Partakers Christian Podcasts

Gems in the Gospel of John - Part 77

Gems in the Gospel of John

Part 77 - John 18:26
Peter’s failure - corporate

 

“One of the high priest’s servants, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, challenged him, “Didn’t I see you with him in the garden?” Again, [for the third time], Peter denied it, and at that moment a cock began to crow.”

There are two aspects to the effect of Peter’s denials of Christ: one which would have an effect on the whole early church, which we will think about here; and that which was part of his personal life experience, which we leave for next week.

It really is extra-ordinary that all four Gospel-writers tell the story of how Peter denied Christ in full detail. By the time the gospels were being written Peter had been the leading apostle, the Chief Executive, the Managing Director of the church through its early years. In our day of spin doctors and careful manipulation of the news things would have been done very differently. Perhaps someone writing a negative biography, picking on all a fellow’s weak points, might have highlighted this episode, but surely the Gospel-writers would not come into that category.

By the time that these gospels were written down he was dead, martyred in Rome, but that was surely all the more reason why one might expect them to have suppressed a story so damaging to his reputation. There would be no dishonesty involved in not mentioning what happened. Why, then, did they think it so important to tell this particular story in full? They must have had distinct, positive reasons for doing so.

They were teaching us, and the church down through the ages, that leaders are never perfect. We may not know what their weaknesses are or have been, but we may be sure they are there hidden somewhere ‘under the carpet’. And then, secondarily, they are teaching us - at least Luke was when he said Peter ‘wept bitterly’ - that such failures should be repented of as quickly and as totally as possible.

It is scarcely possible to be a Christian for long without having to face up to the consequences of this teaching. Yes, we have all failed. We all need to seek forgiveness by deep repentance of what we have done. But we can all expect to continue to live a rich and fruitful Christian life as did Peter.

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Gems in the Gospel of John - Part 76

Gems in the Gospel of John

Part 76 - John 18:11
Peace

Nearly 300 years ago there was a considerable war in the Caribbean between Britain and Spain. Yes, the loss of an ear caused a war and many deaths! Historians know it as the ‘war of Jenkin’s ear’. Certainly that particular war did have quite a background. The Jenkins involved may well have been a smuggler and the Spanish ship that challenged them was a customs vessel, and it was several years before the incident was worked up to be a cause for war.

There was no such time lag involved in this incident. An armed posse of various people, full of excitement and of doubtful discipline, was chasing a much smaller group in the middle of the night. When they caught up with them they will have surrounded them. Swords were drawn, one rather foolishly by the ever impetuous Peter. There was a cry of wrath and pain from one guy, Malchus.

What happened next? One would expect that there would have been a general set to; several people hurt or killed, mainly from the smaller party. But it didn’t happen. We know what Jesus said in rebuke to Peter, “Put your sword away! Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me”. We know that he healed the ear - Luke tells us that - but we do not know what he, or anybody else, said to restrain the larger party. But there was no general scrap, no casualties, no unfortunate effects of that one blow. Why?

Because in the midst of the group, at the very centre of all that was happening was the Prince of Peace himself. And so, against all the odds and what might have been expected peace prevailed, even in the dark and all the confusion that might have been expected with hot-heads on both sides, .

This is our Lord. this is the one we seek to follow and serve. Let us too live in peace with all men and women so far as within us lies, and even further than all expectations might suggest we will and should.

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Gems in the Gospel of John - Part 75

Gems in the Gospel of John

Part 75 - John 18:10
Malchus

 

There wa a brief clash of swords – which must have been a dangerous business in the dark. As a result one of the temple servants loses a bit of his ear. We read, “Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s servant, cutting off his right ear. (The servant’s name was Malchus.)” This leads to the rebuke by Jesus of Peter who was acting, true to his usual nature, with unwanted impetuosity.

Jesus commanded Peter, “Put your sword away! Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me.”

