John 1 part 3

AND NOW WE HAVE SEEN HIS GLORY

glory - At once the Jewish reader would have thought of the Tabernacle. The place where God would concentrate Himself and where His glory would dwell. There were times that Moses and the Priests had to back off because the glory of God was shining so bright in this place. They had to be careful with the glory. ‘Shakeena' or 'God’s glorious presence’ is the word the Priests would use to refer God’s glory. And Jesus’ flesh now becomes the new Shakeena.

“Shine Jesus shine, fill this land with the Father’s glory” - But there is just one problem to that lyric...

Throughout the rest of the Gospel, John describes the central exhibit of Jesus’ GLORY as the fact that He was killed. In John 12, Jesus finally tells us that His hour has come - up to this point John has been foreshadowing the cross saying that His hour had not yet come - And remarkably Jesus says at that time that the hour has come for the Son of Man to be GLORIFIED! "Truly I tell you that unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain. But if it dies, it produces many grains."

Immediately we step back and ask ourselves: how can this be. We are surely not use to seeing the death of our champion as glorious. Only a racist heart glories in the death of a Martin Luther King Jr, only an evil heart glories in the death of a President Lincoln... We are not use to thinking of our champions death as glorious.

Jesus died on the cross, and His followers looked on. He died on a torture instrument that the Romans adopted in order to terrorize their enemies. The Romans took Jesus’ life and His dignity through a state sponsored terror event that was meant for anybody who could see or hear saying to the onlookers -- Cesar is lord and don’t you forget it!

Now where is the glory there? Glory on a cross?? A closer analogy to the onlookers of that day could possibly even be Glory through drug overdose... Glory on an electric chair??

But the Gospel finds glory there! Because the death of Jesus Christ will feed whole nations with the Bread of Life. Jesus body sown like a grain into the ground will send its roots down and its stock up until He bursts from the ground with life. For everybody who will believe in Him, who will believe that He saves...

This is what the Gospel cries out from that day of Resurrection to today. God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.

John 1 part 2

John 1

THE WORD BECAME FLESH AND DWELLED AMONG US...

The Tabernacle is now Jesus' flesh. It is where God concentrates Himself, it is where people can hear God speak. And 'the Word' can speak God's words because He is here. Immanuel, God is with us! The disciples probably knew 'the Word' when He was sick. And Joseph and Mary knew 'the Word' when He was so young He could only babble or on a day that Jesus cut a board too short and was not too happy about it. 'The Word' became flesh, now He could embrace His followers, laugh with His friends, and ask for a second helping of food...

And now He could suffer terribly because He has got a neck and a back and the back’s of His

thighs are crisscrossed with nerve endings that scream when He gets whipped... He’s flesh. So He probably forgot stuff. On some days He might say something and then on the next day He might say ‘Oh I am sorry I meant to say something else.’ He’s flesh. He wept, He got tired, He prayed before calling His disciples and then got Judas as one of the answers to His prayer. He is flesh. He said there were things He didn’t know, like when the end of the world would happen. He is flesh after all.

But He is also God of God and Light of Light. What you see in His life is the MOST remarkable display of the heart and mind of God the earth has ever known. He has the power to send demons away, He has the power to send sickness away, and the power to send sin away and He does it!

And He has the power in the very next chapter, to turn water into wine. Jesus is at a wedding in cana, Jesus’ mother notices a wine shortage, and Jesus goes to work. He makes about 150 gallons of wine. He does, as what Pope Gregory the Great said in the 7th century , “a speeded up version of what God does all the time.” Every Fall God turns water into wine, in the Napa Valley, in the Cayuga Valley. Jesus does a small speeded up version of what God does in the wedding at Cana. So you can say that Jesus speaks for God, but we will see that Jesus keeps on doing what God does, or to use another metaphor - Jesus as the deed. And He does it in the Flesh. And so you now you have the feet of God taking Him to the shack of a leper, and the hand of God reaching out towards flesh that nobody else would touch, and the knees of God that bent as He washed the feet of His disciples, an act that they would not have dreamed of doing for each other, and you got the arms of God stretched out to be nailed for our sins, wounded for our sins. It’s as if the terrifying work of atonement cannot be done without God becoming flesh.

THE WORD BECAME FLESH AND DWELLED AMONG US... Words don’t have meaning until we see action, until there is flesh and blood executing the deed.

