lord. Remember Psalm 103? “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name.” This tells us that we can be a blessing to Him. This is a remarkable thought, because He takes deep pleasure in communion with us and it is a blessing to Him.

So, we go on, in verse nine, “Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.” I see it as a remarkable thought then, in this context; of what is happening to Christ, what He knows is going to take place in a matter of hours. He knows He is in His last hours.

But, He speaks of three intriguing things here. Back in chapter 14, verse 27, what did He talk about? “Peace I leave with you.” What does He talk about in this text? He mentions three things, love, peace and joy. Do you recognize those three words, peace, love, and joy? Or, how about love, joy, and peace, put in that order? They are the first three of the nine-fold fruit of the Holy Spirit.

Now, it is a remarkable thought that He would be focusing on the theme of peace, love, and joy, when He knows He is about to go through the horror of crucifixion. It is more than just the physical; it is the spiritual separation from the Father, so that He would become our sin-bearer. How He was capable of doing this, even to the end He served His own, is truly remarkable.

But, this is what He wishes for us. It is also a condition of obedience, which I will return to in just a moment. In verse 12, He goes on to say, “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.” In verse 13, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” How can He command us to love one another? The answer is that Christian love is not a feeling, it is an act of the will. He sure doesn’t command us to like one another. ‘This is My command, that you like one another’. That is not a choice. There are some people you like and, frankly, there are some people you just don’t like. Some people you have no chemistry with at all. That’s okay, because you still can love them even though you don’t like them. Why? Because love is a choice to seek their highest good. That is an issue He can command us to do, because it is a love of choice, a love of the will. The proof of our love, then, is not in our feelings but in our actions, even to the extent of laying down our lives for Christ and for one another.

So, we are called to treat others the way God treats us. Again, He is the exemplar and we imitate what He has already done previously. In verses 14 and 15, “You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.” A lot of have many acquaintances, but few, and certainly men, have few deep friends. What many of us call friends might rightly be called acquaintances. There is a need, then, for this intimacy, and some of our friends may prove unfriendly or unfaithful at the end. I was recently talking to a person in the ministry, where a person who appeared to be devoted to him and involved in his ministry, treacherously talked about him behind his back and ultimately even tried to steal his mailing list and take money from him through that after he formed his own so-called ministry. This is an act of betrayal, especially in consideration of how my friend poured his life into this guy. Apparently, he decided that if he could not have an equal role in that ministry, then he would do this. It is a sad picture.

So, even followers of Christ can be treacherous in this regard, But, our friendship with Christ involves something more than that. It involves a desire to be people who have commitment, integrity, and hope. I want to say, then, that there is a knowledge that comes here, and, frankly, the knowledge of Christ animates our choices.

So, we have to have knowledge as well as love and obedience. These things are critical; we know him, we love him, and we obey Him. You see the sequence? It is important. In that great prayer by St. Richard of Chichester, he said, “May we know you more clearly, love you more dearly, and follow you more nearly.” You see the sequence? The better you know Him, the more you will love Him and the more you love Him, the more you are willing to obey Him.

So, the pray here is to love what He commands and desire what He promises. Think about that; may we love you command and desire what you promise. Isn’t that a wonderful image? So, we seek this sequence in our lives. And, as friends of the Kingdom, we know His plans but we are also subject to Him and obey His commands. Abraham was a friend of God, but he was also the servant of God and so there is a mutuality there. He was God’s friend because he obeyed God.

So, if we are friends to the world, we are going be at enmity with God. Some of you may have seen, the sequence is pretty well known, and if you go back to verse eight, “My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit.” So, we can very well say that our deep call is to glorify the Father. So, if we glorify the Father, it gives Him pleasure and we actually have the capacity to do that. What is the key to glorifying God? After all, we are called to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever. So, what is the key to glorification? He says, in verse eight, that we glorify Him by bearing much fruit.

Now, the question you have to ask next is, how do you bear fruit? Well, He has already told us in this text. What is the answer? Let me give you an example. Look at verse five, and what does He say? You bear fruit when you abide in Him.
So, abiding is the key to fruit-bearing.

Now, what is the key to abiding? Look at verse ten, “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love.” Obedience, then, is the key to abiding. As you obey Him, then you abide in Him.

So, what is the key to obedience? The key to obedience is in verse ten, and it is love. “Just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.” So, love prompts obedience. There is still one more key to discuss. The final key, and this is critical, is found in verse 15. You know what the Father has revealed.

So, to know Him is, in fact, key to loving Him. And loving Him is critical in obeying Him. And obeying Him is the thing that brings about that abiding dimension in our lives, which leads to fruit-bearing, which leads to glorification and honoring God.

So, these things all connect together. Going on to verse 16, “You did choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit.” That is to say, before the foundation of the world, He chose us. Turn with me to Ephesians chapter two, verse ten, and you will see that exact analogy. It says, “We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” It is similar to this, then, when Jesus says, “You didn’t choose Me, but I chose you.” What does that mean? It means that the fruit we bear remains and lasts forever.

So, we have this extraordinary idea that we have this privileged position, not of our merit, but because of His grace. He chose them, and He chose us. He is always previous to our response.

But, we are called now to manifest a discipleship by bearing true fruit, because if it is true fruit it will last forever. Human results eventually disappear, but whatever is born of the Spirit of God will have the mark of eternity and will endure. Verse 17, “This I command you, that you love one another.” This is the most important of the commands, that we love God and then love one another.

The friends of the King, then, will not only love the King, but will also love one another. You are loving the people that God loves. We can only do that, in a really powerful way, as we abide in Him, because, frankly, Jesus asks us to do something that we don’t have the power to do by ourselves. We do not have the power to live the Christian life. You do understand this? There is only one person who can live the Christian life, and that is Jesus. How does He live it, then? He lives it in you and through you as you abide in Him and allow His Spirit to become manifest.

That is why it is not a presence of instructions, but the presence of a person. He makes it possible for us to do what would otherwise be impossible to achieve. That is to say, He not only calls us to a task, but also empowers us to do it. Let us now look at the next portion of the text. “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it has hated you.” You see the profound contrast there? Up until now He has been talking about love, hasn’t He? All of a sudden He is looking from a completely different orientation, and now looks at hatred. He openly taught His disciples that one day persecution would come. He told them that in Matthew five, and He told them that in Mark 13. He told them that the response to His own ministry would be resentment, and hatred, and opposition.

So, now He is saying the “world.” The world can mean different things, according to the context. It can mean the created world, and if He is in the world and He created it, then it is a neutral thing. That is referring to the creation. That is the first way. What is the second way we could look at the word ‘world’? It is the world of humanity. “For God so the” what? The world, speaking about the world of His people.

But, the third way of using ‘cosmos’, the world, is society, apart from God and opposed to God, and that is what He means here. “If the world hates you, then know it has hated Me before it hated you.” We are told not to love the world or be conformed to the world. 1st John 2 tells us, “don’t love the world.” Romans 12 tells us, “don’t be conformed to the world.” And, James 4 tells us, “the one who loves the world is not a friend of God.” You see those ideas? Why is there opposition to us, if we are following Jesus? First of all, I think it because we are identified with Christ.

Opposition takes place because of our new identification. The world can not understand that. And so, in verse 18, “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it has hated you.” In verse 20, “Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master’. If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also.” And the second reason the world will hate you is that we do not belong to this world. We belong to a new world. Consequently, in this new world in which we find ourselves citizens, where are we in this world? We are strangers, sojourners, exiles, pilgrims, and aliens in exile. So, we see that we are looking for a city whose builder and architect is God and we are not home yet.

So, we are in this world but we are not of the world. The world does not understand that. We have become, as Hebrews 3:1 says, “Partakers of a heavenly calling.” So, we look now at the things of earth from heaven’s point of view. That gives us a radically different orientation and, in fact, what does this present world invite us to do? To be conformed to the world. See the idea? Persons who are not conformed to this world, but to Christ, are going to really be swimming against the current. We are not conformed to the world then, and are in fact new creations, we no longer pursue the old life. 1st Peter 4:1-4 says they insult you because they don’t understand that the person you have become is now not what they are. They almost regard that as an insult to them. The fascinating thing is that they have a double standard. If you claim to be a Christian, they expect you to have a higher life.

But, when you lead a better life, they think you are being self-righteous. Thirdly, the world is spiritually ignorant and blind, so the world is really incapable; not just ignorant, but blind. It is not capable of seeing the Gospel of Christ and the meaning of these truths. The religious establishment claimed to know God, didn’t they? But, they never knew God. Chapter one, verse ten will well illustrate that, at the very beginning of this Gospel. “He was in the world, and the world was made for Him, and the world did not know Him” Look at verse 3 of chapter 16, “These things they will do because they do not know the Father or Me.” There is a huge difference between knowing about God and knowing God.

Now, the fourth reason there will be opposition is going to be found in verses 22 through 24. The world will not be honest about its own sins, and the problem is that the sin of the world is exposed and the world hates it when that takes place. That is why I believe there is such opposition to The Passion of the Christ. The Passion of the Christ forces people to wrestle with something they do not want to think about. Why was He there? Why did He suffer? That is something the world does not want to wrestle with and they come up with this trumped up charge of anti-Semitism.

But, if anyone sees the film, they know better, but they keep beating that dead horse into the ground because that is all they have got. Look, now, at verses 22 through 24, “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin.” That reminds me of what Paul said in Acts chapter 17, in his speech in Athens. In verse 30, “Therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.”

And so, the resurrected Christ, then, reveals the sin of the world. Consequently, the world can not be honest about its own sin. In chapter three, verses 19 through 21 of John also make that very, very clear. “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hated the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.” It is the cockroach syndrome. You turn on the light and they flee. You see the idea? I used to stay in a friend’s apartment in New York. They tried everything and had ‘roach motels’ everywhere.

In the middle of the night, you’d get up for a glass of water and turn on the light and they would scatter by the hundreds. That is a metaphor for people, in a very real way. They ate the light and do not want to be exposed by that light. People heard His word, and saw His works, but they would not respond to the truth. In verse 23, “He who hates Me, hates My Father also. If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not have sin; but now they have both seen and hated Me and My Father as well.” They were not sinning in ignorance. They heard His word and saw His works.

So, they couldn’t plead ignorance. “But they have done this to fulfill the word that is written in their Law, ‘They hated Me without a cause’. I am going to really kind of end here because it would have been better for the chapter division to occur right here, because He is going to speaking a good deal more about the Holy Spirit.

But, just a word about that, though, “When the helper comes,” and here he means the comforter, the ‘paraklet’, the Holy Spirit, “whom I will send to you from the Father, He will testify about Me, and you will testify also because you have been with Me from the beginning.” The point here is that the power of the Holy Spirit will come upon you and you will now be able to make a credible and powerful witness and reveal truth to those who can not hear. Remember the description of people in the world without Christ. “People are blind,” in 2nd Corinthians 4, second, in Ephesians 2, “they are dead,” and third, 2nd Timothy 2, “they are held captive to do the enemy’s will.”

So, they are in bondage, they are blind, and they are dead. The only thing that can break through that darkness, of course, is the power of the Spirit of God, and He has empowered us. (Q)(A): Suffering depends upon your response. You will either become bitter or better. There are no other choices in between. If you are embittered, then the suffering will actually cause resentment and hostility.

But, if you see the suffering through the lens that God is there, you do not have the grief of despair, you will have the grief of hope. There is a big difference. The grief of despair assumes there is no answer and that God is the one that brought it about. The grief of hope, the pain of hope, assumes there is an answer, but we don’t understand it, but God really does have my best interests at heart, even though it might not appear as such.

(Q)(A): Yes, I do recommend that book to you, The Question of God, by Armand Nicholai. It contrasts Freud and Lewis on a variety of points and what is interesting is that it uses much of their own correspondence. The obvious contrast couldn’t be greater. However, he is clever because he never lets on which side he is on. He is a committed Christian, and by the end of the book it is obvious.

(Q)(A): The point is that it is not a preachy book and it can be given to a seeker. Let us close in a prayer. Father, we do thank You that Christ, our Lord, has suffered for us so that we see Him as our exemplar and that we understand that there is nothing that You call us to do that Your Son has not first done for us. We love because He first loved us. He invites us to forgive others because we have been forgiven by Him. May we love others as He loved us. May we serve others as He served us. May we obey You just as He obeyed You. We pray these things in His name. Amen.

Let’s begin, as we always do, with a prayer. We thank You, Lord, for our time together. We thank You for each person in this room and for the plan that You have for each person’s life here. We ask that You would cause us to pursue Your purposes for our lives and embrace the hope, the peace, and the joy that is made available in the in-Christ relationship. We pray in His name. Amen.

We are up to John chapter 16 and as we continue, we really have to go back to the end of John 15 just for a moment to see the experience that Jesus has been talking about. In that chapter we have the central teaching, in the Upper Room Discourse, that He is the true vine and we have this image, or allegory, of the vine. He is talking about the abiding in-Christ relationship; to abide is to draw your life from Him. Remember the analogy that we used of the vine and the branches, that the branches do not create life, but receive life? Then they display the fruit of that life. You and I can not create life. We can only receive the life in Christ and then manifest that in spiritual fruit, the fruit of character, and the fruit of the Spirit.

So, that life is not something we create, but we receive it, and then we are conduits to that life. That is an important principle, because then Jesus talks about this abiding relationship and how central for us to find a true, day by day, power and identity through that relationship that God has now made available in Him. And so, this is a central theme, and it relates to prayer and to a sense of peace. He talks about the idea of bearing fruit and, really, all of us here want to accomplish something that will go on forever. Isn’t that true?

Wouldn’t it be sad to go through life and then realize you just squandered your existence, and that there would be nothing but dust and ashes in the end? All of us have been created by God with a desire to accomplish something that is meaningful and that will really endure. I see this in my own life and in my own desire. I think it is wise for us to come in touch with deep that longing, because it is a longing from God. It is something that He tells us; if you do not use your time well and wisely, if you do it just to pursue the agenda of the world, rather than the agenda of the Word, you will miss out completely. What you will do is go for second things first and in doing so you will not only miss the first things, but you will miss the joy of the second things as well.

So, He goes on to discuss the idea that you can anticipate that with this message about Jesus, you are going to be encountering some strong opposition. Particularly, as you know, in the Jewish world, but you have to keep in mind that Jesus Himself was a Jew. The disciples were all Jewish. All the writers of the New Testament, with the possible exception of Luke, were all Jewish.

So, you can not say it is anti-Semitic. The central theme is that the salvation is from the Jews. But, it is true, however, that there is a term John uses, ‘Jews’ in the plural, and it refers to the temple establishment, and particularly the Sadducees, although the Pharisees were also hostile to Him. This is what he is referring to, the national rejection by the spiritual leadership of the people of Israel. However, keep in mind that in the early Church, all the believers were followers of Messiah, and ‘Yeshua ha Machiach’ was actually the fulfillment of the promises in the Hebrew Bible.

So, all of them were Jewish until some years went by and the real fundamental question is, what about the Gentiles? Can they get in? Today, we ask about the Jews, but the question has always been, what about the Gentiles? And, really, historically, it required the Acts 15 Council, in Jerusalem, in AD 50, for that to finally be resolved, and the Gentiles do not have to become proselytes to Judaism in order to have the right relationship with God.

So, you have this theme here, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. That was characteristic of the ministry in the Apostolic preaching and the Cross and the Resurrection in the Book of Acts. So, in seeing all of this, Jesus is saying to them that they can anticipate all these things. “They persecuted Me, they will persecute you,” and “They do this because they don’t know the One who sent Me.” Then He goes on to say, as we saw last time, that these people had not received the message that He had given them, and he says, “If I had not and spoken to them, they would not have sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin.

He who hates Me hates My Father also. If I had not done among them the work which no one else did, , they would not have sin; but now they have both seen and hated Me and My Father as well.” The point here is that they have rejected this message and the fundamental sin is that of disbelief. That is really the ultimate issue. The one sin that God can not forgive, having sent His Son on our behalf, is that sin of rejecting the provision that God has made in Jesus. Remember, as we have said before, if I understand Galatians 2:21 correctly, he says, “If salvation were possible,” if righteousness were possible, “by keeping the Law, then Christ died needlessly.”

If I understand what Paul is saying there, if it were possible, through some sort of works system, to arrive at a right relationship with God, then the death of Christ was a tragic waste. Similarly, the other side of that coin is, if the death of Christ is actually the means by which God brings us into relationship with Him, then He is our only hope. So, it comes down to this, and I have said it before, all the world’s religions that I have studied are work systems.

So, you have the uniqueness of this message, and that is it is by grace through faith. Of course, you always have the question of what about those who have not heard, and it always relates to the issue of the fairness of God. And, God is fair. If you want to know about God, look at Christ and look at how He related to people, and the issue is, those who seek will find; those who knock, it will be opened to them; and those who ask, it will be given to them.

So, this issue of whether a person is seeking God or avoiding God is going to be the fundamental divide. If a person seeks God they will find Him, and how God brings that about is up to Him. Furthermore, God does not hold people responsible for Light they did not receive. He does, however, hold us responsible for the Light we have received, and no one is ignorant of all that Light, because Romans 1 makes that clear, because from the internal and external witness of the created order, God has made Himself manifest to us. Romans 2 emphasizes the witness of our conscience, and how we also have a concept of a moral code.

Try as we may, in a post-modern world, to eliminate that idea, that morality of wrong and right, of truth and falsehood, of beauty and ugliness, try as we may, we just don’t live that way. I have yet to find a post-modernist who can live consistently with their view, that there is no such thing as right and wrong, or truth and falsehood, because they are very, very eloquent in trying to convince us in the truth of their relativistic position, namely that all truth is just something that is constructed by the community and really has no bearing on what is out there.

Then, of course, that raises the question of whether their own truth was something constructed by their community? It is a self-refuting system and is completely unlivable. But, that is where we are. We all know inside of us when there is something wrong. We are also aware that there is a power, an intelligence, a designer, that has made it all.

Now, we can avoid that or we can pursue it, and that is what it comes down to. But, the point is, and this is the issue, “They have done this to fulfill the word that is in their Law, they hated Me without a cause.” That is why Isaiah 53 describes Jesus, the suffering Servant, the Messiah, coming out like a root out of parched ground. There is ‘parched ground’, which is symbolic of the spiritual deadness of Israel in that context. It was predicted that this would happen. It was actually written that they would hate Him.

But, then He goes on to say, in verse 26, as He looks now, and focuses in on the powerful ministry of ‘the comforter’, the Holy Spirit, “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me.”

So, what Jesus is saying is that those who wish to know, God is giving the power for it to become possible for them to know Him. There are three conditions in the human situation that, from a human point of view, are impossible to overcome. One is that we are spiritually dead. That is the first problem. From Ephesians 2, we are “Spiritually dead.” The second problem is that we are spiritually blind, as we see in Corinthians 4. We can’t see that Light unless God reveals it to us. The third problem is that we are held captive by the enemy to do his will. We are volitionally bound, as we read in 2nd Timothy 2.

Now, that is pretty tough. You are in slavery, you are dead, and you are blind. Try dealing with that. How can you possibly, on human power, overcome those things? You can’t; only the Spirit of God can break through that, and in His power convict the world concerning, as we shall see, three things: sin, righteousness, and judgment. Apart from that convicting power of the Spirit and His regenerative work, we have no hope whatsoever.

So, Jesus talks about this resource that will come when He goes to the Father. So, He says, “You will testify because you have been with Me from the beginning.” So, He is talking about the Apostolic Ministry.

So, as we look at this, then, we see that the Holy Spirit will encourage us, and work in such a way that, though the people who heard His Word and saw His works did not respond to the truth, yet there are those who will. It is the Spirit of God who will make that manifest. In chapter 16, now, again, if I were making the chapter divisions, I would have done it after verse 25. I sometimes can’t figure out what they thinking. That is why you must remember not to let the chapters keep you from reading what is right before and right after. Always understand that these divisions were not in the original text.

So, beginning with verse one, then, “These things I have spoken to you so that you may be kept from stumbling. They will make you outcasts from the synagogue, but an hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think he is offering service to God.” Isn’t that what Saul thought? When Saul was persecuting the Christians, what was he doing? ‘The followers of the Way’ it was originally called. They didn’t call them Christians until Antioch, and that was many years later. They were called ‘followers of the Way’.

The idea was that these followers of Jesus, or the Way, were now being persecuted, and Saul, as therapy, took particular zeal in pursuing them, all the way from Jerusalem up to Damascus and he got permission to do this. Jesus was predicting this would happen. They were actually thinking they were offering service to God if they persecuted them. In verse three, “These things they will do because they have not know the Father or Me.” Now, this knowledge is not just cognitive, it is relational knowledge. Frankly, it is possible to know God and not know God. You know what I mean? It is possible for you to recite the Creeds, but not know the Jesus to whom they point. It is possible to be a theologian, and know many things that are propositional truths about God, but not know God.

So, the issue is, what is the difference? One is cognitive, intellectual assent. Well, the “demons believe and shudder,” as James 2 shows us. The demons are actually more orthodox than most liberal theologians. That is a bit of an irony. Intellectual assent is one thing; personal reception is entirely another thing. Now we are dealing with the knowledge of the heart of a person, of a relationship, and God is a relational being and therefore He invites us to know Him in that way.

So, Jesus is saying they didn’t know the Father in this way. In verse four, “But these things I have spoken to you, so that when their hour comes, you may remember that I told you of them.” He is preparing them in advance, because He is about to leave. Recall, Jesus well knows that it will be only a matter of a few hours before He will be departing from His disciples. He will then go through the horrors of the mission for which He was sent, but the glory that is involved. The Cross-, remember, is the lifting up of Christ, but it is also an image of the resurrection and the ascension.

So, there is dual picture here, that it was for this purpose that He has come. Still, He is preparing them now, because there is almost no time left. So, He says, “These things I did not say to you at the beginning because I was with you.” In other words, He didn’t need to tell them about this because He was with them, empowering them, and teaching them.

But, now He is going to leave them, and you can well imagine that the disciples were increasingly despondent at these words and it became more and more evident to them that Jesus really is going to leave them. They were sorrowing, they were confused, and they were afraid. Jesus is offering these words of power and comfort. By the way, this is the way God works in your life. He does not teach you something until it is needful for you to know that thing. He knows what you need and he gives each person what they need at that time. If you do not respond to the Light you have, He will not give you more Light. Only when you respond to the Light you have will He give you more illumination.

So, in verse five, “But now I am going to Him who sent Me; and none of you asks Me, ‘Where are you going’? But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart.” In other words, now they are afraid. They are scared to ask Him where He is going, because they already know the answer. It has finally dawned on them. He says, But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart.” He knew them well. He understood their character, their nature, and the love that they had for Him.

So, He says in verse seven, “But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.” So, it is necessary, then, for the Holy Spirit to come because He is going away.

Now, they will be empowered by the ‘paraklet’, the ‘Comforter’, and so this is the purpose for which He will send the Holy Spirit. It will go along side them, in a universal way, and in the same way Jesus was physically along side them during His earthly ministry.

So, it extends beyond the actual visual and tactile experience of Christ to the spiritual encounter with Christ. Remember “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” That is what the Spirit of God mediates, so that the presence of Christ on earth is not localized, but manifest, because, “I am with you always to the end of the age, where two or more are gathered together, there I am in their midst.” Now it is mediated through the power of the Spirit, who is not only with you, but will be in you. The rivers of living waters will then flow out of you when the Spirit comes.

So, He says, “And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.” This is an interesting image, “sin and righteousness and judgment.” As to sin, the sin of unbelief is really the idea of refusing to embrace, not the commitment of individual sins as the ultimate issue, but the reality of refusing to believe. And so, the idea of sin is the thing that God has to convict us of, not to clean up our acts. A lot of people still suppose you have to clean up your act in order to come to Christ. You have to become a better person and then you can come to Him. My very point is that you need to come to Christ because you can not clean up your own act. You see?

Once you admit that, and understand that, then you really are now in a position to grasp your desperate need. So sin, the understanding of sin, the experiential awareness, is a grasp of your genuine need before God. That is really what it comes down to. And only the Spirit can convict in that way. My wife, Karen, and some of you know the story, took a year and a half, while I was in Seminary, to finally come to faith in Christ. She had an intellectual assent, but it was not a personal one, and part of the issue there was that she never grasped that she was a sinner. She thought she was a pretty good person. Let’s be frank, most people tend to compare themselves with other people.

The last one they are going to compare themselves to is Jesus. Most people, as you know, think they are above average. The problem you have is that half the people you know are below average, but none of them will ever say that. Take any area of life you want. Would you say you are in the top quarter of all drivers? Everybody will say they are at least above average. Very few people will think they are below average in that department. And so, the mistake is to compare yourself with other people, rather than to compare yourself with God’s standard. God’s standard is, in fact, the life of Christ.

So, therein lies the issue, and once we come to see that, we see that we fall woefully short and the infinite abyss between ourselves and God becomes manifest to us and we begin to realize that separation. I still remember my own experience of encountering this abyss. It was this ‘mysterium tremendum’, as Rudolph Otto calls it. He calls it this idea of the ‘numinous’, the idea of God as being someone who is powerful and transcendent, but also terrifyingly imminent, and there is a sense of desire for Him, but terror at the same time because of the terror of Holiness. You see the idea? Frankly, I was in a tight spot until I came to the understanding that the only way that is going to be overcome, and the grasp of that, was in a relationship with Christ. That is something that had to be revealed to me, otherwise I would not have known it.