The most extraordinary thing about that statement is that John has told us what the name of the wounded man was. Very few people, except the apostles and a few of the closest women to the group, are named by John or any of the other Gospel-writers. John names some apostles, some women, Nicodemus, Lazarus and Joseph of Arimathea. Elsewhere we hear about blind Bartholomew but that is about it. Why then do we know the name of Malchus?

There would seem to be only two possibilities:

1) John, or the person who may have told him all about what happened that night, knew his name because they were obviously closely acquainted with the members of the senior households;

2) Malchus was a well known person later in the story of the early church, and although he must have been distinctly old by the time John was writing was sufficiently important to merit this mention.

Of these only the second would seem at all likely. Why would John mention the name if Malchus was only a servant in the governor’s household 40 or 50 years earlier? He would be of no importance to John’s original readers and the fact that Jesus healed his ear was only one of many such healings. No! It is a safe guess that Malchus became a Christian and of sufficient stature in the very early church to be mentioned by name. What are we to make of that?

Two things come to mind: first, that no one is excluded from the fellowship of the Kingdom and therefore of the church. They weren’t in those early days and they should not be now. There can be problems in some cultures, where if any stranger comes into a church meeting there is always a concern that they may be a spy sent in to see who is involved. It is impossible to set down any guidelines as to what should be done in such cases. The people involved can only use their best wisdom in what they do – but they must be careful not to exclude any genuine person.

The second thing is this: it is you and I who must ensure that no one is excluded who should not be. It is a difficult trap - the closer the fellowship in a particular meeting of the Lord’s people the easier it is to overlook the stranger, the incomer, the new convert. It is so easy to let them stand round the edges of the group while all the close friends talk together in a close knit huddle. Only by having some whose duty it is to lookout for such people is it possible to make sure that all are drawn into the centre of the fellowship. Watch out for it in your church. It will be surprising – and good – if you cannot see it happening.

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Gems in the Gospel of John - Part 74

Gems in the Gospel of John

Part 74 - John 18:5
The man in the garden

So it came very nearly full cycle. The problems started in a garden, the garden of Eden. Now they were beginning to come to their resolution - in a garden.
It is impossible to tell how much of this was done by prior arrangement between Jesus and Judas. Perhaps Jesus had quietly made it completely clear to Judas that they were going to follow their usual practice of walking in the garden in the cool of the evening even although the city was in a somewhat dangerous tumult and he was the centre of the problem.

Anyway, when they got there the posse turned up, as expected, and Jesus asked who they were after - as if he didn’t know!
The answer they got surprised them. “I am he” as the NIV has it. Basically ‘I AM’, once again the Old Testament name for God. ‘ego eimi’ in the Greek.

Seven times John has told us about an occasion when Jesus said of himself ‘I am, something’, or as the scholars say ‘I am - with a predicate’. Six times he has told us that Jesus said of himself plain ‘I AM’, even if it was not always clear that it meant any more than ‘it’s me’. On this the last and most significant occasion when Jesus says those two words it was quite clear to the arresting posse what he meant. They ‘fell to the ground’’. They immediately recognized, even in the dark only illuminated by flaring torches, that here was someone very special indeed. Part of the Triune God, of the Trinity, stood in front of them - though of course they would have had no idea that that was the true situation. It is a mighty puzzle how they managed to recover themselves so that they could arrest him. (I wonder whether they actually tied his hands together or anything until they had to do so when they met the top people in Jerusalem.)

The message for us is crystal clear. This was God. God the Son was on his way to his great sacrifice for our sins - for yours and for mine. The world would never be the same again. To that point men and women had had no satisfactory and satisfying way out of their inability to live good decent and upright lives. All had been clouded by their inability to do so. Now as Jesus led them out of the garden (I am sure he must have walked in front, leading the way!) the great process that would change all mankind’s situation was beginning. The personification of God in this world of ours was about to present himself as a sacrifice for sin – yours and mine. Praise be!

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Gems in the Gospel of John - Part 73

Gems in the Gospel of John

Part 73 - John 18:4
Who is in control?

