John 6:22-40

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John 6:22-40

 
22 On the next day the crowd that remained on the other side of the sea saw that there had been only one boat there, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with his disciples, but that his disciples had gone away alone. 23 Other boats from Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. 24 So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor his disciples, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum, seeking Jesus. 25 When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” 26 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. 27 Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.” 28 Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” 29 Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” 30 So they said to him, “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? 31 Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'” 32 Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 34 They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. 36 But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. 37 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. 38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. 40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
 
 
 
In an interesting way, great leaders are always judged by whether or not they provide bread for the people they govern. We remember fondly those leaders who cared for the well-being of their people. We remember harshly those leaders who lived well while people starved around them.
For instance, the night before she committed suicide or was murdered, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, Joseph Stalin’s wife (who had become a Christian), bitterly shouted at the revelers attending a banquet of the wealthy and the powerful, “I hate you all! Look at this table, and the people are starving!”[1]
Or, more famously, we might think of Queen Marie Antoinette’s infamous statement. While the words are almost certainly wrongly ascribed to her, the old story is that when she was informed that the peasants had no bread to eat, Marie Antoinette callously responded, “Let them eat cake!”
France’s Henry IV openly declared his desire that there would be “a chicken in every pot.” This hope was picked up by the Republican Party in 1928, with the addendum, “and a car in every garage.”
Yes, we may judge rulers on whether or not they provide bread for their followers. It’s always been that way. Bad rulers don’t care if the people have bread. Good rulers care a lot.
It is interesting, then, to find Jesus providing bread, miraculously, for the hungry crowd, then using their hunger for more bread to take them deeper into the reality of who He is. For Jesus indeed came to give sustenance to the world, but not in the way that the world imagined it. In fact, the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand gave rise to certain tensions between what the people expected of Jesus and what He knew He needed to be for them.
Points of tension are good. These are the moments where we grow. So it was into these points of tension that Jesus stepped and led the people to a greater understanding of Himself.
The people wanted the immediate whereas Jesus wanted to give them the eternal.
 
In the aftermath of two dramatic miracles (the feeding of the five thousand and Jesus walking on the water), Jesus has to clarify the meaning of the first miracle to those who come to Him again wanting more.
 
22 On the next day the crowd that remained on the other side of the sea saw that there had been only one boat there, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with his disciples, but that his disciples had gone away alone. 23 Other boats from Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. 24 So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor his disciples, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum, seeking Jesus.
The disciples, you will remember, had gone to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. When they left, Jesus was not with them. After the miraculous events of the night before, however, He arrives with them on the other shore.
The people, of course, want more of Jesus. But, in truth, what did they really want? Their true intentions, and the truth of who Jesus is and what He wanted to be for them would both surface in the conversation to come.
25 When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” 26 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.
There can be no doubt that this revelation of the people’s flawed intentions for wanting to be near Christ stung and confused many of those in the crowd. It always stings when Jesus puts His finger on the unpleasant truth of who we really are and what we really want.
What was driving the people, Jesus revealed, was not a desire to know the One to whom the signs pointed, but rather a desire for the immediate gratification that the miraculously-provided loaves offered them.
They wanted bread.
In revealing this, Jesus announces one of the great, abiding, conflicts that exists among many who come to Him: the conflict between the immediate and the eternal.
The people wanted the immediate. They wanted bread…now! They would, of course, have claimed that they wanted Jesus. But, in truth, what they wanted wasn’t Jesus but more of the material offerings He earlier gave them.
After pointing out the reality of their hearts’ desires, Jesus next reveals the fallacy of this approach to Him:
27 Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.”
 
“Do not labor for the food that perishes.” Do not set your hearts on the gifts, no matter how good, that are here only for a moment. Do not love the expression of love more than the One who loves you. Do not want what I am capable of giving you more than you want Me!
It is almost as if Jesus is saying, “I didn’t give you the bread to make you hungry for more bread. I gave you the bread to make you hungry for Me! Come unto Me! Don’t come unto My miracles. Don’t come unto the bread I have given you. Don’t come unto what you think I may do next. Come unto Me!”
Oh what a great, great tragedy this conflict between the immediate and the eternal has wrought in Christianity today. What carnage has been left because people, in the name of Jesus, desire the gifts more than the Giver?
The tyranny of immediacy – the desire for instant gratification at the hands of God (what Calvin Miller has called “the sensual thrall”) – is a powerful tyranny in the church today.
I read an expose on a large pastor in the Atlanta, GA, area who has grown a large and prosperous church that emphasizes immediate gratification. The article reported how, when offering time came, the people would all stand and wave their offering envelopes and shout, “I want my stuff! I want my stuff!”
There is perhaps no greater image of many in the church today than that: “I want my stuff!”
This was the cry of those who came to Jesus in search of more bread and this is the cry of many who come to Jesus today. “Give us more bread! Give us more wealth! I want my stuff!”
There is a whole army of prosperity preachers who teach that one of the great points of Christianity is that God wants you to have good bread whenever you want it and in whatever amounts you desire.
It is true that Jesus told us to pray for “daily bread,” but that is “daily bread.” It is bread for today, enough to live on.
Even then the Bible does not disparage wealth in and of itself, though it points out the inherent dangers that can come with it. But what the Word of God manifestly does not say is that the point of knowing Jesus is having what you want when you want it.
 