So, He convicts the world of sin, first of all, and secondly, of righteousness. “Concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer see Me.” Jesus was the standard of righteousness that was manifest. And so, unless people see Him, they will suppose they are better than most people and that is where religion comes in to play. Basically, the idea of religion is that God will judge on a curve.

The failure to see that Jesus is the One who lived perfectly and so He is the curve breaker because salvation is only available in two ways. One is to be perfect in thought, word, and deed all your life, or receiving the righteousness of the One who was perfect thought, word, and deed. You see the difference? So, this is the need for righteousness. God’s standard, the righteousness that God requires, as I have so often put it, is that righteousness which His righteousness requires Him to require. In other words, God can not grade on a curve.

His righteousness is required by His own character. He can not have compatibility, or intimacy, or fellowship with that which is incompatible with His nature and character. What is the solution to this terrible dilemma, because no one can reach that area of perfection? The only solution is that for God to be the initiator, reach down to us, and to impute the perfect righteousness of Christ on our behalf, while He takes our sin and imputes it on His account. The key verse for that is 2nd Corinthians 5:21; “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

So, it is a double exchange, where He has taken our sin upon Himself and given us His righteousness, and that is what occurred on the Cross. Only in that way, then, can we be just, even though we are not perfect in our behavior, we are now perfect in our new nature. You see the difference? We are now participants in, and partakers of, His divine nature. 2nd Peter 1:4 illustrates that for us.

So, we have a new self that we didn’t have before and that new self is holy and righteous because it is the new self in Christ. Now, even though our practice is not perfect, nevertheless, your position is. That is the solution for how God, then, can embrace us as His beloved children, and accept us unconditionally, and at the same time satisfy His perfection in His character, in which He can not enjoy the presence of that which is sinful.

Now, in heaven, as you know, all of that will be removed. That is to say, the things that are still imperfect, which are in the deepest you, in your mind, your emotion, your will, that will be finally purified and what remains will be the real you. That is a glorious thought and a great hope.

So, we see Him saying that the third thing is judgment, “Because the ruler of this world has been judged.” And again, the popular phrase today is ‘stop being so judgmental’. You hear it all the time. Judgmental is one thing; that is a sensorial attitude.

But, to be discerning is a different matter entirely. You can judge according to truth. That is to say, you can discern the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. The issue that we have to keep in mind is that it is possible for us to embrace and love a person without embracing and loving what they say or do.

The world will tell you otherwise. We live in a world that says if you don’t buy what I say or do, then you don’t really buy me. That is not the case. A person can really love another without accepting their belief or their behavior. Understand, then, that it is not judgmentalism. Judgmentalism is a condemning and sensorious attitude rather than using simple discernment and truth. The point is that judgment will come. If Jesus is right, then, He is judged the Prince of this world by His death, as chapter 12, verse 31 makes clear, and He has overcome the world and the devil.

The only person, then, who can rescue us is Christ, but there can be no conversion without conviction. Let me stress this; there is no conversion without conviction. That is where the Spirit of God comes in. There is no conviction apart from the Spirit of God, who uses the Word of God to witness to another person. Usually He will mediate that through a person who takes the truth of the Word and communicates that to another person and the Spirit then empowers that witness and convicts them, and the conversion would follow.

But, all of this is the work of God mediated through His people. I regard the idea of sharing our faith, in a relational way, is a great privilege. We can be part of the idea of spiritual birth and we can participators in that process. In any case, as we go on, in verses 12 through 15 we see the vocal point is the Spirit as teacher, who will guide the Church and He emphasizes the idea of teaching as needful for them to grow.

So, in verse 12, “I have many more things to say to you, but you can not bear them now.” He stresses this point and in verse 13 tells them, “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but what ever He hears He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.” The Spirit of God, then, will break through and reveal things to you, as you need to receive them.

By the way, this is an important promise because if you compare this with chapter 14, verse 26, there is that promise again, “The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.” There we have a strong promise that the teaching of the Apostles will be consistent with the teaching of the Lord. Therefore it is an intimation of the inscripturation process that will come through the apostolic witness. That is to say, the Apostles will now be inspired by the Holy Spirit to write God’s word and to communicate that truth.

So, He is predicting that they will receive it. In verse 14, “He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. All things the Father has are Mine; therefore I said He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.” So, this idea of disclosure is one of intimacy. Remember He said, “A slave doesn’t know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends,” and they did know what He was doing.

So, this idea of intimate knowledge is something that reveals our true position before Him. Now, if you go to verses 16 through 33, the last portion of this chapter, what you now see is the conclusion of the Upper Room discourse. In chapter 17 we fin the High Priestly prayer of Jesus.

So, the discourse is complete at the end of chapter 16, then we listen in on this amazing prayer, as we will see at our next meeting. It is one of the most amazing prayers; especially in that what He asks for us has a tremendous bearing on our own identity and destiny.

But, what we have, again, in chapter 16, is His dealings with the emotions of His disciples. I find it intriguing that we see than as very real people with very real problems. I find it a wonderful comfort that He uses imperfect people. To be frank with you, the people He chose are not the folks I would have chosen. That is just the reality of it. That is meaningful, however, because it means that He can use us as well. You do not have to be highly gifted, in the eyes of the world, for you to be used in a powerful way. Instead, you need to be radically dependent. Obedience and dependence; trust and obey, to use the old phrase, is what will really make the cutting difference. The fact is, and we all know it, that some people have greater amounts of intelligence, or ability, or wealth, or influence, and surely that is true.

But, the divine equalizer is that reward in God’s Kingdom is based on faithfulness and opportunity, and not on time, talent, or treasure. Therefore, a very, very deficient person, as the world would define them, that is to say not educated or they are impoverished, has as much opportunity to be rewarded in the Kingdom of Heaven as does a person who is a ‘mover and shaker’, even apparently in the Christian world.

Therefore, I believe there will be tremendous surprises at the judgment seat of Christ. You will see people who were the unsung heroes and whose faithfulness will give them that reward. That is a comforting word for us all. Speaking of comfort, there is also a recurring theme in this chapter. Look at verse 20 to 22. He says, “The world will rejoice; you will grieve, but you grief will be turned into joy.” Then He talks about the issue of joy that will come into the world, in verse 22, “No one will take your joy way from you.” Then, in verse 24, “So that your joy may be made full.”

So, He uses this theme of joy and remember, joy is not the same as happiness. Happiness depends upon circumstances, joy transcends circumstances. There is a big difference. So, we can be joyful in the midst of adversity, because of our perspective. That is why James says, “Count as all joy, when you encounter various trials, knowing,” he says, “not that you are enjoying the process but because you know the outcome.” You can see that God will use this to mature you, to layer you, and to develop you. That brings us to an incredibly important principle, in verses 16 to 22, that I really want us to grasp. In my opinion, it can be a life changing principle if we begin to see it more clearly.

Let me read you those verses and let’s listen carefully to what Jesus says to His disciples. Knowing that they are concerned, and knowing that they are terrified of what is going on, He says to them, ‘“A little while and you will no longer see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me’. Some of His disciples then said to one another, ‘What is this thing he is telling us, ‘A little while and you will not see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me’; and, ‘Because I go to the Father’?”

So, they are totally mixed up. It was total chaos. If this was a forgery, if this were a fraud, would they really paint themselves as being so obtuse? It is amazing when you think about it. There is, clearly, complete honesty here; they were admitting that they were complete dumbbells. The reality is that they should have figured it out by now, but they had not. It simply illustrates that all of us are that way; we are all dense and we are all obtuse, unless the Spirit of God breaks through.

But, the text goes on to say, in verse 19, “Jesus knew that they wished to question Him, and He said to them, ‘Are you deliberating together about this, that I said, ‘A little while and you will not see Me, and again a little while and you will see Me? Truly, truly, I say to you, that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; you will grieve, but your grief will be turned into joy. Whenever a woman is in labor’,” and He uses this powerful illustration, ‘“She has pain, because her hour has come; but when she gives birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy that a child has been born into the world’.”

Now He is applying that powerful image. “Therefore you too have grief now; but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you.” That is a very powerful thing and the principle I want to give you is this; God will bring joy into your life, not by substitution, but by transformation. Let me say that again; joy will come not by substitution, but by transformation. Let me explain what I mean by that principle. The illustration of a woman giving birth really makes it clear. The same baby that caused the pain also caused great joy. Instead of relieving the mother’s pain, what did God do? He transformed it. You see the idea?

The mother’s pain is not replace by joy, it is transformed into joy. You see the difference? It is not replace by joy, it is transformed into joy. If the mother always get a new toy for a child, each time a toy is broken, what will happen to that child? Every time something goes wrong the kid is covered. That child will grow up expecting every problem to be solved by substitution. That is to say, if something goes wrong, let me give you a new thing. So many people suppose, sadly, and often during a mid-life crisis, that a new wife, a new career, or a new car, all substitutions, will suddenly make things better. That is an illusion.

The point is this; God will not solve our problems by way of substitution because that is the way of immaturity. The way of transformation is the way of faith and that leads to maturity. You can not mature emotionally or spiritually if someone is always replacing your broken toys. And by the way, we typically use God. When we get desperate we will try to use God as a utility to repair our toys.

So, God is viewed as kind of a divine vending machine. Remember the phrase, from Larry Crabbe’s book The Pressure is Off? He says, “The sad part is that most Christians are more concerned with the better life of God’s blessings than they are with the better hope of God’s presence.” Let me say it again. The sad part is that most Christians are more concerned with the better life of God’s blessings than they are with the better hope of God’s presence.” What does the better life of God’s blessings look like? Pretty much what you want.

Fill in the blank; better health, better career, or more money. They see God as a cosmic utility who will help them bring that about, rather than what I believe is more Biblical, the way of transformation, namely, the better hope of God’s presence. I have just started a series on The Pursuit of God, by A.W. Tozier and in his first chapter he talks about the horrible problem of ‘God-hyphen-and’. In other words, we want God, and this. We are hoping not to have Him all by Himself, but also what He will provide, whatever that may be. And let’s be honest, we will have an ‘and’ that we want God to solve. Part of the terrifying, radical abandon is to finally abandon all those ‘ands’ and pursue Him only for Himself.

That is to say, pursue the better hope of His presence, whether the ‘ands’ come or not, and there is no promise that they will. Do not commit yourself, do not make your joy, depend on something God has not promised. If you do, you will be disappointed and embittered in the end. Never put your hope on something God has not promised. There is no promise that righteous living will lead to greater earthly prosperity. There is no direct correlation between that, or between un-Godliness leading to less prosperity. That is pretty obvious in the world. One of the first phrases a child learns is ‘it’s not fair’. We all have this hard-wired and built-in idea of fairness.

But, what we want is ‘fair for me’, not always what is fair for the other person. ‘God isn’t fair’, we say. If God were fair, we would all be in a Christ-less eternity. If God were fair, He would judge us according to true judgment and we would be separated from Him forever. God is more than fair, He is gracious, and that really leads to the issue of how we respond to Him. So, this is an important principle.

So, keep in mind this Scripture, “The Lord your God turned the curse into a blessing,” from Deuteronomy 23:5. Remember when it talked about that idea? Think of Joseph’s brothers. Remember they sold him into slavery, he was put into prison as a criminal, and what does God do? He mutates it into joy. Not by substitution, but by going through the pain he discovers the joy of God on the other side because of his transformation. Egypt’s persecution of Israel just caused them to multiply and prosper even more. King Saul’s pursuit of David made him even more a man of God than he otherwise would have been. And, it actually helped create the Psalms.

If Saul had not pursued David, like a dog tries to scratch a tick on its back, many of the Psalms would not have been written. Think about the tremendous comfort and consolation that the Psalms have meant to so many people. That is the book I always turn people to when they are going through times of depression or despondency. Why? Because every human emotion is revealed in them. There is an honesty about that. One of the things I love about the Psalms is their incredible honesty about God. God well-knows our thoughts and it is never a smart idea to cover up your thoughts and think that God is not going to know what you are really thinking. That is a chapter in my book, People Must Think God is Stupid.

The fact is, though, that it is wise for us to see that the ultimate example of bringing joy by transformation, rather than substitution, is what? What is the ultimate example of joy through transformation? Is it not the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ? It seems to me that He took the Cross, the symbol of defeat and shame, and He transformed that Cross into a symbol of glory and victory. Now, that is an amazing achievement.

So, when we think about that, people often focus wrongly on who killed Jesus, but there is another thing. Frankly, He laid down His life on His own initiative. Nobody killed Him, in that sense. He laid His life down. In fact, it was necessary, was it not, for Christ to suffer? Remember He tells the disciples, in Luke 24, verse 25, “O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken. Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory.”

Then He went into, “Beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.” I would like to have been there to hear that message. What Scriptures would Jesus have chosen to illustrate prophecies concerning Himself? Some might surprise us. The point here is, though, “Wasn’t it necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?”

The Scriptures clearly teach this. He is telling them that it is necessary, but the suffering is not the end. It is a doorway to joy. That is why it says in Hebrews 12, that Jesus, because of the joy set before Him, endured the Cross, despising the shame. He did not look at the Cross as an end, but as a means to a greater end. So, the Cross was not the end, nor is death the end. It is not the last word. It is a doorway to the ultimate joy that we will receive in His presence.

So, returning to the text, in verse 20, “You will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice.” Frankly, Egypt did rejoice when Israel departed and the world was glad when Christ moved off the scene, I promise you that, because the only response people would have, if they were with Him long enough, would be either antipathy or acceptance. Those were the only options. To ignore Him was not an option. If you spent much time with Him, He would produce those twin responses, which were so beautifully illustrated in the two thieves on the crosses on either side of Christ.

They illustrate the two basic responses, one of reception and one of rejection. He was flanked by those two responses. The point here is that there is a perspective we must embrace, whenever a woman is in labor, she has pain because her hour has come, but then she no longer remembers that anguish. In our concept of time, isn’t it true that it changes with your feelings? Frankly, if I am in a doctor’s office, it seems to go by very slowly. Then you spend a wonderful evening with your friends, and what happens? You are amazed at how the evening just whizzed by. Your perspective changes that.

A mother thinks that the birth is taking a long time, but actually it may only be a little while. What happens is that when the baby is born the pain is forgotten and it is transformed into joy. Keep in mind that the Creation awaits Christ’s return, does it not? In Romans 8:22, “it awaits its own transformation.” From Hebrews 10:37, “But in a little while, He who is coming will come.” To us it may seem a long time, but He doesn’t measure time the way we do. In 2nd Peter 3:8-9, “With the Lord, one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day. He is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness.”

The fact is that from God’s orientation, it is just a short moment. The time will come, let’s call it a hundred years from now, and none of us will be here, but you will look back on this earthly life and it will be just a blip in time. Yet, it was the most important, because it has shaped your whole destiny. The choices you make here really do count in eternity. And so, our perspective must be one in which we see the joy because God will not substitute, but cause us to go through the pain and experience His transformation.

As we conclude our discussion on chapter 16 tonight, let’s now focus on verses 23 through 33. “In that day,” Jesus says, “You will not question Me about anything. Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask the Father for anything in My name, He will give it to you. Until now you have asked for nothing in My name; ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be made full.” Here is the point. While Jesus was with them, He always met their needs.

Now, He is going to go away, and He emphasizes this again and again, in chapters 14, 15, and 16, and it is the privilege of prayer and how God will be the One to whom they can turn, in the power of His Spirit, to meet their needs. He is not there with them anymore, but He will continue to meet their needs. In the early Church, in the Book of Acts, they believed in the promises of God and acted on those promises. There are many prayers about believing and acting, and also listening.

Remember, don’t limit prayer to a few minutes in the morning. Seek the skill of practicing His presence throughout the course of the day so that you engage in what is called ‘habitual recollection’, by which you recall, from time to time, His presence. Sometime I can mean just carrying a word with you and every so often letting your mind go to that one simple word, which can bring you to reflection. Prayer is a very powerful resource, as we all know, because it brings us into contact and union with Him. Continuing, now, Jesus says, “These things I have spoken to you in figurative language; an hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figurative language, but will tell you plainly of the Father.

In that day you will ask in My name, and I do not say to you that I will request of the Father on your behalf; for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came forth from the Father.” In other words, He is not wresting things from a God who resists us. He is not twisting God’s arm to love them and give them good gifts. He Himself love them, and He Himself sent Jesus to them. It is the Father who wishes to know them and have intimacy with them. “In that day you will ask in My name, and I do not say to you that I will request of the Father on your behalf; for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and believed that I came forth from the Father.”

So, the Father loves them because they loved Jesus. “I came forth from the Father,” and here is the key phrase, “and have come into the world; I am leaving the world again and going to the Father.” That is the first time He was absolute and unfigurative in His speech. Notice how close it is to the end. He is waiting until the eleventh hour because they were not ready to receive it until then. “His disciples said, ‘Lo, now you are speaking plainly and not using a figure of speech. Now we know that You know all things, and have no need for anyone to question You; by this we believe that You came from God’.”

That is a powerful thing and they finally got it. Think about the timing of God. He has been with them over three years and they did not get it until the last minute, in the Upper Room discourse. Again, it is my view that you never have to be in a hurry to do the will of God. He has given you just enough time on this earth to accomplish His purpose. He is the One who is going to fulfill it when the time is necessary. As you know, I have had a few close brushes with death. Each time I had to conclude that there was more stuff for me to do.

So, Jesus knew He did not have to be in a hurry. He knew the Father would reveal these things through the Spirit to the disciples when it was needful. As it happened, it was in the eleventh hour. Isn’t that the way God often answers your prayer? He seems to wait until the last minute. How would your faith ever be stretched if He gave it to you when you wanted it? Again, you would like the infant, wanting substitution rather than transformation.

So, now He says to them, “Do you now believe? Behold, an hour is coming, and has already come, for you to be scattered, each to his own home.”

So, He predicts that they will betray Him. Strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered. He knew this, and the Scriptures predicted as much. “Yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me.” You, in your relationship with God, never are alone. You have solitude, but you are not isolated. Do you understand the difference? You can have a solitude in you, but it is the solitude of God’s manifest presence and even when there is no one with you, you are in communion.

He tells them, in verse 33, “These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.” What a great line that is. Remember in chapter 14 where He is talking about a different sort of peace? In verse 27, “Peace I leave with you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled or let it be fearful.” Jesus is offering us a peace than transcends all understanding.

The key verses here are in Philippians 4:6-8. Many of you know it already. I want you to read and review that and see how those verses transmute and transform anxiety into God’s shalom and God’s peace. It is abandonment to God’s divine providence. This is a power and rich chapter and warrants great reflection and prayer and I encourage you read and review it on a regular basis, along with chapters 13, 14, 15, and 17 as well. Ask God to speak to you and listen to His voice when you do it.

Let us close in a prayer. Father, we thank You for this time we have and we have profited from looking into Your word and reflecting on these truths. Call us to transformation, where our sorrow will be transmuted and transformed into Your joy, as we look to Jesus, the author and perfector of faith. We pray in His name. Amen.

We are continuing in our series on the Gospel of John by looking at chapter 17, which in many ways, as it is often called, is the ‘high priestly prayer’ of Jesus. This is really to enter into the ‘holy of holies’. This is an actual opportunity for us to listen in to the intercommunication of two members of the divine Trinity. And so, there is a deep and profound understanding that this text gives us. Jesus has already been working with His disciples in chapters 13 through 16, and this represents His last message to His disciples before He is going to depart from them. Last week we saw that Jesus made it very, very clear that He was going away and that they could not follow Him now, but that they would follow Him later.

But, His point to them was that He needed to give them the resources so that when He was no longer with them in His physical manifestation, still He will be with them and the Holy Spirit will be with them. And so, this inter-relationship, where the Spirit is with them, and later being in them, shows that He was not leaving them as orphans and furthermore Jesus offered them three key things that we have looked at already. He says, “I want to give you My joy,” so that their joy would be full. He wants them to become lovers of one another, “Even as I have loved you,” and “Peace I give you,” not the kind of peace that the world offers, but a peace that will really last and endure. Those are the first three fruits of the Spirit when you think about it, love, and joy, and peace. Again, this would be surprising if you did not know Jesus’ understanding of His purpose. That is to say, His last words are other-centered, rather than fearful about Himself.

It is quite remarkable when you think about this. What He is doing is tying together all the threads of His teaching and only in the last portion, in John chapter 16, do the disciples finally and clearly understand what He has been saying. “Now we know that You know all things,” they say in verse 30, “And have no need for anyone to question You; by this we believe that You came from God.” And so, in God’s remarkable timing, He always waits until the eleventh hour, but in this case it really is the twelfth hour, because it is the very last night, and they finally catch on to what He has been trying to communicate to them all along. They did not get it, because they wanted to hear the part about the Kingdom, and they did not want to hear the part about His leaving them. They understand, now, that He will come in power and glory later on, but not immediately, but He would still be with them and in them. So, that was the part they really struggled with.

Now, at this point, when He says in verse 33, “These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace.” He also mentions that in chapter 14, as well. “In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.” He now uses this way of communicating the idea of His peace and also His provision, that “I have overcome the world.” He now, in the first verse of chapter 17, “Jesus spoke these things; and lifting up His eyes to heaven,” He speaks to the Father. I take it they are all already out there in the Valley of Kidron and that this is just before Jesus wrestles with His Father there is the garden of Gethsemane. And so, His disciples have gone out from the Upper Room and I take it, from chapter 15, that they were actually walking by a vineyard there, on their way to Gethsemane, and that is why He used the allegory of the vine and the branches. They reached the garden of Gethsemane and He gives these last words to His disciples there.

Then, in chapter 17, they are privileged to overhear His prayer to His Father. Then, in chapter 18, we will also see another prayer to His Father, where He wrestles with Him about the cup that He must drink. So, let’s take a look at these things in this chapter. One of the things we are going to see, as we listen to the Son converse with His Father, just as He is about to give His life as a ransom for others, we see that Jesus is, and was, the 'overcomer'. He was not the victim. The Gospels stress this again and again. He was not a victim; He was, and is, the victor. Go back with me to verse 33, and He makes it very clear, “I have overcome the world.” And, as you recall, in chapter ten, verses 17 to 18, Jesus said, “For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again. No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have the authority to lay it down and I have the authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father.”

So, from the ultimate standpoint, there were human agents involved in the crucifixion, but frankly, He was the One who laid down His life. No one could have taken His life from Him if He had chosen to remain. You this point? This was a voluntary sacrifice, and, indeed, this was the purpose for which He had come. He knew from the beginning that this would be the climax of His ministry, whereby He would glorify His Father. Glorifying the Father would involve His death. Glorifying the Father would involve His burial. Glorifying the Father would involve His resurrection and, finally, His ascension to the right hand and then from that He would give gifts to men by sending the Holy Spirit. So, all of this was needful for us; the complete righteousness, to fulfill all righteousness.

So, it wasn’t ever the idea of His somehow being a victim. He was not a victim. He first prays for Himself in chapter 17, and then we are going to see how He moves to praying for His disciples, beginning in verses 16 and 19, and then in verses 20 through 26, He will pray for us.

So, He starts with Himself, then He looks at His disciples and prays on their behalf, but beginning with verse 20 He will say, “I do not ask on behalf of these alone,” and He is referring to His disciples, “But for those also who believe in Me through their word.” He is talking about us, which is a remarkable thought. You see, there has been an unbroken chain, going from the first century to the 21st century. This message, this good news, has been carried from one changed life to the next changed life, in unbroken succession, right to the present day. You know, people are interested in their genealogical tree, aren’t they? Personally, I’m not very keen on it, and the fact is I don’t think I come from very noble stock. Why should I bother learning about that? It just doesn’t interest me at all.

But, you know what is a more important genealogy? Wouldn’t it be fascinating if you could do a spiritual genealogy? Your spiritual father had a father. And he had a father who had a father, all the way down to the first century. Ever think that way? You will find out and you will discover, what was involved. You will find out, also, that we have many fathers and mothers, in the sense that there are many who prayed for us, interceded for us, and it is not just one person, but a constellation of people that He has used to ultimately bring us into this relationship with Himself. So, God mediates His presence through people.

So, I would be very interested to see how that line goes back. It does go back, unbroken, to the first century. And so, when Jesus says, “I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word,” that will include all believers, from that first century on, who would come to faith in Him. I find that to be intriguing, that here He is praying for us, and He gives us privileges that we have. In verses one through five we have the privilege of sharing in, and receiving His life. Look at verse one, “Jesus spoke these things; and lifting His eyes to heaven, He said, ‘Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You’.”

So, our Lord’s burden was always the glory of the Father. ‘The hour has come’, we see in the Gospel of John, to be a significant theme, because we saw before that often it would say, “His hour had not yet come.” Finally, though, the hour has come and this was seen there in chapter 13, “Knowing that His hour had come, and that He should depart from this world,” and now He reinforces that here, “That hour has come, that hour for which I came.” He was living on a divine timetable. Psalm 31:15 says, “My times are in Your hand,” and it is true. Our times, really, are not in our own hands, but they are in God’s hands, and we just do not know what He has in store for us.