As we move into chapter 18 John changes his style of writing quite abruptly. Up to this point he has concentrated on major incidents, mostly not covered by the other gospel-writers, exploring them in some detail. From here on he gives us a much more straightforward account of what happened following very much the same pattern as the other writers, with only detail changes as he added items of knowledge of what had happened which he had but they clearly lacked.

We need to note one all important fact about these next three chapters - easily missed. Who was in charge? Who was in control of what happened? We read in 18: 4 “Jesus, knowing all that was going to happen to him, went out and asked them, “Who is it you want?” That is indicative of all that was to follow. The amazing fact is that he knew he was the one they wanted and all that was to follow. He was the one who asked who the arresting squad were after. He argued with Pilate as an equal even as the blood poured off his back and brow; He organised the future of his mother even as he hung on the cross; He directed events after his death and resurrection. Always it was Jesus who was in control even in the hour of his death and throughout the subsequent events.

Jesus did not just go knowingly to his death; he went deliberately; he went of set purpose; he went controlling what was happening when he might at any moment have changed his mind and called in squadrons of angels to the rescue. He had made himself of no reputation; he had taken on the form of a servant; he had humbled himself, he had become obedient to the wills and passions of other people – yet he was, in a strange way, still in control.

And why did he act in such a counter intuitive way? The answer is for you, for me. Isn’t that absolutely amazing!
“at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. … God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

John said in the introduction to his Gospel, “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.” It was very unclear then what John meant. Now we can see the full glory of it – the Glory. His glory was in his death, for us, for you, for me, which he carried out through every awful detail, in control, in command. The Lord of all the earth reigned in his death.

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Gems in the Gospel of John - Part 72

Gems in the Gospel of John

Part 72 - John 17:21

Solidarity

Now, after praying for himself and his apostolic band Jesus prays for all those who will follow his teaching passed on to them from the apostles. That is – for you and me! Have you got that – Jesus prayed for you? It is so easy to overlook the enormity of that. But that is what he said: “I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us”. That is hard to get your mind round properly. What did he mean when he used that simple little word ‘in’? It is not too hard to understand in that Jesus and God were ‘in’ each other but how can we possibly be ‘in’ Jesus and God. That kind of identity with some one else is particularly hard for Westerners with their culture’s great emphasis on individuality to get their minds round.

The only place in our culture where we get anything like that level of group solidarity seems to be in football team supporters (of whatever sort of football). It would not be at all surprising to hear one Manchester United (ManU) supporter say to another, “we have never been the same since Alex Ferguson retired!” but the big question in that statement is ‘who are ‘we’? Neither of the supporters will be likely to have ever played for ManU; neither of them may even be members of the supporters club, or have any significant connection to the team except for turning up at some of their home games – and maybe not even that. Yet the level of identification with ManU is such that ‘we’ is the appropriate pronoun. (And I am sure you can replace ManU with some other team identifier – at least if you are male!) Why? It is something to do with the sense of personal identification of the supporters. They are solid in support of ‘their’ club, hence the use of the word ‘solidarity’ to express this sense.

I am sure you will see where I am going. It is that sense of solidarity that Jesus is praying may be ours.

Unfortunately some Christians have seized on these verses and interpreted them as a command to bring churches together in an organisational sense, rather than a spiritual one. The result has been the World Council of Churches, which has had a very chequered career. Churches that give all authority to scripture tend to keep away from that organisation but, if you have ever been abroad and reliant on Christians from other churches, you will know that the label we bear is of little significance compared to our allegiance to the Lord.

There is one other important thing to note in these last few verses of his prayer. Jesus tells us what the glue is that makes this level of solidarity possible. It is love. The sort of love we looked at a few weeks ago. Love which starts with steady development as we move into the area of this sort of Jesus based love, and then moves on to action and great deepening. The love which comes down from him to us and that we must then allow to spill out sideways from us to other people, the rest of the world.

