30. Too much???

‘The Wonder of the Christ’ Meditations No.30: Too much???

Jn 6:66 “From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.” 

In many stories (and films made from them) there comes a crisis before the end that makes you think it is the end – but it isn’t, something happens to make it all right. As we come to the end of this first part of this series, it could seem like that. Jesus’ challenging teaching is too much for some who had followed him, so they leave. It is challenging because it requires them to think and when they cannot understand, the right response would be to trust Jesus that he knows what he’s about and stick with him until it becomes clear.

Now we obviously need to think about this some more. When Jesus told the parable of the Sower (Mt 13), “The disciples came to him and asked, ‘Why do you speak to the people in parables?’ He replied, ‘Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. This is why I speak to them in parables: ‘Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.” (Mt 13:11-13)

The Message version puts it more forcibly: “That’s why I tell stories: to create readiness, to nudge the people toward a welcome awakening. In their present state they can stare till doomsday and not see it, listen till they’re blue in the face and not get it. I don’t want Isaiah’s forecast repeated all over again: Your ears are open but you don’t hear a thing. Your eyes are awake but you don’t see a thing. …. They screw their eyes shut so they won’t have to look, so they won’t have to deal with me face-to-face and let me heal them.”

Trying to put it most simply, Jesus is saying that true disciples need a teachable spirit, need to have open, seeking hearts. The person who comes to Jesus with a vague interest, just isn’t going to get it. It is only the person who comes with a hungry, seeking heart who will get there.

The truth is – for all of us – that initially we may not get it, we may not understand what we read in the Scriptures or hear the preacher explaining on a Sunday. The big issue is how will we respond when we don’t initially understand? Will we sit in the pews muttering about the poor preacher and get up and leave grumbling, like some of the present followers of Jesus, or will we pray, “Lord, please teach me, please give me understanding, please open my heart and mind to understand what YOU are saying.” Yes, this is the point, we are responding to God and to His word, so we should really give some more thought to these things. Stick with us, there’s more to come in the follow-on series.

29. Confused?

‘The Wonder of the Christ’ Meditations No.29: Confused?

Jn 6:51 “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

We saw in the previous study how Jesus was revealing how he had come down from heaven (not merely a calling from heaven on a human life) and now we see him repeating that claim but linking it to the need to take him into your life.

We considered earlier how Jesus sometimes asks confusing questions, but now we see him bringing confusing teaching – confusing that is for literalists (like Nicodemus earlier) who fail to understand that the ‘teaching pictures’ he brings are not to be taken literally but are to convey truths. (You would have thought that listening to Jesus’ teaching and hearing him using so many parables, that this would have become obvious, but without help from heaven, we are easily confused!)

‘My flesh’ – my physical body. ‘Bread’ is sometimes called the ‘staff of life’, the basic food to enable us to live. But Jesus flesh is bread? Well, trying to put it most simply, surely it must mean that his body is the means that salvation will come to the world (on the cross). We must take this truth into our very beings, so it transforms us.

The Amplified Version of the Bible makes it clearer: “I am the Living Bread that came down out of heaven. If anyone eats of this Bread [believes in Me, accepts Me as Savior], he will live forever. And the Bread that I will give for the life of the world is My flesh (body).”  

I fear we are sometimes over disparaging or being judgmental of Jesus’ listeners because of their difficulty in understanding what he is saying, but that, I suspect, is because of our over familiarity with it and our failure to remember their historical context. What I mean by that is that they were used to the Rabbis in the synagogue every Saturday simply declaring the Scriptures and then making some appropriate comments about the reading. i.e. they didn’t have to really think about it; it was all spelled out for them, as it so often is in modern church services.

Now we have commented a number of times in this series about how Jesus was different to us, and no more is this seen than in his style of teaching. As we’ll see in the next study it didn’t go down well with a number of his apparent followers but that didn’t provoke Jesus to try to make it clearer for them. Even with the most simple of the parables, it required the listener to think about the meaning being conveyed by the story. When it is less than a story and simply analogies – as he has already used with Nicodemus (Jn 3:3-8), and the woman at the well (Jn 4:10) – it demands we really do, with a seeking heart, think about what he is trying to teach us. How we respond reveals our heart.

28. From above

‘The Wonder of the Christ’ Meditations No.28: From above

Jn 6:38 “I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.”

