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We recommend Training Hearts, Teaching
Minds as
a text for family
devotions! The readings are short and concise for each
day with a scripture reading to discuss. This is an excellent
resource for teaching your children (and entire family) how
to memorize the Westminster Shorter Catechism. ---)------------ ---)------------ Communion's Book Club meets on the third Tuesday of each month with an open invitation to all to join if you're reading it or not! Here is our current text:
Our most recent past text was:
"It is impossible to say that one can be justified and yet still remain 'dead in trespasses and sins.' 'The natural person,' not the believer, rejects 'the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.'" Everyone who is buried with Christ in the likeness of his death is raised with him in the likeness of his resurrection. Returning to spiritual blindness and death is an impossibility for those who are in Christ. It is in this light that we can say that only those who are being sanctified will be glorified. That inward holiness that God requires is not to be confused with justification, but it also cannot be separated from it. Those who are justified will enter heaven with new hearts that delight in God's law, and none who despises God's law will enter its sacred precincts" (p.184). "Everything that God requires in this covenant is also given by God!...The salvation that he promises and provides is total, leaving nothing for us to achieve through our own strength" (pg. 185). "So now a condition such as 'all who persevere to the end shall be saved' can come to us not as a threat--a condition that somehow we have to meet if we ever hope to attain our own salvation--but rather as a condition that we know God himself will work out for us and within us according to his own good pleasure" (p.185). "Yet not everyone who belongs to the covenant community will persevere to the end. Some are weeds sown among the wheat, seeds that fell on rocky soil or that is choked by the weeds. Some branches do not bear fruit and are broken off. Again, this should be threatening only to those who in fact do fall away, those who like Esau forfeit their birthright for a paltry alternative" (p.185). "It is not the faithful who gather together to participate in the weekly covenant renewal ceremony who should be threatened by a final excommunication on the last day, but those who are unrepentant and unbelieving among us" (p.185). "If you are living in open rebellion against the promises of God and do not delight in his law inwardly, then the inheritance does not belong to you even if you have been incorporated visibly into the covenant community. The gospel is greater than we ever imagined, and the judgment is severe for those who reject the realities it brings into our lives" (p.192-193). "God's law, we find, provides the direction but not the power, and a panoply of spiritual technologies are available to substitute. We think that by reading this book or going to that conference or following this plan for spiritual victory or these steps for overcoming sin in our life, we can get the boat going in the right direction again" (p. 193). "What you really need is to be told all over again about who God is and what he has done to save you, and about the new world that awaits you because of his faithfulness to unfaithful sailors. This alone will fill your sails so that you can get safely back to the harbor when the gales blow hard" (p.194). "Our whole life as Christians is a process of sailing confidently
into the open seas, dying down in exhaustion, and having our sails
filled again with God's precious promises. We are never at any
moment simply under full sail or dead in the water, but move back
and forth throughout the Christian life" (p.194).
Our last text was the
classic work by G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (read
it online here) Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. Some followers... in their almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street. The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. A confusion quite as unmeaning as this has arisen in connection with the word "liberal" as applied to religion and as applied to politics and society. It is often suggested that all Liberals ought to be freethinkers, because they ought to love everything that is free... In actual modern Europe a freethinker does not mean a man who thinks for himself. It means a man who, having thought for himself, has come to one particular class of conclusions, the material origin of phenomena, the impossibility of miracles, the improbability of personal immortality and so on. And none of these ideas are particularly liberal. Nay, indeed almost all these ideas are definitely illiberal, as it is the purpose of this chapter to show. For to us Trinitarians (if I may say it with reverence) -- to us God Himself is a society. It is indeed a fathomless mystery of theology, and even if I were theologian enough to deal with it directly, it would not be relevant to do so here. Suffice it to say here that this triple enigma is as comforting as wine and open as an English fireside; that this thing that bewilders the intellect utterly quiets the heart: but out of the desert, from the dry places and, the dreadful suns, come the cruel children of the lonely God; the real Unitarians who with scimitar (A curved sword) in hand have laid waste the world. For it is not well for God to be alone.