Finally, note the result: if there is even a small amount of this in our experience we shall see his glory, “the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.” (17: 24)<

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Gems in the Gospel of John - Part 71

Gems in the Gospel of John

Part 71 - John 17:17

Set apart

At first in Chapter 17 Jesus prayed for himself. Now, in verses 16 – 19 he prays for the small apostolic band that had been with him for the 3 years of his ministry, faithfully, doggedly, sometimes not understanding at all, but still with him. So the detail of what he wanted to happen to them is not for us - but the principles are, and they are quite clear. For the very first time in John’s Gospel we get the word ‘holy’ and the words ‘sanctify’ which mean ‘make holy’ twice. The basic meaning of the word ‘holy’ is simply ‘set apart’. Unfortunately in common usage, in English anyway, it has come to mean being a bit lost in religiosity, a bit disconnected from reality, not quite with the rest of the world – which thought connects with the original meaning of ‘set apart’. But Jesus has just been talking about the way that although he was soon to leave the world, they were to remain in it. They were stuck in it. He was not talking about any possibility of them withdrawing to a special group for living and going into the world of ordinary people as little as possible.

What Jesus wanted his followers to be was set apart from the rest of the world but playing a full part in it. But there are right and wrong ways of being set apart. It is not about outward appearance; things like the clothes we wear. Paul told the women of the church in Corinth off because the way they did their hair and the things they wore, or didn’t wear, on their heads made them stand out from other women. They could be identified in the street. We used to drive to church in Glasgow some Sunday evenings and be passed by a car. Ooh look, we would say: there are the Christians going to church as we saw the car was full of women wearing hats such as no one else wore except to very special occasions. They were quite wrong to do that. In obeying the letter of scripture they were contradicting its principle completely.

No. we are to be set apart but not that way. It is about setting ourselves apart from language full of sexual innuendo, from groups wallowing in gossip, from the modern equivalent of idolatry such as the close worship of a sports team, from drinking parties or drug parties. Only if we set ourselves apart from these things can we have any hope of being fully accepted by the Lord as one of his. Yes, we shall have been saved but only as through fire and flood.

There is a big problem here. Different churches in different countries view this differently. Some think the follower-of-Jesus should try to be as much like the ordinary guy in the street as possible so as to remove any potential barrier to him visiting church. Other churches try to be closer to the view we see that Jesus took here, arguing that those were very different days and a very different culture.

The most important thing to do is to think about the situation you are in and not let a situation develop which is not appropriate because you have not thought and prayed about it. There are right and wrong ways of going about everything like this. I remember going to work in a small firm. One of my predecessors had been a declared Christian. I don’t know what he did but he succeeded in upsetting just about everybody he came into contact with. I have to confess that as a result I kept my head down seeking to avoid conflict. He was wrong; I was wrong. There must be a right middle way somewhere between those two extremes. Seek it; find it

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Gems in the Gospel of John - Part 70

Gems in the Gospel of John

Part 70 - John 17:1

Strange glory

Chapter 17 is the final prayer of Jesus. It was the custom in those days to record a final prayer like this of notable people and John followed that practice, presumably gathering the recollections of the disciples of what Jesus actually said – they often prayed aloud in those days.

Jesus begins by praying for himself, saying “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you.”What a strange thing to say! He was expecting to die the next day the most excruciating and demeaning of deaths by crucifixion. We think of glory as receiving praise and honour, even adoration and worship. Jesus was asking God the Father to glorify him that rather different way. How amazing! What could he possibly have been thinking? The way he worded his request it certainly refers to that terrible next day. A very few verses later he does say, “now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began” and there he is looking forward to when he returns to heaven and sits down at the right hand of the Father, receiving the honour and glory of that position. But not here – here he sees glory in what was about to happen in his death in the next 24 hours and then 3 days later in his resurrection.

