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Episodes
Saturday Sep 26, 2015
Saturday Sep 26, 2015
Gems in the Gospel of John
Part 5 - John 1:6–8, 15, 19-28 - John was not Jesus
Part 5 - John 1:6–8, 15, 19-28 - John was not Jesus
The other John, John the Baptist as we call him, though he is never called that in this Gospel, flits in and out of this chapter. Reading John 1: 6 – 8 and then 15 and 19 – 28.
First in the prologue, the introduction to the Gospel we read ‘There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.’ This introduces John as that most important person, a true witness giving testimony to Jesus.
Those words ‘witness’ and ‘testimony’ are just about the same in the original Greek, both coming from the word ‘martyr’. John is important in his role as the first and most prominent witness to Jesus. He gets more space than Jesus does in the history of the time written by a guy called Josephus, probably because he acted much more like an Old Testament prophet than did Jesus and so was more easily understood by the Jews of those days.
He is a good reminder to us that we too should be good witnesses to Jesus. As Peter said, ‘Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect’.
Second: later in the chapter we read that ‘(John testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.“)’ and then there are several verses explaining how John testified. ‘Now this was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Messiah.”
They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?”
He said, “I am not.”
“Are you the Prophet?”
He answered, “No.”
Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”
John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord. ’”
Now the Pharisees who had been sent questioned him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”
“I baptize with water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know. He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.”
All of which is a sharp reminder that when we witness we should not do it to increase our own self-image to ourselves or to the Lord, but purely for the sake of our Savior Jesus. Such a caution is probably unnecessary if we are witnessing privately to one or two other people, but if we are up on a platform, or behind a microphone, then we may well fall into the trap of glorying in what we are doing. John did not do that.
The people sent down from Jerusalem were fairly sure he was someone very important: the Messiah, Elijah come to life again, or the promised prophet like Moses. No – says John. ‘I am just a voice in the wilderness preparing the way for a much more important person who is to come. Not even slaves were expected to take people’s sandals off but John was prepared to do even that for the one who was to come. You can’t get much lower, more humble than that. And that is the way we should be. Oof!
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Saturday Sep 19, 2015
Saturday Sep 19, 2015
Gems in the Gospel of John
Part 4 - John 1:14 - Jesus is amongst us
Part 4 - John 1:14 - Jesus is amongst us
John 1:14‘The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.’
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.’
How can John possibly talk in one and the same breath about flesh and glory in relation to God the Word? Answer - because of the Incarnation – as we call it. My dictionary says incarnation is: the assuming of a human body by the Son of God; the presence of God on earth in the person of Jesus.
Can you imagine yourself taking on the form of an ant and going to live in a vast woodland anthill? That is something like an equivalent of what Jesus did in leaving heaven and coming to live on this earth of ours; not in a big palace or grand house either, with all the nice luxuries that the fortunate folk of the world have these days, but to a working man’s small house in an occupied country long before all the things that we think make life comfortable existed.
In our excitement over the great sacrifice Jesus made for us on the Cross and the way in which his Resurrection makes us sure that all he said and did was true we may forget the importance of the Incarnation that made those things possible. John did not forget the importance of this; indeed he emphasizes it much more than any of the other three Gospel writers as we shall see as we work through what he wrote.
John starts with ‘the Word was God’. He has now said ‘the Word became flesh’. What a wonderful contrast that is.
This is, in many ways, a rather awkward passage. It is often, and rightly, read in church at Christmastime – but it doesn’t quite fit! In many churches the children do a Christmas pageant. Two senior ones are Joseph and Mary with a doll as Jesus. Three older ones are the three wise men, suitably dressed in turbans and robes. Several are shepherds with walking sticks as shepherds crooks. The youngest and smallest children are sheep in woolly clothes. There may even be a donkey somewhere. All very nice and picturesque but where is the scene for the ‘WORD was with God’? Missing. It doesn’t fit.
Yet it is the most important passage in any Gospel on the subject of the Incarnation. God became man.
That is so important. Behind all the fuss and glitz of Christmas: big meals, parties, family get-togethers, presents, commercialization and so on we must never forget the real thing. Many must think - if God has come down to earth we cannot be such a bad lot after all. Wrong! This Gospel is full of judgment and the need to follow Jesus.
One writer lets his imagination fly to get an image of what Jesus did. He points out that almost all the Western films in which someone rescues a town from the bad guys have the good guy, the hero, riding in from outside the town. He is greeted with ‘who are you stranger?’ So it is with our Saviour Jesus. He rides in to our rescue from outside the town, outside the human world. He is the good guy. He is the hero. We must love, honour and worship him. Particularly at Christmas.
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Saturday Sep 12, 2015
Saturday Sep 12, 2015
Gems in the Gospel of John
Part 3 - John 1:14 - Jesus is amongst us
Part 3 - John 1:14 - Jesus is amongst us
John 1: 9 – 14 ‘The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God — children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.’
Let’s start at the end. ‘The Word made his dwelling among us.’ More literally that reads ‘He pitched his tent among us’ or ‘he pitched his tabernacle among us’. This is clearly a reference to what we read in Numbers 2: 1, 2 where it says ‘The Lord said to Moses and Aaron: “The Israelites are to camp around the tent of meeting some distance from it, each of them under their standard and holding the banners of their family.’