The people wanted provisions whereas Jesus wanted them to have a Person.
In verse 27, the Lord Jesus elevates the eternal above the temporal (while never denying that the temporal does, in a meaningful sense, matter) and calls upon those who would follow Him to “not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life.” So He has called them to labor, to work, for eternal food. Naturally, given their state of mind, they respond:
28 Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?”
This crowd, like all crowds that come to Jesus, are pragmatists. They want to know the nuts and bolts of what this labor for eternal things looks like. So they ask the same question that the rich young ruler asks in Luke 18:18: “What must I do?”
The very question reveals that their minds are still bound to the earth and to earthly things. What must we do to make this eternal bread happen? How do we achieve this amazing feat? Then Jesus goes on to show that they misunderstood the nature of this labor. He’s not talking about new ways to make even better bread. He’s talking about the only way to receive the only bread that lasts forever:
29 Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”
Ah! Here it is! When Jesus tells them to “labor…for the food that endures to eternal life” He means that they are to trust and believe in the Jesus who is the bread of life. In saying this, Jesus draws attention away from the provisions they are fixated on and onto the Person they are missing.
The point isn’t the bread, the point is the eternal Bread of Life, Jesus Himself, Who has come from Heaven to satisfy all who will partake of Him!
30 So they said to him, “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform?
Will you allow me a moment to vent the full force of my amazement at this astounding question? “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you?” What? What?! What sign? Did they really just ask Jesus what sign He was going to perform so they could believe in Him?
What had Jesus just done? What miracle did He just perform, leading them to seek Him out in this place?
Honestly, the mind boggles at the amazing lunacy of this request! Then again, it is just possible that they are using even this amazing revelation of Himself as an occasion to use Jesus for their own purposes. It is just possible that the sign they really want to confirm that He is God’s own Son, the bread from Heaven, is (you guessed it) more bread from the earth!
It is almost as if they simply refuse to go where Jesus is trying to take them mentally, spiritually, and psychologically. There is a pernicious determination implicit in this question that belies their utter determination to get more food out of Jesus.
So Jesus says, “It’s not about bread to eat, it’s about believing in the One who gave you bread to eat.” And the people seem to say, “Ok. Give us more bread so we can believe!”
The only thing that keeps us from an outright complete denunciation of these people is the painful realization that we are capable of the same myopic short-sightedness ourselves. It is difficult to break the terrible habit of wanting to use Jesus for our own purposes.
Then, their manipulation continues:
31 Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'”
Not only does this statement strengthen the connection between John 6 and the events of the Passover and Exodus, it also reveals just how far the people are willing to go to get Jesus to do for them what they want Him to do. “Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness.”
Among other things, the people are no doubt seeking to move Jesus by the fact that Moses fed them in the wilderness. Do you see what they are doing? “Jesus, Moses, mighty Moses, the great Moses, he gave us food. This Moses, our hero, who we celebrate at this time of Passover, he cared for our physical needs. Would you like to be as mighty as Moses, Jesus? Moses gave us bread. Can’t you do the same just one more time?”
At least, that seems to be their common understanding of the events of the Exodus, as evidenced by Jesus’ response:
32 Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.
Jesus attacks their unspoken assumption. He reminds them that it is not and never was about Moses. Indeed, Moses did not want it to be about Moses.  It’s always been about the Lord God. It’s always been about the Father’s provision for His people. And here, in Jesus, Almighty God has offered them the greatest provision: the person of Jesus.
33 For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
Ah! So the bread is a person! “For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
The people saw the bread as mere provision. Jesus revealed that the true bread was His own person. In doing so, Jesus wrenched their attention free from their unhealthy fixation on physical provision and temporal needs and focused it firmly on His own nature and person and work.
Life isn’t about provisions. Life is about a person.
Finally, the light of understanding seems to begin to dawn in their hearts and minds:
34 They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”
Now we’re getting somewhere. “Sir, give us this bread always.” Jesus’ response to this, I believe, is best read with an imaginative view of Jesus slapping his forehead and breathing out these words in amazed but loving exasperation:
35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.
Take note that Jesus here uses the name of God that was given to Moses in response to Moses’ inquiry concerning how he was to explain his coming to Pharaoh. The Lord answers: “I am has sent you” (Exodus 3:14). This is the divine name that Jesus applies to Himself, thus, once again, strengthening the connection to the events of the Exodus: “I am the bread…” More than that, of course, it reveals once more the startling reality of Jesus’ diving nature.
Jesus, the person, fully God and fully man, is the bread that satisfies all hungers and quenches all thirsts.
It’s about a person, not provisions.
Church, have you planted your feet firmly in an understanding and knowledge of the fact that the person of Jesus is of infinitely more value than the temporal provisions for which you and I slowly ruin our lives? Upon what, exactly, are you spending your life?
It is a deep and abiding tragedy when the people of God yearn for and obsess over and weep over and fight over the temporal provisions of the world in the exact same way those who do not know Christ do these things. As if we did not have something of greater value freely offered to us! As if Christ isn’t enough! As if these provisions our culture is drunk on could add one iota to resplendent glory of the risen Christ!
Do not destroy yourself on the anvil of provision when the beautiful person of Christ is offered to you instead!
The people wanted to survive whereas Jesus wanted them to live.
Finally, we see the tension between mere survival and the full living of life that Jesus intends for his disciples to have and experience.
36 But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. 37 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.
Christ is the eternal bread from Heaven, and those who trust and believe in Him are partakers of this eternal sustenance. That was true two-millennia ago and it is true today. We must trust and believe.
Of course, we do not trust and believe in a vacuum. God is at work in the hearts of those who trust in Christ. God is opening the ears and eyes of the lost man or woman who calls on Christ.