Jesus was taking the long view, which in view of the torture he knew he was about to have to endure is quite amazing. He knew, as the disciples didn’t, that his tomorrow, his hour as he called it, was going to be the most glorious day in the history of the world. He, God, was about to die for the salvation of mankind. His tomorrow would be the dividing point of history. Up to that day nobody had had anything more than hope that the Lord God would accept them. From that tomorrow onwards those who turned to him in humility and faith would begin to understand that they would be accepted in his name, on the basis of his sacrificial work on the Cross. Then a few days later they would learn that they had the Holy Spirit of God, his replacement, actively involved in their lives, directing their course through life, supporting them in all the many problems that the human condition brings, challenging and empowering them.

So there was glory ahead, even if it looked a rather strange glory at first sight. Indeed, it was because the followers he left behind recognized that glory that they started to worship him and it was because they found themselves irresistibly worshipping him that they began to realise that he was no less than God walking this earth as well as being a man.

That was his matchless glory. This is his matchless glory for us. We only need a small bit of that glory to come into our lives, to illuminate us, to be deeply blessed.

Thank you, Lord Jesus, for your prayer, for your constancy, your endurance of all the physical pain and spiritual pain that lay so closely ahead of you as you prayed. Thank you that your glory was for us.

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Gems in the Gospel of John - Part 69

Gems in the Gospel of John

Part 69 - John 16:13

The Spirit of Truth

I think we should pause for a moment to think of what all this must have looked like to the disciples. It is no surprise that they said to each other, “We don’t understand what he is saying.” About three years earlier they had agreed to join the new group forming around the person of Jesus. They thought he was a prophet and, very probably, the leader who would set up a rebellion against the hated Roman occupation, which might just succeed. It had been a considerable surprise to find that things were working out very differently from those early expectations. They had been flexible enough minded to cope with the change of orientation, probably because they had been carefully selected by Jesus as those who would be flexible in their thinking. They had learned over the three years they had been with him that when Jesus said something would happen – it happened. Now he was saying that he was going away. He had even said he would be killed by the Roman authorities. In view of what was happening in Jerusalem, the seething unrest, it seemed likely that would happen very soon. What then? Would their small group continue? And, if so, who would lead it? Peter had been the obvious spokesperson of the group but would he be capable of leading them forward as a spiritual force? It seemed doubtful. John was stronger spiritually but he was surely too young. James and John were labelled the sons of Boanerges, that is sons of thunder, and they were certainly two forceful characters but were they at all likely to be able to lead an effective group along the lines that Jesus had set up – lines that were so different from their previous experience and, indeed, all that had gone before.

Into this difficult and worrying situation Jesus seemed to be suggesting there would come nothing more obvious than a spiritual force which he labelled the Advocate, the Counsellor, the Comforter or, in the original Greek, the Paraclete (meaning a bit of all three). Really. Would that be sufficient? How would in work out in practice? Impossible to imagine.

Of course, it did work out because the person being talked about was the Holy Spirit himself. Part of the Triune God, though to say that is to jump ahead several years and even centuries. But their considerable immediate problem was to work out what would he actually do?

That we find Jesus told them in 16: 13 – 15, “when he, the Spirit of truth comes he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you.” All of which reinforced what he had already said in 14: 26, “the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” So we ought to add ‘teacher’ to the list of words translating ‘paraclete’.

Teaching is not an easy occupation. Some teachers will concentrate not on their students but on their material. At their worst they read out their notes expecting their students to copy them down word for word. That is poor teaching particularly in this age of many copying machines. The good alternative is to teach students how to think, so that what they learn will be of use to them even when they do not meet the exact situations the teacher envisaged, and that is not so easy for the teacher. But it is the sort of teaching the Holy Spirit expects us to transmit to others. It is called ‘discipling’! We tend to think of the Holy Spirit as the one who brings specific gifts to individuals: one to this guy, a different one to that girl and so on. But what Jesus is emphasising here, and John is making sure we see, is that the Spirit will be a teacher and a guide for the whole group. That meant the eleven apostles on this occasion, possibly a few more who were also present, and then the ongoing church down through the ages to the present day. Yes, to your church and to mine, imperfect though they may be. This guidance will come as we study the words of Jesus as enshrined in these four Gospels. So much of what we most probably hear and are taught in church actually does not come directly from Jesus but at second hand through the epistles and other scriptures. What Jesus is saying here is a potent reminder of the central importance of his ministry, his life, his death, his stories, his statements.