"A young man during the Civil War was watching Abraham Lincoln coming into a Hospital Ward as he sat down by a boy that was dieing. The Secretary of War and some Generals wanted to move him on, but he wanted to stay. And so he did, talking to the boy about his home on the Sangamon River. He sat with him two hours before the boy died. The young man commented later, ‘You know I had a good home, I knew from church that God had compassion, but that day when I saw the sadness in the President’s eye and saw the weariness in his face I came to know something about God that I had never known before. Compassion has to have flesh before we can really understand what it truly is, what the Word truly means in our day, the Word becoming flesh."

John 1 part 1

John 1

THE WORD is like a metaphor for Jesus. Jesus, in a sense, speaks for God.

Jesus is God all over again, Jesus is a chip off the ol’ block... He sounds just like His Father. When someone appears in a place unexpectatly, Jesus says what God would say, “Don’t be afraid.” When Jesus is confronted by religious leaders Jesus said what God would say, “Woe to you! You give your money, but you neglect justice! In fact you run widows right out of their houses.” Jesus speaks for God. At least 5 times Jesus says none of His words come from Him, everything He says He has heard His Father say.

AND THE WORD BECAME FLESH...

He is God, absolutely... and He became flesh.

CS Lewis once wrote, "you want to get the smallest of glimpses to see what this might mean for the Son of God to stuff Himself into human form? Imagine yourself becoming a slug. Your activities would be limited and restrictions would apply."

HE BECAME FLESH AND DWELT AMONG US...

Actually, the Greek is a little sharper than this. The Greek says He tented with us. We are like Israel in the wilderness.

God wants to be with them there so He has them make the Tent of Meeting, a place for Him. It’s got holy places in it and what not, but the basic idea for it is that Israel is going to be okay when God is in His tent and His people can worship Him. In fact, “tenting” becomes part of God’s ID in the Old testament, ‘Who is Israel’s God? Well, He is the one that "tents" in Zion!’

Then at the end of the Bible, John sees a vision beautiful enough to break your heart (in Rev. 21). At the end we don’t go to Heaven, Heaven comes to us! The City of God descends to us, so God can TENT with us here.

Jesus' thoughts on the Bible - How Can We Hear from God, Part 4

John 5:31-47

(4) How can we hear God? Jesus argues to see everything in the Bible as pointing to Him- He is the TRUE Joshua, the host of the armies of the Lord; He is the TRUE Jonah, the prophet who died for His people who was kept in the belly of the Earth for 3 days...

Until you see every passage of Scripture about Him and not about you... until you read the Bible NOT for information but for formation... until you read the Bible to meet Him you will be reading it just like the people who end up killing Jesus.

The Gospel (the Good News in which Christianity stands on) is NOT that you do things and you offer them to God, BUT that God sent Jesus Christ to live the perfect life and that it is His standing that is now offered to you. If that truth reforms, or in other words, remakes you, then you are starting to stand in what Jesus accomplished in His life. God then sees you as perfect and as blameless as Christ.

Every other religion says that it is your job to rise up and live a divine life... the Gospel says that Jesus came down and lived a human life and did what we were supposed to do for us. When you are united with Him you are accepted through that. If you don’t believe that the story is true, then what you really believe in is a lot of principles that you have to live up to. BUT if you see the story as true, then you can read everything in the Bible as being about Jesus and not about you and what you must do. If it is all about you, you will be mechanical and rigid and will miss the point and will not have internal character change. The weight of the principles will either be absolutely crushing or they will serve as a source and excuse for self-righteousness and ignorant arrogance... If you read it as about Him the love of God will dwell in you (V38).

PLEASE self give the Bible authority over me!! In the areas I don’t want to hear. If I don’t then how can God ever heal me in tough times!! - If He doesn’t have authority over me now then what is going to happen in my life when my heart is broken or when I feel like a failure... when our hearts condemn us the Bible says that God is greater than our hearts BUT how can God be greater then my heart, how can God come in and give me hope and love unless I give the Bible full authority over me in all things. I can't just pick and choose these things creating a god of my own choosing, can I??

For those of you who have Jesus’ “view of the Bible”... how are you reading the Bible? Are you reading it for information or formation? Read it to its logical conclusion. Can you earn your salvation or do you need a savior?

Jesus' thoughts on the Bible - Why we don’t hear God speak, Part 3b

John 5:31-47

2. Not only did these people miss the purpose of the Bible, but they missed the POINT

Jesus says the Bible testifies about Him like John the Baptist did... During his life, people asked John the Baptist; ‘Are you the one?’ He adamantly said, ‘NO, I am pointing to something beyond me, I am baring witness to the one, I am not the one.’... When Jesus says the Bible is just like John the Baptist I think this is what it means: if we are not seeing in every single part of the Bible pointing beyond itself to Jesus, just like John the Baptist, then we are lost. We are missing the point.