To what end does the Father give the Son those who come to Him?
38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. 40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
The end is nothing less than eternal salvation, eternal security, forgiveness, joy, and peace. In other words, bread will help you survive for a moment but Jesus will enable you to live for eternity.
The people wanted to survive. Jesus wanted them to live. Our culture wants to survive. Jesus wants us to live. “Everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
We spend our lives scratching for survival. Jesus gave His life to bestow upon us eternal life! But we can miss this life in our frantic lust for survival.
Is it possible that we love the lesser things so much that we miss the greater things? Is it possible that our society’s fixation with bread – with survival, with winning the rat race, with reaching our own goals, with getting that promotion, with getting that house, with reaching that financial goal, with having that relationship, with achieving that level of fame, with having as much stuff as our neighbors, with finally getting what we think God owes us – is it possible that our frantic, feeble, pitiful, soul-destroying obsession with these things can actually cause us to miss the greater gift and the greatest gift of Jesus?
How can this be? It can be because of fear. We fear to let go of the bread of survival and so we cannot receive the bread of eternal life, for we cannot receive a gift in hands that are too full of worthless trinkets and cheap diversions. We must let go of the lesser things to receive the greater things.
I believe that Jesus is here pleading with these dear, confused people to give up the lesser things so that He might give them the greater things.
There once was a little girl who had loving, caring parents. She loved her mommy and daddy and, like a lot of little girls, she had her daddy wrapped around her finger! He loved her so very much, and she loved him.
In fact, they had their own little nightly ritual that nurtured their love for one another. Each and every night, after dinner, her daddy would sit in his big chair in the den, next to the fireplace, and he would call his daughter to him. He never had to wait long, for the little girl delighted in these moments with her daddy.
So every night she crawled up into his lap and they talked. “What did you do today?” he would ask. “Oh, daddy, today I learned my letters! Would you like to hear? Daddy, today our teacher read us an amazing story! You’ll never believe what it was about!”
On and on it went, every night, to the delight of them both.
One night, as the little girl climbed into her daddy’s lap, she was particularly animated. “Daddy, you will never imagine what happened today!” “What happened sweetie? Tell me?” “Mommy bought me this!” And with that she held up a plastic necklace comprised of multi-colored, plastic beads.
Her father smiled at her mother then at his daughter and said, “Oh, honey, they are so very, very pretty! Put them around your neck and show me how they look.”
She did so and her daddy carried on with great enthusiasm: “Look at that! You look soooo pretty! How very pretty your necklace is!”
The next night the little girl crawled into her daddy’s lap. She had the beads on again and, like the night before, all she could talk about was her plastic, colorful beads. Her father complimented her and them yet again and then tried to change the subject to other topics, like her day and her life, the topics upon which their very relationship was built.
But the little girl was having nothing of this. She was so enamored with her plastic beads that they dominated her speech.
The next night, once again, her plastic necklace dominated the conversation. She could speak of nothing else.
By this time, her father was quite frustrated and somewhat concerned. His continued attempts to get his daughter to speak of other issues consistently failed. The little girl seemed to see nothing but her beads, her plastic necklace. Her interests did not and seemingly could not go beyond them.
The next night, she crawled into her daddy’s lap and started to talk about her beads again when her father stopped her.
“Honey, can I ask you a question?”
“Yes, daddy.”
“Do you know that I love you?”
“Yes, daddy!” she said, smiling.
“Do you know that your daddy would never hurt you?”
“I know that, daddy.”
“And do you trust me?”
“Yes, daddy,” laughed the little girl, hugging herself to her father.
“Good,” said her daddy. “Honey, I want to ask you to do something. It’s something you might not understand, but I need you to trust me, okay?”
“Okay, daddy, of course. I trust you.”
“Honey, what I want you to do is this: I want you to hop off of my lap, walk over to the fire there in the fireplace, take off your necklace, and drop it in the flames.”
The little girls’ expression changed from joy to horror. Tears filled her eyes and, through quivering lips, she asked: “What, daddy?”
“I want you to trust me, honey. I want you to go and drop your necklace in the fire.”
For a brief moment the little girl stared into her father’s eyes while tears brimmed over the lids of her own. Slowly, she slid off of her father’s lap, walked to the fireplace, took off the necklace, hesitated, looked back at her father, turned back to the fire, and dropped her necklace into the flames.
The flames made quick work of the plastic necklace as the little girl turned and ran past her father to her room where she cried herself to sleep.
The next night, after dinner, for the first time ever, the girls’ father had to ask her to come and sit with him. Slowly, her head lowered, her feet shuffling, she walked to her waiting father. He picked her up with strong hands, placed her on his lap, and hugged her tightly to himself. Again, the tears flowed down her cheeks.
After a moment, and a kiss on the head, her father spoke: “Sweetie, do you know that your daddy loves you?” She slowly nodded her “yes.” “Did it make you sad to have to throw your beads into the fire last night?” Again, the silent nod. “And do you understand why I asked you to do such a thing?” This time, a nodded “no.”
At this, her father lifted her face up so that their eyes might meet. “I know it was painful dear. I know you do not understand. But I asked you to throw your beads away because I need for you to know something very important. I need for you to know, dear, that your father will never ask you to give anything up unless he has something better to give you.”
And with that, her father reached into his shirt pocket and slowly drew out a pristine, perfect, beautiful strand of costly white pearls. To her amazement, he held the pearls before her face for a moment and then affixed them around her neck, saying as he did so: “I love you so much, honey!”
I believe that this is an accurate illustration of the nature of the God we serve. Yes, He asks us to give up those treasures that dominate our small horizons – our bread, our provisions, our survival – but He only does so because He wishes to give us something greater.
He wants us to give up our worthless beads so that He might give us pearls. He wants us to let go of the bread that has come to dominate us so that He might give us Christ.
Christ is the pearl necklace.
Christ is the greater gift.
Christ is the eternal, all-satisfying bread of God.
Christ is all.
Christ is enough.
Central Baptist Church: Christ is enough.