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The following
quotes come from our current sermon series from the gospel of
John: In the gospel of John, Jesus
meets a lot of people, and we’ll
be looking at those meetings to see how God comes to meet with all
of us. Like the characters we will meet in John, we all come from different
places, have different perceptions, different agendas, but as a result
of meeting Jesus, we will all comprehend the importance of eternal
realities. ---)---------------- John 1:12 says But to all
who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right
to become children of God. ---)---------------- And it is at this point that
we say, “Who’s your daddy?” ---)---------------- Dr. Finlay, who preached last
week discussed one important aspect about this incarnational verse.
(you gotta love it when the guest preachers
prep your people before hand!) Dr. Finlay reminded us that the world
of human philosophy was at a terrible impasse – they cold not
agree on the nature of “being.” Or ontology, as he put
it. ---)---------------- So the philosophers love that
things are changing and becoming something else; but there is this
nagging problem with our world – there
are eternal truths by which we live. Logic always remains logical – it
does not change, scientific laws govern, they are called “laws” because
they are known by everyone, and remain constant consistently! Mathematical
equations depend upon axioms, there are universal rules for language,
in philosophy there are “brute facts,” and in the human
heart there is a continual desire for justice and dignity – and
just plain old love! We just want to be loved, is that so wrong? ---)---------------- For us, and our salvation, in
order to establish a new family – Jesus
Christ who was always and constantly the eternal son of God – the
very expression of reason, coherence and logic from the very beginning,
became flesh and dwelt among us, so that he could make us like him
for all eternity – we too must change to become something that
will never change again! ---)---------------- Everyone gets to speculate on
Jesus’ insight of knowing that
Nathaniel was sitting under a tree, and why mentioning it, becomes
a spiritual explosion by him before Jesus. So now it’s my turn… One
of the signs of God’s blessing upon Israel as a nation was to
say that each Israelite would one day be able to sit and rest under
their own vines and fig tree. Multiple passages allude to this prophetic
picture. So I envision Nathaniel actually finding a fully leafing fig
tree in the heat of the siesta sun, and he sits there and he contemplates
these types of passages. He is sitting there, thinking to himself, “This
is what life is supposed to be like, rest, protection, and God’s
provision. And as he sits there, seeing his own private moment as a
fulfillment of these OT passages, he then realizes what Israel needs
to be and do to experience this moment nation wide, what they will
need to do to unshackle themselves from the Roman oppression and become
a blessed nation – righteousness! All of Israel must long to
obey God’s commands and laws and statutes, and as they collectively
seek to be a holy people with pure hands and clean hearts -- without
an ounce of guile – the Messiah will come and establish the Ideal
that Israel was supposed to be. So when Jesus says he sees him under
the fig tree, and invades his private thoughts – Nathaniel makes
all kinds of spiritual connections and realizes that Jesus had read
his heart and his desires, his immediate blurt is to blurt out an Old
Testament passage that Nathaniel must have been meditating upon, Zephaniah
3:15 The LORD has taken away the judgments against you; he has cleared
away your enemies. The King of Israel,
the LORD, is in your midst; you shall never again fear evil. ---)---------------- Jesus, the son of man, is the ladder of the OT account of the angels climbing Jacob’s Ladder. Jesus takes this profound dream that Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham; the vision that for Jacob, re-established with him all the promises that Abraham received. God was confirming with Jacob, that the Lord had not given up on him. His descendants would inherit profound blessings, and that Heaven would come to earth to make it happen – and isn’t that absolutely true in Jesus Christ! The message of heaven comes down to earth from heaven in Jesus. He is heaven, breaking upon the earth to announce the blessing to all who will believe the gospel. Only Jesus is uniquely gifted to link both heaven and earth – more than that, Jesus is the true house, or temple of God, He is the only gate of heaven! And he has come down to establish a righteous Israel, a royal priesthood, and kingdom of priests, and will plant a beautiful vineyard and fig forest! Heaven must break into our realm for us to get it, and only those who receive this spiritual insight get very excited about it!