Let’s look at the story of Joseph in Genesis. What is the story of Joseph about? He is sold into slavery. He triumphs through it because he trusts in God. Incredibly at the end he saves the lives of his family because he is at the right hand of the Pharaoh and forgives them... What is that about? Most people would say that the story is pointing to Joseph - ‘If I try hard, no matter how bad people treat me or who betrays me, I can get through it. If I just believe in God I can do anything. If I try hard enough I can forgive.’ If you read it that way you will either become smug and self-righteous OR you will be crushed with despair.

BUT if every part of the Bible is saying, ‘I am not the one, I am pointing to something beyond me!’... There was a real Joseph who was sold and was betrayed by the people that should have loved Him, and He brought about redemption not just in spite of His suffering but through His suffering and now He is seated at the right hand of the Father and He has forgiven us... Until you see yourself as the recipient of what the TRUE Joseph has done you will never have the heart to be able to forgive other people. If Joseph is just an example he will crush you. If He is pointing to Jesus then suddenly there is liberation.

Every part of the Bible is the same...

Look at the “Golden Rule” in Leviticus 19. Anybody who says, ‘we don’t need Jesus, we just need to live by the ‘Golden Rule’ has never really listened to the Golden Rule because it is impossible to keep by itself. The Rule says that you have to meet the needs of other people with all of the creativity, power, and joy that you use to meet your own needs... Do you know what that means?? The ‘Golden Rule’ is saying I AM NOT THE ONE. It is testifying! - It is saying, ‘If you think you can obey me, you are crazy! I am here to show you (as Paul says in Romans 5) that the Law is a school master here to bring you to Jesus.’ If you say I can obey the Law if I try hard enough then you are NOT even listening to the Law because the Law is pointing beyond itself. If you look at the Law as an end and not a means to the end as leading you to the need of a Savior then you are deaf to the great things that God is saying. And I don’t think it really matters if you claim belief in the “inherency” or “infallibility” of the Scripture!

The Bible was meant for the Gospel to be seen in every part of it. Jesus declared that to be so here in John, in Luke 24, in many other places.

Here is another example: in the Garden of Gesthamine Jesus is telling His disciples, ‘I need you to stay awake.’ After three times seeing them asleep He is not irritable at all, He wakes them up, and goes to meet the Roman soldiers... I use to read that and say I need to be like that. I need to not be irritable! But yet I continue to find myself irritable with people who are not meeting the standards I have set for them everyday... There is liberation to the degree that I have meditated and know that that I am not Jesus in this story but am the disciples that fell asleep... If you see Jesus as simply a model of forgiveness (Even forgiving on the cross!), His example will crush you. But IF you see Jesus dieing and forgiving you for YOUR sins, that melts your self-righteousness and it gives you a desire to forgive others’ sins, but only because you have been built up.

Jesus said the Bible will get up on the last day and judge us - even those who have studied it, who know it inside out, and, I think most importantly noteworthy, who have read it for information and NOT for formation. Read V37-38. The very authors of the Bible will judge those who who read the Bible for information and rules and without seeing it pointing to Jesus.

Jesus' thoughts on the Bible - Why we don’t hear God speak, Part 3a

John 5:31-47

(3) Why do we not hear God speak?
On the last day, Jesus says here in John that Moses and the writers of the Bible will call you into judgment because “you did not listen.” Remember who Jesus is talking to - serious Bible students. This is VERY FRIGHTENING to me and it should to churches across America. Jesus says that it is very possible to believe in the “infallibility”, “inerrancy”, and “inspiration” of the Scripture AND be as deaf to what God is saying as if you did not believe any of it at all. Jesus is telling this to the people that have ‘the right view!’ He is criticizing their use of scripture. In a sense Jesus is saying that although you may have the technical view of the Bible, it can be for naught if you do not use the scripture in the right way.

Jesus is telling the Bible students how they are missing the Bible in 2 ways:

1. They are missing the whole purpose of the Bible. V39 Jesus says that the Pharisees believe that the study of Scripture and the knowledge of the Scripture is how people are going to get favor with God. I would say that this view is NORMAL today. Many people starting out in Christianity often say something like, ‘I am going to be really good now - I am going to start reading the Bible. I am going to read it everyday and then I am going to know that God is in my corner. I will study, read, memorize, know the Bible...’

I am not saying you should not be studying the Bible. I just remember how many times I have gotten up in the morning, or sat down throughout a day, and I would feel so much better after simply doing the deed. It would not be because of a meeting with Jesus or having the Holy Spirit work on my heart, it was often simply that my conscience felt better. I thought I was more in tune with God and that I had more sway with God and that only then would He be answering my prayers and, honestly, only then that He was pleased with me. I was really not doing anything with the Bible, I was not learning, growing, seeing the point... I felt that just by searching and studying the Bible that I would be okay and that God would love me then... and only then.