I have had, as some of you know, some really close calls with death and some were quite intense and I went through that stage of remembering my life, as it flashed by me. In each of those cases, I didn’t think I was ready to go yet and I felt there was some unfinished business left. In one way or another, I was rescued, and so I don’t know how long it will be before another, nor do you. You are called to labor in the fields of God for a period of time. He gets to determine how long that labor will be. He determines the amount of time you will have in His vineyard. Some will require much time, and some will require less time, but God’s purposes will be accomplished through us, regardless of how long that time will be. Now, look at verse two; “Even as You gave Him authority over all flesh, that to all whom You have given Him, He may give eternal life.”

So, He is saying, first of all, that His desire is that You would glorify the Son and that the Son would glorify You, which ought to be a preoccupation in our own lives. It should be our desire. If my desire is to be more pleasing to God than I seek to be impressive to people, that would be a healthy pursuit, would it not? To be more concerned about the glory of God than the glory of people. The glory of people is a vanishing thing and it fades very quickly. How long can you live on the accolades of the past? You understand that. It is the ‘what have you done for me lately’ syndrome. So, you can only rest on the laurels of the past so long.

But, here, seeking God’s glory, that will endure and never fade. And so, He says, then, that God has given Him authority over all flesh, so that, “To all whom You have given Him, He may give eternal life.” The key here is that those who would come to embrace the Lord are actually God’s gift to the Son. That is a nice way to look at yourself, as a gift that God has given, the Father to the Son. Once having received that gift, now we are secure in His hands, as we are about to see.

Now, in verse three, “This is eternal life; that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” This idea of knowing Him, we know, is not just intellectual knowledge, but a personal reception. It is a relational knowledge. It is an experiential knowledge, and that is His desire. That is what He defines as eternal life. Knowing Him, “the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent.” Knowing the Father through faith in the Son is eternal life, and eternal life, therefore, begins now. It begins here on this earth. It is not something we wait for, it is something we already experienced, and will experience more and more fully until finally the fullness of that will be manifest when we see Him face to face.

But, we progress, and we already have the life of the Kingdom, in the present tense. That, then, is how He defines eternal life. Remember, eternal life is not merely unending life, but, rather, a new quality of life. It is not just an unending existence, but it is a new kind of existence. You are a new creation. Previously, you were one kind of person and now God has redefined you and made you a new creation.

So, we can not know the Father apart from the Son. We saw that in chapter 14, “We can not know the Father apart from the Son.” Look at chapter 14, verses 6 through 11. That is why He involves “Jesus Christ, whom You have sent.” I won’t go through all those verses, but He says, “I am the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father but through Me.” He also says, “I am in the Father and the Father is in Me.” And so, earlier, if we go all the way back to Matthew, chapter 11, we see another text in verse 27 and this underscores the same principle, which is an incredible claim if you really unpack this. Jesus is saying, that having “hidden these things from the wise and intelligent, and having revealed it to infants,” which means one does not enter into spiritual truth by mere intellectual acumen. It is not merely by your intellectual grasp that you gain spiritual truth.

This is something that is His gift and it is given to us. That is something that is spiritually revealed and that is why God has given it to people who would come to Him with the faith and trust of little children. “Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in your sight.” Now, listen to this verse, verse 27, because the implications virtually stun me. “All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.” Do you see what He is saying here? These are not the words of an ordinary sage or prophet. He is saying that He is the gateway to the Father. And no one can no the Father unless the Son wills to reveal Him to them. That’s about audacious as you can get. Think about the implications of that and they are absolutely astounding. And so, the point here is this; we do not just have enough just believing in God. In James 2:19 it says, “The devils believe and tremble.” The devils actually have orthodox theology, basically speaking. They are actually more orthodox in their theology than liberal theologians are. That is a true statement. Liberal theologians are very, very inadequate in their theological grasp. The devils have a better grasp; they do know that Jesus is God.

They well understand the authority of the scriptures. Having said that though, what good does it do you? Even id you have orthodox theology, what will that do? It will just give you a shrewder mind, but you will not have a changed heart. Theology is not sufficient unless we break through from propositional truth to personal truth. That is what James is really telling us, as well. We have to be people who are not just devoutly religious. There are a lot of devoutly religious people who don’t know God. They go to Church regularly. They recite the Creeds and listen to sermons, and yet they still don’t know God. They know about Jesus, but they don’t know Jesus. There is a huge difference. And so, going back to John 17, in verse 4 Jesus speaks about the work that He actually had on this earth. He describes this work as, “I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have given Me to do.”

So, what did this work include? It included a variety of things. It included His messages, His miracles, the training of the disciples for the future, and, ultimately, that work was completed by His sacrifice on the Cross. Listen to Hebrews chapter nine, concerning the work on the Cross, and particularly verses 24 through 28. “For Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; nor was it that He would offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the holy place year by year with blood that is not his own. Otherwise, He would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world.” In other words, He would have had to be crucified again and again. “But now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.” It was a once, for all, death and the death of Christ was the death of death, and He overcame the power of sin. “In as much as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment,” which, by the way, is a verse that really goes against reincarnationism, “so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him.”

So, the second time He comes, He will come in glory, and honor, and power. Thus, we see the need for us to understand that His work is complete and nothing remains. He sat down at the right hand of the Father, symbolizing the completeness and the fullness of His work. The one sacrifice was a once for all sacrifice, acceptable to the Father because the Son was divine. But it was also a real sacrifice because He was human.

So, you needed a God-man for that sacrifice to be genuine and to be efficacious. By the way, this purpose statement that we see in John chapter 17, verse four, is the third purpose statement that I can specifically identify: “Accomplishing the Father’s work.” In other words, the Father sent the Son for a particular purpose. He sent Him into the world to accomplish a particular end. I identify two other purpose statements that our Lord has made. Again, these are not His only purposes, but let’s put that together and see what Jesus saw as His fundamental purpose. If you go to Mark chapter ten, verse 45, “Even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for the many.”

So, He has come to serve us by giving His life. This is why He said, “The hour has come. This is why I came. I came not to be served but to serve and give My life as a ransom for many,” is what we see in that verse. Go, now, to Luke 19:10 and we see He gives a second purpose statement. “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which is lost.” That is a very good purpose statement. We can put these three together if we like. We can say that the Son of Man came into the world to seek people by giving His life. You could say to seek them and to serve them by saving them through His own life. Thus, having done that, He would sit down at the right hand of the Father, having accomplished the work that the Father had sent Him to do.

This raises the question about our purpose as well. Because we also have been given work to do, haven’t we? I have stressed this before, but I will do it again, you really need to hammer out a ‘life purpose’ statement before God. I would encourage you to pray about that. Think about how you can summarize what God’s purpose is for you. Write down several points and then try to synthesize it into a single statement and revisit it from time to time until it becomes clearer and more crisp and more meaningful. It doesn’t happen all at one. I would encourage you to do this over a period of time. Again, I often put it this way; we often have purpose statements for our business, but not for our lives. That strikes me as very strange. We are more diligent, vis a vis our businesses than we are asking, ‘why am I here, where am I going, what is my purpose’? Sure, we all have a universal purpose of growth and reproduction. When we cam to Christ, He didn’t suddenly pull us right up into heaven. We are here to grow in His image and to reproduce that life in the lives of others.

But, I believe in addition to that, in our arena of influence, and in our unique backgrounds, we have a unique way of doing that and expressing that universal purpose.

So, we all have an arena of influence, and we all have spiritual gifts. We all have certain temperaments and personalities and experiences and backgrounds that crafts for you a specific purpose and when you try and identify that purpose it is a good thing to review where you have been and to see where you think that has given you a life message. My strong and firm belief is that you and I are men and women of destiny. We have a destiny to be fulfilled as we embrace the Father’s purpose by prayerfully pondering our purpose for being on this planet. That is what Jesus would often do, going to lonely places and think that through. That is why I can’t stress too much the idea of you taking a 24-hour retreat by yourself, and in that 24-hour retreat do the following three things. The first thing to do would be to review your past. Then you would also want to look at your values; what are my commitments and priorities in the present.

Then, consider the future, where do you want to be? I don’t mean a five-year plan. But, what you can do is have a particular vision of what God has in store. There is a trajectory, a vector, and a vector has momentum and direction and we find that God will actually animate the experiences of our past and, in the present moment, work them in such a way as to allow us to make mid-course adjustments along the way. This is why I have often told people, as well, that your greatest years are often going to be the last ten or fifteen years of your life. Why would that be? You must allow it to be that way. Many people retire and they retire from life. I am not down on you retiring from your career, but I am down on retiring from life. If anything, that is the time your ministry can really take off. Rather than just becoming inert and frittering your time away, I believe that they can be the most effective years of your life because you are now a person of skill and knowledge and then you can invest that.

So, you ask God to show you how to take the entire pattern He has given you and invest it in other people. Where can you take the passion He has given you? So, that is just a thought about our own purpose statement. Let’s continue on with the text, and look at verses six through twelve and look at the great privilege of our security in Him as we come to know Him. From verse five we see, “Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory, which I had with You before the world was.”

So, we have Jesus referring back to the glory that was known even before the foundation of the world. Turn back, for a minute, to John chapter one, and if you reviewed that great prologue in verses 1 through 18, we see that the Word was with God, the Word was God, and all things came into being through Him. Jesus was around well before the world, and in fact He is co-eternal and co-equal with the Father, and so He is referring to the glory that He had before the world was and that ultimately He is going to go back to that glory and that when He asks the Father to glorify Him together with Himself, it is the pleasure of each to glorify the other. There is a co-inherence and mutuality and other-centered love among the three persons of the divine Trinity.

This gives us the ultimate foundation for communication, communion, and love in our own lives, because God is a relational being and we are in His image as relational beings. That, we all know, is the most important thing in our lives. If push came to shove, what would you discover were your greatest treasures? You know it is going to be people. It’s not going to be your possessions, or your position, or your power, or your prestige. It is going to be people. It is not what you have. It is not what you do, but it is who you are and who you have loved, and who loved you. There is this idea of relationships. Why is that the most important thing at the end of the day> Because that is what God is. He is a relational being.

So, then, continuing, in verse six Jesus says, “I have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world; they were yours and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word.” That is a beautiful picture. Again, they were God’s gift to the Son. The Father’s gift, and “They have kept Your word.” In verse seven, “Now they have come to know that everything You have given Me is from You” Now, they have finally gotten it. “For the words which You gave Me,” from verse eight, “I have given to them; and they received them and truly understood that I came forth from You, and they believed that You sent Me.” This is an allusion back to when they said, “Now we know that You understand all things,” which is from the very last part of chapter 16. They finally came to understand this powerful meaning.

So, Jesus again seizes the great ‘I-am’ of the Old Testament, Exodus 3:11-14. What was Moses to tell Pharaoh regarding who sent him? Tell him that the ‘I-am’ sent you; the ‘I-am’ that ‘I-am’. That is the perfect name for God because He is the One who is the self-sufficient being and He is the self-existent One. God in the necessary being, He is not contingent. He is the only necessary being. There isn’t any infinite regress when His being and His existence are one and the same. We, on the other hand, are contingent beings. The world could go on without us and it never needed us. But God, by definition, is necessary.

Therefore, all things come from Him and through Him and for Him. And so, we see in this idea of Him being the great ‘I-am’, and we recall that Jesus spoke of this tremendous intimacy with the Heavenly Father and that Father is now ours as well. The word ‘Father’ is used 53 times in this Upper Room discourse. 53 times, in John 13 to 17, the word ‘Father’ is used. You see it used 122 times in the Gospel as a whole. Again, that is a concept that the Jews didn’t have. The idea of calling God our Father isn’t something they could fully understand. And, that it is a fatherly relationship that we can have, and that it transcends the faults and frailties of human fathers, which are always imperfect.

That is why I know a lot of people struggle with that word, ‘father’, because of the negative association they may have had in their own homes. We must realize that if we want to know what the Father is like, that He is lovable and trustworthy, you must look at the Son, because the Son has revealed Him. Ask yourself the question, can you trust this Jesus? If you can, then you can trust the Father, because He and the Father are One, they are both God, and He manifests the virtue and the glory of the Father.

So, if we continue, then, He speaks about the words, “Which You gave to Me I have given to them,” in verse eight, and, “They received them and truly understood that I came forth from You and that You sent Me.” Then He says, in verse nine, “I ask on their behalf; I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom You have given Me; for they are Yours; and all things that are mine are Yours, and Yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.”

Again, we have that mutuality. ‘Everything I have is yours, and every thing you have is mine’. And so, there is this powerful picture of mutuality. But then, in verse 11, He says, “I am no longer in the world; and yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your name,” so, He intercedes for these men, “the name which You have given Me, that they may be one even as we are. While I was with them, I was keeping them in Your name which You have given Me; and I guarded them and not one of them perished but the son of perdition, so that the Scripture would be fulfilled.” Jesus knew, from the very beginning who would betray Him.

But, He kept all the others in His name. I see in these verses an emphasis on our security and our safety. I see that our safety always depends on the nature of God and not on our own character or conduct or performance. And, I love Philippians 1:6; “He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.” He began that work and He will bring it to completion and fruition.

So, once having worked the work of Christ in us, we now have a security, and, indeed, the Son of God intercedes for us. Not only in verse nine, but also consider with me Romans chapter eight, which invites us to see that the Son of God Himself is interceding for us on the basis of all that He has accomplished. And so, in verse 34 it says, “Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God who also intercedes for us.” Then we can also turn to Hebrews, chapter four, and verses 14 through 16, and there I see another image of Him interceding for us. “Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.

For we do not have a high priest who can not sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in our time of need.” More specifically, look at Hebrews 7:25, which tells us, “Therefore He is able to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.” You see that His present work of intercession is illustrated in these verses. Thus, we, too, are ‘overcomers’, and thus we have security because we are being held in His hands. It is not on the basis of our performance, but on the basis of His that we have that security.

It is the understanding that it is not something we do, but the person we have embraced. Having embraced Him and having come to trust in Him, then we discover the true security that we need. We share Christ’s life and are ‘overcomers’. In 1st John 5:4 I says, “For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world-our faith.” Go back with me now to John 17 and verses 13 through 19, and He speaks specifically about the word, and how the word sanctifies us and gives us a genuine sense of growth and empowerment. Beginning with verse 13, He says, “Now I come to you; and these things I speak I the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves.”

Once again, He is speaking about this joy. You see, the word will give us joy. We saw last week that joy really comes by transformation and never by substitution. That is to say, when there is pain in life it not a matter of substituting one thing for another, but rather using that painful situation and using it to be transformed, so that the ‘lead’ of our suffering can be transmuted into the ‘gold’ of God’s glory by means of His grace. And so, God, through His grace, transforms suffering into glory and uses it to create Christ-like character in us. That is the process, then, and that gives us joy. I didn’t say it gives us happiness, but it gives us joy, because it transcends our circumstances.

So, we can rejoice when we hear the bridegroom’s voice. Now, I must say, Jesus was a Man of sorrow. We know that from Isaiah 53:3, but He was also a Man of joy, not the joy that is the fleeting levity of a sinful world, but an abiding enjoyment of the Father’s life and of His word.

So, He didn’t depend on outward circumstances, but rather on inward spiritual resources that were hidden from the world. In verse 14 He says, “I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.”

So, He goes on to speak about how the word gives us an assurance, even though the world hates us because we don’t belong to its system and we are called not to be conformed to the system, in Romans chapter 12, however, we also know that the word reveals the love of the Father to us. It exposes the world as well; the world’s pretenses, the world’s deceptions, the world’s vices, and so the better you know the word the better you understand how the world operates. You will see the real thing and you will see the radical contrast between. It would be good for you to do the following exercise. Take an hour in which you read the Bible. That’s not a long time; you think nothing of watching something on TV for three hours. Then, turn on prime time TV and watch that for an hour.

Then, go back to the Bible and you will see a total disconnect. The problem is that we feed on those kind of things and want things that God would not find is best for us. Cal Thomas once said the he reads the New York Times and then picks up the Bible to get the other side of the story. The fact is, and I often put it this way, if we bracket our day, our first thought is to the paper and the last thought is the 11 o’clock news, then we are in trouble. Those are the most important thoughts of your day. My conviction is for you to make the choice to set your minds on the things above at the beginning and then at the end of the day as well. What I love about the word is that it reveals all the stratagems of the world’s system. It is always the same, just new wrinkles of the same stratagems. Better technology, but the same kind of appeals; the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life. Money, sex, and power. Basically, these are the pulls of the world and we know this. People haven’t changed.

Now, the world, therefore, will compete with the Father’s love. And so, it is needful for us not to neglect the word of God. D.L. Moody put it this way; he wrote in the front of his Bible, “This book will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from this book.” He is saying that if you want to see the first step toward moving into the sphere of the world and its values, it will be by neglect of the Scriptures.

So, I strongly encourage us to review that and keep it as a priority in our minds. And, by the way, not merely to relegate the times we are reading Scripture to the times we feel like doing it, but rather to times we choose to do it because we know in that way we are creating a context in which we can have a meeting with God. It is not just some kind of law-bound duty, but rather it the means by which we can get to know Him. I have to stress this again, because for years and years when I read the Bible, I just did the reading and the thinking. I have discovered now, though, that I have to read in a different way; read with a spirit that is attentive to God’s Spirit; with more slowly and see what the Spirit would teach me through the word.

Now I can a communication and a conversation. I can speak to Him but also, through His Spirit, He can communicate to us and the way He best does that is that you must stop after a key verse and just listen and allow the Spirit of God to speak to your heart. If you are reading several verses, there may be one that stands out more than any other. That is a hint that you want to meditate on that. Secondly, there may be a phrase within that verse that stands out to you. That is another invitation and I would make that perhaps the word or phrase that I would seek to carry with me throughout that particular day.

Every time you come to the same passage in Scripture you will find something new that you didn’t quite see the time before because His word is living and active and its resources are boundless. And so, looking to the text and to verses 15 through 17, He says, “I do not ask You to take them out of this world, but to keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.” The word, then, imparts God’s power for holy living. He has moved from the idea of security to the idea of sanctity. I want to show you something that will be of help. God’s word and God’s truth comes to us in three ways. Jesus just said, “Your word is truth.” But, what does He say in John 14:6? “I am the way and the truth and the life.” But, what does He say in 1st John chapter five, in verses six and seven? It tells us, “This is the One who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood. It is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.”

So, the Spirit is now called the truth. You see, all three are called the truth and note that they are not just pointing to the truth, they themselves are the truth because, in fact, they are all God, but they are not each other. But, they are fully, equally, and inexhaustibly, God. That is the mystery of the Divine Trinity we have seen before. They are co-eternal and co-equal, but they are not each other, but they are God. And so, in that mystery, then, we see from these verses that all are the truth.

So, I believe we need all three to have a sanctification that touches every part of the inner person. We learn, as we read the Scriptures, God’s propositional truth and we reinforce and renew our minds, as we see in Romans 12. I want to stress the importance of the mind because we want to learn to think God’s thoughts after Him. Then, with the heart, we love God’s truth, which is His Son.

So, with the heart we come to love God’s truth. It says in 1st Peter chapter one, “Although you do not see Him, you love Him.” You haven’t come to see Him yet, but you can already love Him. In addition, with the will, we yield to the Spirit and live God’s truth. And so, if you think of it this way, we learn God’s truth, we love God’s truth, and we live God’s truth. Or, you could also say it was ‘knowing, being, and doing’. That is the old ‘know-be-do’ principle. All three are essential because knowing the truth and loving the truth will cause us to live the truth. See how that works? You learn the truth, you come to love the truth by knowing the Son and embracing Him, and then through that process we can make the right choices to live it. It is to know, to be, and to do. So, there is an integrative idea of truth.

So, this stress on truth is continued in verse 18, “As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves may be sanctified in truth.” Once again, the sphere of our sanctification is the truth.

So, He prays on their behalf and sets Himself apart from us and now He has set us apart for Himself. Just as He set Himself apart and sanctified Himself, He now sets us apart, sanctifies us, for Himself, because that is what it means to be sanctified; to be set apart. And so, we jump now, to verse 20, and now we hear Him praying on our behalf. “I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those who also believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they may also be in us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.”

So, He not only prays for His disciples, but now He is prays for us, as well. What does this marvelous verse imply, verse 21? Frankly, this is really the sanctum sanctorum, the ‘holy of holies’, and we can not grasp it in this life. He says, “That they may be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they may also be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.” It is a matter of being in ‘Us’, in the Father and in the Son, but also in the Holy Spirit because earlier, in chapters 14 and 16, He talked about how the Spirit of God would also bring them into knowledge of the Son and into the knowledge of the Father. So, we have, again, this deep mystery of the Triune God who wants us to share in His glory and to experience that unity.

So, in verse 22 we see, “The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, so that they may be one, just as we are One; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them even as You have loved Me.” What He is saying, then, is that the lost world can not see God, but it can see His followers. That is really the key. If we have His glory already within us, this is the basis for true Christian unity. I want to stress again that true harmony among brothers and sisters of Christ is not based upon the externals of the flesh. Rather, it is based upon the internals and eternals of the spirit in our inner person.

So, therefore, you can look beyond the elements of our first birth. What are the elements of your first birth? How would you describe them? What are the things you are born with before you have a second birth? What are the things we use to identify ourselves, distinguishing us from other people? Well, your appearance is certainly one of those things. The way you behave, your personality, your origin, your sex, your race, your socio-economic standard, are all also qualities of the first birth. But, the qualities of the second birth are very different, indeed.

Now, in the new birth, we share the same life and share the same destiny and therefore we have a basis for unity that the world couldn’t even begin to dream of, because if we are going to the same place, and loving the same person, and having the same destiny, does that not give you a deeper foundation for unity than any of these superficial qualities of the first birth we use to assess the value of people? I love that phrase, ‘how much is he worth’? That is not a definition of our worth. There is a more profound basis for unity than those externals. That is why we have a basis for true unity that is reflected in our destiny, in our dignity, and in our hope.

Continuing, Jesus tells us, “Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for you loved me before the foundation of the world.” Now, I love that particular verse because this reveals the desire of the Son to be intimate with you and you with Him. There is no higher invitation that you will ever hear, or ever get, than that. Listen to what He is saying; “I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am.” Go back to John 14:3 and you see Him saying, “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, you may be also.” Both verses reinforce the same thing. It is His pleasure, it is His desire, for us to be with Him, so that we can share in that divine fellowship. This is very profound to me because we really have a fundamental destiny. We are going to enjoy the same place, the same presence, and the same person, then we also have a basis for a true identity.

Finally, in the last two verses, 25 and 26, “O righteous Father, although the world has not known You, yet I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me.” He is speaking of His disciples but also of those who will come to Him through His word. This is spiritual revelation because you will not know that Jesus was sent in that way unless the Spirit reveals it to you. “And I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them and I in them.” There, again, you have a wonderful balance of truth and of love. The mind will grow by taking in God’s truth and the heart will grow by giving out in love. We take in truth and give out love.

So, there is a process of taking in and an outward expression of truth and love. You take truth in and then you communicate that by the incarnation. So, what you are called to be, just as Jesus was in John 1, when we see, “The word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Do you know what that means? You and I are now called to be the people for whom the word becomes flesh. That is to say, God’s timeless word, as you take it in, causes you to incarnate that word and then manifest that word in love. In a very real way, the word becomes flesh in us, insofar as Christ, who is in you, makes that possible. We couldn’t make it possible, but He, through the indwelling Spirit, makes it possible for all these things to be true. The last portion of the last verse is this, “That the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.” That is the spiritual priority in this prayer. I see the glory of God being emphasized. I see the sanctity of God’s people. I see the unity of the body of Christ and I see the ministry of sharing the Gospel with a lost world. It should also be our desire, at the end of our own earthly sojourn, to be able to say the same thing. “I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have given Me to do.” May that be our own prayer. May that be the word that we can say as we reach the end of our earthly sojourn. So, then, God can speak to us and say, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Master.”


(Q)(A): Yes, concerning the character of Jesus, He knew from the beginning that Judas would betray Him and yet He did not treat him differently from the other disciples. Indeed, Jesus washed the feet of Judas in John 13. It was always a bonafide offer, to come to Him, but He also knew the other side of the coin, that he would choose to reject Him.

(Q)(A): Yes, in the first birth, we have certain characteristics we use to see if people have clout and worth. We use these yardsticks to differentiate ourselves. What would be the qualities, though, of the second birth? To me, those qualities would have to do with, first of all, the life of Christ in us and the way He uniquely reflects that life through the prism of our personality. He will reflect that life in a unique way for you that no one else will quite reflect or refract.

So, we are not clones of one another, but now we are less and less attached to the elementary principles of the first birth, by virtue of no longer being bound by nature, but by the Spirit of God, which is now in us.

So, we have a new understanding there. Another quality would a new form of Christ-like character. 2nd Peter chapter one would be the passage to look to there. I would also say the fruit of the Spirit would be a new, and real, quality; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Again, it is mediated through your new and unique personality. In addition to that, I would also add to that your spiritual gifts, which you didn’t have before. You have been given spiritual gifts, and these spiritual gifts are to be used to invest in the lives of others. So, those would be four or five qualities right there.

(Q)(A): Yes, this theme of glory is a big emphasis in this Gospel.

(Q)(A): Well, He seems to have prayed this in the presence of His disciples because He was just speaking to them in chapter 16 and it doesn’t say that He went aside. This gives us every indication that they were privileged to hear, now that they finally understood Him, a prayer that would burn in their hearts for the rest of their lives because they knew it was prayed for them. I see every evidence of that.