We are approaching the end of the month (and we usually measure these series by months), but this series calls us to see much more of what John’s Gospel has to say about Jesus, and so we will start off a new but continuing series next month under the title, “The Christ who is different,” continuing on through John but then picking up on the events of what we call Christmas.  

But now as we continue on through John we see something unique. Nowhere in the Synoptics have the writers picked up this clarity from the lips of Jesus, but John has pondered on this for decades and key truths have floated to the surface of his memories: “I have come down from heaven”. Wow! Where else in history have we seen such words? Possibly from a few nut-cases, but not from anyone who justified his words by actions beyond any human abilities. There is a power and authority here that has its origins back on the throne of heaven. This is the Son who has come down and brought the authority and power of God and heaven with him. No wonder he is different from the rest of us!

We will go on to see this claim reinforced further in this chapter but let’s be clear, Jesus is not saying something similar to that which John said – “the one who sent me,” (Jn 1:33) as if to indicate he was simply a man with a mission given to him from heaven. No, Jesus is clearly saying, in this sentence structure, I existed in heaven, and then I left heaven to come to dwell on the earth. Perhaps, apart from the very specific claims, this is the clearest indirect claim to divinity, to be God, that Jesus makes, and John remembers it as he reflects back over those wonderful three years with Jesus, after a lifetime of remembering.

(I lead a group called Nostalgia to help elderly people strengthen their memories and have watched at length how memory works and have noticed how one memory can trigger off another memory and then another, and it happens especially in old age – and that was John when he came to write.)

A word that appears twice in our starter verse is ‘will’, meaning purpose or goal. Remember earlier we saw Jesus say, “My food,’ said Jesus, ‘is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work,” (Jn 4:34) He is very clear that he has come with a very clear and specific goal, to do what his Father in heaven wants. We know from elsewhere it is what they have decided from even before the creation of the world. Jesus is working to a specific plan. We watch humans, perhaps leaders, and they may have ambitions that drive them from day to day, but Jesus’ ‘drive’ is bigger than that; it originates in heaven from before the world started!

27. Belief & Faith

‘The Wonder of the Christ’ Meditations No.27: Belief & Faith

Jn 6:29 “Jesus answered, ‘The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”

We are, remember, considering the wonder of Christ, how Jesus stands out and is so clearly different from the rest of us. Jesus, in our present passage, has just taught, “Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life,” (v.27) to which his listeners responded, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” (v.28) It is in response to them that he answers, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” i.e. whatever else you do, your starting place has to be believing in Jesus and responding to his call on your life.

At the end of the day, it is very simple: we’re not called to be spiritual giants but to simply believe in the one who is! Our belief is not to be focused on us, but on him, on who he is and what he is capable of – and remember that he is the same today as he was two thousand years ago (check out Heb 13:8).

So often we talk of the work he has called us to do, but in reality it is about the work HE can do through us. There is an important distinction here. HE is the Son of God, not us. If he says to you, “Stretch out your hand and pray for healing over this person,” when that person is healed it is because JESUS healed them. You simply spoke some words into the air as he prompted you and then HE stepped in and using HIS power, HE healed them. You’re just the announcer that opens the door for the Son to act and be seen. Easy isn’t it!

If only! The starting place is twofold, to believe he can do the stuff while involving me, and then that I can be sensitive to his nudging to step out in faith. For both of them, I believe we need to pray that prayer I referred to at the end of the previous study, “Lord, I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!’ (Mk 9:24). We not only need his help to perform the healing (or whatever else it might be) but also to believe. It is always a matter of complete reliance upon him.

And that is where the impact of this whole series comes in, or as they say, ‘where the rubber hits the road’.  We have got to let the truths of Scripture impact us, we’ve got to let what we read in the Gospels truly get through to us, to build the picture of who Jesus really is, so that our faith may be fueled by truth and that the Holy Spirit may blow on it to kindle a fire of belief, a surge of vision, that we call faith. It is interesting, Matthew uses the word ‘believe’ 9 times, Mark 15 times, Luke 10 times but John 84 times!!!!! John’s understanding of Jesus calls us to belief in a way beyond what we find in the Synoptic Gospels. The truth – and it is the truth – fuels belief and then belief builds and releases faith. Go for it!

26. Extended faith

‘The Wonder of the Christ’ Meditations No.26: Extended faith

Jn 6:19 “they saw Jesus approaching the boat, walking on the water; and they were frightened.”