As Christians, we can tell people how "church" can be a positive influence for their lives, how it can foster loving families, how it can bring order to society, how it might even elevate our social standing perhaps – but if all this kind of "witnessing" to our friends keeps them from “seeing for themselves” about Jesus – then we are getting in the way of people meeting the true King of the universe! Like Phillip, we must not ultimately rest on the persuasiveness of our own testimony (or even the pastor's!) but we must finally say, John 1:46 Nathanael said to him, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" Philip said to him, "Come and see." ---)---------------- The question was asked, "Can anything good come
out of Nazareth?" Well, let me ask this quite cynically, "Can anything
good come out
of YOU? Or any of us?" And it is at this point that we say… Look
to Jesus, and let him speak something into you – and the response
will be our understanding of who he really is: The Son of God, the
King
of Israel. ---)---------------- And then I thought about my own pastor when I was a youth, RevT; who became a little flustered with the new requirement to be a “born again Christian.” He would say, “That’s the most redundant thing you can say! Of course you have to be born again to be a Christian; but it’s like saying that you drive a Chevy Chevrolet – what’s that mean?" ---)---------------- And from what I know about what happens in back rooms with leadership, and the kinds of conversations that are had there, I believe that Nicodemus is evaluating the attitudes and behaviors of his backroom, with the attitudes an behavior of Jesus, whom he is meeting in a “backroom” of sorts, privately, in the middle of the night. For Nicodemus, he at least has the character to sincerely interview a “tradition breaker," rather than to dismiss him off the bat. Nicodemus is attempting to determine if Rabbi Jesus has the goals and purposes that truly honor God, or to advance some personal agenda. And like Nicodemus, we must all make this evaluation of the type of faith community we will reside. IS our little church trying to stuff down alternative views for the sake of protecting our position? Or is our little church authentically open to where the Spirit directs? People especially of the Reformation movement must be careful about how and who they oppose as they advocate new traditions because our very history reveals that we should not fight against a sincere Christian, even a German monk, who can clearly articulate the truths of Scripture! ---)---------------- John 3:3 Jesus answered
him, "Truly, truly,
I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom
of God." ---)---------------- Here we learn that being born of the Spirit is like having an additional influence in our life, like water is, like wind is. The flesh has one kind of influence upon us, a very powerful influence upon some more than others, but to be born of the Spirit is to become aware of God’s cleansing action to our souls – so that we will always want to remain pure, AND continue to listen to His audible direction with His persuasive leading – we love hearing the word of God spoken to our minds and our spirits --- ALL OF THIS TO ACKNOWLEDGE a KEY POINT - - something outside of us, is working upon us – this is not the work of our hands, this isn’t reaching inside of us to pull out something better – it is a washing away of who we are, a blowing away of the self, and the restart from the top with Jesus as Lord! ---)---------------- Jesus will conclude his time with Nicodemus by eluding to an OT incident
that even he will be able to understand, an incident that occurred
while the Israelites were wondering in the wilderness. A time that
the Jews were not to be too particularly proud of because they were
often walking as unbelievers in the promises of God and the walking
rebelliously against the leadership of God. Jesus references the famous
story of the biting snakes and the brass serpent raised upon a pole
in the book of Numbers. ---)---------------- 13 Jesus said to her, "Everyone
who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever
drinks of the
water
that I will give him will never be thirsty forever. The water that
I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to
eternal life." ---)---------------- Jesus is now setting up the real cost of His gift. If you want what I have, are you willing to give up what you have to receive it? The water is free, but it has a cost! Because you can’t drink pure water, and not change – so that means we’ll have to determine your real need, and that is to identify how dry and parched you really are! ---)---------------- 19 The woman said to
him, "Sir, I perceive
that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain,
but you
say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship." ---)---------------- 21 Jesus said to her, "Woman,
believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor
in Jerusalem