Let's close in a prayer. Father we thank You that You have loved us with an everlasting love. We thank You that Your desires are for us to be intimate with You and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and that where You are, we may be there also. We pray in Christ’s name. Amen.

Let us continue, then, in our study series on the Gospel of John and begin with a prayer. Lord, we thank You for this evening and we thank You for the freedoms that we enjoy and we pray that we wouldn’t take them for granted. May we always have a heart of gratitude for Your gifts and most of all for Your great gift, Your indescribable gift, of Your Son, Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.

We are up to chapter 18, and we are moving, now, in this chapter, from the private ministry of our Lord, with His disciples, into the public drama of redemption. We had five chapters that slowed down the clock to one day.

So, the first 12 chapters of John covered basically the essence of His three and a half-year public ministry, beginning in Judea and also Galilee, and then the clock stops in chapters 13 through 17. If you looked at John, chapters one through twelve, what we would have is His three and half year public ministry, although even here He spends less and less time with the public and more and more time with His disciples as time goes by, in view of the mounting opposition.

Then, in chapters 13 through 17, we have the Upper Room discourse. In these chapters Jesus is telling His disciples the essence of what is to take place and the resources God will give them. He has an opportunity, and we are listening in on this very holy conversation of the last words that He gives His disciples. Again, if you had a chance to speak to your loved ones, and knew you would be dying in one day, what would you say to them? It wouldn’t be trivial stuff.

So, John, alone, gives us an overview of this and in those chapters, you recall, He talked about His offer of peace, His offer of love, His offer of joy, His offer of the Holy Spirit, and His promise to come again to receive them to Himself, so that where He is, so they may be also. Notice how utterly other-centered it is. He never focuses on His needs, but on their needs. He knows that they are distraught and yet He focuses on them because He knows that this is the purpose for which He was sent, to complete His Father’s business on this earth.

Then, in John 18 through 21, then, we go back to a public ministry. Only John records this private ministry. We would be greatly impoverished if we did not have the Gospel of John. It is the supplemental Gospel, for whom something like 90 percent is unique. 92 percent of John is found only in the Gospel of John, so it is truly great that we have it. Really, what we have in this particular text, is the essence of the Epistles. These are the seeds for all the doctrines about how the spiritual life would be led in the Epistles that would follow.

So, we now move back to a public ministry and in the earlier public ministry we saw that He accomplished seven signs. These seven signs were designed to demonstrate who He was. The last sign was the raising of Lazarus in chapter 11. Then, we have an eighth sign, and that sign, of course, is the most important one and it is the resurrection from the dead.

So, here will be the culmination of the evidence for who He is by virtue of His resurrection from the dead. It is not just as evidence for who He is, but it also the basis for our redemption and salvation and the basis for our having a right relationship with the living God. So, keeping this in mind, we are making the transition into the third major portion of the Gospel of John.

So, let’s move on into John 18 and what we see in this text is that man will do his worst and God will respond with His very best. That is the real contrast that we see here. We see, first of all, the theme of obedience, in the garden, “When Jesus spoke these words, He went forth with His disciples over the ravine of the Kidron, where there was a garden, in which He entered with His disciples.” It tells us, in Luke, chapter 22, that Jesus often went to this garden with His disciples, not only to rest, but to meditate, to pray, and the fact is that during this particular time of Passover, Jerusalem would be filled with pilgrims attending the Passover. Jesus would want to go to a private place, where He could get away from the press of the multitudes. Of course, this is an important theme for all of us, isn’t it? Frankly, we all need places of solitude and silence in our lives, otherwise we only live on the surface of live and we lose the real sense of what life is about. It is good for us to have rhythms of activity and engagement on the one hand, but also rest and reflection on the other. That is really how that works.

Now, looking at the garden, you know there is a huge theme, don’t you? Everything begins in a garden and it ends in a garden, in a way. Jesus often went to the garden with His disciples, as we said, and human history is something that tells us something about a journey. The garden that Jesus went into with His disciples will remind them of a garden the first Adam went into. Recall he was created in this garden and the book of Genesis really begins with a garden and it ends, in the book of Revelation, in a city. There is still a garden in that city. You recall, of course, the first sin was committed in that garden and the first Adam disobeyed God and was cast out of the garden, lest he eat from the tree of life and live forever. Having been cast out of that garden, the last Adam, Christ, as we see in 1st Corinthians 15:45, was obedient as He went into this garden, the garden of Gethsemane. You might say that in a garden the first Adam brought sin and death to humanity, but Jesus, by His obedience, the second Adam, brings righteousness and life to all who would trust Him.

So, the first Adam turned a garden into a wilderness, in a way, and turned it into death and a context of alienation. But, the second Adam, because of His obedience, turns this garden into the gate of paradise. The difference is simple. ‘Thy will be done’, in Christ’s case, versus ‘My will be done’, in Adam’s case. They wanted to have life on their terms, supposing somehow that God was somehow keeping their best interests at bay, because He was not going to give them the full knowledge. Eden, then, was a context of disobedience and sin, and Gethsemane was a garden of obedience and submission.

So, the contrast is very radical, disobedience and sin versus obedience and submission. Heaven, I think, is going to be an eternal garden of delight and satisfaction. By the way, the word ‘Gethsemane’ means ‘oil press’, because they had olives there and these olives would be picked and put into the press to squeeze out their oil. The text also mentions the Kidron valley and this was the same Kidron valley David crossed when he was rejected by his nation and betrayed by his own son, Absalom, in 2nd Samuel 15. Jesus was rejected by His people and at that very moment was being betrayed by Judas Iscariot, at the very moment He is doing this.

Now, David’s treacherous counselor was a fellow named Ahithophel, and he hung himself and David’s treacherous son, Absalom, was caught in a tree and he was killed while he was hanging there. It seems to me very interesting that Judas went out and hung himself. In any case, let us go on, now, to verses two through nine. There is, of course, this treachery of the kiss in the garden. “Now Judas, also, who was betraying Him, knew the place, for Jesus had often met there with His disciples.”

So, he was very familiar with that place and frankly I am stunned that this man, who had so many privileges, despised those privileges and opportunities that he ultimately wasted. He was privy to Jesus’ teaching, to Jesus’ love and ministry, yet he rejected it. “Judas then, having received the Roman cohort and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees, came there with lanterns and torches and weapons.” You need to know that a ‘cohort’ was one tenth of a legion. Anyone know how big a Roman legion was? A Roman legion numbered 6,000 soldiers, so a cohort would have been 600 men. I have to say that the Passion of the Christ disappointed me on this part because they only had 20 or 30 soldiers and they were only temple guards, but this was a Roman cohort and it mentions that plus “officers from the chief priests and the Pharisees.”

So, it was a pretty big crowd that came out and they were armed, it says, “with lanterns, torches, and weapons.” And Judas was really the one leading them in there. And “Jesus,” it says, and note in verses four and five, that He was in full control, “knowing all the things that were coming upon Him, went forth to them and said, ‘Whom do you seek’?”

So, He comes out; He doesn’t let them find Him. He goes out to meet them. Do you see the difference there? “They answered Him, ‘Jesus the Nazarene’. He said to them, ‘I am He’.” Actually, He didn’t say, “I am He.” He said ‘I am’, or ‘ego ami’. Recall that whenever you see a word in Italics, it means it is implied in the English translation, but not in the original.

So, He said, ‘ego ami’, ‘I am’. “And Judas also, who was betraying Him, was standing with them.” I want us pause for a moment and review the fact that Jesus well knew what would happen. He knew that “His hour had come,” from chapter 13, and He repeated the fact that it was going to be time if you look at chapter 16, again, and verse 19, that He said, “In a little while, and you will not see Me, and again in a little while you will see Me.”

So, He well knew what was going on and, frankly, I think He shocked Judas. I also think He shocked the arresting officers, because He boldly presented Himself to them. Part of this is to illustrate, again, that Jesus willingly laid down His life. No one took His life from Him. Rather, He laid down His life for the sheep. If He had chosen not to lay down His life, just as so many cases before, remember they wanted to stone Him and what would it say about those stoning events? Jesus just went His way. You don’t just go away when you have a mob that wants to kill you. Yet it says He just went His way. The Gospels are masters of understatement.

But, “His hour had not yet come.” He was invincible until the Father’s will and the hour had come. And so, now He knows the hour has come and He willingly presents Himself. Notice what happens. In verse six, when He said, ‘“I am He’, they drew back and fell to the ground.” I would have liked that in the movie as well, but it wasn’t there. The fact is, something happened when He said, “Ego ami.” You know the words ‘ego ami’ mean ‘the I am that I am’. It is an allusion back to Exodus. Remember that? God tells Moses to tell Pharaoh the ‘I am’ sent you, and it is the One who appeared to Moses at the burning bush. Remember the idea there? It is an allusion to His power and to His divinity. “So when He said to them, ‘I am He’, they drew back and fell to the ground.”

The word that is used there, in the Greek, means that they were pinned there. All He needed to do, if He had chosen, would have been to walk over their bodies and quietly walk away. They were pinned to the ground; 600 of them. You see, again, that John is a master of understatement. I’ll tell what I think happened. Remember at the transfiguration with the disciples, what did they observe? The veil was removed and they saw His pre-incarnate glory for a moment and they were dazzled because He was brighter than the sun.

So you recall that? I think for a very small moment, maybe just a few seconds, they saw that glory and then it was closed again, but it was enough to cause them to fall backwards. To show again, that Jesus’ authority was so awesome, so powerful, that no one could take His life from Him. Recall that He said in chapter ten, “No one takes My life from Me, I lay it down on My own initiative. I have the authority to take it up again. This authority I received from the Father.” No one killed Him. He laid down His life.

So, if you asked, then, who killed Him, in one sense we are all responsible for that, but in the other sense no one killed Him. If you understand what is going on here, He hung on the Cross not because of the nails but because of His love. That is what kept Him to the Cross.

So, He clung to that Cross, knowing that was the purpose for which He came. Continuing, in verse seven, “He again asked them, ‘Whom do you seek’? And they said, ‘Jesus the Nazarene’.” I rather suspect they were quaking, to see if it was going to happen again. “Jesus answered, ‘I told you that I am He; so if you seek Me, let these go their way’.” So, immediately He is thinking about the needs of His disciples. He does not want them to be arrested, “To fulfill the word which He spoke, ‘Of those whom You have given Me, I lost not one’.”

So, He protects His disciples. However, what Peter does now is something that could have led to real trouble. In fact, he could well have been arrested at this point. He had a sword and, “He drew it and struck the high priest’s slave and cut off his right ear; and the slave’s name was Malchus.” I suppose he meant to cleave his head but he didn’t a good aim, but in any case, he cuts off his right ear. This becomes Jesus’ last miracle before His resurrection. He takes the ear and puts it back. In so doing, by the way, He averts an almost certain arrest for Peter. Besides which, it is truly an amazing event and they don’t know what to make of it.

So, this healing was an act of grace toward the disciples, especially for Peter, and it is also, of course, for this servant named Malchus. So, in verse 11, “Jesus said to Peter, ‘Put the sword into the sheath; the cup which the Father has given Me, shall I not drink it’.” There is a parallel account, back in Matthew 26, verse 39.

But, John does not record the agony of Gethsemane in the same way the Synoptics do. We know, prior to this particular event of His arrest, that Jesus went to pray and He said to them, ‘“My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death. Remain here and keep watch with Me.’ He went a little beyond them and fell on His face and prayed, saying, ‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will’.” Those are the words that made the difference, “Not as I will, but as You will.”

Frankly, that surrender, that submission, to the will of the Father is really what discipleship will ultimately be about. There will be various submissions along the way, but at the end of the day He wants us to continue to submit to His will. Again, there is a phrase from a prayer I have given you before, but I will give it to you again, “Grant that we may love and desire what You promise.” It is a very insightful prayer. To love what He commands is to trust that what He commands is always in our best interest. To desire what He has promised is to be convinced that what God promises really will bring about our hope rather than buying into the fleeting promises of a dying world.

So, there is a huge difference between the two. So, the drinking from a cup is often used in Scripture to indicate suffering and sorrow. It is found in Isaiah 51 and Jeremiah 25 in that way; drinking of a cup is one of sorrow, suffering, and wrath. Jesus has compared His own sufferings to the drinking of a cup and also to the experience of a baptism. If you go to Mark chapter 10, verses 38 to 39, it shows us, “Jesus said to them, ‘You do not know what you are asking’,” and remember they had made this modest request, to sit, one on His right and one on His left, in His glory. I love that audacious request. Jesus said, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?”

I love what they said. “We are able.” They have no idea what they are talking about. Then Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you shall drink; and you shall be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized.” In other words, they themselves would suffer martyrdom, just as Jesus would, because of the testimony of the resurrected Christ. When He instituted the supper, He compared the cup to His blood shed for the remission of sin. This cup was the new covenant in His blood. It was a blood covenant. Apart from the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness, no remission of sin.

So, what we are seeing here is a submission to the Father’s will that is reminiscent of Psalm 48: “I delight to do Your will, O my God. Your law is within my heart.” I must tell you that God, our Father, will give us some cups and He will prepare them for us in love and in the long run they will never harm us, though we may suffer pain and heartbreak. Eventually He will turn this suffering into glory, because the story is not over yet. How it ends, really, determines the whole.

So, if we see they are part of a process that leads to a greater good, then the best analogy to use is that of a father who has to hold his own son down on the table in the doctor’s office so that the doctor can give him a shot. The son looks at his father and wonders why he seems to be betraying him. He has no category for understanding, at that age, why it is necessary for him to go through this pain. If he sees his father’s tears, he also knows his father loves him and does this because it is necessary for him.

Do you see the point here? If that is true of an earthly parent, the point here is that when he has to do that it is for a greater good. If the son had not encountered that pain, what would have been the consequence? He would have suffered from a terrible disease or possibly even have died. The point is that there will be things in a fallen and disease-ridden world where pain is involved, but the pain brings us to transformation. You will recall that I said before there are two basic principles when it comes to suffering. One is the principle of substitution and the other is the principle of transformation. Substitution is where you are having trouble and you are hoping that God will substitute and give you something else. If your toy is broken, He will give you another one.

But, transformation is when we go through the pain and we discover that He uses this to transform us just as when a woman experiences pain in labor, she has sorrow, but when the child is born she forgets the pain experiences the joy of a child that has come into the world. Pain is very brief but joy endures. In fact, the ultimate example is that the pain and sorrow in this world is as a tiny moment when compared to the joy of eternity. There is no comparison.

Recall what Paul said in Romans 8:18. “I consider the sufferings of this present time not even worth comparing to the glory that is to be revealed to us.” Pain is momentary in life, but glory has weight and is eternal. The pain is only a little while, the glory is everlasting. That is the perspective that we must understand. Why do we have to have this pain? Our Father knows what we need, even if we do not understand it. We would choose the lesser good, God would choose the greater good, because He knows that pain can be an instrument to forge Christ-like character in our life by causing us to become more dependent on Him.

So, there is a whole process that we go through. So, there is a sense in which we also experience a cup. Now, I believe that we will either hold a sword in our hand or a cup in our hand. Look at it that way. We will either try to resist what is happening or you will surrender to it. Frankly, it goes on to describe a trial that is mentioned here. It says, in verse 12, “So the Roman cohort and the commander and the officers of the Jews, arrested Jesus and bound Him, and led Him to Annas first; for he was father-in-law of Caiaphas, who was high priest that year. Now Caiaphas was the one who advised the Jews that it was expedient for one man to die on behalf of the people.”

So, there was an illegal and brutal trial that took place and Christ began as One who suffered wrongfully. He committed no evil and no sin was found in His mouth. He suffered sinlessly, silently, and as a substitute because there was a redemptive dimension to His claim. It continues on, in verse 15, “Simon Peter was following Jesus, and so was another disciple. Now that disciple was known to the high priest, and entered with Jesus into the court of the high priest.” This was probably John. “But Peter was standing at the door outside. So the other disciple who was known to the high priest, went out and spoke to the doorkeeper, and brought Peter in.” Now frankly, Peter followed the crowd. He would have been better off fleeing because Jesus said in verse eight, “If you seek Me, let these go their way.” It talks to the idea about how, if you strike the shepherd, the sheep will be scattered.

Fortunately, had he gone his way, he would have never denied the Lord, but by doing this he has put himself in harm’s way. Have you ever allowed yourself to gradually move into a place of temptation? Have you ever put yourself in a compromising situation, where you make it easier for yourself to be in a position to where it goes beyond your ability to restrain yourself? You don’t want, for example, to put a person who is addicted to gambling in the middle of a Trump casino. There are some things you just don’t want to do. You don’t want to hand a bottle of liquor to a person who is an alcoholic. You see where I am going here? There are obvious things that you don’t want to do. A person who has a sexual addiction shouldn’t be dropped off next to a porn house. Those are all obvious examples, but there are more subtle things we can do so that a person begins to compromise himself. You must allow yourself enough margin, and you know your own convictions, so you must be a safe distance in order to flee the temptation. Remember Psalm 1:1? Turn with me to Psalm 1:1, because there is a good analogy here.

This Psalm invites us to see the consequences of walking with God or rejecting God. Verse one says, “How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers!” He doesn’t walk, stand, or sit with them. Then it says, “His delight is in the Law of the Lord, and in His Law he meditates day and night.” It also goes on to say just how fruitful that will be. Here is what happened, though, Peter stood at the door, and was brought in by “that disciple, who was known to the high priest,” and then in verse 17, “The slave-girl who kept the door said to Peter, ‘You are not also one of this man’s disciples are you’? He said, ‘I am not’.” That is the first denial. Continuing, “Now the slaves and the officers were standing there, having made a charcoal fire, for it was cold and they were warming themselves; and Peter was also with them, standing and warming himself.” He was actually standing among them, but there is a parallel, if you look at Luke chapter 22. In verse 55 we get an extra little detail. It tells us that, “After they had kindled the fire in the middle of the courtyard, and sat down together, Peter was sitting among them.”

So, Peter was first walking with them, then he stood, and finally her sat down. You see the imagery here? There is a continually higher level of commitment and compromise and he is putting himself further and further in harm’s way. Frankly, you don’t want to be sitting with the enemy. The wise person really will not have that kind of connection or temptation.

So, Peter is asked these questions and then the text continues, with Jesus’ trial. “The high priest then questioned Jesus about His disciples and about His teaching. Jesus answered them, ‘I have spoken openly to the world, I always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where all the Jews came together; and I spoke nothing in secret. Why do you question Me? Question those who have heard what I spoke to them; they know what I said’. When He said this, one of the officers standing nearby struck Jesus, saying, ‘Is that the way You answer the high priest’? Jesus answered him, ‘If I have spoken wrongly, testify of the wrong; but if rightly, why do you strike Me’?”

Frankly, I must tell you, that they violated about twenty laws concerning the Sanhedrin at His trials. There were many laws, specific to trials, that the Sanhedrin had to obey. One of those was that you wouldn’t convene it at night or in secret. They violated their own traditions because they hated Jesus, who violated their traditions. Catch that? He never violated the law. He fully kept the law. He did violate human tradition and they hated Him for it. The irony here is that they were willing to violate their own traditions to nail Him. It is quite remarkable. They ad no right to strike Him in from the high priest.

So, in verse 24, “Annas sent Him bound to Caiaphas the high priest.” This brings on another trial and He is on His way to that. “Simon Peter was standing and warming himself. So they said to him, ‘Are you not also one of His disciples’? He denied it and said, ‘I am not’.” There is the second denial. Going on, in verse 26, “One of the slaves of the high priest, being a relative of the one whose ear Peter cut off, said, ‘Did I not see you in the garden with Him’? Peter denied it again and immediately a rooster crowed.” Actually, in other parallel texts, it says he cursed.

Now, I want you to listen to this verse. It is found in Luke chapter 22, and only Luke records it. In verse 61 we get a remarkable account. But before that verse, let me read from a little bit earlier in the chapter. “Having arrested Him, they led Him away and brought Him to the house of the high priest; but Peter was following at a distance. After they had kindled the fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter was sitting among them. And a servant-girl, seeing him as he sat in the firelight and looking intently at him, said, ‘This man was with him, too’. But he denied it, saying, ‘Woman, I do not know Him’. A little later, another saw him and said, “You are one of them too’! But Peter said, ‘Man, I am not’. After about an hour had passed, another man began to insist, saying, ‘Certainly, this man was also with Him, for he is a Galilean too’. But Peter said, ‘Man, I do not know what you are talking about’. Immediately, while he was still speaking, a rooster crowed.” There we see the parallel.

But, here is the detail that I want you to listen to: Just as Peter denied Jesus for the third time, “The Lord turned and looked at Peter.” Do you see that little detail there? It is chilling, because John’s account tells us that they were leading Him out and were sending Him, bound, to Caiaphas. They were sending Him from Annas to Caiaphas and as He was out in the courtyard Peter denied Him the third time and that was the moment their eyes met. So Peter was then bitterly repentant and it goes on to say, in the Lukan account, “And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how He told him, ‘Before a rooster crows today, you will deny Me three times’. And he went out and wept bitterly.” Now, Peter’s context here of his own conviction ultimately led to redemption. He wept over his sins and repented. While Judas admitted his sins, he did feel remorse but never felt true repentance. And so, there are ways in which we deny our Lord. The main way you can deny your Lord is by refusing to do what He commands you to do and by not honoring Him before others.

So, we have this portrait here of that denial, that motif of denial, and then in verse 28, “They led Jesus from Caiaphas into the Praetorium, and they themselves did not enter into the Praetorium, so that they would not be defiled, but might eat the Passover.” Now, long before the Jewish leaders arrest Jesus in the garden, they had determined to kill Him. John 11 describes this. They planned to kill Him, especially now that the last straw was committed, namely the resurrection of Lazarus. So, they planned to kill Jesus and, by the way, also Lazarus.

But, they needed the cooperation of Rome. Here is what you have. You have six trials that He went through and they lasted most of the night. The first three trials were Jewish, or religious trials. Here is what they were. If you put the four Gospels together, here is the picture you get. First, you have one at the home of Annas. Secondly, you had another at the home of Caiaphas and included the members of the Sanhedrin.

Then, early the next morning there was a council trial. So, you had the three Jewish trials that took place throughout the night. Each time He was mocked and vilified and beaten.

Then, these were followed by three Roman trials, or civil trials. As I said, they needed the cooperation of Rome. The Jews did not have the authority to execute a man. They would normally have stoned Him to death, but they wanted the Roman officials to publicly execute Him. You can ask the question, if they needed permission, how is it that they stoned Stephen to death? My answer is that they didn’t go for public approval. It was an immediate thing and a crime of passion when they killed Stephen. In this case, however, they wanted Jesus to be publicly repudiated and rejected and therefore it required the cooperation of Rome.

So, the first appearance, then, was before Pilate. This took place in the Praetorium. Pilate’s residence was on the coast, in Caesarea. Have any of you visited Caesarea? If you have been to Israel you will almost certainly have seen it. In any event, what would take place, during the feast of Passover, Pontius Pilate, as the Roman Governor, would need to go up to Jerusalem because he wanted to make sure the crowds didn’t get out of hand. It was that large an event. The Romans had this fortress that was on the temple mount, the Antonia fortress, and this was where the Praetorium was located. The next civil trial was before Herod. You see, when Pilate discovered that Jesus was a Galilean, he said it was Herod’s jurisdiction. So he sent Him up there, hoping to get Jesus off his own hands. This irony is interesting because when Herod saw that Pilate had sent Jesus to him, they became friends. Before that they were at enmity with one another. A common enemy brought them together.

But, Herod was disappointed when Jesus didn’t do any tricks. He wanted Him to perform some miracles. Jesus did not say a word to Herod. So, Herod sent Him back to Pilate. Poor Pilate was now in a tough position, because he acknowledged, repeatedly, that there was no sin in Jesus.

Now, Pilate, I might mention, was in office during the years 26 to 36, and was the Governor of the Roman province of Palestine. Palestine is a Roman name, not a Jewish name. The Roman name comes from the Philistines. So, Palestine comes from Philistine. It was no honor to be the Governor of Palestine. This was not a great job. It was a backwater province and was considered a dead-end.

So, apparently Pilate hadn’t had the career he had hoped for. We do know that Pilate was a wishy-washy sort of guy, but he sure could be ruthless when the need arose. If you turn with me to Luke chapter 13, verses one and two, you see this very clearly. Jesus is alluding to an event that is not recorded in the Gospels, and, “Now on this same occasion there were some present who reported to Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. And Jesus said to them, ‘Do you suppose that these Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered this fate’?”

So, he could be brutal when necessary, and in this case he understood the Jewish power structure. He knew how to use them, although his handling of the trial of Jesus indicated that he was something of an indecisive man, and a weak man, and a compromising man, because in his heart he know that Jesus was not guilty. In fact, he looked for a loophole and was trying to please both sides. He was afraid of the crowd, though. After a while, though, he became more afraid of the prisoner, and he began to wonder who, then, is this that I am dealing with? He knew this was not an ordinary man. Recall that his wife had actually had a dream and told him not to touch that righteous man and that made him even more afraid. He acknowledged that Jesus was not guilty of any crime.

