Partakers Christian Podcasts

Gems in the Gospel of John - Part 31

Gems in the Gospel of John

Part 31 - John 7:24
Decision time

“Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly,” said Jesus. Or perhaps approximately ‘make up your mind - follow me or don’t follow me!’

Our acquaintance with decision-making will vary enormously according to where we live. I remember visiting our son and his family in a Central Asian city. They wanted to buy a small bicycle for their son. Eventually they found one after a long search. There was no decision to make – it was this or nothing. I also remember a grown woman who had been living in an African city telling us that she had come home to the UK, gone into a supermarket, burst into tears and rushed out. The degree of choice was too overwhelming for her to take.

You are going to have to listen to, or read, what follows very much according to your background. Jesus was telling his hearers to decide whether what he was saying and doing made sense, in which case they should follow him, or not, in which case they should not. That was, and is, the biggest decision anyone ever has to make for it determines the whole course of one’s life from there on forever.
Rather strangely this is most difficult for those of us who live in a part of the world where there is a huge choice in the supermarkets. We are too used to making decisions and then changing them for another one next week. We live in a consumer society so we too easily act as consumers over everything, including whether or not we should follow Jesus. Then, if it doesn’t suit us because the church meets at the time we want to play football – or something, next week we will give up on following Jesus and do something else.

It may well be that our life is a chaos of conflicting events. But then so is this chapter. It is easily the most chaotic chapter in this Gospel so far. Jesus starts off in Galilee, goes up to Jerusalem late for the festival, has to dodge the authorities, and then challenges his hearers over his latest miracle in Jerusalem. That is: when he healed the man at the pool of Bethesda on a Sabbath. It was that last event which lead to this direct challenge to decide whether what he did, and the way he justified what he did, meant that they should not judge him on the basis of the rules and regulations but on the basis of the effects of what he did. Effects which included not just an infringement of the rules but accepting that he stood above the rules because he was the Messiah, the chosen one of God.

In a way this seems a lot to base on this one incident, but no doubt they would have heard something of what he had been doing in Galilee, both the miracles that John has recorded and the many healings he had carried out that the other Gospels tell us more about.

Jesus tells us not to judge by mere appearances, but to think carefully what we are doing first so that we make good decisions. That is good advice for anything and everything we have to decide about. Unfortunately it is not the way we tend to act. The whole advertising industry relies on our inability to make wise choices, but to go by appearances.

What about you? And what about your decisions for or against Jesus? Those decisions are fundamentally different from all the others you can ever make in life because they are two-way decisions. The Holy Spirit comes into them as well. In his goodness and his graciousness the Lord God has allowed us to think that we make the decision to follow Jesus, in much the same way as we decide all the other things of life. But hidden behind our decision is the work of God the Holy Spirit calling us to follow Jesus. As we have noticed before those two things don’t logically add up but they are nonetheless real for that.

Have you decided to follow Jesus? Or, should I rather ask whether the Holy Spirit has called you to follow Jesus?

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Friday Prayers 20 May 2016

Partakers Friday Prayers!

20th May 2016

A prayer of Praise!

We pray together and when Christians pray together, from different nations, different churches and different denominations - that reveals Church unity! Come! Let us pray together!

O God, you are the most beautiful and most priceless One!
O God, you are the most glorious and uncreated One!
O God, you are the eternal and holy One!
O God, you are the infinite and blessed One!
O God, you are the immense and Living One!
O God, you are the Everlasting and wise One!
Accept these words of praise from our mouth and our hearts!

O ever-loved & ever-loving One;
Make us, O holy God, your treasured one;
Make us, O glorious Lord, your precious one;
Make us, O highest Good, your longing one;
Make us, O blessed Word, your chosen one;
Make us forevermore your loving ones.
Amen

(Based on a prayer of Cardinal Newman)

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Think Spot 16 May 2016

Think Spot - 16th May 2016

Charlotte Bronte once said “Life appears to me to be too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrong.”

Many people nurse a guilty conscience owing to holding onto animosity or wrongs done to them or having done wrong things to others. As a consequence, their life is filled with turmoil and bitterness. You may well be like that – I don’t know!