will
you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship
what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming,
and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in
spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship
him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit
and truth." ---)---------------- Her departure without the water
jar is so inspiring. Here she came to just get a jug of water without
anyone hassling her – but
within her very soul, thirsting for love, purpose, identity. Her own
thoughts most likely hassled her more than any teasing or mocking from
the people of her village. And yet the water she sought is NOT the
water she left with! She left with water that was now leaping inside
of her, and she had to tell everyone she knew about it! ---)---------------- Here they are singing Hoshiani, which means, Save, I pray! They are singing the song of salvation, and as they do, they are meeting the savior! This is the precursor of the heavenly chorus that Jesus will receive from all his saints – so glorious! All the glimpses on earth of the true reality yet to come – we have to capture this thought when we come to the Lord’s Table – it looks so simple and unimpressive – just as we are unimpressed and even upset with this crowd receiving Jesus because we know that later how shallow their praises were – but it was indeed right that Jesus receive this praise, and it is indeed right that we think of our simple meal as a grand banquet with the king of glory! ---)---------------- Often times we try to do significant things for our family and friends in order to help them embrace and receive Jesus – and we get frustrated that they don’t “Get it.” We get frustrated when they get frustrated with our attempts to show them the grandeur of Christ and his salvation. I can say from my own testimony that all the things that my family and church were trying to impress upon me did not make sense to me at the time, but later, when Christ revealed himself to me as my savior and king, I AM now SO grateful for all the experiences, education, and faithfulness to display Jesus before me, even when I really didn’t know what was going on. But when I came to realize it – all that wealth of spiritual investment was readily available to my memory, and became a foundation to build my own personal faith. How sad that when people resist us, or when our children say that they don’t want any part of it anymore, that we might be tempted to give up on the task of providing important Christian truth to their life - - but think about the day it finally takes – and they remember and understand why all of those things were done – they will praise God for these experiences! ---)---------------- John 12:19 = The Pharisees are becoming desperate. They see that their influence upon the crowds is being challenged – as if they really cared about the crowds! They cared about their own power, and their ability to maintain it – isn’t this all so POLITICAL?? They can see the political winds changing and they are scared to death, and start to fight with themselves. Like a political campaign that is starting to implode, everyone blaming someone else for the apparent loss on the horizon. ---)---------------- John 12:27 = What a stark and poignant statement of Jesus here! As the people are shouting and singing, “Hosanna, Save we pray!” That Jesus would quote a section of Psalm 6:4 that references this Hebrew word again, hôšî`ëºnî ”save me!” Everyone is shouting Save us, save us, but Jesus won’t join that chorus! He will not be saved from what is about to come upon him. He will encounter the trial of unjust persecution and misery, he will endure the wrath of God upon the cross, and the power of death to his body and soul! He should be praying with the Psalmist, SAVE ME FROM THIS! But he will not! Out of obedience, he will be the only one not singing this tune because he knows that in order to save God’s children, he must endure this torment so that those who believe in him would never have to encounter these awful judgments and punishments! Thank you Jesus for saving me, by refusing to be saved from me! ---)---------------- The crowds came out to Jerusalem to glorify their king, they shout his praises and their desire for salvation. But Jesus will refuse being saved from what is about to come upon him. On this day, of all days, that would appear to be the highlight of his earthly ministry, he will not take the proper honor due to God’s Name. And above the accolades of the crowds, the true voice of praise comes from the one who is our true audience, our chief cheering section. A voice of heaven announces that Jesus does glorify God, and that Jesus will be the source of future glory. The crowds hear the thundering voice of God’s purposes and gives complete perspective on what Jesus is there to do. He has not arrived in Jerusalem to cast out some Romans out of the holy city; but to cast out the ruler of this fallen world. He isn’t ascending the holy hills of Jerusalem to receive the praise from the Hebrew people, but he will be ascend these hills to be lifted up upon a cross in order to draw everyone and everything to himself. He has come to Jerusalem in a triumphal entry to declare the future victory that he will have when he is lifted up as a serpent upon a stick, and there has…Colossians 2:15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him. ---)---------------- Meeting the gardner =