This is mentioned twice in Luke and twice in John. Yet, he refused to release Him because they said if you do not deal with Him, you are allowing an insurrectionist to get away with political crimes. Basically, since Jesus said He was a king, Pilate had to deal with that and asked them what they wanted him to do with their king. They said they had no king but Caesar. Boy, that must have been hard for them to say. So much did they want to get Jesus that they proclaimed something they truly hated to say. They did not want to acknowledge the authority of Caesar, but they were desperate to get Jesus. Then they said if Pilate did not do this, word will get to Caesar and that will be the last straw. So, out of fear, Pilate washed his hands of the affair and he gave Him over to be crucified.

So, going back to the text, we have the three Jewish religious trials and three Roman civil trials, lasting all night long. They were psychologically, physically, and emotionally exhausting. Looking again at verse 28, “They led Jesus from Caiaphas into the Praetorium, and it was early; and they themselves did not enter into the Praetorium so that they would not be defiled, but might eat the Passover. Therefore, Pilate went out to them and said, ‘What accusation do you bring against this Man’?” I love the answer they gave. Instead of giving him a cogent accusation, here is what they said: “If this Man were not an evil doer we would have not delivered Him over to you.” Talk about sidestepping the issue. “So Pilate said to them, ‘Take Him yourselves and judge Him according to your law’. The Jews said to him, ‘We are not permitted to put anyone to death’, to fulfill the word of Jesus which He spoke, signifying by what kind of death He was about to die.” It was clear He would not be stoned.

They would take Him and crucify Him and He would rise from the dead. The Jews never crucified anyone. It was a cruel and particularly Roman form of punishment. We have talked about this before, but I had an article from the American Medical Association that gives a lot of details about what is involved in a real crucifixion. It was more gruesome than you might imagine. When people complained about The Passion, that it was so bloody and violent, that is what happened. It was a bloody affair, and it was a cruel and violent affair. Frankly, they were experts on this, and so they knew how to scourge a man, so that he would almost die, but not quite. They could keep their victims in that state. Pilate had Him scourged, you recall, hoping, out of pity, when they saw what He looked like, he said, “Ecce Homo,” or, “behold, the man.” In other words, have pity on this guy, we have already punished Him enough.

But, then the chief priests instigated the crowd to say, “Crucify, crucify.” (Q)(A): If Pilate had simply had Him beaten and released? It is hard to say. Pilate certainly did not want to have Him killed. That is a true statement, but it was needful for Him to be delivered over and it was needful for this to take place.

But, ‘woe to that man who delivers Him over’, it is that same tension, and he is still culpable for his response, just at it said about Judas. “The Son of Man is going to be delivered over, just as it has been predicted.” But, woe to that man by whom He is delivered. It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.

Now, I can’t get around that. There is a tension and a balance. On the one hand, God knows exactly what is happening and there are no surprises to God. He is not like the God in the movie Oh, God!. This was the movie years ago, with George Burns, and he never know what was going on. That is not the God of Scripture. The God of Scripture is never surprised. At the same time, He never eliminates the reality of human choice and freedom.

There is a deep mystery as to how the two go hand in hand. Pilate is culpable for what he does. In any case, we continue on with the story and I was saying a word about crucifixion. We know from crucifixion victims, evidence from their bones, that the nails went through their wrists and not their palms, because it was more painful because of the nerves located there. In doing so, it wouldn’t break any bones, but it would be agonizing for the victim. It is interesting, later on, in Medieval paintings, that they did not know what it was like. Crucifixion was eliminated as a form of capital punishment in the middle of the fifth century. You don’t see renderings of crucifixion scenes until long after that because it was so gruesome. They had no knowledge of what was involved.

It was most likely that the legs would be put together and the ankles would be right next to each other and they would take one long spike and drive it through both of them. There would also be a little pedestal upon which you would stand. In doing that in this manner, the victim would be stretched out and the diaphragm would be in such a position that his lungs would fill up and he would have to push down in order to breathe. Pushing down would be an agonizing event in itself. By the way, your shoulders would be dislocated when they put the Cross down into the ground. In addition to that, your back would be forced against the wood of the Cross. Jesus’ back was already open with wounds because of the flailing and the scourging. It was truly a gruesome method and you recall that one of the things that happened was it led to a deep thirst. The interesting cruelty was that it was the sort of death that would cause a person to try to stay alive because of natural impulses, but the longer you stayed alive, the more pain there would be. It would last, sometimes, two days.

But, it was needful for them to get Jesus down early because it was a holy day. So, they wanted Him down by 6PM, because that was when a new day would begin. The day went from sunrise to sunrise and not as we measure it today. Therefore, they had to get Him down.

Now, how would you get Him down? What would be the technique? If He has to hold Himself up, in order to breathe, what would be the technique? You would have to break His legs. Once His legs are broken, He can not hold Himself up any longer and He would expire by asphyxiation. And recall that is exactly what they did with the two thieves. I have said before that the two thieves represent the two possible responses to Jesus, either to accept Him, or to reject Him. Those are the only choices. To ignore Him is covert rejection. You can not ignore Him, because that is covert rejection, and in the end it will be simply to reject Him. If you recall, they went to the thieves and broke their legs so they would die, but then when they came to Jesus they saw that He had already died.

But, in order to be completely sure, what did they do? They took a spear and pierced His side and that was a fulfillment of prophecy as well. It says, in Zechariah, “They will upon Him who they have pierced.”

So, we knew His side would have to pierced and that He would have to be crucified, but it also predicted that not a bone would be broken. Had they broken His legs it would have violated the prophecy that said you are not to break a bone in the Passover lamb. You see the idea here? It says in Psalms that not a bone is to be broken.

So, inadvertently, these Roman soldiers, totally clueless as to what they were doing, were actually fulfilling prophecies, even as they did not break His legs but pierced Him in the side. And so, you have all these things woven together and even so, as painful as it was, it was nothing in comparison to what Jesus was really sweating blood over. It was not the physical death, as bad as it was. It was the separation from His Father and the bearing of sin. That is what He was really loathing. Here is the sinless lamb of God, before the foundation of the world, perfect in all ways, and now He takes all sin upon Himself. I want to show you a quick chart.

If I take a look at my situation, and what I have done, what does it add up to? If I look at my thoughts and my words and my deeds, what does it add up to? Does it come up to God’s standards or not? “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” And so, I would use the word sin, which is a word that means contrary to God’s character. In other words, even in the best of my words, thoughts, and deeds, I fall short of God’s character. I look at Christ, on the other hand, and look at His words, thoughts, and deeds, and what does it add up to? The key word would be ‘righteousness’. Righteousness means conforming perfectly to a standard.

Now, 2nd Corinthians 5:21 puts it this way: “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” He took our sin, on the Cross, and put it upon Himself, and that is what He was sweating blood about. To become, now, a murderer, a rapist, a liar, and a thief and He took on not just a few sins, but all the sins of the world. “Behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” It is beyond our comprehension.

But, that is not the whole story. What else do we need to have in order to be acceptable before God? We not only have to have our sins removed, but what else do we have to have? What is the positive thing we need? We need the righteousness of Christ. “He made Him who knew no sin to become sin on our behalf, that we might have the righteousness of God in Him.” It is called the ‘double imputation’. He imputed our sin on Him and imputed His righteousness on us. He who deserved the love of God received the wrath of God.

We who deserve the wrath of God received the love of God. That is the best offer, the best gift, you will ever, ever get. You can not earn it, it must be a gift. Recall what I said before about Galatians 2:21. “If righteousness came by keeping the Law, then Christ died needlessly.” The implications are two-fold. First of all, then, if it were possible, through some work system, to attain righteousness, perfection, and justification before God, if that were possible, then the death of Christ was a great tragedy and a great waste. If it is not possible, through works, then the death of Christ is the only hope. That is what it comes down to. I have to stress, again, that the world’s religions do not agree about God, about human nature, about sin, and about human destiny. The world’s religions, for example, say the way of salvation is a variation of works.

Only in the Gospels and the Epistles do we discover that it is by grace through faith. It is intimated, also, in the old covenant. Finishing in our text, in verse 33, “Therefore Pilate entered again into the Praetorium and summoned Jesus and said to Him, ‘Are you the King of the Jews’? Jesus answered, ‘Are you saying this on your own initiative, or did others tell you about Me’? Pilate answered, ‘I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests delivered You to me; what have You done’? Jesus answered, ‘My kingdom is not of this world.

If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm’.” Now, that doesn’t say that He has no kingdom in this world, just that He would not rule on the earth. If you look at Daniel chapter 7:13-28, it makes it very clear that as the Son of Man He will reign on this earth and His reign will never end. In fact, it says that in Luke chapter one as well. Pilate was concerned with the source of this kingdom. Where did He get His authority? And so, he goes on to say, ‘“So, you are a King’? Jesus answered, ‘You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice’.” That is an interesting combination.

Why does He say, “For this I have been born?” My thinking here is that in John’s work we have an intimation of His incarnation of humanity, “I have been born,” and an intimation of His deity, “I came into the world.” See the difference between the two? It is kind of a perfect combination of humanity and deity. Jesus says, “Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice,” and then Pilate asks Him this famous question, “What is the truth?” This was said in a cynical and disparaging way. “And when he had said this, he went out again to the Jews and said to them, ‘I find no guilt in Him. But you have a custom that I release someone for you at the Passover; do you wish then that I release for you the King of the Jews’? So they cried out again, saying, ‘Not this Man, but Barabbas’. Now Barabbas was a robber.”

There is no explaining how a mob chooses its heroes, is there? The mind of a mob is the mind of a child. It is not led by rationality, but by emotions. Remember they said, “Give us Barabbas.” What did they also say about Jesus? “Crucify Him.” Is it possible that Barabbas only heard the mob saying, “Give us Barabbas,” and “Crucify Him”? That would have put him in a very uneasy state. But then, when the guards came for him he was told that Jesus would die in his place. You get the idea? All of us are Barabbas. We are all him and we are set free. That is a good closing thought.

(Q)(A): Yes, Peter carrying a sword is a strange image. Normally they would not be carrying a sword, but there is sort of a fear about what is going to take place. It is a strange circumstance and there are only two ways you can look at it. Either they try and fight them as men, or you deal with it and know that your warfare is not against flesh and blood. But, it is unusual.

Let us close in a prayer. Father, we thank You that are the One who sent Your Son. For this reason He was born and for this reason He came into the world, so that through the God-Man we might have life. Thank You that He who knew no sin became sin on our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God in Him, by trusting in Him and receiving the gift of eternal life, by embracing Christ and trusting Him, not in the proposition, but as a person. We pray in His name. Amen.

As we look at John chapter 19 tonight, I want us to consider some key issues concerning the crucifixion of Christ. John 20 looks at the resurrection of Christ and John 21 focuses particularly on resurrection appearances of our Lord. In looking at the crucifixion, many that say the Gibson film, The Passion, of course, have that vividly in their mind’s eye. I want to look at this chapter and recall how last week we saw how Judas betrayed Jesus, how Jesus stood before the priests, and then before Pilate and you recall that there were three religious trials and three civil trials. First, there were three involving the Jews and then the last three involved the Gentiles, one before Pilate, another before Herod, and finally back again, to the last one, with Pilate. This was a grueling and gruesome ordeal, taking all night, and Jesus was being mocked, vilified, beaten, and spit upon. This treatment lasted virtually all night long.

So, it was a night of tremendous agony for our Lord, and He knew this coming, and He knew, still, the worst was yet to come. I am referring not just to the crucifixion, but to the bearing of the sins of the world. For that, He would sweat drops of blood. As we continue with the story, and after Jesus has been talking with Pilate and, remember, Pilate asks Him, “What is truth?” He then goes out to the Jews and says, “I find no guilt in Him.” The Jews don’t want to let loose on that score and they say, “Not this Man, but Barabbas.” They wanted Barabbas freed and Jesus crucified. Chapter 19, then, begins, “Pilate took Jesus and scourged Him.” Now, he tried an approach of sympathy, because he really did not want to crucify Jesus. By scourging Him, he hoped to evoke the sympathy of the crowd. Scourging involved a leather whip, which was knotted and weighted with pieces of metal or bone, and many people would not even survive the whipping involved in that process. Thus, they had to do a careful job to keep victims alive if they were going to crucify them as well. The portrayal in The Passion, of the beating with the rods, is not specifically mentioned in the Gospels.

At the very least, the scourging, which was the second part of that, was, in fact, historical. This is not to say he wasn’t, it is only to say it is not a part of the Biblical accounts. As I said, He had previously been slapped in the face in front of Annas, spat and beat upon before Caiaphas, and then after the scourging, of course, was the crown of thorns, the mocking. I must point out something about the thorns that He wore. Remember they created sort of a skullcap out of these thorns that are indigenous to that area. The thorns and thistles have a theme in the Garden, don’t they? They were brought about by sin. Now, the Creator would wear a crown of thorns as He bore the sins of the world. I don’t think it is accidental. Thorns and thistles will come up as a result of sin and Jesus will bear the sins of the world and actually have a crown of thorns and thistles, which were actually beaten into His head. You see the idea here?

So, you have a very clear idea of how God reverses the work of the Fall, and reverses the work of the first Adam in the second Adam. So, the story continues, “And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on His head and put a purple robe on Him; and they begin to come up to Him and say, ‘Hail, King of the Jews’ and to give Him slaps in the face. Pilate came out again and said to them, ‘Behold, I am bringing Him out to you so that you will know that I find no guilt in Him’.” Let me stop here for just a moment. It is interesting that the Jews mocked Jesus in His claim of being a prophet. In Matthew chapter 26, verses 67 and 68, we see a mocking that has to do with Him being a prophet. “Then they spat in His face and beat Him with their fists; and others slapped Him, and said, ‘Prophesy to us, You Christ’,” in effect saying He is a false Messiah, “Who is the one who hit You?”

So, the Jews mocked His claim to be a prophet and the Gentiles mocked His claims here to being a king. Here is was, “Hail, King of the Jews.” Why would that be? Well, the Jewish understanding and concern would be that of the prophetic, Messianic claims, whereas the Gentiles would see Him as an interloper, or a subversive, or simply as a trouble maker claiming to have pretense to political authority.

So, he would be mocked by both, but for different reasons. Now, in verse 4, “Pilate came out again and said to them, ‘Behold, I am bringing Him out to you’,” and this is the third time that Pilate faces the people, ‘“So that you may know that I find no guilt in Him’. Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and purple robe. Pilate said to them, ‘Ecce Homo’,” or, ‘Behold, the Man’. My suspicion here is that he was saying it as in, ‘haven’t we done enough’? Pilate was hoping to gain the sympathy of the Jews. I must tell you, though, that we are never saved by a moral example. We are never saved by sympathy, but only, and ultimately, by turning away from our sins and trusting in the sinless substitute. The Gospels are very clear about this. If He were just scourged and beaten, it would not have been enough. As believers, we don’t just contemplate the Cross, in a way we also carry it.

So, there is this idea of the Cross but also of the crucified life as well, because we are followers in His steps. In this case, the crucifixion is that one dies with Christ, and we crucify the flesh, with its desires and so forth, and put on the Spirit instead. In verse six, we see, “So when the chief priests and the officers saw Him, they cried out, ‘Crucify, Crucify’!” They were rousing up the mob, a fickle lot, and eventually everyone was saying it. “Pilate said to them, ‘Take Him yourselves and crucify Him, for I find no guilt in Him’.” Now, this was the third time that Pilate declared that he found no guilt in Jesus and he wanted a compromise that would somehow please everybody, but he figured he was better off letting them take Him off and crucify Him, but even that was not enough. We now see that, “The Jews answered him, ‘We have a law, and by that law He ought to die because He made Himself out to be the Son of God’.” The verse that follows is very interesting. “When Pilate heard this statement, he was even more afraid.” Now, Pilate was already plenty afraid. Turn with me to Matthew 27:19, and we see something which took place right before this moment. “While he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent him a message, saying, ‘Have nothing to do with that righteous man; for last night I suffered greatly in a dream because of Him’.”

So, he was already wondering who this guy really was. Remember that idea? He claimed to have an authority that was not a human authority. “My Kingdom is not this world,” that kind of an idea. That, in addition to the statement, here, that He was claiming to be the Son of God, actually made Pilate afraid. The significant part here is that Jesus was silent. It goes on to say, in verse nine, “He entered into the Praetorium again and said to Jesus, ‘Where are You from’? But Jesus gave him no answer.” He was silent before His accusers. Turn, for example, to 1st Peter chapter two, where it gives us an illustration of the prophecy found in Isaiah 53, where He did not open His mouth. In 1st Peter 2:20-23, we see, “For what credit is there if, when you sin and are harshly treated, you endure it with patience?

But if when you do what is right and suffer for it you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God. For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, ‘Who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth’,” and that is from Isaiah 53, “And while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously. And He Himself bore our sins in His body on the Cross, so that we might die to sin,” and here you see the image of our dying with Him as well, “and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed.” The next verse says, “For you were continually straying like sheep,” and this is another allusion to Isaiah 53, “but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls.”

So, we have a very clear portrait here of the fulfillment in part of Isaiah 53. Looking back to the text, in verse ten, “So Pilate said to Him, ‘You do not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release You, and I have authority to crucify You’? Jesus answered, ‘You would have no authority over Me, unless it had been you from above; for this reason he who delivered Me to you has the greater sin’.” Pilate is making a boast that he has authority. But, if you consider Romans 13:1, it says that all authority comes from God. He is the One who empowers. He raises some up and then He deposes them. We suppose we are in authority, but ultimately it is God who is in authority. It goes on to speak of how Caiaphas knew the Scriptures, but it hardened his heart. This we learned in chapter eleven, verses 47 through 54.

So, it was he who had the greater sin. Then, in verses 12 to 15, we read that, “Because of this Pilate made efforts to release Him,” because, again, he can not comprehend matters and that this is not an ordinary criminal. He is wrestling with this concept. “But the Jews cried out saying, ‘If you release this Man, you are no friend of Caesar; everyone who makes himself out to be a king opposes Caesar’. Therefore when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out, and sat down on the judgment seat at a place called The Pavement, but in Hebrew, Gabbatha.”

You can see that actual pavement today because it has been uncovered there is Jerusalem. As you know, the city of Jerusalem was razed in the year 70, and then it was rebuilt around 135 AD, and it was called the ‘Aelia Capitolina’ and then that, too, was destroyed. It was a hard job to find where the authentic sites were. You do know, of course, that when you look at Jerusalem, it looks like an ancient city from the outside, but those walls are from the 15th century and what we call the ‘Via Della Rosa’ is not where Jesus walked. He would have been in that area, but the streets have been rebuilt.

So, what we see here is that when Pilate brings Him down, he brings Him to The Pavement. “Now, it was the day of preparation for the Passover; it was about the sixth hour, and he said to the Jews, ‘Behold, your King’.” This might have been about six o’clock in the morning. “So they cried out, ‘Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him’. Pilate said to them, ‘Shall I crucify your King’? The chief priests answered, ‘We have no king but Caesar’.” May I tell you, that must have been a hard pill to swallow, because that was thing they did not believe. They did not think that Caesar was the rightful king over them.

So, for them, on a high and holy day, to crucify their own Messiah, and then feign loyalty to Caesar, was a double whammy when you think about it that way. I want to stress again, though, from the standpoint of the Scriptures, it would be wrong to say there was an anti-Semitic bias in the New Testament. The idea here is that the Gospels are really focusing on the death and resurrection of Christ and the fact is that when we look at the loves of the disciples, you have the life of Christ with the disciples, the life of Christ with the multitudes, you see a strong narrative structure. It is not biographical, but topical and thematic and it emphasizes the crucifixion in a disproportionate way, because this was the ultimate purpose for which Jesus came. The New Testament teaches multiple causation in the death of Jesus.

It was not just the Jews, it was everyone. His Jewish opponents were involved, but His own disciple betrayed Him. A Roman judge, Pilate, issues the sentence, and it was the Roman soldiers who carried out the execution. You have to keep in mind that the early Christians were all Jews. For probably the first 20 years of the Church all believers in Christ were Jewish. You can not forget that. Jesus was Jewish, the disciples were Jewish, and the whole New Testament was written by Jews, with the possible exception of Luke. At the same time, the Jewish leadership, the Sanhedrin, and the temple priests, they rejected their Messiah. And so, it was rejection by the Jewish leadership. In verse 16, then, we read, “So he handed Him over to them to be crucified. They took Jesus, therefore, and He went out, bearing His own Cross, to the place called the Place of a Skull, which is called in Hebrew, Golgotha.”

So, what you have here is, from a human standpoint, the crucifixion was, indeed, a great crime. From a human standpoint, it was a tragedy. But, from a Divine standpoint, you see it totally differently. From the Divine standpoint, it was the fulfillment of prophecy and an accomplishment of the will of God. “It was for this reason I came, It was for this reason I came to serve.” Now, Roman citizens, I should point out, were never crucified. That was too ignominious a death. It was reserved for the lowest criminals because it was an agonizing method of punishment.

The criminal would customarily carry his own cross or the crossbeam, not necessarily the whole cross. It was more likely that it was the crossbeam that Jesus carried. In an article from the Journal of the American Medical Association, one of the drawings shows what position Jesus would have been in during the scourging and another drawing shows how He would have carried the crossbeam, or ‘patibulum’. The ‘stipes’ would be the vertical portion on which it would be placed.

So, He likely carried the crossbeam, but remember they pressed Simon of Sirene into carrying it, because of Jesus’ physical condition. It was about a mile and quite a long walk. And so, it was necessary for them to do that. In any case, the Place of a Skull, where He was crucified, was outside the city. This is an important point. I want to read to you Hebrews chapter 13, verses 11 to 13, and they relate to this very issue. “For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy place by the high priest as an offering for sin, are burned outside the camp. Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people through His own blood, suffered outside the gate.

So, let us go out to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach.” See the imagery there? Now, where He was crucified is now inside the city walls, but in the first century it was clearly outside the city walls. (Q)(A): Are there any other accounts, outside of Scripture, where the Romans were asked to carry out Jewish law? I can not think of any and I think this was an unusual occurrence because of the complexity of the case. The Jews were clever and knew that Pilate was in some hot water already with Caesar and if it was reported that he let this Man go, who was a claimant to the throne, then he could have lost his position altogether. Knowing that, they said, “We have no king but Caesar.” Let’s continue on. Frankly, we are left to guess as to the exact location of this Place of a Skull. There are two traditional sites and one is Gordon’s Calvary and it is the most impressive because it has a nice garden.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is an older traditional location. That locale has better historical connections, but it is not as fun to see. If you have the opportunity, go see them both. One gives you the sense of what it might have looked like at the time, whereas the other is more likely the locale. Returning to the text, and to verse 18, “There they crucified Him, and with Him two other men, one on either side, and Jesus in between.” Again, this is not an accident. I believe it is a symbolic picture. It is historical, but it speaks of something theological as well. On the one hand He had the response of rejection and on the opposite hand He had the response of acceptance and those are the only two options you have. To ignore Him is, in fact, covert rejection.

So, not to choose is to choose. There is no way around this one. People say that they didn’t ask to be born. Deal with where you are and don’t whine about where you aren’t.

So, my point is that you are in a condition here where you don’t get to make the rules. God, the Scriptures teach us, is gracious and compassionate and those who wish to know Him will find Him. The point here is that a response is needful. Just mere intellectual assent is not enough. There has got to be the issue of personal reception. As I often put it, belief in Jesus is not assent to a proposition, but trust in a person.

So, I say that propositional truth always points beyond itself to personal truth. But, revelation demands a response. The Gospels are not there to inform us but to transform us. Therefore, it requires a response and that is the uncomfortable position that the Gospels leave us in, frankly. It is one of the reasons, by the way, why the Gospels have been subjected to more scrutiny and more vilification than any other ancient texts. This is because of its power. Whenever there is something that powerful, it will cause trouble. It is like stirring up a hornet’s nest. Demonic desires would be to keep people from reading the Gospel to see what it really says; better to hear it from a second, and third, and fourth account. My desire is to get people to read these Gospels directly. I have this special little book and it is the message of John. I often give it to people. It is small, so I’m not giving them some giant text. If I can get them to read that, at least I have them in a situation where they can more intelligently assess who this Jesus was and what He really said. You need to make an intelligently informed decision.

You will make the decision to either accept Him or reject Him, so wouldn’t it be a good idea, at least, to check out the evidence instead of relying on what others have said? Now, we these two transgressors here and in Isaiah 53:12, and this text was written some seven centuries before the Crucifixion, and it reads, “Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great, and He will divide the booty with the strong; because He poured out Himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet He Himself bore the sin of many, and interceded for the transgressors.” We have a remarkable image here of how Jesus fulfills prophecy and we will see that many more are fulfilled as well. A criminal would wear a placard identifying his crime and this was Pilate’s insult to the religious establishment. In verse 18 we see, “There they crucified Him, and with Him two other men, one on either side, and Jesus in between. Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the Cross. It was written, ‘Jesus the Nazarene, the King of the Jews’.