What I do know is that your conscience is the faculty which is sensitive to right and wrong, and judges your actions and attitudes. Everybody has a conscience and all are sensitive to spiritual truths, whether they are immediately aware of it or not.

According to the Bible, a clear conscience is essential for inner peace and joy, confidence in prayer, good health, effective service, .right relation-ships, effective witnessing, making right decisions, and victory in spiritual battle. A clear conscience is the inner joy and peace of spirit which results from having all personal wrongs made right with those whom a person had offended - either God or someone else.

However- many Christians carry around guilty consciences due mainly to unconfessed sins, affecting relationships with God, other people and themselves. If left unchecked, a conscience which is guilty, slowly grows 'dead', cold and silent. That is until such time that the guilt has been assuaged and put right.If at the moment you are burdened by a guilty conscience, ask the Holy Spirit to show you clearly what is affecting your conscience.

Then decide, at any cost, to clear it up in the power of the same Spirit. He will help you! Pray to the Father and ask forgiveness, (1 John 1:9), and fully accept His love and forgiveness. If there is anyone else involved, then you will also need to ask for their forgiveness (Matthew 5:23-24). Ask the Father to help you go, and the Spirit will help you, because one of the hardest things in the world to say is: “I was wrong! Please forgive me."

Your conscience can be cleansed because of what Jesus did on the cross! Hebrews 9:14 says “How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!”

Go into this week, ready to serve the living God, being confident that the Holy Spirit living within you, empowers you, is transforming you and desires that your conscience be clear. He will help you overcome if you ask!

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Gems in the Gospel of John - Part 30

Gems in the Gospel of John

Part 30 - John 6:53
Food and drink

In the last few verses of this long statement of Jesus John suddenly adds the drinking of blood to the idea of eating the flesh of Jesus. We may well ask – why did he do that? We cannot be sure that all this is something Jesus said in one connected speech. In verse 25 he seems to be at the side of the sea, in verse 59 he is in the synagogue. So these verses from 53 to 58 may be something he said on a different occasion. The big question, over which the experts argue and differ, is whether these verses are about the Lord’s Supper (also called the Eucharist, Communion service or Breaking of Bread, etc.) or not. I think they are. John has chosen not to tell us about the last supper eaten in the upper room, but has put this short section of something Jesus said in instead. Which, of course, raises the very important question – why did he do that? What are the different things this section teaches us about the Lord’s Supper which we might not get from the more straightforward accounts in the other 3 gospels?

There are 2 in particular. They both relate very sharply to the practice of many churches as to how they do the Lord’s Supper. First is about what it means. Following the phrase ‘do this in remembrance of me’ in Luke’s gospel, repeated in Paul’s instruction to the church in Corinth, many churches, taking that very literally, insist that their celebration of the Lord’s Supper is just that and only that – a memorial feast. It is a good guess that this is what was happening in the church that John was associated with 50 plus years later. So, rather than repeating this well known instruction, he puts in these words. He is saying – no – there is more to it than that. When you partake of the bread and the cup you are coming much closer to Jesus. You are becoming part of him, as near as can be. We think of a good marriage as one where the phrase ‘the two become one flesh’ has become a reality. John is here saying that is the sort of way we are to relate to Jesus. We are to become ‘one flesh’, ‘one blood’. That is a hard metaphor, hard to live up to that is, but we need to realize that is the challenge that John puts before us.

Being a bookish person I think of it this way: as I can be excited, enthralled, enthused, changed by a really good book, or a passage in a book, so I should react to partaking in the Lord’s supper. And I find that difficult. The words in the book have challenged me, gone into my mind and my memory store. The flesh and the blood of Jesus are indeed a word, because he is the Word of God but it is still hard to lay hold of such simple things as bread and cup with the same intensity. Perhaps that is just me and you find it better and easier – I hope that is the case.

Second is about how the meal is to be carried out. One might think - many churches do - that because it was only the apostles that were present at that first meal the people involved in leading the service should be special. Rather sadly some denominations even call them priests. A priest is someone who stands between the ordinary worshipper and God. Therefore they are special. But there is no sign of any particular person leading the feast in this passage. There are no priests in the New Testament except ALL the Lord’s people. We all have immediate access to the Lord through the Spirit. Did John mean by the way he phrases it that it could be anyone of the Lord’s people who broke the bread and poured out the from the cup? I think he does and in doing so he was reflecting what Jesus meant. The other 3 gospel writers all say that when the 5000+ were fed it was the disciples who distributed the food. John says simply ‘Jesus distributed …’. No intermediaries are mentioned.