As we approach today’s study, I think we need to emphasize the point we were making yesterday, that what we see and learn of Jesus in the Gospels, applies just as much today; the lessons the disciples were learning while they were with Jesus apply equally to us today. This is the wonder of the lessons of Scripture, they are timeless.

The context of this story is important. The disciples have just been part of the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand. We might add that they have been with Jeus some while and had been witnessing the miracles that he performed numerous times, so you would have thought they would have learned something about him by now, but the truth is, of course, that Jesus is so different from us that it is sometimes difficult to get our minds around that.  

So, as we’ve just said, the disciples have been around Jesus for some time and have seen his miracles – not put off by distance or length of time.  Nothing it seems, in the realm of healing is beyond Jesus. But is he just a great healer? We noted in a previous study how people tend to compartmentalize Jesus and so they cane accept him in some parts – e.g. as a teacher or healer – but not in others, e.g. a God in the flesh. The simple lesson here is that we must not compartmentalize Jesus; what he can do in one context, he can do in another. That’s at the heart of what is coming.  

So, when he walks across the lake to them in the middle of the night following that miracle of feeding, they cannot put all these things together and come up with a casual, “Oh, it’s only the master.” No, they were scared because they were not able to translate and extend his abilities, which they had witnessed, into a new realm. I wonder if sometimes we limit ourselves and our perception of Jesus by the limited experience of him we have had so far, and cannot extend it wider to other possible things that the Son of God might be able to do?

The trouble with life is that it isn’t filled with problems that are all the same size or the same kind. We may have a testimony of how Jesus has turned up for us in say a case of providing a new job, but when it comes to a different financial or practical need, we’re not so sure. If there is a need for healing, that may be another area where we have not yet experienced his power. Or perhaps we have experienced his power in one aspect of health and healing but when something entirely different occurs, it may seem too different for our current faith level. Jesus can handle any and every circumstance so perhaps we just sometimes need to pray, “Lord, I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!’ (Mk 9:24)

25. Nothing impossible

‘The Wonder of the Christ’ Meditations No.25: Nothing impossible

Jn 6:6 “He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do.”

Just a reminder that this series about the wonder of Christ is about how he has been revealed to us through the Gospels and especially the Gospel of John. We have been seeking to see what we have been told of how he lived, ministered, and sought to serve his Father in heaven. But more than that, where possible, we have been seeking to apply how we saw him working then into lives and, thus, how he continues to work today. Now this is important to say in the light of our present study.

In our starter verse, this is Jesus just before the feeding of the five thousand. Seeing the crowds coming to him on a mountainside, he asks this question of Philip TO TEST HIM. Jesus knew exactly what he was going to do but used the potentially impossible situation (feeding such a large number with virtually no food) to test his disciple.

The lesson here, surely, is when confronted by a need beyond our capabilities, is our relationship with Jesus such that we can utterly trust him to provide the resources we need? How often, I wonder, have I missed out because I’ve said, “I can’t handle this, this is beyond me,” and failed to seek Jesus to resource me?  

The difficulty with Bible study sometimes is finding ways to apply the lessons we find before us, and if we are to get the most out of it, we must pray and persevere and ponder on our lives. Remember, the general principle that comes through here is that Jesus can always provide the resources we need to meet the often difficult needs that confront us in our day to day lives.

So let’s start with physical needs. These may be literal, personal, physical lack of energy or they may be a matter or material resourcing, maybe because we are not well off financially. With limited space we will not seek to suggest answers but simply to state that the principle still applies. Jesus can take however little we have and bless it so that in fact it does meet all the needs that are there. How these things happen is sometimes impossible to define or describe, such as in the case of the feeding of the five thousand.

But then there are mental or emotional needs. We may be faced by circumstances that create anxiety, or people who are causing us stress. Again, the principle applies. We may want the Lord to take the circumstances or people away, but instead He says, “My grace is sufficient for you,” (2 Cor 12:9) or indeed, “My wisdom is available for you” (Jas 1:5). I say again, we may not understand how such things can be, but with God such things are possible. No situation or person is beyond him – including us.

24. Opposed

‘The Wonder of the Christ’ Meditations No.24: Opposed

Jn 5:18 “For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.”