Therefore many of the Jews read this inscription, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek.” The point is that the “chief priests were telling Pilate not to write, ‘King of the Jews’, but that He said, ‘I am the King of the Jews’. Pilate answered, ‘What I have written, I have written’.” What do you suppose was going on in Pilate’s mind when he did that? I think it was more than just getting back at the Jewish leaders. I think there was some doubt in his own mind that He had been the King. It was against his own will to crucify Him, and so this might have been a last possible tribute to Him. Again, however, regret is not the same as repentance. There are some apocryphal books that talk about the conversion of Pilate and Claudia, his wife, but they are just that. There is not much historical warrant for it. Now, it is interesting here that Hebrew is the language of religion, Greek the language of philosophy, and Latin the language of law. All three combined to crucify the Son of God.

A Centurion and four soldiers would usually be assigned to do these executions. In verse 23, “Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took His outer garments and made four parts, a part to every soldier and also the tunic; now the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece. So they said to one another, ‘Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it, to decide whose it will be’. This was to fulfill the Scripture: ‘They divided My outer garments among them, and for My clothing they cast lots’.” This is a fulfillment of Psalm 22, verse 18. At this time the people would revile Jesus and so we also have this account in the parallel Gospels. Look at Psalm 22:18, to vividly see, again, that reviling. Part of that reviling is also in Psalm 22, verses 12 to 18, “Many bulls have surrounded Me; strong bulls of Bashan have surrounded Me. They open wide their mouth at Me, as a ravening and a roaring lion.

I am poured out like water, all My bones are out of joint; My heart is like wax; it is melted within Me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and My tongue cleaves to My jaws; and you lay Me in the dust of death. For dogs have surrounded Me.” The word ‘dogs’ is often used in reference to the Gentiles. “A band of evildoers has encompassed Me; they pierced My hands and My feet. I can count all My bones, they look, they stare at Me;” and then, again, verse 18, “They divide My garments among them, and for My clothing they cast lots.” This is very strong picture of the fulfillment, particularly in Mark’s Gospel. I Will read you some verses from Mark 15 and this supplements what we are reading here in John. In Mark 15:29-32, we see, “Those passing by were hurling abuse at Him, wagging their heads, and saying, ‘Ha, You who are going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save Yourself and come down from the Cross’. In the same way the chief priests also, along with the scribes, were mocking Him among themselves, and saying, ‘He saved others; He can not save Himself. Let this Christ, the King of Israel, now come down from the Cross, so that we may see and believe’. Those who were crucified with Him were also insulting Him.” At first both did, but in the end one changed and repented.

So, you have a picture here of tremendous rejection, a culmination of that rejection. Going back to our text, we see in verse 25, “Therefore the soldiers did these things, but standing by the Cross of Jesus were His mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.” If you put the Gospels together, you get three Marys and Solome who were near the Cross at first. Then we see them again and they are further away from the Cross, standing at a distance. Mary, I believe, was experiencing something that was predicted even before Jesus’ birth. Turn to Luke, chapter two, and it illustrates this very point. It was on her heart even before her son was born. In verse 34, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and for a sign to be opposed, and a sword will pierce even your own soul,” speaking, here, to Mary, “to the end that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.”

So, she understood these things, but she also knew what would ultimately take place. Now it is being fulfilled. What is interesting, as we go on to the next verse, when we look at Jesus, even on the Cross, He fulfills His responsibilities as a son. He gives His choicest disciple the responsibility to care for her. Verse 26, “When Jesus saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son’. Then He said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother’. From that hour the disciple took her into his own household.”

So, He was making provision for her. We later see her, in Acts 1:14, and she is awaiting Pentecost with the other disciples in the Upper Room.

So, she is found yet again in the book of Acts. If we go to verse 28, we see, “After this, Jesus, knowing that all things had already been accomplished, to fulfill the Scripture, said, ‘I am thirsty’.” This is also a fulfillment of Psalm 22 and also Psalm 69, as well. A few verses from that Messianic Psalm and you have a feeling for that. It is good to know of these Messianic prophecies, and Psalm 69 has a number of them. Beginning with verse three we see, “I am weary with My crying; My throat is parched; My eyes fall while I wait for My God.” Verse 15 reads, “May the flood of water not overflow Me, nor the deep swallow Me up, nor the pit shut its mouth on me,” and verse 21, “They also gave Me gall for My food and for My thirst they gave Me vinegar to drink.” Back to verse four and we see, “Those who hate Me without a cause are more than the hairs on My head.” You will recall that Jesus quoted this earlier, in John 15. Verse eight of this Psalm is also something He quoted, when He said, “I have become estranged from My brothers and an alien to My mother’s sons.” This He spoke in John 7. There is an emphasis here on reproach as well. From verse 19, “You know My reproach and My shame and My dishonor; all My adversaries are before You.” Returning to John, and verse 30, “Therefore when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, ‘It is finished’.” It is possible that He received this so that He could speak. His mouth could have been so dry that He was unable to speak. The verse concludes, “And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.” There are actually seven statements made from the Cross. “I have completed the work that You sent Me to do.” Tetelestai—it is finished—is what He cries out. The debt was paid on full.

The blood of the sacrifices could only cover sin, but the blood of the Lamb of God took away the sins of the world. Again, from John 1:29, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Also, I would invite you to consider the words of Hebrews chapter nine, verses 24 to 28. “For Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; nor was it that He would offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the holy place year by year with blood that is not his own. Otherwise He would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And inasmuch as it is appointed and for men to die once and after this comes judgment, so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him.”

So, this is an anticipation of His Second Coming, which will be coming of power and glory. Let’s consider, then, seven statements from the Cross. The first three, actually, relate to the needs of others. The first one was to those who crucified Him. That would be found in Luke 23, verse 34. “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do,” are the first words uttered by Jesus on the Cross. The second statement is found in Luke’s Gospel as well, and it is to the believing thief. It is told in verses 39 to 43 of Luke chapter 23. “One of the criminals who were hanged there was hurling abuse at Him, saying, ‘Are You not the Christ? Save Yourself, and us’. But the other answered, and rebuking him said, ‘Do you not even fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed are suffering justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong’. And he was saying, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come in Your Kingdom’. And He said to him, ‘Truly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise’.”

So, he actually promises to this criminal, the one who believed, that he would be with Him in Paradise. The third saying from the Cross is found here in our Gospel, John 19, and particularly in verses 25 to 27 and it involves His mother. We just read how He made provision for John to take His mother under his wing. Then, in the fourth case, it turns from the need of others to His relationship with His Father. It is found in Matthew 27, verses 45 to 50. “Now from the sixth hour darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour. About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani’, that is, ‘Father, why have You forsaken Me’?” This is a quote, as you know from the first verse of Psalm 22, that same Messianic Psalm we looked at before. It is a fulfillment of that as well. “And some of those standing there, when they heard it, began saying, ‘This man is calling for Elijah’. Immediately one of them ran, and taking a sponge, he filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed, and gave Him a drink. But the rest of them said, ‘Let us see if Elijah will come and save Him’. And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up His spirit.”

So, we have the original theme of others, and then His Father, and the fifth statement from the Cross has to do with Himself. The last three, in fact, focus on Himself, and first of all, His body.

So, in John 19:28, we see, “After this, Jesus, knowing that all things had been accomplished, to fulfill the Scripture, said, ‘I am thirsty’.” Earlier Scriptures we looked at indicated that it would occur on the crucifixion. The next statement is found in verse 30, the sixth statement, and this is concerning His soul and it says, “Therefore when Jesus received the sour wine, He said, ‘It is finished’. He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.” But, there is one more that takes place. The seventh is in Luke’s Gospel. In Luke 23:46 we see, “And Jesus, crying out in a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit’. Having said this, He breathed His last.” Jesus did not die by asphyxiation, although that was what crucifixion was designed to do. He died of His volition, and He gave up His spirit. The soldiers, when they saw that He had died, were quite surprised. It was not an ordinary sequence. In any event, we see that the first three statements deal with others and then with His Father and then with Himself. And so, if we tie all these seven statements together we see a kind of ‘mini-theology’ and how He is concerned for the needs of others, and how He wrestles with the separation from His Father, and how He is obedient; body, soul, and spirit, to the work that God has called Him to do. The death of Jesus, as you know, is a major theme in John’s Gospel.

It is pictured as the slaying of a lamb in chapter one. It is depicted as the destroying of the temple in chapter two. It is seen as the lifting up of a serpent in chapter three. It is focused upon as a shepherd laying down his life for his sheep in chapter ten. It is seen as the planting of the seed in the ground in chapter twelve. Jesus’ death was not an accident. It was a Divine appointment. We have to keep this in mind. His death was voluntary; He willingly dismissed His spirit. Again, I refer you back to John chapter ten, and a very important statement. He says, in verses 17 to 18, “For this reason the Father loves Me because I lay down My life so that I may take it again. No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father.” It was a voluntary submission to His Father.

Jesus dismissed His spirit at three o’clock, about the time the Passover lambs were being slaughtered, although the horrific agony went from twelve o’clock to three o’clock. From nine to twelve He was hanging on the Cross, but then it turned dark. Now, interestingly enough, in verse 31 to 37, the Roman soldiers did not do what they were commanded to do. We see, “Then the Jews, because it was the day of preparation, so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away.” As you know breaking their legs would prevent them from holding themselves up. Again, the article in the Journal of the American Medical Association describes this very reality. When He is inhaling, He is having to push down because inhalation is active in normal breathing but is passive in a crucified victim.

So, to exhale, which is passive in normal breathing, becomes active in a crucifixion, you have to push down to do that. Of course, that becomes an agonizing process. So, the cruelty of this death is caused by your instinct to live. You see the idea there? The only way that you could hasten the crucifixion, then, would be to break the legs so that the victim could no longer push Himself up.

So, they wanted to get Him down for the high, holy day, because, as you know, the Jewish day was from six o’clock to six o’clock. So, Jesus, by the way, was crucified on Nisan 14, which is the day of Passover and He was crucified at the same time as the Passover animals were being slaughtered in the temple. This was not an accident. He was raised, and not accidentally, on the feast of First Fruit and He sent the gift of the Holy Spirit to fulfill the symbolic meaning of the feast of Pentecost. All of these fulfillments took place. Let me continue on in out text. “So the soldiers came along and broke the legs of the first man and of the other man who was crucified with Him; but coming to Jesus, when they saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs.

But one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out.” Now, if we turn to Zechariah chapter 12, we see in verse ten, “I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him, like the bitter weeping over a firstborn.” As I understand it, this is an image of how the people of God will eventually acknowledge that this was really the One who was their Messiah. Also, in Revelation chapter one, you see this imagery as well. In verse seven, “Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him. So it is to be. Amen.”

So, the piercing is the fulfillment if the Scripture in Zechariah. It is intriguing to me that by not breaking His legs, they fulfilled Exodus chapter 12, which said that not a bone was to be broken in the Passover lamb. It is also repeated in Numbers chapter 9, verse 12. But, they did do what they were not supposed to do, and that was piercing His side. But, by so doing, they fulfilled the prophecy inadvertently. Now, John makes an unusual comment next, but there is a good reason for it. In verse 34, “But one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear and immediately blood and water came out. And he who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you also may believe.” I think that he is saying this here as proof that Jesus did have a real body. It is proof of that. In 1st John chapter one, verses one to four is really a commentary on how he saw and beheld. He experienced a real death, then, and this is to counteract an early form of Gnosticism that actually denied that Jesus was the Christ and this developed more and more in the second and third centuries with these Gnostic Gospels.

Now, he goes on to say, “For these things came to pass to fulfill the Scripture, ‘Not a bone of Him shall be broken’.” Verse 38 reads, “After these things Joseph of Arimathea, being a disciple of Jesus, but a secret one for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus; and Pilate granted permission. So he came and took away His body. Nicodemus, who had first com to Him by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds weight.” It is interesting that from this point on no unbelievers touched the body of Jesus. Once He had accomplished His work, no unbelievers touched His body. God, I think, prepared these two very influential men, Joseph of Arimathea, and Nicodemus, to prepare His body for burial. Otherwise the body would have been carried off and thrown in a ditch, along with the other thieves. I think this a clear fulfillment of Isaiah chapter 53, another text we were looking at earlier. Specifically, in verse nine, “His grave was assigned with wicked men, yet He was with a rich man in His death, because He had done no violence, nor was there any deceit in His mouth.”

So, again we see fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. It is interesting that Joseph and Nicodemus had enough cloth and spices necessary for His burial. We also know that Mary and the other women planned to return after the Sabbath and complete the burial procedures. We see this in each of the Synoptic Gospels, although it is not recorded in John. Now, the text goes on to say, “So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen wrappings with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews. Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid.” A new tomb like that, hewn out of the rock, would have been a very expensive proposition. “Therefore because of the Jewish day of preparation, since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.” Jesus finished the work of a new creation. If any one is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away, and behold, new things have come.

So, now He would rest as the Sabbath was about to begin. Then, on the third day, He would rise from the dead. Let me point out something here. A lot of people are troubled with this idea of three days and three nights, thinking He was going to in the grave three days and three nights, just as Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights. How, then, could He have been crucified on Friday and raised from the dead on Sunday, if it is supposed to be three days and three nights? The answer to that is that is a Jewish idiom. There are a number of texts, for example, in Esther, which talk about how they prayed for three days and three nights, and then it says, “On the third day.” Here is how it worked. In the Jewish reckoning, and it is even in the Talmud, a portion of a day shall be reckoned as a whole.

So, you had a portion of the first day, all of the second day, and a portion of the third day. That is three days and three nights in the Jewish idiom.

So, this indicates a Friday crucifixion and I think it holds best with the text. Now that we have tied these threads together, are there any closing questions? .

(Q)(A): No, He did not die of asphyxiation, but rather He gave up His spirit. Asphyxiation, that is to say, the inability to breathe, would finally take over. A person could only hold themselves up so long. Typically the victim would die from an inability to breathe. This could often take many hours and the Jews, knowing this, had to hasten that process because they wanted the bodies off before sunset because that was the beginning of a high day and it was associated with the Sabbath connected to the Passover. .

(Q)(A): Yes, He chose to die. I think that is why the Centurion said, when he saw the way Jesus died, “Surely, this Man is the Son of God.” My point is that a Centurion, who does the grisly work of execution again, and again, and again, said, basically, that this one is different. He never saw anyone die as this Man died. You see the point there?

So, that is an extra addition that would intimate that Jesus, having said it was finished, then said, with aloud voice, “Into Your hands I commend My spirit.” Then He breathed His last. Again, I think it illustrates the point that, “No one takes My life from Me. I have the authority to pick it up and I have the authority to lay it down.” I think there is a consistency about that and it would make perfect sense. He did die a real death, but He died volitionally, not as a tragedy, but as a Savior. He came for this purpose and it was His submission to His Father’s will so we can now actually have a relationship with God. Keep in mind that Christ did not die for our sins merely to cleanse our sins. That is the basis on which He can now have a fellowship with us. The cleansing of sin is needful, but that is only the means by which He could be restored to an intimacy with us. Do you see that point? It is the means for the restoration of a right relationship. We now have peace with God, before we did not. .

(Q)(A): That is correct. The very time was not accidental. He died at the very time when the Passover lambs were being offered. It was even said in Exodus 12 that it would be in the afternoon, and so it on the same day and at the same hour and it is no accident. He had authority to lay it down. He also had the authority to take it up, which we will see next week in John 20. .

Let me close, now, in a prayer. Father, we thank You for Your goodness, Your grace, Your love, this inexpressible gift is beyond our ability to really comprehend, but we want to thank You again for the imperishable and infinite gift of forgiveness through this price that was paid through the blood of the sinless One, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. I pray that we would respond. I pray that if any of us don’t know Him that tonight would be the night we would come to respond to His gift and invite Him into our lives, thanking Him for the freedom and forgiveness of sins, and for coming into an intimate relationship with Him. For those of us who have done that, I pray that we might press on to a heart of gratitude and of discipleship, that we might become conformed to the image of Your Son. We pray in His name. Amen.

Let’s begin in a prayer. Lord, we give You thanks for this evening and pray that You would guide our thoughts. In Christ’s name, Amen.

We are up to John chapter 20 in our study and we are considering tonight the reality of the resurrection. That the resurrection is an essential part of the Christian message is evident throughout the New Testament. The resurrection chapter, in 1^st Corinthians, is an extended illustration of that thought. In 1^st Corinthians 15, Paul speaks of the Gospel, which He preached to them, and which he says, “I delivered to you,” verse 3, “as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until

Now, but some have fallen asleep; then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles; and last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also.” The argument is that the resurrection is a factual reality and that there are many witnesses who saw it, and on many occasions during the 40 days of appearances prior to His ascension to His Father, and that the resurrection is the basis, really, of our hope. He goes on to say in that same chapter, in verse 12, “Now if Christ is preached, that He has been raised form the dead, how do some among you say there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain.”

Then he goes on to describe that if Christ has not been raised, then, “Your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins.” I really find it hard to imagine how people profess to be Christian ministers actually deny that there was a resurrection. They make it some spiritual thing, but it is difficult to see words being more plain and clear then what Paul outlines in 1^st Corinthians 15. It is a worthless faith if Jesus really died and never came back. It is a worthless faith if it is just some symbolic idea. What kind of thing is that? Either He did or He didn’t appear to them. Either He was raised or He was not raised. Don’t give me some nonsense about some spiritual apparition or we can believe it in some sort of ‘faith’ way, because that is not worthy of the dignity of the Christian faith.

The Christian faith stands and falls on the resurrection. It is the central theme in terms of our evidences and we see throughout the Apostolic preaching of the Gospel in the Book of Acts that it is the essential theme throughout that book. The resurrected Christ is the centrality of their sermons and messages. It is a foundational doctrine and it proves that Christ was the Son of God. In Acts chapter two, Paul’s great sermon on the day of Pentecost, illustrates this very thing. In verses 32 through 36, it reads, “This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses.” Remember He is speaking this in Jerusalem, in the city where this resurrection took place. If it were, in fact, a false account, there would be too many witnesses who could controvert the evidence. If they could have produced some body, the body of Christ, they could have immediately dispelled this allusion that Christ was raised and that would have eliminated the whole threat of Christianity.

They were fearful about that. They set guards at the tomb to prevent His body being stolen away. The interesting irony is that they played into God’s hands because by setting the guards there and actually sealing the stone, they actually made the case of the resurrection a great deal more powerful than it ever would have been if they had not. We know exactly what was going on there and the case is very strong. The three basic resources for the development of the evidences of the resurrection are these: The evidence of the empty tomb; the evidence that Jesus was really dead; and that He appeared again to His disciples on numerous occasions. A fourth one that is often used is the changed life of the disciples; how this band of men are now suddenly people who preach only a few weeks later with a tremendous boldness. We are going to see in John 20, in our account, that they are hiding and are afraid of getting caught.

Now, only a few weeks later, after the resurrection, there they are preaching boldly, in the very city of the resurrection. Paul makes it clear, in Romans chapter one that this is also the foundation of the Christian message. In verse three Paul says, “Concerning His Son, who was born a descendant of David according to the flesh, who was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord.” He was declared to be the Son of God with power, and it was the resurrection that made that declaration clear. Furthermore, if you continue on in Romans, and turn to chapter four, verses 24 and 25, we see Paul speak about, “Those who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He who was delivered over because of our transgressions, and was raised because of our justification.” Again, this is central to the theology of the New Testament. Christ is also seen as the sanctifier, if you turn this time to Romans chapter six, and look at verses four through ten, Paul says the resurrection is actually the template, the exemplar, of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

As he says in verse four, “We have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. If we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection.” Then he goes on to discuss the implications of that and says, “Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death is no longer master over Him. The death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.” He is also seen, because He is resurrected, in Romans chapter eight, verse 34, as our interceder. “Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also interceded for us.”

So, Christ died for us, was raised from the dead, and now He is ascended to the right hand of the Father, and there He interceded for us, on our behalf. So, clearly, there is so much about this theme of the resurrection throughout the New Testament. One last reference I will give you contexturalizing this is Paul’s sermon on Mars Hill, in Acts, chapter seventeen. Near the end of this sermon he speaks about the fact of, “Having overlooked the times of ignorance,” verse 30, “God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.”

So, Jesus, he says, is going to be the judge of all men. Of course, when he speaks to the Greeks about the idea of the resurrection of the dead, you know their philosophy, it is pretty dualistic, “Some began to sneer, but others said, ‘We shall hear you again concerning this’. So Paul went out of their midst. But some men joined him and believed,” so those were the responses. Some sneered and rejected it, some said they would consider it some more, and others believed right away. I think a lot of people fit in that second category. I’ll be honest with you, it takes many exposures, multiple exposures, to this message before it begins to grip us and we understand its implications. It is so contrary to human reasoning. It is so counter-intuitive that you have to hear the Gospel many times before it begins to sink in. In my own experience, when I have taught, say, the Gospel of John, or the book of Romans, eventually little lights start to come on. Many involved can’t say exactly when it happened, but suddenly they realized they were believing it. Some people know exactly when they came to faith, others can’t tell you precisely when, but the issue is not to identify the moment, the issue is where you are in your relationship with Christ.

So, from the beginning, the enemies of the Lord tried to deny the historic significance of the resurrection. This truth was not understood immediately by Jesus’ followers, and we will see this very clearly as we look at this account. But, it will make a radical difference in their lives. In John chapter 20, we move from tears to joy. In verses one to eighteen in particular, and it begins, “Now on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb, while it was still dark, and saw the stone already taken away from the tomb. So she ran and came to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved,” and I take that to be John Himself, “and said to them, ‘They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb and we do not know where they have laid Him’.”

So, in the first two verses of John 20, then, we see that the women were planning to go the tomb. Actually, if you compare this with the Synoptics, and turn with me to Mark chapter 16 for just a moment, there is a parallel passage here, but it reads a little differently. “When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James, and Salem bought spices so that they might come and anoint Him. Very early on the first day of the week they came to the tomb when the sun had risen. They were saying to one another, ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb’?” It then goes on to describe what they did. And in the Lukan account, it is very similar as well. Those accounts in the Synoptics, namely Mark and Luke, indicate that there were several women who went. But, if you read John’s account, it only mentions Mary Magdalene. I think it is actually simple to harmonize those accounts, because what we need to see is that Mary Magdalene evidently went ahead to the tomb and left before the other women arrived. What is one of the evidences for that, by the way? When the others got there, what was the situation, in terms of the sun? It said the sun had just risen. In the John test it says it was still dark. My own view of the Gospels is that they can all be harmonized; though there are some tough passages.

Particularly, they are challenged on the resurrection appearances, but, frankly, there are clear ways of harmonizing those accounts. For example, one mentions that there was an angel, our text, here, will mention two angels, at the head and at the foot. Well, if there were two angels, there certainly was one angel. It doesn’t say there was only one angel. The point is simply this; the emphasis in one of the narratives is on the prominent angel, the one who spoke. You see where I am going with this? If the one said there was only one angel there and the other said there were two, that is a contradiction. But there is no contradiction. Again, it is the sort of thing that really speaks for the evidence of the Gospel writers as first-hand narratives because, frankly, they were not in collusion with one another. It is the same kind of thing you would expect to see if there were four witnesses to an accident on Peachtree and each witness was on a different corner. You would get four different interpretations but they would overlap in the center and you could figure out what happened. They would be truly honest people, reporting what they saw, and you would get different nuances to the same event. This is precisely what we see here in the Gospels.

Now, Joseph of Arimathea, we saw in John 19, as well as Nicodemus, had been forced by circumstances to prepare Jesus’ body in haste. If you go back to chapter 19, and look at verse 38, “After these things Joseph of Arimathea, being a disciple of Jesus, but a secret one for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus; and Pilate granted permission. So he came and took away the body. Nicodemus, who had first come to Him by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds weight. So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen wrappings with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews.” They placed it in a new tomb that had never been used.

So, what we have is a rather hasty situation because they needed to bury Him before that Sabbath began, which was at sundown. A day went from sundown to sundown, and so they had to it quickly and the women apparently wanted to complete the work and that is why they came early on the first day of the week after the Sabbath was over. They could not do anything on the Sabbath; it would have been considered work, so they waited until the first day of the week, which was Sunday. They came very early and on the way there they were wondering who was going to roll away the stone. They had no way to roll it open themselves. They were hoping the small band of soldiers would be there. Of course, when the earthquake began, the Roman soldiers ran off.

So, when the women got there the soldiers were gone, the seal had been broken, and the tomb was exposed because the stone had been rolled away. Mary did not go inside. Instead she saw the open tomb and the text tells us that she ran to Simon Peter and, I take it, to John, and told them they had taken the body away. She assumed that someone had stolen the body.

So, Peter and John took a risk by running into enemy territory to return to the tomb. Look at verse three, “So Peter and the other disciple went forth, and they were going to the tomb. The two were running together; and the other disciple ran ahead faster than Peter and came to the tomb first; and stooping and looking in, he saw the linen wrappings there, but he did not go in. And so Simon Peter also came following him, and entered the tomb; and he saw the linen wrappings lying there.” This is an interesting detail, “and the face-cloth which had been on His head, not lying with the linen wrappings, but rolled up in a place by itself. So the other disciple who had first come to the tomb then also entered, and he saw and believed. For as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that He must rise again from the dead. So the disciples went away to their own houses.”

The issue here is that they are confused. They still don’t get that what Jesus said over and over again was true. Remember how often he told them, especially as the time drew near, that the Son of Man is going to be betrayed, spat upon, and crucified, but He will rise on the third day. Recall with what clarity He did that, but the only part they wanted to hear was the stuff about the Kingdom. They selective heard the things they did like and sort of let the rest go in one ear and out the other. We all do that; we all have the ability to be very selective in what we are hearing. We tend, if we are not careful, to remember in our own best interest. By the way, your memory is highly selective.