A stark juxtaposition from the triumphal entry just a week ago. Let
us recall the crowds
cheering,
singing, waving palm branches in adoration of Jesus – but this
is not how Jesus wanted to be received with all the expectations of
a crowd who wanted some worldly need to be met. ---)---------------- Consider what Jesus has sent them to do. They are not going out just to be good story tellers, set up gigs at coffee shops and public libraries. They are going to announce freedom for the captives. The spirit of the Lord was upon him to announce this good news, and now the followers of Christ must do the same – and that means, addressing a absolute reality, but an unpopular thought – the world is held under the bondage of sin and death – everything sinks into the hopelessness and unfulfillment of sin and death. It is the great enemy of all humankind and is the curse of God upon disobedience – sin and death – and Jesus has conquered them both! And his followers are now here to proclaim that Christ came to end the reign of sin and death! He has made us his representatives, his ambassadors – In our relationships with people, do we dare mention these ultimate topics? Who wants too? Mention sin and death and you sound like a prude and a morbid party pooper! NO, it’s way easier to come at it from a different angle -- let’s talk about self esteem, and successful living, and purpose for living, and the principles for having your best life now! We can walk that path but what still awaits every single life no matter how blessed and self-actualized it is? Sin and death! Now I’m not against creative means to help people listen to the very hard and sensitive truths of Jesus’ teaching, our culture needs this on occasion – but consider this scene. Jesus appears to give his disciples hope and assurance. With joy they embrace him, he breaths on them and gives them the holy spirit and the next thing he says IS… go write a creative book? Maybe he did, that’s why we have the gospels. And the title of all the gospels is this, “How to be free from sin and death” subtitle – The Christian church has the way, the truth, and the life! We could speak for hours on how sin destroys and kills everything – we can speak for hours on how the power of death rules over every relationship of the created order. But not now. Because each Sunday we participate in a sacrament that acknowledges sin and death. Both the Lord’s Table and Baptism acknowledge the reality of sin and death and our need to be freed from their influence and power – and equally, and most important – those same sacraments demonstrate how we are set free from the curse of sin and death because Christ took that curse upon himself, he buried it in the tomb, and he rose again to give us life, and that life is accompanied by his presence with us by his Holy Spirit so that we can speak very plainly as to how sins may be forgiven. Now naturally, I DON’T FORGIVE people’s sins; but as a minister of Christ, I can proclaim that sins are forgiven and that death has no power over the one who confesses their need of Christ and that freedom in his resurrected life is truly their possession – by word, and by sacrament. And that’s why we are old school here, we will confront ourselves with the cost of sin and it’s consequences, and equally so we will acknowledge the forgiveness of sin and the freedom from every curse we posses in Christ! ---)---------------- Thomas hears the reports of the disciples and their encounter with Jesus and he finally says, “I don’t care about what you say, I NEED to be the one who verifies this story, I NEED to have this experience for myself, or I will never believe! Of course, Thomas was away, and in his alone time, had probably switched a lot of things around in light of Jesus’ death! SO Thomas IS believing in something even though we call him, Doubting Thomas, But Thomas’s doubts are based on a whole host of competing belief’s that are helping him to make sense of what he has just been through the past 3 years! Thomas doubts his friends because of the following reasons:- His friends are confused maybe they're going crazy – they believe the impossible! People do not rise from the dead, people do not appear in rooms without coming in through some opening, Crucified men don’t go walking around with their holes in their bodies!- Maybe his friends are playing a cruel joke on him, and now they are twisted // They may have joined some multi-level marketing group and he’s going to be on the bottom of the pyramid!