I was horrified when I heard a Christian woman, a missionary in a remote part of Africa, say they had been unable to Break Bread in their little meeting because there were no male converts. What rubbish! Nowhere does the New Testament even begin to hint that it is necessary to have a man, or an ordained man, or a priest to be able to partake of the body and blood of our Lord. Jesus set this feast up in the simplest possible way – we should not complicate matters.

Of course, very sadly, this service has been one of the main causes of disagreement in the worldwide church. Paul, who got so upset when Peter started to say some people can come to this table and these others cannot because of their ethnic background, would be horrified when churches today say some can come to our celebration because they share our particular viewpoint but others cannot because they belong to a church with a different name and different practices. Consequently there are as many individual views as churches on what is right and what is wrong. Hence the above comments must be said to be my view, heavily influenced by my particular background (Baptist/Christian Brethren/evangelical).

Think about all this – carefully. Accept these views or reject them as you think fit. What you do will very likely depend on your background. It is no good bringing the ‘leading of the Holy Spirit’ into your thoughts because he seems much less concerned than we are by all the differences!

This is a wonderful passage that should send us to our knees not to our debating chamber!

One modern song captures the most important things about this passage rather nicely. Here it is:

So we share in the bread of life / And we drink of his sacrifice /

As a sign of our bonds of love / Around the table of the King.

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Think Spot 9 May 2016

Think Spot 9 May 2016

For those of us who would call ourselves Christians, the Bible is very clear – you are called to lovingly and obediently serve in some capacity. A life of true Joy is seen in obedient service to the glory of God the Father, through God the Son Jesus Christ, in the power of God the Holy Spirit who lives in you. If you are engaging in either intentional or unintentional acts of disobedience, then you need to turn your life around to one of utter obedience to the God you profess to follow.

As a Christian, you have the Holy Spirit within you, as a seal of your salvation. Your body is the temple where God now resides. You can’t hide from Him, so you may as well choose to be obedient to Him in a life of joyful service, exhibiting that true Joy and the hope you have in Him. Just as joy followed Moses and Aaron’s obedience in Leviticus 9, so too can it be for those of us willing to lovingly serve obediently.

This is an extract from Glimpses into Leviticus available at Amazon

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Gems in the Gospel of John - Part 29

Gems in the Gospel of John

Part 29 - John 6:51
Living Bread

Three times Jesus announces that he is the bread of life. This is a somewhat strange thing to do, particularly when he goes on to tell his disciples to ‘eat my flesh and drink my blood’. We will need to think about 1) why he does this, 2) what are the Old Testament ideas he is referring to, and 3) what does he mean by eating bread when he has just equated himself with bread.

First, why does he do this? This is the first of the 7 ‘I AM’s with a ‘something following’ with which John has so carefully structured his Gospel. We have already seen how there are 7 occasions on which he reports Jesus referring to himself as I AM and how that was the personal name of God given to Moses at the burning bush. These 7 I AMs with a ‘something following’, better known than the others perhaps, though possibly not as important, also declare the importance and divinity of Jesus in no uncertain fashion and that emphasis is the clear motive of John in including them in his Gospel. So this is the first in an enormously important sequence of statements.

Bread was more widely eaten in those days than it is now and formed the basic source of nourishment for most people. This was particularly true of the Biblical area, which does not get enough rain to grow rice. Bread is not eaten proportionately so much these days because of the wider diet of the more affluent countries, and the large areas of Asia that grow and eat rice. When Jesus said I am the bread of life he was laying claim to a complete and fundamental part of people’s intake using the image of the physical necessity to point to a spiritual need, often overlooked but just as necessary to live a truly full life.

Of course, what he said was misunderstood, which is quite understandable since it sounds as though he was suggesting cannibalism. That misunderstanding reverberated down through the history of the church. It was centuries before people stopped making that an excuse for persecuting Christians.