I take a one-day retreat every quarter. I go off to a quiet, 175-acre farm and I go on long walks and all I can hear are the insects, the birds, and the wind in the trees. It is lush and beautiful. I will reflect on where I have been and where I think I am and where I think I am going. I highly recommend getting away by yourself, out of your routine, for a day. It will do you enormous good, I promise. You will come a better understanding about yourself and your own journey in that one day than you would in several years because you are alone, with no TV, telephone, newspaper, no anything. It is just you and God in the natural environment. It is a powerful thing. The point is this, in spite of the many times Jesus told them, they couldn’t understand what was going to happen. I must say, as well, this was faith-based, but it was still not enough. It has to be based on the revelations from God. If you turn back with me to John chapter two, verse 22, it says, “When He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He said this; and they believed the Scriptures and the word which Jesus had spoken.” It is one thing to use evidence, it is another thing to use the authority of Scripture.

There is another example of this in John chapter 12, verse 16. Here it says, “These things His disciples did not understand at the first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things were written of Him,” that is to say in the Hebrew Bible, “and that they had done these things to Him.” In this case it refers to a prophecy made in Zechariah chapter nine, about Him coming seated on a donkey. Yet another example is John 14:26, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.” There is a need, not just for empirical evidence, but to contexturalize it in Scripture. I wrote a book called I’m Glad You Asked, and in one chapter it discusses whether the Bible is trustworthy, and I highlight the many prophecies and discuss the Old and New Testament fulfillment’s and how they were very specifically and graphically fulfilled. Returning to our text

Now, and verse 11, “But Mary was standing outside the tomb weeping.” The other disciples had gone away to their own homes. She stayed there, but the others were confused. It was strange to them that He just disappeared. Remember that there was perhaps a hundred pounds of spices in His shroud, and it couldn’t be unwrapped with damage. It would have been like an empty cocoon. It was exactly in its place, as if it had not been disturbed. There was no way the body could get out of there without leaving physical evidence. You see my point here? Obviously, it was the resurrection of Christ, not leaving a body behind, but the transformation of the old into the new. That is the radical change. (Q)(A): Why would the disciples make such a fantastic claim? The fact is that the disciples had nothing to gain by making a fantastic claim about the resurrection. They had everything to lose. Furthermore, the Romans, who would have wanted to find the body, could not produce it. It is not a matter of fulfilling expectations. That is the last thing the expected. Even seeing the empty tomb, even seeing that the body had somehow disappeared without any physical evidence, they were still not quite sure what to make of it. They had not contexturalized in the context of God’s revelation.

So, continuing on, “Mary was standing outside the tomb weeping; and so as she wept, she stooped and looked into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had been lying.” Again, we have a movement from radical weeping and despair to joy. What we have here are angels that are very reminiscent of something in the Old Testament. What do they remind you of in the Old Testament? Do you recall, in Exodus chapter 25, when they were given instructions how to build the Ark of the Covenant, and then put the Mercy Seat on top of that, what went on top that Mercy Seat? Two Cherubim facing one another. My own view of this is that it is reminiscent of those two Cherubim and even specifically mentions where they were. One, it says, was at the head and the other at the feet. Here is the interesting analogy. The Mercy Seat is no longer there and instead a new Mercy Seat has been provided. In other words, in this new Ark, if you can see the analogy here, Jesus is flanked by the angels and that is where the Mercy Seat of God is now and we now find forgiveness and satisfaction there. Remember when the tax collector asked God to be merciful to him? The word he used was ‘heliosmos’, which means be propitious to me. It is intriguing how that is.

So, we have a new Mercy Seat, in effect, which we see in this text. And so, they asked her a question, ‘“Woman, why are you weeping’? She said to them, ‘Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him’. When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and did not know that it was Jesus.” Clearly, He appeared in a form that she did not recognize. “Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking’?”

So, He asked her the very same question that the angels asked. “She said to Him, “Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have laid Him, and I will take Him away’.” She mistook Him for somebody else, maybe the gardener, and had no idea that it was her Lord. We see this elsewhere, don’t we? Remember on the way to Emmaus, He walks along side two of the disciples and they don’t recognize Him? It is very interesting. He acted as if He was going to go further, but they invited Him in to eat with them. Recall, al

So, at the dinner, when Jesus lifts up His eyes to heaven and breaks the bread in a characteristic way that was unique to Him, suddenly they realized who it was. He allowed Himself to be seen, and what took place? He disappeared, just like that.

So, He could manifest Himself, even in another form to those two disciples, as it tells us in another Gospel. In His resurrection body, He is capable of manifesting in any form He wishes because, in a very real way, that resurrection body is far more awesome than we might suppose. I invite you to compare, where John was leaning on Jesus’ chest in the Upper Room, and when John sees Jesus in Revelation chapter one, what happens?

Now, he sees Him in heaven, here, not on earth. He sees Him in His true glory and he falls on his face like a dead man.

So, evidently, during His forty days of appearances, Jesus would not manifest His true glory and thus He could be confused for another person. But, when Paul, or Saul was his name at that time, saw Him it was in the heavenlies. And, when John sees Him, what was his response? He saw something brighter than the sun. That is actually what His resurrected body is like, rather than just that of a mere man. He is capable of adapting, just as angels are capable of appearing as men. Or, they can also appear as these extraordinary beasts, with eyes and wings all around, and with fire and flame. I have told you this before, but one thing angels never appear as, never, is men with wings, which is the main way we represent them. I don’t understand how we got that so wrong. They are never men with wings. They are either men with bizarre features, or they are men, but they are nothing in between. Keep in mind, though, they are spiritual beings and so they don’t have a physical form.

So, there is much to this, and to be perfectly frank with you, I am intrigued by the idea of the resurrected body. The older I get, the more interested I am on that subject. I find it to be deeply mysterious. In fact, my very first book had a chapter on the nature of the resurrected body. It can out in 1975, and was called, God, I Don’t Understand and one of the mysteries I discussed was the resurrection body and I explored the idea of what that would be like and realized that in one respect it is recognizably similar but in other ways it is radically and completely different. And

So, let’s move on with the text. Recall that Jesus asked the question, “Why are you weeping?” She answered, and then Jesus responded, ‘“Mary’. She turned and said to Him in Hebrew, ‘Rabboni’, which means teacher. Jesus said to her, ‘Stop clinging to Me for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to My brethren and say to them, ‘I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God’. Mary Magdalene came, announcing to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’, and that He had said these things to her.” I should point out something. The “stop clinging to me” does not mean that He could not be touched. If you recall, in verse 27, Jesus invited Thomas to reach with his finger and see His hands. What He is saying is not to cling to Him, because He is no longer going to be in the form He was in before. He is ascending to His Father, but will always be with them, just not in a localized sort of presence. That is what He saying.

In fact, I would invite you see, in 2^nd Corinthians chapter five, this very theme of how we no longer see Him as He was. In verse 16, “Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the Flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer.” In other words, we once knew Him in the flesh, but we now no longer know Him in this way. We see Him now resurrected and sitting at the right hand of the Father. Paul goes on to say, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” By the way, one application of that is not to regard people as you normally would do; see them differently, as people who are going to be immortal beings. See them as God sees them and you will have a different attitude. Even the poorest person on this planet, even the most ignominious person, has a greater dignity than you imagine. Let’s continue.

My point here is that their sorrow is being transformed into joy and I want to say that the sorrow of a Christian must be different from the hopeless sorrow of this world. The verses I use for this are 1^st Thessalonians 4:13-18, where he says, “We do not grieve as those who have no hope.” We may grieve, but we don’t lose hope. In fact, 1^st Peter 1:3 says, “We have been born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” You now embrace a hope that is alive. It will never fade away and it will never die. All of us, I think, have embraced false hopes, have we not? Hopes that finally died on us, shattered dreams; but here is a living hope that will never die, never be corrupted, and can not be taken away. That is a very powerful hope we have to contexturalize life in this world. I think that we need the broader context, because, frankly, life is not easy. Most of you may have noticed this already. Life is not easy and there are many challenges and pitfalls, but don’t just look at the story of life on earth as the whole story. This is preparatory for our eternal citizenship in heaven. This is as nothing in comparison for what God has planned for us.

So, I often quote that Romans 8:18 passage, where Paul says, “I consider the sufferings of the present time not worthy to be compared to the glory that is to be revealed to us.”

So, the suffering is nothing. It is brief, but glory is eternal. Now, let’s move on with verse 19. We see that the disciples are moving from a sphere of great fear and now they are becoming more bold, more courageous. “So when it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and when the doors were shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst, and said, ‘Peace be with you’. When He had said this, He showed then His hands and His side. The disciples then rejoiced when they saw the Lord. So Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you; as the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” Let me stop here for just a moment. The news that Jesus had risen from the dead at first was spread with some hesitation, but then with greater enthusiasm.

There were five resurrection appearances of Christ on that very first day of the week, if you put the Synoptic accounts together with the Gospel of John. He appeared to Mary Magdalene and we just read about that one in John 20. He also appeared to the other women and Matthew 28 tells us about that. He appeared to Peter, according to 1^st Corinthians 15 and Luke 24. He appeared to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus on that same day. Fifth, He appeared to the disciples, but without Thomas. On the next Sunday the disciples would meet again and this time Thomas would be in their midst. I want to point out something about this idea of the first day of the week. It has tremendous theological significance. My own view is that Sunday is not the Christian Sabbath. Many hold to that notion, but I don’t think it is right. The idea of Sunday being the Christian Sabbath is a theme that we see in Chariots of Fire, when Eric Liddle said that he could not run on Sunday because it was God’s day. There is nothing that teaches this. As to the Sabbath, the Sabbath celebrates God’s finished work of Creation, as we see in Genesis chapter two.

So, He created the heavens and the earth and on the seventh day, what did He do? He rested. The seventh day is the Sabbath. But, the Lord’s day, the first day of the week. Commemorates Christ’s finished work of redemption.

So, everything is different. No longer do we just commemorate the Creation, now we commemorate the new Creation. So, the Lord’s day becomes very significant. God the Father worked for six days and then rested; God the Son suffered on the Cross for six hours and then rested.

Now, going back to the Sabbath in the Old Testament, the Sabbath was given, in the Hebrew Bible, as a day for physical rest and reflection and refreshment, both for men and for their animals. Guess what happened, though? The Jews, in their traditions, decided to turn it into a laborious day in which they had to assemble and worship and they turned it into a day of bondage rather than a day of blessing. Instead of being a day when they could have enjoyed one another, they turned it into a ritualistic system and it is not found in the Torah that this was required. The Sabbath was not repeated for the Church to obey. Nine out of the ten Commandments are specifically repeated, but the fourth one is not repeated.

Now, there are people who hold different views on this, and the Seventh Day Adventists hold very strongly that the practice of the Sabbath is required on Saturday. My own view is that it misses the theological implications of the resurrection and it is not something that I think can be demonstrated from Scripture. The early Church evidently met on the first day of the week. Turn with me to Acts 20:7, where it says, “On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul began talking to them.” And if we look at 1^st Corinthians 16:1-2, there is another hint about this. “Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I directed the churches of Galatia, so do you also. On the first day of every week each one of you is to put aside and save, as he may prosper, so that no collections be made when I come.” This implies, again, that they would meet on that first day, just as the disciples met those two days. Al

So, in the earliest Church traditions, the Patristics talk about how this was the case. You need to understand how radical this was for a Jew. For them, to no longer practice the Saturday Sabbath is no minor thing. In fact, the only way I can account for it is the resurrection, because there is no way you could take a religious Jew and cause him to switch from the Sabbath to the first day of the week unless there was a clear warrant for it, namely the resurrection of Christ. Concerning the question about whether it is mandated in the new Testament, I don’t see any mandates, and furthermore I see passages that indicate there are ways of understanding days and seasons that frankly give us latitude. Paul says in Romans 14:5, “One person regards one day above another, another regards every day alike. Each person must be fully convinced in his own mind.” He is saying that some people will scruples about a particular day and others will not. What he says is if you don’t have scruples, don’t judge those who do, and if you do have scruples, don’t judge those who don’t. See the idea there? This is a matter of freedom or liberty. Let’s look at another text as well. Turn to Colossians 2, and there is a similar theme. In verses 16 to 23, when Paul says, “Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day-things which are a mere shadow of the things to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.” In other words, don’t let anyone judge you concerning those kinds of things, especially

So, as here he writing to Gentiles. Having said all this, I want to back and say something slightly different. I will say that there is a Sabbath principle that should be applied. That is to say, we all need rest and leisure. I believe there are different ways in which we do it. Each day should have a Sabbath moment, if you stop and think about it because you can have ‘mini-Sabbaths’ at various times during the day. On a weekly basis you have a longer Sabbath and you want to allocate a longer period of time for reflection and many people will associate that with going to church. You could have a different monthly conviction, or, as I do, have a quarterly conviction, where I go off for a full day. And, annually, I think it wise for us to have even a longer time, if you want to look back on the year just passed and reflect and anticipate the year ahead. That would be your annual Sabbath. Remember what they did, beyond the annual Sabbath? They went beyond that didn’t they? Every seven years they were supposed to take an entire year off. They never did it, though, they never once practiced the Sabbatical year. Isn’t that sad? If only they had obeyed God, their lives would have been so much better. They couldn’t trust Him. They could trust Him for one day out of seven, but they couldn’t trust Him to provide for them for a whole year. The irony is, as you k

Now, is that the Sabbath principle was such that the land enjoyed its Sabbath. For 490 years they were in the land and refused to recognize the ‘one year in seven’. How many does that work out to be? 490 divided by 7 is 70 years. How many years did they spend in Babylonian captivity? 70 years, wasn’t it, and the prophet said, “The land will get its Sabbaths.” You see the point here? They tried to do an end-run around God because they thought God would not provide for them. The irony is that they actually made their lives much more miserable. Had they only listened, how much greater would His gift to them have been? Imagine, every seven years, a whole year off just to enjoy one another and to enjoy and reflect and practice the presence of God. (Q)(A): Yes, there are certain numbers, 40 and 7 and 70 that are found throughout Scripture. The 40 days refers to the time Moses spent fasting up on the mountain. You have the theme, al

So, of Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness. It seems to be a decisive period. Very often it can be a testing time. The 40 day period we now celebrate as Lent. It is supposed to be 40 days of reminding about the grace of God and our reflection upon that. By the way, there originally a longer period than the 7^th year. Every 7 times 7^th year was to be the Jubilee. All land was to revert back to its original ownership. You know they wouldn’t have done that. But, I digress. Going back to our text, in verse 19, Jesus says to them, “Peace be with you,” because He knew they were afraid. I want you to notice something here, because it would certainly make me afraid. It says, “It was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors were shut where the disciples were for fear of the Jews. Jesus came and stood in their midst”

Now, how did He pull that one off? The doors were locked. He walked right through them. Or, another way of putting is that He just manifested Himself. Suddenly they look up, and there He is. You see the point here? That is why He said, “Peace be with you.” Continuing on, “And when He said this, He showed them both hands and His side. The disciples then rejoiced when they saw the Lord.” In other words, now they knew. This was not some mere ghost or phantom they were seeing. Elsewhere He says, “A ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see that I have.” (Q)(A): Yes, if you recall, in Luke 24, He actually eats some fish and bread with them, so that is pretty specific. A ghost doesn’t eat.

So, there is a lot of specific evidence. So, He assures them, and then in verse 21, He commissions them, “So Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you; as the Father has sent Me, I also send you’.” This is parallel to the great commission in Matthew 28.

So, he is giving them a privilege and a responsibility of fulfilling His place in the world, and of Him living in us and through us to accomplish His work through His people. He is entrusting us, then, with His word, and he is entrusting us with His work.

Now, in verse 22, “And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’.” Now, not only does He commission them, what does He do? He empowers them to fulfill that which they need to do. Without the Holy Spirit they would not be able to fulfill the commission, but now He empowers them. He does the same thing to you. He reveals Himself to you, He calls you, He commissions you, and then he empowers you. He gives you a particular purpose and function in this world. It is through the gift of the Spirit that empowers us that we are able to accomplish spiritual fruit, bearing spiritual fruit that will abide.

So, recall the breath of God in the first Creation, and what did that mean? By the way, keep in mind that in both Hebrew and Greek, the word for ‘breath’ also means ‘spirit’. In Hebrew it is ‘ruwach’ and in the Greek it is ‘pneuma’. The breath of God in the first Creation, what did it mean? What form of life was it? It was biological life, life that all people have, until they die. But then, the believers would receive the baptism of the Spirit at Pentecost, and be empowered for ministry, and the breath of Christ in the new Creation means spiritual life. The spirit had dwelt with them in the person of Christ, but now He would be in them. John 14:17 talks about that. Looking at verse 23, Jesus says, “If you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they have been retained.”

Now, this is a complex verb structure and in reality it should be translated in the following way; If you forgive the sins of any, their sins shall have been forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they shall have been retained. It is not to say that they provide forgiveness, because they don’t have that authority, but they can proclaim God’s forgiveness. There is a difference. They are not actually providing forgiveness, but they are proclaiming God’s forgiveness. They are still being given an authoritative position. In verses 24 and 25 we see “Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples were saying to him, ‘We have seen the Lord’. But he said to them, ‘Unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe’.”

Now, doubt is often an intellectual problem, isn’t it? But, unbelief, unlike doubt, is a moral issue. Unbelief is simply that you will not believe. Now it is more a matter of the will. Doubt relates more to the mind; unbelief relates more to the will. Doubt says I can’t believe, there are too many problems. Unbelief says I will not believe unless you give me the evidence I want, and on my terms. You see the difference? I have to say, in verses 26 and 27, I am amazed at what happens. “After eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors having been shut, and stood in their midst and said, ‘Peace be with you’. Then He said to Thomas, ‘each here with your finger and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing’.”

Jesus graciously stoops to our level of experience to lift us up to where we need to be. As a principle in life, He will often, in His grace, stoop down to raise us up. He doesn’t have to. He does the same thing with Gideon. Remember Gideon wanted to have it both ways, in Judges chapter six? I have actually heard people promote this as a good way of discerning God’s will. I don’t think the fleece idea is a good way of discerning God’s will. Gideon says to God, “If you deliver Israel through me, as You have spoken, behold, I will put a fleece of wool on the threshing floor. If there is dew on the fleece only, and it is dry on all the ground, then I will know that You will deliver Israel through me, as You have spoken. And it was so. When he arose the next morning and squeezed the fleece, he drained the dew from the fleece, a bowl full of water.” But that wasn’t enough for him. “Then Gideon said to God, ‘Don’t let You anger burn against me that I may speak once more; please let me make a test once more with the fleece, now let it be dry only on the fleece, and let there be dew on all the ground’. God did so that night; for it was dry only on the fleece, and dew was on all the ground.” Don’t lay out a fleece.

Now, God was gracious to him. He should have whacked him for that. He already said one was enough. He is much more patient and the older I get the more impressed I am with the patience of God. Two of the things that have really grown in my understanding are God’s sovereignty and His patience. I am truly amazed at that.

Now, in verse 28 we see, “Thomas answered and said to Him, ‘My Lord and my God’. Jesus said to him, ‘Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed’.”

So, He accepts that worship. Finally, as we conclude our text, I want to suggest something about this. Everyone ultimately lives by faith. The issue is the object of your faith. Even the atheist walks by faith. You do understand that? They can not demonstrate their first principles. The issue is not how much faith you have, but what the object of that faith is. That is what makes the difference. That is why I use the analogy of the person who is terrified of flying and yet still gets on the plane; another person is quite used to it. One is fearful throughout the whole flight, and the other pays no attention. But, what happens to them? One had much faith and one had little faith. What is the outcome? They both get to the same destination. It wasn’t the amount of faith they had, it was the object of their faith. I recently saw Rain Man again, and I had forgotten how he refused to fly on a plane. The only plane he would fly on was Quantas, because they had never had an accident. But, there was no Quantas going where he needed to go. You see the point here?

So, Tom Cruise, as his brother, Charlie, is forced to drive him across the country. Now he won’t get on the interstate because of the accidents there. They go on side roads all the way and stay in fleabag motels for days and days. The point is the issue of faith. You don’t have to have a lot of faith, but you have to have some if you are going to put it in a particular object. Anyway, to verses 30 and 31, “Therefore any other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which re not written in this book; but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.” This is the purpose and this is the theme of this book. Faith comes from hearing, and from hearing the word of Christ. Salvation comes from faith, not seeing, and there are at least a hundred references in John alone on what it means to believe in Christ. The point is this, as we look at this concept, we see in John’s Gospel that in His word, His works, and His walk, He is who He claimed to be. He was either a deluded madman, or He was who He claimed to be. You have this marvelous exploration, where He offers the gift of eternal life. This is not a quantity of time, but a quality of life. That is what He is offering us. Next week we will complete our study of John.