-So yeah, Thomas doubts his closest friends, because he already believes a host of other things – he believes that if miracles happen, (and he must have seen plenty with Jesus) they need to happen with his approval and verification - Isn’t that what we’d all expect? -Thomas believes that a whole group of people could suffer from delusions and all report the same thing because of fear -- That is more plausible than a resurrection after all, right? -And Thomas most likely believes that he had become part of another failed Messiah campaign! He gave it his best shot; but Jesus was just like all the other Messiah campaigns that had come and gone, and he must have imagined all the wondrous things that happened to him during that time was a bazaar psychosis. - After all, why did all those other people follow all those other supposed Messiahs? -So it’s time to grow up and get on with your life Thomas. It’s time to be strong and separate from your friends who are nostalgic and get off their religious circus ride. And the best way to get off the hook is to demand incontrovertible proof! - That’s fair! Because, Thomas doesn’t really doubt Jesus – Jesus was a good and moral teacher who would be a good example for us to remember -- he really doubts all his friends and their mental state! AND Isn’t that just what the rest of the world thinks? - SO in order to not sacrifice his own sanity about the way this world is and all his suspicions about it, he establishes a pretty reasonable standard = you guys got to meet Jesus in a real way – I NEED that too! Of course, Thomas does not have the Spirit of Christ breathed upon him, so what else would he think? He will think about every other possible reality – even that the disciples were visited by an imposter alien and fooled them all. After all, Thomas had a twin – maybe Jesus does too! And Jesus’ secret twin who was left in Egypt is taking all the glory now that his brother has died. IT’S POSSIBLE!! That’s right, Jesus’ twin brother materialized in the room, and while in seclusion this whole time in Egypt, he learned how to ascend into the clouds – CASE SOLVED! I can out doubt the doubters! ---)---------------- I’ve stated that John concludes his Gospel in
a Garden; but before the sun can set on this idyllic place, a final
meeting with the Savior must take place! Because there is someone who
had become weak when he was placed under the fire – as a result,
something must be resolved! TRUE communion does not exist for the disciple
who had been given the name to symbolize “unmoved faith” – a
disciple who had been keen on following Jesus; but when it came time
to profess, he denied that he even knew Jesus at all – with cursings! ---)---------------- “I
am going back to fish” ---)---------------- I’ve stated that John concludes his Gospel in a Garden; but
before the sun can set on this idyllic place, a final meeting with
the Savior must take place! Because there is someone who had become
weak when he was placed under the fire – as a result, something
must be resolved! TRUE communion does not exist for the disciple who
had been given the name to symbolize “unmoved faith” – a
disciple who had been keen on following Jesus; but when it came time
to profess, he denied that he even knew Jesus at all – with cursings! ---)---------------- 21.3 = While Peter is waiting for Jesus, he’s gonna fish! Sad thing is that he is going to return to a life that really didn’t satisfy him. Peter wanted revolution, Peter wanted to change the world, Peter wanted to help lead a movement for a new kingdom – and so with a hallow sound of “I’m just a fisherman, not a world changer…” He will take his hand at it again – but he will soon find that his life was created for something so much more than this – his night’s work will produce nothing, his nets will be empty, and his life’s direction will be adrift – But who is he that he should expect more than this? ---)---------------- Is John, who is writing HIS account of Jesus’ life, a thoughtful and trained theologian? John is only going to choose 7 miracles to signify something VERY important to the church. And are we all supposed to get out of Jesus first sign that He can come through in a pinch when you need him? Are we supposed to learn that he would have been a great contestant on Iron Chef? Is this first sign just a training miracle for the better ones yet to come? OR IS JOHN, by this profound miracle, going to tell us something about how we, as the church, must regard Christ as the focus and supply of our every need? More than that, Jesus is accompanied with such an abundance of divine provisions – it’s sick! ---)---------------- Let’s think about this theologically! Jesus comes
to his people Israel, and Israel in his day, is sort of like a party
that is winding
down. It has no more life, no more supply, it cannot accommodate the
guests – Israel is
starting to sour into cheap vinegar. Why do I say this? What is Israel
in Jesus’ day? A foreign outpost for the ruling Roman empire.