Secondly: there are at least 2 Old Testament ideas that are in the background in this chapter. The most obvious is when the Israelites were given manna as they travelled through the wilderness (Exodus 16). This, together with quail (a small game bird eaten for food), rescued them from starvation when they were running out of food 15 days after they left Egypt. The story includes a great deal of grumbling on their part, first about the lack of food, then the inadequacies of a quail and manna diet. That grumbling is repeated in this episode but now it is grumbling at Jesus because of what he said: “I came down from heaven” which did not square with what they knew about his background as the son of Joseph (so they thought) and Mary.

Because the miracle of Jesus feeding the 5000 did not clearly include a heavenly angle and only lasted for one day rather than the 40 years the manna came down they did not consider it as impressive. Jesus, however, pointed out that the manna came not from Moses but the Lord God. The bread they had just had came from him – implying that he was on the same level as God himself.

The other Old Testament passage they may have been thinking of was Isaiah 55: 1-2 which reads “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare” which then goes on to 55: 10-11 which say “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” Those verses give a clear linkage between ‘bread’ and the ‘word of God’, precisely what Jesus is connecting up in himself when he said, “For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.”

Putting those thoughts together makes clear what he meant when he talked about eating bread and his flesh as bread. He came down from heaven as did the manna but he was vastly superior to the manna because he was the very Word of God. That in turn takes us right back to the very first verse of the Gospel. Jesus was the Word of God. We are to ‘eat’ that word taking him, his ideas, his thoughts, his teachings, into our very beings. And, because we are human beings, that means listening to words and hearing them and putting them into practice.

The repeated call of the New Testament that we should be in close identification with Jesus (‘I am with you always’; ‘united with him’; ‘transformed into his image’; ‘when Christ appears we shall be like him’) in practical terms means to be like him in what we say, our words, what we do, our actions, and what we are, our motives and attitudes. We will never completely succeed for we are human and he was and is both human and divine, but the path ahead of us is clear: walk in step with Jesus.<

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Friday Prayers 8 May 2015

Partakers Friday Prayers!

We pray together and when Christians pray together, from different nations, different churches and different denominations - that reveals Church unity! Come! Let us pray together!

Take, Lord, and receive
all my liberty, my memory,
my understanding, and my entire will,
all that I have and possess.
You have given all to me.

To You, Lord, I return it.
All is Yours;
do with it what You will.

Give me only Your love and Your grace,
that is enough for me.
Amen

Based on a prayer of Ignatius Loyola

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Thursday - Testimony

Milly's Story

  

"I am healed and an overcomer"

Today on Partakers we have Milly sharing her story about how she became a Christian and the influence and affect that Jesus Christ has had on her life - helping her overcome depression, heal her and set her aright... Come and hear the story of Milly and how Jesus is being glorified in her life!

For more to think about please do ask yourself the following questions and see how you respond or react to them. Then why not share your answers with your spouse or a close friend, so that you can pray over any issues together.

Q1. What were the events leading up to my choosing to be a Christian disciple which symbolize God running after me?

Q2. How am I, as a Christian Disciple, continuing to listen to God's voice?

Q3. Will I be ready to give my testimony the next time somebody asks me as to why I am a Christian?

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Think Spot 2 May 2016

Think Spot 2 May 2016

"God blesses those who work for peace, for they will be called the children of God." Matthew 5:9

All over the world, people share a common desire for peace! But what is peace? The peace the world wants varies from the peace the Christian knows. The world sees peace as the absence of conflict and people being generally ‘nice' to one another. Peace in the Christian context goes further, saying peace is perfect harmony with God, other people, circumstances and self. Therefore perfect peace will not come until Jesus Christ comes again, and takes Christians to be with Him.

That doesn't give us as Christians a mandate to sit around not doing what we can for peace, because we are commanded to be peacemakers (Matthew 5:9), our God is a God of peace (1 Thessalonians 5:23), and the Kingdom of God is about peace in the Holy Spirit (Romans 14:17). Peace is to be our business!