Do you see how dangerous that is?

One BIG, HUGE reason why people today don’t believe the Bible is because of how conservative Christians use the Bible. Conservative Christians use the Bible in a certain way because of how they study the Bible. The study the Bible like this: to feel good about themselves, to feel superior about themselves, to feel that God must love them because they know the Bible so much... People who study like that cannot judge the central to the less important things in the Bible and so they get into all kinds of theories and calculations about creation or about the ‘end times’ and then fight for absolutely every little bit of ‘their view.’ They buy more into their view of the Scriptures rather then the Scriptures themselves. They hit people over the head with it. They study the Bible simply for facts and information and not for the gist and for what it is really teaching.

This is a very dangerous approach. I should know. I was and still can be there.

Jesus' thoughts on the Bible - How God Speaks, Part 2

John 5:31-47

(2) How God speaks.
* (Quick Disclaimer - if you have a hard time with this post PLEASE wait until the next post to see it in its context before judging it)

Out of the three evidences the scripture is given the lion’s share of weight. It is the only one that is claimed as the “Father’s testimony.”

We learn important things here about Jesus’ view of scripture. It is a little indirect but it is there. Directly He is attacking the Pharisees/these "Bible studiers" use of scripture but in the process we get Jesus' view of scripture.

We get at least two things:
1. Jesus said that the scripture is Divine and not human. He does not say it was not written by human beings (“Moses wrote of me”), but in V34 He says that human testimony is not enough and so then in 37 He says He is going to give the Father’s testimony and then in 39 He gives scripture.

The Bible often is declared as man’s search for God. Jesus says it is from God. ‘Yes Moses wrote it, but it is actually the Father’s testimony.’ This is not man reaching up for God, it is God reaching down to us.

In Matthew 19 Jesus quotes God and what He quotes is Genesis 2:24. But if you go back to Genesis you will see that the author of the book wrote that, not God, as a comment on what just happened. But Jesus can quote what the author of Genesis wrote as from God just like He is doing here with Moses. ‘It is the Father’s testimony.’

2 Peter 1:20, 21 - “no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”

Jesus and Peter are both saying that what you have in the Bible, though humans wrote it, is the testimony of God.

2. Another thing Jesus says is that not only is this a divine revelation, it is the most sure divine revelation. Jesus is saying that ‘you have not heard His voice nor seen His form... yet you have the testimony.’ Or in other words, you have never had a vision or heard God’s voice, but you have His testimony anyway.

In 2 Peter 1 - Peter is saying a few verses before twenty that He heard a voice, He saw a vision, but yet the scripture testimony is more sure. Paul in Galatians 1:6-9 says that even if an angel from Heaven came and declared a different message you can dismiss it if it is against Jesus being our full and complete atonement. You can just throw the angel out at that point, even with the ground shake and lightning coming down from the sky!

Jesus, Peter, and Paul are saying that the Bible is better than a vision. I think because honestly there are only three possibilities if you have such a vision: 1. It is a human source, you are making it up in your head or it is a fraud; 2. It can be supernatural outside of God; or 3. It can be a supernatural source from God. If you have a vision or hear a voice you only have a 1/3 chance that it was not a mistake. But with the Bible you are batting 1.000. Jesus is saying you have the real testimony of God in the Bible.

(On my next post, I will get into the fact that you cannot bat 1.000 by simply using the Bible if you use it as an end in itself and not a means in pointing beyond itself or in other words if you don't see the point of the Bible...)

And if this the Scripture sits in judgment against voices and angels from the sky then you have to ask yourself this question: Is your heart going to sit in judgment against the Bible or is it going to sit in judgment against your heart? Listen closely to the authority that Jesus gives the Bible.

Jesus is saying that this is the only way you can really know that God is speaking. What this means is this: You cannot have relationship without believing in the complete authority of the Bible.

I am finding that many people today talk about the Bible like this: ‘If you think of the Bible as truth then you are not having a conversation or intimacy with God because the Bible just has a lot of laws and rules and you cannot have intimacy or a conversation with that. Let us realize that the Bible is not always true, we are enlightened today and we are able to now judge on what parts of the Bible are right and wrong, and only when we do that can we actually have real intimacy or a real conversation with God.’