‘Different people’ often incur the opposition of ‘the powerful people’. People who stand out by their vulnerability or their shear, simple differentness, often become the butt of humour or even bullying by those more powerful than them. It’s the way of the fallen world. But when those people stand out by their goodness or their cleverness, we brand them as ‘geeks’ or even weirdo’s, such is the envy or insecurity that exists in the fallen world. Now we have been making the point that Jesus stood out because he was so different and so it should be no surprise that he too had opposition.

A number of times in his gospel, John points out that Jesus was not bashful about linking himself to his Father in heaven and thus declaring his divinity. This was ‘the bridge too far’ for many of the religious leaders of that day, and it is still true of what other religions (including atheism) think of Jesus. A nice man? OK. A great teacher? OK. A prophet? OK. The unique Son of God who is God in the flesh? NO!!!!!!!!!!!! But that is the truth and everything else flows from this. Never lose sight of this truth. This is God-in-the-flesh we are following!

Now of course Jesus didn’t just speak words about himself, as we have already seen, he performed miracles that John sees as ‘signs’ highlighting who he is. But if miracles weren’t bad enough for the religious authorities, the authority with which he taught also showed them up.

Mark in his Gospel, pointed this out, right from the beginning: “The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law.” (Mk 1:22) Note the distinction he makes, “They were surprised at his teaching—so forthright, so confident—not quibbling and quoting like the religion scholars,” (Msg version) or as the Living Bible puts it, “They were surprised at his teaching—so forthright, so confident—not quibbling and quoting like the religion scholars.” Wow! No wonder the Jewish teachers were upset by him, for he clearly showed them up.

So miracles, healings, strong teaching, and now declaring his own divinity. Did we say he was different? (and that should include different from any world leader, religious or secular!) Understatement!!! Earlier on we used the words ‘envy and insecurity’ and they are clearly at play here, just as they so often are when the inferior are revealed as what they are by the superior, in whatever sphere it may appear. If only the religious leaders of his day could ‘see’?

23. Why???

‘The Wonder of the Christ’ Meditations No.23: Why???

Jn 5:6 “When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, ‘Do you want to get well?’”

We are, we remind ourselves, observing the wonder of Jesus that is revealed in a whole variety of ways, a wonder that makes him different from us. We’ve seen in a number of instances how he knows us, knows everything about us, we’ve seen how he came bringing spiritual revelation using simple everyday pictures, we’ve seen how he has power to change material properties and we saw yesterday how his power is not limited by distance.

We also observed how Jesus works within our everyday events and, perhaps to strengthen his reputation would go back to places he had been before. John, we also said, has a deeper understanding of the meaning and significance behind so much of what Jesus said or did, that went way beyond the pure facts of the Synoptic Gospels. John has, we have seen, picked out specific miracles and spoken of them as ‘signs’ (see 2:11,23, 3:2 & 4:54).

Bringing these things together we now find Jesus returning to Jerusalem (5:1) and although the miracle of healing that follows is not directly referred to as a ‘sign’ there is a subsequent reference that would include this as such (see 6:2) and which opened the way up for the feeding of the five thousand, also seen as a sign (6:14).

Now returning to our starter verse which occurs in Jerusalem beside the pool of Bethesda (5:2), there Jesus picks out a paralyzed man who had been in that state for thirty-eight years (note that length of time!) and asks the man if he wants to be healed.

Jesus sometimes asks what we might think are obvious questions, but the One who knows everything about us, knows the truth we need to face. Sometimes we grow so used to our second-rate lifestyle or plight, or disability in whatever form it might take, that we feel more secure sticking with it than with the thought that Jesus could dynamically transform our lives. Vision of an alternative life can be uncomfortable, and it is only faith that can climb over the obstacle of ‘security in the mundane’ to reach the glorious heights that God has for us.

Now note various things about this man. First, he had been disabled for a very long time and was apparently incurable. Second, he doesn’t appear to have great faith and indeed, afterwards is told by Jesus to stop sinning (v.14) but purposely goes and tells on Jesus to the religious authorities (v.15). This man seem to have very little going for him, yet Jesus picked him out and healed him. Lessons? Just as distance didn’t matter to Jesus, neither did length of time, nor the quality of life of the one being healed. Ponder on that!

22. Interplay

‘The Wonder of the Christ’ Meditations No.22: Interplay

Jn 4:46 “Once more he visited Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son lay ill at Capernaum.”