Of course we all know that the difficulties lie in knowing what exactly we should do to obey him - you think that, I think this. Being human we have the very human problem of working out how to hear the leading of the Spirit. Some churches do it through a strong central decision structure; others through a decentralised arrangement of church meetings and executive committees called elderships or diaconates. It is clear from the epistles that both sorts of approach to the problem were used from the very early days of the church and are recorded in scripture, so there is no clear right and wrong here. We have to fit our approach to our particular society and culture. Being human we will often have a tendency to want to retain structures which worked years previously but are not so good in our present day. We live in an age when all societies and cultures are changing continuously and often with a rapidity greater than ever before so that is not a good idea.

Let us all, you and I, be careful that we contribute positively to the fellowship we are in, good at hearing the promptings of the Holy Spirit of God, good at not hindering his work, good teachers of the Word of Truth, good at helping the church of the ages to progress towards that great day when He, Jesus, returns to say ‘well done good and faithful servant’.

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Gems in the Gospel of John - Part 68

Gems in the Gospel of John

Part 68 - John 5:26-27

Eyewitnesses

Jesus selected his closest disciples from those who had ‘been with him from the beginning’. They, with the all important help of the Holy Spirit, will be those who are to tell the world what has happened and would shortly lead the infant church on its first steps.

There is a fundamental and important difference here between what we, in the Western world anyway, would do and what they did. We think it is important that our witnesses to an important event should be dispassionate, uninvolved observers able to provide an unbiased assessment of what is going on. That was not what they looked for in their recorders of events. They, Jewish and Roman alike, wanted their reporters to be those who had been deeply involved in the events recorded. That was probably because they considered the meaning of the events more important than the actual events themselves and wanted a guide to that meaning such as we would resist. Thus, the prime historian of the Roman-Jewish war of AD 68-71, basically the only one we have access to, was a man called Josephus who was first a commander of Jewish forces involved in the war and then an assistant to the Roman general. He was not unbiased but he had seen what was going on first hand.

It is easy to see the point of the way they thought in those days and we must accept its value and not criticise it.

We can see these ideas worked out in the four Gospel-writers. Not one of these four names himself within his writing. They took to heart the modesty and humility that Jesus asked of his followers. We only know who they were from reports from the early church. We cannot be absolutely certain of the accuracy of these but there is no good reason to doubt them. Matthew, also known as Levi, was with Jesus from very near the beginning of his ministry (Mark 2: 13,14). We are told that Mark wrote at the direction of Peter, so his Gospel is Peter’s testimony to the events of the ministry of Jesus that he had observed from close to all the way through. Luke, very aware that he was not an eyewitness himself, emphasises in the first few verses of his Gospel (1: 1 - 4) that he had been very careful to refer to eyewitnesses of the events and had checked what they told him very thoroughly. John was clearly an eyewitness although exactly who he was, which John, is a matter of much argument and disagreement. He was the ‘beloved disciple’ of John 13:23 etc. but we don’t know who that was either. John was a very common name in those days. He is usually taken to be John, son of Zebedee, but he was a Galilean fisherman while the writer of the fourth Gospel seems more likely to have been a sophisticated man from Jerusalem. But he certainly was an eyewitness of at least much of the life of Jesus.

The result is that we have four accounts of the life of Jesus, which the very early leaders of the Christian church wisely refused to have combined into one, leaving them as true eyewitness accounts of what happened. No event of ancient history is anything like as well documented as the life of Jesus. We can rely on its truth and accuracy even where it seems to defy all natural possibilities, as in the resurrection. To believe in Jesus and all the events of his life is not one step down from knowledge, as many would say. We believe because we know.

We cannot testify because we are not eyewitnesses in a literal visible sense. We can testify because of our experiences of the Spirit and his work in our lives. Go! Testify!

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