The Stepford Wives movie is a good example of a point here. I saw the remake years ago. The movie was not good, but I think a good principle can be taken from it. The movie is basically about the husbands of this town are replacing their wives with robots. The robots are programmed to be the ‘perfect’ wife. Relationship and intimacy are the farthest things away from what those couples in the movie had at that point... When you have people that you can turn off whenever they say something that offends you, when you are surrounded by people that only say ‘Yes dear’, when you are surrounded by people that never contradict you, that never challenge you - then you are NOT having a conversation, you are NOT having intimacy. You are not having a personal relationship at all.

When you come to something that offends you in the Bible and say in a sense, ‘I can’t believe in a God that would send people to Hell, I can’t believe in a God that would say that is wrong!!’ When you get to a place where God contradicts you in the Bible, but then say I can’t accept that because it offends me, what you have then there is a Stepford god. It is a god according to your rules, how you think. If you don’t take the Bible as anything but Truth you will not have a conversation, you will not have intimacy.

You cannot ‘know’ Jesus and not have His view of the Bible? Jesus’ view of the Bible was the very foundation on which His entire life was based. He is constantly saying: “It is written...” or talking about the scripture being “fulfilled” while dealing with temptation in the desert, to Peter before the Roman soldiers who are about to take Jesus away... with the cross on His back (Luke 23), on the cross as He is dieing (Psalm 22).

If you say you want Jesus AND you DO NOT want a Bible that you have to obey no matter what it says, what you are really saying then is that you don’t want the real Jesus, you want a Jesus that you can make up, that you can program and turn off. You can’t have Jesus and deny the very basis of His life. Jesus says that the Bible is TESTIMONY - it is personal to Him, testimony is a personal account.

Jesus' thoughts on the Bible - God Speaks, Part 1

Jesus argued. He often picked debates. I think He had to do this because Jesus said, in a sense, that we do not have a category in our heads for Him and so it would not have worked if He had just said “Think about this”. That is the reason why He argued. We need to look at the hard sayings because we are not perfect, we need to be shaped by the weighty things of God. It is time for me to pay serious attention to this truth myself (I feel a bit foolish that I have had a CS Lewis quote that speaks to this very topic on this blog since day 1 but yet have hardly scratched the surface).

Jesus is arguing about the Scripture here. It is surprising here because He is going after diligent Bible students. I am sure at least thousands of people are meeting in “Bible studies” in our country today. They are diligently studying the Bible. That’s good, right??

Jesus comes here to possibly the most diligent Bible students in the history of the world and He says that, ‘You are as dead wrong as people who don’t even believe in the Bible at all.’ He faces down people here who have a high orthodox view of scripture. That shows us that we have listen to this argument of Jesus’ very carefully because He is speaking to all of us, and more emphatically to those that assume that they have the very view of God... He is zeroing in on "bible-studying, God-believing Christians"...

I think Jesus is telling us in John 5: 31-47four things about God speaking to us: (1) God does speak to us, (2) How does God speak to us, (3) Why we don’t hear what God speaks to us and (4) how we can hear God speaking to us.

(1) The passage here speaks to the fact that God speaks to us.

At the beginning of Chapter 5 Jesus healed a paralyzed man, but He does it on the Sabbath. The Pharisees confront Jesus about His work on the Sabbath and Jesus responds with claims about Himself that must have been absolutely shocking to them. In 5:20 they say horrified to Jesus saying, ‘You are claiming to be equal with God!’.

In our passage Jesus agrees and continues that He does not want them to believe the claim just because He said so. He says He wants to point to testimony or evidence for the claim that He is God, which in turn tells us three ways in which God speaks to us. It is interesting because these three things are evidences that any American has access to today.

I think Jesus is also saying that Faith in Him is more than thinking, but it is certainly not less. It is more than examining the evidence, but it is not less. If you cannot believe in Jesus you have to ask yourself, ‘Have I looked at the evidence?’ Or if you say ‘I don’t hear God speaking to me’ you need to ask yourself, ‘Have I gone to the places where Jesus has said that God speaks? Have I exposed myself to the testimony that God [supposedly] has sent?’

Jesus says here don’t believe just because I am asserting it. Look at the evidence:
1. The first evidence He gives is human. Jesus points to John the Baptist. John was a ‘burning and shining light.’ He is looking to John as, not the prophet, but a radiant human being and a great man who was a burning and shining light. The first way God speaks to us is through personal relationships, through His work through another human - people who point to Christ and whose lives are radiant. There is integrity, an unaccountable radiance there. Unless you have known people like that you have not heard one of the main ways how God gives evidence that He is there.
2. The second is empirical. Jesus says that God has given Him works to do. He is talking about His life, His claims, His miracles, His resurrection.
3. The third is scriptural.

You have not put yourself in the places where God speaks if you have not exposed yourself to these three areas.