In a world full of conflicts, such as conflicts between nations, conflicts between neighbours, conflicts even within families and conflicts within and between churches, Christians are to be peacemakers!With that in mind, here are some thoughts on what the Bible has to say on peace, to help you this week be a peacemaker:

1. Peace with God

• Justified by faith (Romans 5:1-2)
• Christ is our peace between God and man and between men (Ephesians 2:13-18)

2. Peace with others

• Live at peace with everyone (Romans 12:17-20)
• Do everything possible which leads to peace and mutual encouragement (Romans 14:13-19)
• Be a peacemaker - a sign of real wisdom producing a harvest of righteousness (Matthew 5:9, James 3:17-18)

3. Peace within/circumstances

• Peace is a gift of God (John 14:27, 2 Thessalonians3:16)
• Worldly peace requires manipulation of circumstances, God's peace comes regardless of circumstances
• We have peace in troubled times - an untroubled, unfearful heart and mind (John 16:33)

Go in peace this Monday, into this week, knowing that the God of peace lives inside you if you are one of His children! Yesterday churches around the world celebrated the feast of Pentecost - the coming of the Holy Spirit as promised by Jesus. If you desire peace with God, with others and in all circumstances, ask this Holy Spirit who lives inside you to help you! If you would not consider yourself as one of His children, ask Him to help you become one!

Father, I pray that this week we will do all we can to be peacemakers and make a difference in world in conflict. I ask this through the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit who lives inside all those who have peace with you. Amen

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Gems in the Gospel of John - Part 28

Gems in the Gospel of John

Part 28 - John6:36-40
Security

I set out to do this series basically about one verse at a time but here we have a small structure that, being a lover of structures, I must bring to your attention. It is what is called officially a chiasm, but I prefer to call it a reflection for reasons that should become obvious. It is a series of clauses which go ABCB’A’, the second part being a reflection of the first half with some significant changes. Such things are surprisingly common throughout both the Old and the New Testaments. This one goes:

• Verse 36 A you have seen me and still you do not believe
• 37 B All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away
• 38 C For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.
• 39 B’ I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.
• 40 A’ everyone who looks to the Son and believes … I will raise them up at the last day

The 2 outer verses are about seeing and believing – the first negatively, they see and do not believe, the last positively about those who see and do believe. The 2 inner verses are both about what happens to those that the Father has given to Jesus. The central verse explains why Jesus has come down to earth and the consequences, which are that the last 2 verses are both more positive than the first 2.

We cannot see Jesus in any literal sense as they could and the first verse therefore does not make any direct sense to us. But I think we can reasonably change it into the parallel idea of listening and hearing and get the sense that way. You most probably know someone who is very good at listening but doesn’t seem to hear anything much! You talk to them; they give every appearance of agreeing with you; you are sure you have convinced them that what you are saying is right – perhaps some change in the way things are done at work or in church, which they are in a position to make.

But then you discover that absolutely nothing changes. They listened, but they did not hear. So it can be with the way people fail to hear what they are told about Jesus. They read the Bible; they attend church regularly; they enjoy the fellowship; there are all the signs that they are Christians. But nothing really changes in the way they behave; the things they do; the statements they make about faith. They listened but they did not hear, in exactly the same way as the people Jesus was talking to could see him, listen to him, see what he did, but it all made no change in their lives. Be careful. I do hope you are not one of those people who go to a good church to get their regular dose of listening but never really hear anything!

In his second and second last statements Jesus moves on to say that the reason for this is that it is the work of the Father to select those who will truly hear Jesus and follow him. That is both a reason and a promise. If indeed we have set out to follow Jesus we are secure for it was not really our choice but the work of the Father. That does not mean that we do not choose to follow or not. Later on in this chapter we read that many of those who listened to Jesus ‘turned back’. They decided not to follow him. And that is the way it is. From our perspective it is something that we do; from the greater perspective of the Triune God it is something he does. And we shall never be able to make those 2 perspectives meet up and sound the same. Like many of the best things of life: the love of a man and a woman, the things we see beauty in, the joy we can get from many an apparently trivial pursuit; the step of faith is not entirely logical – and none the worse for that.

The second last verse in this structure points out that the true benefit of that is that we are held securely in the Father’s arms and cannot be lost. (Although being frail human beings we always have the potential to walk away ourselves, as most of those listening to Jesus on this occasion seem to have done.) Not only shall we not be driven away in the first place, we are securely in forever, for this life and for the life to come. WOW!

The most important verse is, as usual in these reflective structures, the middle one. All this is possible because Jesus came down to do the will of the Father. We are totally secure in him. Triple WOW!

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