(Q)(A): Yes, my own view about the shroud is that there is a lot of evidence for it, and the evidence is extremely impressive. Let me close in a prayer. Father, we thank You for this time and we ask that You would guide us in our thoughts and in our desires and that we would seek You and desire You above all else. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Let’s begin in prayer. Father we thank You for Your goodness toward us, and we ask that you would guide our thoughts. We pray in Christ’s name. Amen. We are completing our study of the Gospel of John tonight and are looking at chapter 21. Really, there is such an extraordinary truth in this Gospel that it is hard to do it justice by doing a chapter a week, but I have tried to distill the essence by doing an hour on every chapter and that is what we will seek to do tonight, keeping in mind that this now occurs during that forty days between Jesus’ resurrection and His ascension. Our Lord appeared and disappeared at will. The disciples never knew when He would appear, so that had to stay very alert. That is an interesting parallel with us, isn’t it? You never know when He will be coming, so we need to be alert for His coming. The point here is that one of the evidence’s for the resurrection was the multiple appearances, and often to many people at once. So, let’s take a look, first of all, at the first 11 verses, which concerns the issue of being ‘fishers of men’. This is an image they could understand, because seven of the twelve disciples were fishermen. So, there is an issue here of obedience and specifically obedience in the area of evangelism. That is to say, “follow Me and I will make you fishers of men,” was to make a claim that some change will take place in people’s lives. Let us first of all read these first verses in chapter 21. “After these things Jesus manifested Himself again to the disciples at the Sea of Tiberias,” which is another term for the Sea of Galilee, “and He manifested Himself in this way.” Let’s stop here for just a minute. What were they doing up there? We need to look for some parallel passages. For example, let me read to you Matthew chapter 26, verse 32, because they were up there for a reason. Jesus says to His disciples before His crucifixion, “After I have been raised I will go ahead of you to Galilee.” So, He is telling them that is where they are to meet Him. If you also compare this to Matthew chapter 28, verses seven through ten, and this is post-resurrection, you will see, “Go quickly and tell His disciples that He has risen from the dead; and behold, He is going ahead of you into Galilee, there you will see Him; behold, I have told you.” So, there is a very clear understanding that they would go on to Galilee. In Mark 16, it also says something similar, following His resurrection, in that account. In verse seven we see, “Go tell His disciples and Peter, He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see Him, just as He told you.” So, they are in obedience to God by going up to Galilee. Returning to our own text, in verse two, “Simon Peter, and Thomas called Didymus and Nathaniel of Cana in Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two others of the disciples were together. Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing’. They said to him, ‘We will also come with you’. They went out and got into the boat; and that night they caught nothing.” This has happened before, hasn’t it? Indeed, we see that there is going to be a parallel in this account, as we will see in the few verses. “But when the day was now breaking, Jesus stood on the beach; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.” Now, this is very reminiscent of Luke 5:1-11. Let’s go back to that text for just a moment. It is good to recall that account. “Now it happened that while the crowd was pressing around Him and listening to the word of God, He was standing by the lake of Gennesaret;” which is yet another name for the sea of Galilee, “an He saw two boats lying at the edge of the lake; but the fishermen had gotten out of them and were washing their nets. And He got into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, and asked him to put out a little way from the land. And He sat down and began teaching the people from the boat.” Right there, by the way, is an interesting thought. It is very clever, because water will amplify your voice. So, Jesus created a natural auditorium. It goes on to say, “ When He had finished speaking, He said to Simon, ‘Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch’. Simon answered and said, ‘Master, we worked hard all night and caught nothing, but I will do as You say and let down the nets’.” Even though he disagreed with Him, at least he was willing to do it. The point is that He is skeptical, but he is going to do it. A lot of times we will do the same thing. We will trust in Jesus for certain things in our lives, but rarely for our business. However, we make business decisions at our peril if we do not consult God in that decision-making process. The text continues, “When they had done this, they enclosed a great quantity of fish, and their nets began to break; so they signaled to their partners in the other boat for them to come and help them. And they came and filled both of the boats, so that they began to sink. But, when Simon Peter saw that, he fell down at Jesus’ feet, saying, ‘Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man, Lord’.” What does that mean? It means that he realizes that this is the power of God upon him. He knew there was no way this could have happened naturally. Not only the unusual circumstances, but the quantity, as well, was so great. He understood the implications of it and he was terrified because of the power of Jesus’ presence. “For amazement had seized him and all his companions because of the catch of fish which they had taken; and so also were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon, and Jesus said to Simon, ‘Do not fear, from now on you will be catching men’. When they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed Him.” This, then, got their attention. They dropped everything and went with Jesus. Sometimes in our lives, and you will never know what it will be, God will get our attention. Sometimes, I will speak about something, and you never know it will touch a person. Only God knows what each person needs to see and hear. But, as long as we are seeking, as long as we pursue Him, as long as we have an open heart, I believe we will find Him. It is when we close our eyes and our hearts to the evidence that we have a problem. But, when we are open to it, I believe God will ultimately show up and in a way in which we may not expect. So, the disciples did not recognize Jesus at first, because it goes on to tell us, in verse four, “Jesus stood on the beach, but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.” This is also reminiscent of Luke chapter 24, that great chapter about the two on the road to Emmaus. I always love that passage. In verse 16, “But their eyes were prevented from recognizing Him.” It was not until later on, during the breaking of the bread, that they knew who it was. Also, in John chapter 20, in verse 14, we have something very similar. “When she said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus.” Only when He spoke her name did she realize that it was Him. This reminds me, also, of a text that Jesus gives us, in Matthew chapter 11, which is an incredibly powerful claim, and which would make no sense, if He were merely a prophet. In verse 27, of Matthew 11, “All things have been handed over to me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.” If He doesn’t will it, you will not know Him. Now, this is a deep mystery, but He also knows the heart and also knows if a person is seeking Him. Those who seek will find; those who knock, it will be opened; those who ask it will be given to them. So, they did not recognize Him at first. Moving on, in verse five, “So Jesus said to them, ‘Children, you do not have any fish, do you’? They answered Him, ‘No’. And He said to them, ‘Cast the net on the right-hand side of the boat and you will find a catch’.” This has to really make them begin to wonder. Remember He said that He would meet them in Galilee. Here they are, trying all night long, as they did once before, to catch fish, but with no success. “So they cast and they were not able to haul it in because of the great number of fish.” Now, you can be sure that got their attention. “Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, ‘It is the Lord’. So when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put his outer garment on (for he was stripped for work), and threw himself into the sea.” Knowing what we know of Peter, that is exactly what we would expect him to do. The others would wait and bring the boat to shore, but Peter, he just jumps right in. That’s the way he was, very impetuous. In any case, all our efforts, apart from His direction and blessing, are useless. Even when you think you are in control, and you seek to do it without His authority and control, I believe, for various reasons, some people can be very successful and others can not, there is no obvious connect between righteousness and provision, no obvious connection between unrighteousness and loss, but all things equal you would do well to invite Him into your decision making process. I think it is very prudent to do that. You would also do well to acknowledge that He has expertise in all things, far greater than you might suppose you have. He knows the future, and knows your best interests better than you do. Now, it is an interesting text, then, because John was the first to realize that it was Jesus, and my suspicion is that it is because of chapter 13, verse 23. Why was John picking it up faster than any of the others? Well, in that verse we see, “There was reclining on Jesus’ bosom one of His disciples, whom Jesus loved.” Then go to John 19, verse 25 and 26, “Standing by the Cross of Jesus were His mother, and His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus then saw His mother and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, ‘Woman, behold your son’. Then He said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother’. From that hour the disciple took her into his own household.” In any case, what we see is that John knew Him best and he is the disciple who Jesus loved, because he followed Him harder than any other disciple. The more you pursue Him, the more He will manifest Himself to you. There is a connection between those two ideas. Let’s continue with the text. “But the other disciples came in the little boat, for they were not far from the land, but about 100 yards away, dragging the net full of fish. So when they got out on the land, they saw a charcoal fire already laid and fish placed on it and bread.” Jesus made breakfast for them in His resurrected body. Imagine that scene. He starts the fire, and He puts the fish on it. Where He gets the fish, I have no idea. Then He gets bread. So, “Jesus said to them, ‘Bring some of the fish which you have now caught’.” So, He is adding their fish to His fish, which is an interesting combination. The spiritual life is a divine-human process, it is not just one or the other. “Simon Peter went up and drew the net to land, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three; and although there were so many, the net was not torn.” Let go back for a moment to the text we just read from Luke chapter five, and, “The nets began to break,” but in this second fishing miracle, the net held fast. Do you see the idea there? During this present age, my view is that we do not know how many fish we have caught. It will often appear that our nets are breaking. But, here, at the end of the age, and we see the Lord, not one fish will be lost and we will discover how many there are. In other words, in this life you will have hidden impact. You will not know the fruits of your ministry and impact on other people. The ripple effect can go on and on. A fisherman, you see, catches living fish, but when he gets them, they die. That is pretty obvious. Now, let’s take the opposite. We are called to catch dead fish. Ephesians 2:1 says, You were dead in your trespasses and sins.” So, we are called, unlike the other kind of fishermen, to catch dead fish and when we do, they are made alive. They are made alive in Christ. There is a significant contrast between one and the other. Now, as I said before, probably seven out of the twelve disciples were fishermen and let’s look at some of the qualities of fishermen, especially at that time. They know how to work. They had courage to go out into deep water. They also had much patience and persistence. They knew how to cooperate with one another. They were skilled in using the equipment as well as in handling the boat. Now, in my mind, those are good examples for us to follow as we seek to catch fish for Christ. That is to say, have the courage and the faith to go out into the deep, patience and persistence, co-operating with one another, and to be skilled in knowing the objections that people raise and for looking for opportunities. And, you need to know your ‘equipment’. So, I am suggesting that verses one through eleven highlight this idea of obedience and particularly within the context of evangelism. Now, let’s move on and take a look at verses 12 to 17. Here we are going to see that we are shepherds. The real issue here is also going to be related to the issue of love. So, there is a change here, from being fishermen, to moving into the realm of the shepherd or having a pastoral impact on other people. These are some scenes that would be very reminiscent of Peter. In verse 12, “Jesus said to them, ‘Come and have breakfast’. None of the disciples ventured to question Him, ‘Who are You’? knowing that it was the Lord. Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and the fish likewise. This is now the third time that Jesus was manifested to the disciples, after He was raised from the dead.” So, Jesus makes their breakfast and then he feeds them. It is the idea that He is shepherding them and they are called, in turn, to shepherd others. Now we have this interesting commentary. “When they finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love Me more than those’? He said to Him, ‘Yes, Lord; You know that I love You’. Jesus said to him, ‘Tend My lambs’.” Let’s note some things that would be reminiscent to Peter in this text. The first thing would be the catch of fish. That is pretty obvious. The second thing would be the feeding of the multitudes. But, the thing that think most affected him was the charcoal fire. Why that? Because it was at a charcoal fire that he denied the Lord, in John 18:18. Now, think about that. Let’s go back to that text so you can have it fresh in your minds. “Now the slaves and the officers were standing there, having made a charcoal fire, for it was cold and they were warming themselves, and Peter was also with them, standing and warming himself.” We know that it was in that context that he denied the Lord three times. Now, I want to tell you, that when you see something like that, it can have a huge impact on you. His emotions, his denial, and even though we know this, Jesus had actually had a contact with him previously. If you go back to Luke 24:34, we are given the statement that Jesus apparently had encountered Peter before this particular event, up in Galilee. So, in that verse we see, “The Lord has really risen and appeared to Simon.” This was prior to them going north up to Galilee. So, Jesus did appear personally to Simon. Sometimes you are given the impression this is the first time Jesus talked to him. I don’t think that is the case. Also, if you go to chapter 15 of 1^st Corinthians, again you have the same notion here. In verse five we see, “After that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.” Cephas is another name for Peter and so He appeared to him before He appeared to the twelve. My own view here is that Peter had already met privately with Jesus and had dealt with the issue of Peter’s sins. But, Peter had denied the Lord publicly, and therefore it may have been public restoration that was required. My own thinking here is that a sin should be dealt with only to the extent that it is known. Private sins should be confessed in private; public sins confessed in public. I think sometimes people miss that idea. It depends upon the arena of influence. In any case, there is a kind of healing that takes place. For the three times that Jesus was denied by Peter, it is three times that Jesus commissions Peter to take up the mantle of being a shepherd of the sheep. You see the idea? That is not an accident. For each denial, there was an affirmation, which is very comforting to me. In my view there can sometimes be an issue of the healing of our emotions. Frankly, when we go through a painful experience, Peter would immediately have that kind of connection. You recall that Luke also mentions something that is very poignant and that is not mentioned in the other Gospels. At the very moment that Peter denied our Lord, Jesus was being led out and their eyes met. When they looked at each other at that pregnant moment, Peter wept bitterly. You see that idea? You have to connect all this together to see that he is wrestling with this very issue. There is a need for healing, then, that is implied in this text. Now, it is intriguing to me here that there are three invitations in the fourth Gospel. The first of those invitations is found in John 1:39. Jesus offers three invitations in this Gospel. In verse 39, His first encounter with the disciples, “He said to them, ‘Come, and you will see’.” His question was, “What do you seek?” I have told you before that is an incredibly important question. The first question that Jesus is recorded as asking is, “What are you looking for?” Can you imagine how significant that question is if you look at that issue? What you are looking for will determine what you find. Then if you go with me to chapter 7, verse 37, a second invitation is made. “Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.” So, it is an invitation to “Come to Me and drink.” And finally, the third invitation is in our text tonight, “Come and have breakfast.” And so, there is the overall idea of “See where I am staying,” and “Come and drink,” and “Come and eat.” There is an intimacy of communion here, and table fellowship is always a critical theme in Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation. The idea of a covenant meal had huge import and that would often be done in a way to confirm a relationship, or covenant, that would be made. One of the most intriguing chapters in the Pentitude is where the 70 elders went up on the mountain with Moses. What happened there? These elders went up on the mountain to meet with the Lord. And there, it says, they ate and drank before the Lord. Isn’t that intriguing? Where did it come from? God provided it for them; they were not planning to eat up there. But, it says right there that they ate and drank before the Lord. It is this true idea of intimacy. What does Jesus promise? “I will not drink from the fruit of the vine until I drink with you anew in My Father’s Kingdom.” There is also the image, in Revelation 19, of the marriage banquet and the feast of the Lamb. There are all these images that run through the Scriptures, so this is a very significant indicator that this is a powerful closure, a covenant meal, that is taking place in this regard. Of course, the other important one was the Last Supper. As we look at this here, I see something interesting vis a vis Peter’s spiritual needs. Before he cares for his spiritual needs, he takes care of his physical needs, to dry off, get warm, and to satisfy his hunger. My own view is that the spiritual is more important that the physical, but caring for the physical can prepare the way for a spiritual ministry. That is to say, our Lord does not emphasize the soul at the expense of the body. I am very much a believer that there is a need for social action as well as the Gospel, and I believe they should be connected when we are involved in feeding the poor. In my view, I would not want to be involved in merely making people comfortable on the way to a Christless eternity. You see my point there? You can make them more comfortable in this short world, but without connecting that with the Gospel you are not connecting. One of the reasons I like the Salvation Army is because they still faithfully connect the two. Many, many organizations, the Red Cross for example, somehow along the way lost the spiritual side of their help. Remember the original three words the YMCA used? “Body, Mind and Spirit.” Soul and spirit have dropped off and now it is only body. Somehow, the invisible has been occluded by the visible. Again, I have told you this so many times, but nature eats up grace. What Francis Schaeffer meant by that is that the natural, the visible, the physical, these things become so pressing on our consciousness that we can no longer see the invisible, the supernatural, or that which is spiritual. That is what I am saying here. There should be a connect between those two, in one way or another. You know, the issue here, which is key for all of us, is a love for Jesus. And so, “When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love Me more than these’?” What does He mean by ‘these’? Well, one possibility is that He meant the fish. My inclination is that ‘these’ refers to the other disciples. Here is why I think that is true. Go back with me to two texts. First of all, John 13:37 tells us, “Peter said to Him, ‘Lord, why can I not follow You now? I will lay down my life for You’.” Now, let’s connect that with something in Matthew that is even more obvious. In Matthew chapter 26, verse 33, we see a telling statement. “But Peter said to Him, ‘Even though all may fall away because of You, I will never fall away’.” The hint there is he loves Him more than the others. You see the idea? (Q)(A): We have three options for understanding that. Do you love Me more than the other disciples love Me? Do you love Me more than you love the other disciples? Or, do you love Me more than your career? The fish symbolize that point. My own guess is that He asking him if he loves Him more than the other disciples. But, here is what it comes down to, the practical application is always the same. The key for us is whether our love for Jesus exceeds our love for anything else. That is why we have this series of questions going on here, ‘“Simon, son of John, do you love Me more than these’? He said to Him, ‘Yes Lord, You know that I love You’. He said to him, ‘Tend My lambs’.” So, that is the first commission. “He said to him again a second time, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love Me’? He said to Him, ‘Yes, Lord; You know that I love You’. He said to him, ‘Shepherd My sheep’.” There is the second commission. Finally, there is the third, “He said to him the third time, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love Me’? Peter was grieved because he said to Him the third time, ‘Do you love Me’? And he said to Him, ‘Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You’. Jesus said to him, ‘Tend My sheep’.” Notice the movement here; tend My lambs, shepherd My sheep, and tend My sheep. The three times here is important because it reverses Peter’s three times of denial. That is no accident. The charcoal fire is another symbol of this. Peter denied Him three times before a charcoal fire, and now he is restored three times before a charcoal fire. This, to me, is no accident. Now, perhaps too much is made between the difference of ‘agape’ love and ‘philia’ love that is so often used in these three questions and replies. I think to some extent they can be used somewhat interchangeably. For example, in John 3:16, God’s love for man is ‘agape’, but in John 16:27, it is ‘philia’. In that verse we see, “For the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me, and have believed that I came from the Father.” Another example is the Father’s love for His Son, in 3:35, and it is ‘agape’, but in 5:20 we see the word ‘philia’ used once again. There, “For the Father loves the Son,” the word ‘philia’ appears. So, don’t overdo it. We know the structure. Jesus says, “Do you ‘agape’ Me?” He says, “I philia’ You.” Jesus changes down to the term that Peter was using. You see the idea there? ‘Philia’, as you know, is a love of friendship, it is a love that humans can have for one another, but ‘agape’ is a divine love, and that is not a love of the emotions, but a love of the will. So, ‘agape’, really, is a choice of the will. That is why He says to ‘love’ one another. He doesn’t say to ‘like’ one another. He is not saying to ‘philia’ one another, because that would be impossible. Frankly, there are a lot of people that I am called to love that I don’t like. You must understand the huge difference between them. You can choose to love them, even if you don’t like them. How? Because ‘agape’ is a love of the will, and not of the emotions, and therein lies the issue. So, when I do a marriage ceremony, I always draw the contrast between building on the rock of choice, rather than the sand of feelings. Romantic love, ‘Eros’, will only sustain a relationship for a short time. Unless you build some other components of love in there, it really will not have a satisfying and long term consequence. My own view here is that we grow in maturity in relationships and ‘agape’ is meant to transform the human love. C.S. Lewis puts it so well, when he speaks of the four loves, and ‘agape’ is meant to take the human love, which, because of the Fall, is not capable of loving as they ought to have been. We have the love of friendship, ‘philia’, the love of romance, ‘eros’, the love of affection, ‘storge’, all these can be turned into divine human loves if ‘agape’ is infused. In other words, they don’t lose their identity; they become what they were intended to be all along. (Q)(A): It is difficult to say, and I might not push it that far, as a reflection of His God and man nature. In any case, I want to define love, as I have done before with you, as the ‘steady intention of your will toward another person’s highest good’. That is one of the ways of defining ‘agape’, having a steady intention. The most important thing about an action is your intention in the action. What is behind it? What is the intention involved in that? God looks at the heart, not just the outward appearance. And so, ‘agape’, being the steady intention of your will, not your emotion, toward another’s good. This is why, when relationships get frayed, when somebody lies to you or betrays you, even if it is not your desire, you can choose to do the deeds of love even when the feelings are not present. This is true in marriage and it is true in friendship. There are times when you will be invited by God to demonstrate the deeds of love even when the feelings are not there. My conviction is, when we choose, your will is the most powerful and significant thing about your life. What you choose will shape your life. If you choose to walk in the power of the spirit and connect it with the power of human choice, you now have a divine-human synergy. If I am in Jesus, I can make the choice to love that person in that unconditional way. You have to understand that if a friend betrays you, you are called to forgive them, but it doesn’t mean you have to trust them. There is a difference between the two. Forgiveness is not the same as trust. Forgiveness is a grace. Trust is earned. You see the difference there? Someone must earn your trust, but they do not need to earn your forgiveness. No one can earn forgiveness. It is a grace that you give them, which is better than they are due. But, they can, having done something like that, and if there is a breach of trust, that must be rebuilt. That can take some time. That is true, again, in all sorts of relationships. Saying all that, then, there is a nuance in John, but I don’t want to make it just all of one or all of the other. Now, let’s go to the last portion of this text, verses 18 through 25. Here we are called to be disciples. That is to say we are invited to follow Him. Remember the first term He used? It was “Follow Me.” Before I go into this, there are three things I should mention about shepherding. First of all, sheep, as you know, are very, very ignorant and defenseless. They need protection and guidance and they are also prone to wander. Again, it not a great compliment that we are compared to sheep. So, sheep need provision, protection, and guidance. That is what a shepherd does. So, we now have a shift, from fishermen, which is evangelism, to being a shepherd of God’s flock, which is discipleship. In 1^st Peter 5:2, we see Paul telling his readership, “Shepherd the flock of God among you, exercising oversight not under compulsion, but voluntarily, according to the will of God; and not for sordid gain, but with eagerness.” I might also point out that Jesus Christ is called ‘Shepherd’ three times. First of all, He is called ‘the good Shepherd’ in John 10:11, “I am the good Shepherd.” In Hebrews 13:20-21 He is called ‘the Great Shepherd’. And, in the text we have before us, 1^st Peter chapter five, we see, “When the chief Shepherd appears you will receive the unfading crown of glory.” So, He is the ‘good’, the ‘great’, and the ‘chief’ Shepherd, and all people involved in pastoral ministry are to obey Him as the minister to the flock. So, they are not independent nor are they autonomous. The most important thing that a shepherd can do is to love Jesus Christ. So, following up now on the verses, 18 through 25, we see Jesus saying, ‘“Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to gird yourself and walk wherever you wished; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will gird you, and bring you where you do not wish to go’. Now this He said, signifying by what kind of death He would glorify God. And when He had spoken this, He said to him, ‘Follow Me’.” This is similar to the text in Luke chapter five. Any one who yields himself to serve the Lord must honestly confront this matter of death. Many people have a death to their reputation and some a death to their very lives. Peter’s death, I want to stress, would not be a tragedy. It was a death in which he would glorify God. It is the same as it would be with the death of Lazarus, in John 11, verses 4 and 40, it is the means by which God would be glorified. Furthermore, Jesus said of His own death, in 12:23, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” So, we have this clear idea of glorification. We have a similar comparison as well, if you go to Philippians 1:21, where Paul says, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” The verse preceding that tells us, “I will not be put to shame in anything, but that with all boldness, Christ will even now, as always, be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.” The idea of glorification, or giving Him honor, is what is involved here as well. For me, a philosophy of life must be based upon a philosophy of death. If death ends all, then it should have a bearing on my philosophy of life. Wouldn’t you agree with that? If I were absolutely convinced that death meant the end, I promise you I would be living differently than I do. I sure wouldn’t be very interested in teaching the Scriptures. I’d be maximizing my pleasure and minimizing my pain. So, “To live is Christ and to die is gain” should have particular significance. So, in John 21, verses 20, “Peter, turning around, saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them; the one who had also leaned back on His bosom at the supper and said, ‘Lord, who is the one who betrays You’? So Peter seeing him said to Jesus, ‘Lord, and what about this man’? Jesus said to him, ‘If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me’.” Twice, now, He has told Peter to follow Him. “Therefore this saying went out among the brethren that that disciple would not die; yet Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but only, ‘If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you’?” Our task, as we all know, is to keep our eyes on the Lord and not be distracted by ourselves or our circumstances. That is why it says, in Hebrews 12, “Fixing your eyes on Jesus, not the other runners.” The idea is to focus your sights, not on the lives of others, but rather in your own life. How He handles others, how He works in other lives, according to Romans 15, is His business, “To His own master a servant will stand or fall.” You are not in a position to judge another servant. You see the idea? In that context, those of you who feel you have more liberty should not judge with contempt those who do not, and similarly, those who have more compulsions in a certain area should not judge those who do not. We are not dealing with matters of obedience and disobedience to the revealed word of God, but there are going to be some areas of latitude and you will know some people have real convictions in a particular area and others do not. Again, as the example I gave you last week, of Eric Liddle, actually believing that Sunday was the Sabbath, but not all believers believe that. The key here, and this is a tough thing for all of us, is that we have a tendency, if we are not careful, to compare ourselves with other people. If you are writer, you may not be interested in whether a factory supervisor does well or poorly, but you will be interested on other writers in your field. You see what I mean by that? We tend to look at others and then compare ourselves with them. Frankly, that is really a loser’s game because you will lose your contentment when you compare. There is always going to be somebody that is going to do better. Or, the other extreme is that you can become arrogant by looking down at other people and displaying your pride. Either way you lose. Either you look down and you are arrogant or you look up and are depressed. You see the point? It is better to not look at them, but focus on what Jesus is calling you to be. In ministry people often try to imitate another person’s gifts and ministry and it just doesn’t work. You aren’t called to be another person, you are called to be yourself and allow Christ to live through you as you. That is to say, allowing His life to be lived through you, as you, and through the unique prism of your own personality. That is what I mean by that concept. So, as we conclude this Gospel, we see this coda, “This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and wrote these things, and we know that his testimony is true. And there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they written in detail, I suppose even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written.” We know that Polycarp was a disciple of John and that Polycarp also discipled Ignatius. Ignatius quotes Polycarp as saying it was John that wrote this Gospel. In other words, there is a real connect. We know who this ‘other disciple’ was. “This is the disciple who testifies to these things.” The word ‘witness’ is used 47 times in this Gospel. It is the issue of the credibility of this witness. These are not just cleverly made up fabrications. Turn with me to 2^nd Peter and you will see this idea. In verse 16 of chapter one we see, “We did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.” Here is particularly referring to the transfiguration. “For when He received honor and glory from God the Father, such an utterance as this was made to Him by the Majestic Glory, ‘This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased’. We ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain.” Who is the ‘we’? Peter, James, and John are the ‘we’. They heard it. The people who were involved in this, the Apostolic witness, really was an eyewitness kind of testimony. As for Luke, and as for Mark, Mark wrote in the connection of the authority of Peter, and Luke under the influence of Paul. Both of them have an apostolic origin in their two Gospels. Then, of course, Matthew and John would have been eyewitnesses. Apostolic origin, apostolic date, apostolic doctrine, and then acceptance were things used as criteria for regarding these books as truly coming from God. So, John tells us, “I am testifying these things and there are many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written.” We only chose our material very, very selectively. He only chose seven miracles, in chapters one through twelve, as signs of who Jesus is, and then the great miracle, the resurrection, at the end of the Gospel. In both cases, though, these were signs to demonstrate that Jesus is who He claims to be and it brings him right back to the purpose statement at the end of John chapter 20, “Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.” In other words, he has written this book for the express purpose that you may put your trust in Jesus as the Son of God, that He is in fact Christ, the Son of God. It is not intellectual acceptance, but personal reception, which is what that word really means. So, there comes a point where each person will make a choice. Understand, a choice will be made, and not to choose to really to choose. You have no way around it. The only options you have are the two malefactors on the crosses next to Jesus. Those two criminals represent the only options you have. The third option, which we suppose we can do, is just to ignore Him, but at the end of the day that will be tantamount to rejecting Him. Make it an informed choice and base it on true evidence. This is the evidence that John is marshalling and the other apostles do the same. They always go back to the evidence, which is the case for the resurrected Christ. (Q)(A): In His resurrected body, which is quite brilliant and glorious, when John sees Him in heaven, and when Paul sees Him in His glory on the road to Emmaus, it would seem that it was a different body because in both cases they were blinded by His brilliance. My thinking here is that Jesus, accommodated Himself in His resurrected body much as He did when He was on earth. Recall the transfiguration, it was almost as if the veil was open for a moment, they saw His glory, and then it closed. Similarly, I believe, in John 18, in the garden, when the soldiers come up to Him, and He asks them, “Whom do you seek,” and they said, “Jesus of Nazareth,” and then when He said, “I am,” they drew back and fell to the ground. So, something happened. It was enough to overwhelm them. So, my suggestion here is that He accommodated Himself, but there was always a moment of revelation. Mary did not recognize Him until He spoke to her. Or, in the breaking of the bread they realized it was Him. Or, in the casting of the nets, they realized it was Him. There was always something that brought them back to a previous connection. He had a unique way of speaking, or breaking bread, or casting the nets. In each case He manifested Himself. My think here is that it would be illustrative of the fact that we continue to search for Him and ultimately He reveals Himself, but in His own time and in His own way. At the end of the day, my view here is that it would be beyond our imagination to comprehend the brilliance and the glory. Let me close in a prayer. Lord, we thank You for this day, and for the blessings and the opportunities of this day. May we walk in them in faith and may we walk in them and manifest Your love and may we walk in hope, the hope of the sure return of Christ. We pray in His name. Amen.