We focused yesterday on the fact of Jesus’ obedience being in line with his Father’s will and resulting in there being an inner resource that ‘fed’ him, and we noted alongside that just how different Jesus was and is, from us. And yet we’re told that that Holy Spirit is working to make us more like him (2 Cor 3:18).

I said, right back in the first study in this series, that how he responded to people back then is the same as he responds to us today, and this we must remember and remind ourselves frequently. How he responds to us, should also become, there, an example for us to follow, for how we are to work out our lives. I wonder if we can see that here. We find that the narrative in John’s Gospel continues by showing how he returned to Cana, the place, John reminds us, where he performed that miracle at a wedding of turning water into wine, what we called a rather ‘low-key’ miracle.

When we remember that Jesus only ministered for three years, we can discern certain strategies he used to reinforce that ministry. One such thing was going to the same places more than once, to reinforce what was known of him on precious visits. What is slightly strange is that John does not tell us about anything Jesus did with anyone from Cana on this visit, but only with someone who came from a distance.

But this building on his reputation meant that the word about him was spread further than just that particular place, and so it is that when he goes to Cana again, the word reaches Capernaum, some distance away. We might also note in passing that his reputation had been enhanced by some miracles that he had obviously performed while he had been in Jerusalem recently at the Passover (see v.45).

So it is that a royal official in Capernaum, concerned for his ailing son, sends to Jesus. Distance means nothing when a loved one is in serious need, and this official (possibly from Herod’s court) is moved by the plight of his son who is clearly in a bad way, indeed on the verge of death (v.47), and so travels to Cana to find Jesus and plead for his help (v.47).

Jesus then, simply speaks a word and John goes to some length to point out that at that very moment, miles away in Capernaum, the boy was healed (v.51-53). Distance, again, is no hindrance to God!

Perhaps familiarity has dulled the wonder of this in us, but can we see afresh, that there is no magic here that requires physical presence. No, this is simply God speaking a word into his world (at a distance even) and it is done. THIS is God.

21. Spiritual Resources

‘The Wonder of the Christ’ Meditations No.21: Spiritual Resources

Jn 4:34 “My food,’ said Jesus, ‘is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.”

One thing that has perhaps been implied in the studies previously, and perhaps needs to be made explicit in our considerations, is Jesus’ difference, the fact that although he looked like us, in reality he was very different from us. Now that is implied in the fact that we talk about, that he is God-in-the-flesh, but for it to impact us we need to more clearly observe this, and our starter verse today is a good illustration of this.

Here, yet again, we find John picking up on the deeper, more profound things Jesus said, that the Synoptics had omitted. Here Jesus is making three points we should observe.

First, he is pointing out that he is simply fulfilling a mission that has been given to him, second, he implies again and again that it is his Father in heaven, God, who has sent him, and now, third, his energy-resource is obedience to the Father. As he obeys and serves the whole Godhead, he will be resourced with all he needs.

Now let’s pick up on the idea that I started with, that he is different from us, looking at those three points as they apply to us. First he has a clear mission from his Father. Now, in as much as we have been redeemed, we might suggest that we now have a twofold ‘mission’; first it is to live out the lives, the newly empowered, redeemed lives that we have been given and, second, it is to reveal God through these lives.

Moving on to the second point, perhaps we should be asking ourselves, do I make God the Father, the central part, the primary focus, the motivating force of my life? Do I do what I do, do I live the way I do, because God is all of those things in my consciousness?

And thirdly, is my relationship with Him, and my obedience to Him, the primary source of life and energy in my life? I watch and observe Christians, often struggling with the ways of the world, maybe even with Covid-virus effects, and see that ‘struggle’ IS the right word to describe what they are going through. Now I am not saying that when we know God we will never have difficulties on this earth, but I am suggesting that if we are living and walking in harmony with Him, then we will know an inner resourcing that comes from Him, especially when we turn to Him and wait on Him.

It should be, surely, a resource that helps us physically, mentally, and spiritually, and brings us a sense of security in the middle of the difficulties, and it should be a resource that flows in us – the Holy Spirit – who relishes our obedience to His prompting and brings a divine joy, a divine awareness of moving in harmony with heaven. Now I suspect that such a description goes further than the experience of many of us, but should that hinder us reaching for it?  Surely not!