[1] D.M. Thomas. Alexander Solzhenitsyn: A Century in His Life. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), p.55-58.

Fred Craddock’s Reflections on My Call to Preach

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Reflections on My Call to Preach: Connecting the Dots is Fred Craddock’s autobiographical consideration of his calling to be a preacher.  The book bears all the marks of a classic Craddock sermon:  accessibility, winsomness, insightfulness, honesty, and encouragement. I have come to love Christian biography and autobiography more and more, and Craddock’s ranks up there with the best of them.

Craddock is a preacher’s preacher, a masterful homiletician and teacher whose insights never fail to challenge and edify the reader. He is also an amazing story-teller. So when I saw that he had published this memoir (in 2009) I knew that, eventually, I’d spend some profitable time with it.

The story is precisely what it purports to be: a preacher’s reflections on the various peoples, places, scenes, and occurrences used by God to call him into the ministry. It is dominated largely by Craddock’s life as a boy. Having been called myself at the age of fifteen, I am always intrigued to hear others’ stories of their own callings.

A call is as unique as the person being called. This is vividly portrayed in ways moving and touching by Craddock. I was particularly touched by the dynamic of his parents: the tragedy of his father’s struggle with both fatherhood and alcoholism and the solid, persistent anchor of his mother’s nurturing faith. Unlike some sons’ takes on their less-than-perfect fathers (see Frank Schaeffer), Craddock’s depiction is charitable but honest without spilling into thinly-veiled vitriol. In fact, the story of his father pulling one of his own molars with pliers in order to pry out the gold filling to sell for Christmas presents for his children will remain in my mind as a powerful example of fatherly love (even as the stories of his alcoholism has reminded me again that the decisions we fathers make will affect our children all their lives.) I was also struck by Craddock’s revelation of his own perilous infancy and his mother’s offer of him to God should he survive (not least of all because I haved a similar story in my own calling).

Craddock tells his story with sympathy, introspection, humility, and a sense of reserve, but also transparency. I can tell it was difficult for him to write. I was moved by his account of the awkwardness of sitting with his elderly brothers trying to approach issues that haunted them into later life. I also appreciated his self-awareness in admitting that memories are tricky things and notoriously difficult to offer with exact certainty.