Her influence upon the world is nil, her only impact is to muster
Roman garrisons to her land in her fits of rebellion. She is
not the world’s leader in law, politics, religion, art, literature,
agriculture, or innovation – she is simply occupied territory
with fading day-dreams of once being a giant killer. ---)---------------- So follow the commentary from
the head waiter. He’s
been at a lot of parties. He knows the custom and the practices of
weddings – been
to hundreds. You serve the good stuff first, and as the party winds
down, as people have had enough to eat and drink, if people still want
more, well, they can have the 2 buck chuck. Also tells us that they
were able to discern a good vintage from that which was inferior. This
head waiter, not realizing the miracle, taste tests the wine before
it goes out to the guests – sort of determining at what point
we are in the party timeline – and BAM! What is this? First rate
Cabernet Sauvignon! He calls out to the Groom and makes a bold proclamation – you
have saved the best for last! ---)---------------- John starts out saying that anyone can become a child
of God. He concludes this by saying that we must believe that Jesus
is the Christ. If you
can confess him as your lord and your god, you become a son of God. ---)---------------- The disciples do a lot of remembering of this event. Perhaps they were really embarrassed when Jesus comes to Jerusalem, and then creates a big scene with a lot of drama – Maybe this guy that we are starting to follow is a little unstable. And in the tradition of CS Lewis, Yes, Jesus, apart from the reality of the resurrection is a crazy man. Even if he did have healing miracles, even if he did say poetic and helpful things, if he is not the raised conqueror over every curse upon mankind, then he is just crazy nuts, and we should not credit him with any respectable attention. But because of this prediction of his death, and because of this prediction of his resurrection, Jesus IS THE ONLY MAN WITH AN OPINION that we had better listen to and follow! ---)---------------- Evidently, it is very easy from a human perspective to doubt ancient writings. To believe that they have any connection to our modern world. To wonder if they were just for a past civilization and unreliable for our trust. But Jesus Christ endorsed these scriptures, and with his SIGN of the resurrection, whatever HE endorses is now eternally significant, and occupies the chief place in our mind for how we view all of life. All of history, all of relationships, all of our soulishness, all of our goals, all of our morality, all of our choices, all of our politics, all of our entertainment and education and everything! Jesus and the Scriptures are to be believed as Gospel Truth – and we must place all of our eternal worth on what they both say, because it is the word and testimony of Jesus and the Scriptures that will stand forever – and is the standard for God’s righteousness and truth. ---)---------------- We are meeting the Savior from the gospel of John,
John wants you to know right up front in his first chapter, that in
meeting the Savior,
you are meeting God in Christ, ---)---------------- The Sabbath (5.9) = Everything they said about the Sabbath was correct, especially when considering our OT readings this morning – you do not work on the Sabbath! Now, the Jews had struggled with this command ever since they received it. Nehemiah is one example of struggle that a ruler had trying to enforce this day of rest. Nehemiah said in his day, “Do you want to know why we as a nation keep failing in our mission? We don’t obey what God clearly says!” So he enforces the Sabbath in his day. IN JESUS DAY, the Pharisees, for the same reasons that motivated Nehemiah, enforced the Sabbath regulations. They could preach in their synagogues, “Do you want to know why we are being occupied by these heathen Roman’s today? Because we don’t obey the laws of Moses!! C’mon people!!” In fact the Pharisees, both as a religious and political movement, come out of the era of the Macabees who defeated the Greeks – and they didn’t attribute their success in battle to their military strategy, but to their zeal for righteousness. So again, great motives, great intentions – let’s be holy so that God will bless us! ---)---------------- But couldn’t they see that Jesus had come to
give this man rest from his suffering of 38 years? I don’t think
I would be smart enough to figure that out! ---)---------------- To emphasize the notion of ‘wholeness’ the
Greek word “Hugeis” is used in verse 6,9,10,11,13,14,15,
and is the clue for understanding this< Jesus 3rd sign. ---)---------------- Every time Jesus takes a trip
to Jerusalem, I see John replaying a scene over and over again in
this Gospel (especially when
comparing this healing of the invalid and the healing of the man born
blind in John, chapter 9) – In doing this -- John wants the church
to know that Jesus came to over turn all the perceptions that the religious
class had about God, and to recognize that Jesus fulfills and raises
our hopes for who God really is! That He has an abundance healing and
grace – and Jesus' powerful signs indicate this. |
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