Can you imagine the scene? Out there in the wilderness, on a level plain, the Israelites were to form a huge square, perhaps about a kilometre across, three tribes on each side, tent after tent, stretching away into the land on each side, their banners and flags fluttering in the wind. People sitting in the entrances to the tents; children playing all around. And in the very middle of the otherwise empty square a tabernacle, that is a sort of quite small hut made of curtains draped over a wooden frame.
This was where God very particularly was – right in the middle of his people. Why? So that Moses could go to the tent and speak to God face to face and all the people could watch as Moses went over to the tent. We can imagine them sitting in careful rows just the right distance from the central tabernacle. Except for the children who, whatever their fathers and mothers did to try and restrain them, would keep breaking the line as they ran around and got nearer to God than they were supposed to be.
And this is where God is now – right in the middle of his people. No longer in a physically visible sense as it was then, but with us just as really. We might even stretch the picture and compare ourselves to those children who ran in and out amongst the tents and the banners. If we go back to what John said before we find ourselves described as the children of God. The people of God no longer draw up in square formation in one place but in the mercy of God are now scattered over many places, many nations, many continents.
If your mental picture of the Numbers picture was like mine you will have thought of many children racing around between the different tribal encampments, full of fun and joy as young children always are (provided circumstances allow them to be like that). Now we are to be like that – children rejoicing in living, full of fun and excitement. Getting close to God, because Jesus has been close to human beings as he walked on this earth.
He may be invisible, where the tabernacle was very visible, but our Jesus is with us. He is the true light that was coming into the world. The world did not recognize him when he was there in front of them hanging on a Cross because they were looking for the wrong sort of person to be the light of the world. It is our joy that because we have Scripture, and particularly the New Testament, we do know what to look for and we have seen and recognized him.
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.’
Let’s start at the end. ‘The Word made his dwelling among us.’ More literally that reads ‘He pitched his tent among us’ or ‘he pitched his tabernacle among us’. This is clearly a reference to what we read in Numbers 2: 1, 2 where it says ‘The Lord said to Moses and Aaron: “The Israelites are to camp around the tent of meeting some distance from it, each of them under their standard and holding the banners of their family.’
Can you imagine the scene? Out there in the wilderness, on a level plain, the Israelites were to form a huge square, perhaps about a kilometre across, three tribes on each side, tent after tent, stretching away into the land on each side, their banners and flags fluttering in the wind. People sitting in the entrances to the tents; children playing all around. And in the very middle of the otherwise empty square a tabernacle, that is a sort of quite small hut made of curtains draped over a wooden frame.
This was where God very particularly was – right in the middle of his people. Why? So that Moses could go to the tent and speak to God face to face and all the people could watch as Moses went over to the tent. We can imagine them sitting in careful rows just the right distance from the central tabernacle. Except for the children who, whatever their fathers and mothers did to try and restrain them, would keep breaking the line as they ran around and got nearer to God than they were supposed to be.
And this is where God is now – right in the middle of his people. No longer in a physically visible sense as it was then, but with us just as really. We might even stretch the picture and compare ourselves to those children who ran in and out amongst the tents and the banners. If we go back to what John said before we find ourselves described as the children of God. The people of God no longer draw up in square formation in one place but in the mercy of God are now scattered over many places, many nations, many continents.
If your mental picture of the Numbers picture was like mine you will have thought of many children racing around between the different tribal encampments, full of fun and joy as young children always are (provided circumstances allow them to be like that). Now we are to be like that – children rejoicing in living, full of fun and excitement. Getting close to God, because Jesus has been close to human beings as he walked on this earth.
He may be invisible, where the tabernacle was very visible, but our Jesus is with us. He is the true light that was coming into the world. The world did not recognize him when he was there in front of them hanging on a Cross because they were looking for the wrong sort of person to be the light of the world. It is our joy that because we have Scripture, and particularly the New Testament, we do know what to look for and we have seen and recognized him.
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Saturday Sep 05, 2015
Saturday Sep 05, 2015
Gems in the Gospel of John
Part 2 - John 1:1 - Jesus is God
Part 2 - John 1:1 - Jesus is God
‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’
So John starts his gospel. He chooses to use a surprising word to talk about Jesus. Jesus is the Word. Why did he do that? There is no clear answer to that question. Perhaps the most probable is that there are a huge number of places in the Old Testament which refer to ‘the Lord said’ or ‘this is the word of the Lord’ and so on. But if the reason he used the word is not clear its implications are.
First: it says something very important about the Triune God. They talk to each other! They are not just one God with no one else to communicate to at the same level. They are not just three untouchable and unknowable parts of God. They communicate. If they did not, or if they had not all existed, it would not have been possible for John in his letter to say “God is Love” (1 Jn 4: 16). It is impossible to love without someone who is the target of that love. In God the Son, God the Father had the necessary target for his love. So he could be called Love, without qualification or addition. And because, and only because, he was Love could he place his love upon us. We, unworthy, undeserving and unholy people, could be loved by God. John says in that letter of his, ‘This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.’ Wow!