This book offers a moving account of one young man’s growth in a world of racial strife, social complexity, and poverty. The stories of the Craddock’s relationships with black friends and some of the tragic dynamics that living in a racially divided South introduced into their lives were painful reminders of our own scandalous, recent past as a nation.

Above all else, it is a story of divine calling. It is told without pretension or romantic mysticism. It is, instead, the cautious but sincere retelling of one man’s self-understanding of his own pilgrimage.

This is really a fantastic book.

Highly recommended.

John 6:16-21

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John 6:16-21

 
16 When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, 17 got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. 18The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. 19 When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were frightened. 20  But he said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” 21 Then they were glad to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going.
 
 
A few years ago I preached a series of revival sermons at a church in Flagler Beach, Florida. Flagler Beach is a small beach community on the east coast of Florida that has a wonderful, long ocean pier reaching out into the Atlantic Ocean. I was there for three or four days. We kept driving by this pier and I determined that, before I left, I would walk out on it.
One night, after our services and after dinner, I told my host good night and, before going back to my hotel, I decided I would see if the pier was still open. It was near closing time but it was still open so I paid the charge, passed through the gate and walked out onto the pier. It was a strange feeling walking out onto an ocean pier with church clothes and a tie on!
I walked slowly down the pier, further and further out. There were one or two people sitting on the pier near the entrance of it, but nobody further out. I had it all to myself.
When you go out of town and preach revival services, it puts you in a contemplative mood. You’re usually alone and have time to think, so, as I walked further out onto this pier I was lost in thoughts of my own.
After walking out a good ways, as I approached the end of the pier, I stopped and looked over the edge. It was a dark, windy night and the black waves were hitting against the pier pilings. Suddenly, I turned around and noticed something very unnerving…I was very far away from the entrance and the shore, all alone, in the night, in the dark, on the end of an ocean pier surrounded by the black sea.
I do not wish to be overly-dramatic, and it is no good testimony to my own courage, but, honestly, I grew very, very uncomfortable. I was no longer lost in my own thoughts. Whether real or imaginary, I could almost feel the pier swaying beneath me.  I felt the wind whipping my tie back over my shoulder.  The waves seemed very loud all of a sudden. I looked out into the black ocean around me and suddenly thought, “I don’t want to be here.” The wind suddenly seemed stronger and the waves seemed even more aggressive.
I slowly turned around and walked right down the middle of the pier back toward the entrance. I can still feel the sense of relief I had when I got to land. Oddly enough, a few weeks after that I was watching one of those amazing home video shows on TV and saw video of hurricane-whipped waves ripping the final thirty feet off of that exact pier in Flagler Beach some years earlier! No, this is not a “preacher tale.” It was the exact same pier. I could not believe it! When I saw that, I got the heebie-jeebies yet again.
It is a frightening thing to be on scary waters in the night, in the dark! If I felt that way being out on an ocean pier, how much more did the disciples feel afraid on the storm-tossed Sea of Galilee in the night!
The Sea of Galilee is not an ocean mind you. It is a lake. But any of you who have been out in the middle of a large lake know that, for all practical purposes, you might as well be in the middle of an ocean. You can drown just as easily in either, especially in a storm.
After miraculously feeding thousands of people, Jesus’ disciples go on ahead of Him in a boat across the Sea of Galilee. In the midst of their journey, they find themselves in a scary situation on the water.
It is then that Jesus comes to them. It is then that they learn even more about just who this Jesus is.
 
Christ, the Friend (vv.16-19)
 
16 When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, 17 got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. 18 The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing.
From verses 16-18, we learn a number of important things about the situation the disciples were in:
·         It was evening.
·         They were in a boat.
·         They were out on the Sea of Galilee.
·         It grew dark.
·         Jesus was not with them.
·         The wind was blowing and the sea became rough.
As I mentioned earlier, it is a scary thing to be on a dark, stormy, sea, alone and at night. While I think we should be careful not to spiritualize basic details in the Bible, it is understandable that many in Christian history have seen a spiritual reality in the disciples’ predicament. In other words, many suggest that these physical details also apply to the spiritual condition of those who are not in Christ or who are not walking with Christ as they should. For instance, the church father Cyril of Alexandria, the Patriarch of Alexandria, wrote this in the 5th century about the disciples’ situation:
            “Those who are not with Jesus are in a fierce tempest of a storm. They are cut off from him or at least seem to be absent from him because they have departed from his holy laws. Because of their sin they are separated from the one who is able to save. If then it is overwhelming to be in such spiritual darkness, if it is oppressive to be swamped by the bitter sea of pleasures, let us then receive Jesus. For this is what will deliver us from dangers and from death in sin.”[1]
Again, we need to be very careful spiritualizing the physical details of stories, but it must be admitted that loneliness, darkness, and danger are more than accurate descriptions of a life lived without Christ, aren’t they?
When you look at your own life and think of those times when you were not walking closely with Jesus (or, if you have never trusted in Christ, if you look at your life today), is it not the case that loneliness, darkness, and a sense of danger surround your soul? Do you not feel, at times, as if you are drifting alone on a dark and dangerous sea?
In light of this, verse 19 becomes all the more important:
19 When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were frightened.
 
For the moment, I would like to ask that we focus less on the miracle of how Jesus comes to them and more on the miracle that Jesus comes to them. Sometimes in our amazement at the miracle we forget the simple beauty of the wondrous fact that Jesus does in fact come to His disciples.
His walking on the water is a miracle of power and revelation. His coming at all, though, was a miracle of friendship.
 
Yes, there is a miracle here, but, first, there is friendship here.
I’m not sure how you feel about this, but I suspect you would agree that there is nothing so beautiful, so comforting, so encouraging, and so wonderful as the sight of an approaching friend in a time of danger.
Did you know that Jesus comes to us as a Savior and as a friend?
In John 15, Jesus says:
14You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.
What a beautiful statement! “I have called you friends.” And do you know what friends do? Friends come to one another in a time of need.
Somebody has defined a friend as the one person who walks in when everybody else has walked out. Is this not what we see in the person of Jesus?
In 1855, Joseph Scriven was in Canada while his mother was in Ireland. She was going through a very difficult time and Joseph, her son, decided to write her a song. So he took pen and paper and wrote these words to help his mother:
What a Friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer!
O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.
Have we trials and temptations? Is there trouble anywhere?
We should never be discouraged; take it to the Lord in prayer.
Can we find a friend so faithful who will all our sorrows share?
Jesus knows our every weakness; take it to the Lord in prayer.
Are we weak and heavy laden, cumbered with a load of care?
Precious Savior, still our refuge, take it to the Lord in prayer.
Do your friends despise, forsake you? Take it to the Lord in prayer!
In His arms He’ll take and shield you; you will find a solace there.
Blessed Savior, Thou hast promised Thou wilt all our burdens bear
May we ever, Lord, be bringing all to Thee in earnest prayer.
Soon in glory bright unclouded there will be no need for prayer
Rapture, praise and endless worship will be our sweet portion there.
It is important that we do not think of Jesus as a friend to the exclusion of thinking of Him as our King. But it is also important that we do not think of Jesus as our King to the exclusion of thinking of Him as our friend.
He is both. He is our King and He is our friend. He deserves our praise and honor, yet He draws near to us in companionship.
Let me say something to those of you who find Christianity confusing or difficult. Let me say something to those of you who are struggling to understand what the Christian faith is. In a very simple sense, Christianity is nothing more than a relationship with a friend whose love you cannot imagine. Christianity is a relationship with the One who comes to His struggling, frightened disciples and saves them.
Christ comes to the disciples and Christ comes to us. They are powerless to come to Him, but He comes to them…and He comes as a friend.
 
Christ, the Conqueror (vv.19-21)
 
But there is also the matter of how He comes. The friend of struggling humanity comes in a shocking way:
 
19 When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were frightened.
He comes “walking on the sea”! This is no small feat, church! Jesus comes walking on the water.
You can imagine the ingenious ways around this miracle that skeptics have devised. I think my favorite was printed in the April 2006 Journal of Paleolimnology (which, as you know, “provides a vehicle for the rapid dissemination of original scientific work dealing with the reconstruction of lake histories.”) The study suggested that portions of the Sea of Galilee could have contained hard-to-see patches of floating ice during one of two cold periods in that region somewhere from 2,500 to 1,500 years ago (obviously, this includes the time of Jesus’ incarnation). It suggests that during these two periods, temperatures in the region of the lake dropped to 25 degrees Farenheit. So, while it stopped short of saying this was definitely the case, the study suggested that Jesus may have been walking on hard-to-see floating ice patches. And, no, I’m not joking![2]
Skeptical human minds may struggle with such a miracle, but those who know the truth of who Jesus Christ is will not struggle at all. On the contrary, we will marvel at the miracle, not only for what it is but, more so, for what it says about the Savior! And what it says is Jesus is the conqueror of all enemies, no matter how powerful.
The Lord Jesus is Master and King and Conqueror. He is strong. The surging, raging waters are unconquerable from a human perspective. I imagine these disciples clinging in terror to the side of the boat. They see beneath themselves the dark watery abyss of death. They are helpless in the face of such an obstacle. They are undone by the power of the deep. There is, quite literally, nothing they can do!
But then they see this Jesus…walking on the sea! He walks on the water! This is no hidden, floating ice patch. This is no trick of the camera. These are not Hollywood special effects. Here is Jesus the Lord walking on the sea.
Their initial reaction is one of even greater terror. Their horror at the stormy waters is eclipsed only by their terror at seeing what they suspect is a ghost walking on the waters. Spirits and night spirits were commonly feared in the ancient world. In fact, the spirits of those who had drowned at sea were considered especially dangerous and frightening.[3]
Jesus acknowledges their fear and, when they hear the voice of their friend, their fear turns to joy:
20  But he said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” 21 Then they were glad to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going.
 