Second: this says something very important to this 21st century in which we live. Never, in all the history of mankind, has communication, information, words been so important. Words, words, words are everywhere. Previous centuries have been Ages of Agriculture, or Ages of Industrialization, but this is the Age of Information. Words now fly across the Internet at speeds previously unimagined; more and more of them every day. Many in positions of authority find they are in danger of drowning in words because they receive too many every day in emails. We now know that every new creature carries a coded set of information we call DNA from its parents; and that code is a form of words. Above it all unseen, unheard, unimagined, rejected by many or most, stands one who was called the Word, the Word who was God.
Let us hear again how John starts his Gospel: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.’
Skipping over all that might be said about the role of the Word in Creation and the way he had a hand in everything that was and is created we read that the greatest thing he made, that was his handiwork, was life and the light that we enjoy so much. To call life ‘light’ must seem strange to anyone who lives in those parts of the world where people are terrorized by other people, where people struggle to keep alive everyday for lack of food, where the pollution caused by mankind threatens to destruct people. There are so many ways that talking of life and light, not sunlight but the light of good living, in the same sentence seems to be a mockery. But we are not finished yet. Paul said, ‘I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. … the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.’
John of Patmos (probably a different John) said, referring to the heavenly Jerusalem, ‘The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendour into it. … The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it.’
Have faith brothers and sisters. The Word has walked on this earth, has died and risen again, thus promising us that we will see the Light that shines in the darkness, Light which is so powerful that the darkness will never overcome it.
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Saturday Aug 29, 2015
Saturday Aug 29, 2015
Gems in the Gospel of John
John 1:1 - Jesus is God
John 1:1 - Jesus is God
This is the first of what is likely to be many thoughts on John’s Gospel. The very first verse of this Gospel is this, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’
That introduces two exceedingly powerful ideas in the two words ‘God’ and ‘Word’. So powerful that we need to take them one at a time, so ‘Word’ is left to next time.
What a way to start a Gospel! Matthew wanted to put Jesus in context so he gives us a genealogy going right back to Abraham. Mark was so excited by Jesus he plunges right in to what he did without bothering with an introduction. Luke wanted to be a very careful historian so to explain how Jesus fitted into his immediate surroundings he takes us back through a few months of family history. But John goes straight to telling us who Jesus is. He is GOD. That was some assertion in a world where pagans thought there were many gods but the Jewish people knew there was only one God. It is hard to say which is the more difficult idea to challenge head on, as John does. Of course it was the non-Jewish, the pagan, world that thought there were many gods. There were gods in the house, perhaps even one in every room; there were gods in the town, and the country. There was a god in Rome, called Caesar – and he was the most dangerous one of all since one could worship many gods, choose which ones to worship, but you could not choose to worship Caesar, or not to worship him - you had to worship him. No choice; if you were not prepared to say ‘Caesar is Lord’ you were an atheist, and you might die because of it. John was writing, probably about 60 years after Jesus died, for people he knew in the fellowship of which he was leader, and they were under threat. So it was important to say to them, ‘Jesus is Lord, Jesus is God’ very loudly, and very clearly.
And then there were the Jews, brought up to believe that there was only one God and to say every day, at least once, ‘Hear O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.’ John knew very well that Jesus was a man, he was human, but here he is saying he was God. Could he be both at the same time? The answer is yes – he was both man and God, but that is no easy thing to get your mind round so people have been struggling with the idea ever since. There is no point in me trying to argue in these brief notes how Jesus could be both God and man at one and the same time. What I am going to do is point out some of the main reasons the early Christians decided he was God as well as a man.
The first and probably main reason is that they found themselves having to worship him and you could not worship someone who was not God (the pagans did worship heroes who were human but that was not even a possibility for the many Jews who were in the early churches). Thus when he was healed the blind man said, ‘“Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.’ (Jn 9: 38). When they saw him go back to heaven it is said of the disciples, ‘they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy’. (Lk 24: 52). There are many praise statements scattered through the epistles such as 2 Pet 3: 18, ‘grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever’. There is plenty of evidence that this is what happened and continued to happen in the early church after the New Testament was complete.
The second reason was the many things that he did and said which could only be said or done by God. Thus when Jesus said to the paralyzed man in Mk 2: 5 “Son, your sins are forgiven,” religious people watching immediately started to think and say, “Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Jesus also had the ability to command the creation. When he and his disciples were caught in a storm on the Sea of Galilee Mark reports that , ‘He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm’. Only God had control over the created world.
The third reason is perhaps best expressed in the words of a famous writer who said ‘he was either mad, bad or God’. He was pointing to the fact that no one could say the things that Jesus said unless he was indeed God. Otherwise it was the most extraordinary show of pompous self-promotion and blasphemy imaginable. He said, ‘Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.’ Really! Who could possibly say that of themselves? Jesus did.
Our God is that astonishing thing a Triune God: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit: three persons but only one God. We shall never get our minds round that completely but that is what Scripture presents us with. We shall see the remarkable results of that in our next study. What an amazing Lord and God we follow and worship.
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