There is nothing – nothing – as comforting as the presence of a power greater than the power that is threatening to destroy you. The sea is strong, but Jesus is stronger. The waves are great, but Jesus is greater. Somehow, in His voice and in His face, once the fear and shock occasioned by His presence subsides, the disciples find peace in the storm.
The waves can destroy the disciples, but somehow, unbelievably, wondrously, they cannot touch this Jesus. He walks on them! Jesus is the conqueror of the threatening waters!
Let us return for a moment to our spiritual interpretation as well. The seas of sin and death and hell threaten all who are outside of Christ. The sea of destruction rises up to swallow whole those who are condemned by their sins and their guilt. The sea of justice and of wrath condemns the little boat of mankind.
Again, many of you feel this, even this morning. You feel the spray of the foam off the waves of your own wickedness. You hear the crashing waves of death all around you. You know that you are not going to survive by yourself where you are. You are in a destroying sea of your own making. You and you alone have put yourself here. You cling to the side of the boat of your own existence. You cling and weep and fear the certain death that is reaching up to you with its icy fingers. You recoil when you look into the waters. Down there are the sea monsters of death, the serpents and snakes of doom. You cry out but nobody can hear you over the storm of God’s own wrath.
Your little boat is sinking. Some of you feel it this very morning. It’s sinking! The waters of death are in the boat now, rising up to your knees, and they bite at you with bitter cold.
All of a sudden, you look into the distant darkness. Is it a mirage? Is it a ghost? Is it some avenging angel?
Somebody is coming to you…and he’s coming on the waters! It is unbelievable! You fear the sea of wrath and death and judgment and despair, but this one comes walking on the waters! He draws near and you shrink in fear from His presence.
“Who are you?” you scream over the storm.
He pauses and looks into your eyes. Then He steps forward and speaks. “It is I, Jesus. I am the Jesus you have rejected. I am the Jesus you have avoided. I am the Jesus you have made the punch line of your jokes. I am the Jesus you have not accepted. I am Jesus.”
You cry out again, “Jesus! Oh, Jesus! Have you come to destroy me? Have you come to cast me into the sea? Have you come to pour your wrath onto me? You would be right to do so. You would be absolutely right. Have you come to finish me, Jesus?”
Then this Jesus on the waters smiles and extends His hand to you and says, “Child, I love you. I am not here to condemn you. I am not here to destroy you. I am here to save you. It is true: if you reject Me you will sink into the sea of destruction and death and hell. But I have come to save you. I am greater than the sea. I am your friend and I am also the conqueror. I can conquer the sea of yours sins. I am greater than all that threatens you. I have come to you. I love you. Come to Me, and I will give you rest.”
And there He stands on the raging sea and there you sit in your sinking boat. Let me ask you now: what are you going to do? What…are…you…going…to…do?
Will you take His hand or will you die alone in the dark? What will you do?
In the early years of the 20th century, in Saugatuck, Connecticut, James Rowe and Howard Smith wrote and created the music for a hymn that is dearly loved today. Their song speaks of the power of Jesus in saving perishing humanity from drowning in a sea of sin. Listen:
I was sinking deep in sin, far from the peaceful shore,
Very deeply stained within, sinking to rise no more,
But the Master of the sea, heard my despairing cry,
From the waters lifted me, now safe am I.
Love lifted me! Love lifted me!
When nothing else could help
Love lifted me!
All my heart to Him I give, ever to Him I’ll cling
In His blessèd presence live, ever His praises sing,
Love so mighty and so true, merits my soul’s best songs,
Faithful, loving service too, to Him belongs.
Love lifted me! Love lifted me!
When nothing else could help
Love lifted me!
Souls in danger look above, Jesus completely saves,
He will lift you by His love, out of the angry waves.
He’s the Master of the sea, billows His will obey,
He your Savior wants to be, be saved today.
Love lifted me! Love lifted me!
When nothing else could help
Love lifted me!
Christ Jesus conquers the sea. The sea is death. The sea is separation. Christ walks on it, subdues it, and conquers it. Perhaps this is why Revelation 21:1 says the following about the glories of the new heaven and new earth:
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.”
There is no more sea. There is no more separation. There is no more threat. Christ is the conqueror of the waters. Christ has subdued the sea.
His walking on the water was an amazing display of His conquering power.
 
Christ, the Lord
 
Yet, I wonder if we realize the full implications of this miracle? Do we get all that is being said here? I doubt it.
I daresay that a good Jew would have seen something else in this story, something astounding. I daresay that even the disciples in the midst of crisis likely felt stirrings of a deeper truth when they saw Jesus approaching them on the water.
I say this because a good Jew would have been schooled in the Hebrew scriptures and, as such, a good Jew would have had a number of scriptures come to his mind at the sight of Jesus walking on the water.
 
For instance, you may remember that we commented last week on the fact that the feeding of the five thousand has shades of the Exodus in it. Just as God miraculously provided manna and sustenance to the children of Israel, so Jesus miraculously provided food to the five thousand. This connection is strengthened by the fact that the beginning of John 6 says that these things happened at the time of the Passover. The Passover was when the Jews remembered their deliverance from bondage in Egypt. So it is not inappropriate to say that, in some sense, John 6 is taking us back to the Exodus.
That is interesting, of course, because God’s miraculous provision of food in the wilderness was not the only miracle in the exodus, or even the greatest miracle, was it? Even greater was God’s miraculous deliverance of Israel from Egypt through the waters of the Red Sea. In other words, the Exodus began with God showing dominance over the waters that threatened His children with death.
If John 6 is linking the miracles of Jesus with the Exodus at the time of the Passover, and if the feeding of the five thousand reminds us of manna from Heaven, then what is Jesus walking on the water supposed to remind us of? Right: Jesus walking on the water is meant to remind us and to reveal to us that the God who showed miraculous, life-saving sovereignty over the waters of the Red Sea is the same God who shows miraculous, life-saving sovereignty over the waters of the Sea of Galilee.
In other words, in Jesus a new Exodus has come! Jesus is our new Moses, but He is so much greater than Moses. Moses led the children to earthly deliverance. Jesus leads us to an eternal promised land.
Also, a good Jew would have been well-studied in the book of Job, and he might well remember that in Job 9 Job speaks of the glory of God in this way:
 
4 He is wise in heart and mighty in strength
—who has hardened himself against him, and succeeded?—
5 he who removes mountains, and they know it not,
when he overturns them in his anger,
6 who shakes the earth out of its place,
and its pillars tremble;
7 who commands the sun, and it does not rise;
who seals up the stars;
8 who alone stretched out the heavens
and trampled the waves of the sea;
 
Job says that God tramples the waves of the sea. It is God and God alone who walks on the waters.
As a child, a good Jew would have heard the Psalms read. He might well have even sung them himself. And no doubt he would have heard the words of Psalm 29:
3 The voice of the LORD is over the waters;
the God of glory thunders,
the LORD, over many waters.
4 The voice of the LORD is powerful;
the voice of the LORD is full of majesty.
Then verses 10 and 11:
10 The LORD sits enthroned over the flood;
the LORD sits enthroned as king forever.
11 May the LORD give strength to his people!
May the LORD bless his people with peace!
So a faithful Jew, like the disciples were, would have known that Yahweh God is Lord over the waters, the Lord over many waters. God is the God of the waters, and He is over them.
A good Jew would have known what the psalmist said of God in Psalm 65:
5 By awesome deeds you answer us with righteousness,
O God of our salvation,
the hope of all the ends of the earth
and of the farthest seas;
6 the one who by his strength established the mountains,
being girded with might;
7 who stills the roaring of the seas,
the roaring of their waves,
the tumult of the peoples
 
Yes, he would have remembered, if not explicitly then subconsciously, this great recurring theme of God as Lord of the waters. He would have remembered Psalm 89:
8 O LORD God of hosts,
who is mighty as you are, O LORD,
with your faithfulness all around you?
9 You rule the raging of the sea;
when its waves rise, you still them.
 
The words of Psalm 107 would have stirred in his heart if not in his waking mind:
23 Some went down to the sea in ships,
doing business on the great waters;
24 they saw the deeds of the LORD,
his wondrous works in the deep.
25 For he commanded and raised the stormy wind,
which lifted up the waves of the sea.
26 They mounted up to heaven; they went down to the depths;
their courage melted away in their evil plight;
27 they reeled and staggered like drunken men
and were at their wits’ end.
28 Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.
29 He made the storm be still,
and the waves of the sea were hushed.
30 Then they were glad that the waters were quiet,
and he brought them to their desired haven.
31 Let them thank the LORD for his steadfast love,
for his wondrous works to the children of man!
32 Let them extol him in the congregation of the people,
and praise him in the assembly of the elders.
Yes, yes! This sight of Jesus walking on the waters would have agitated deep connections in the minds of the disciples between what they were witnessing in Jesus and who they knew God to be. Amazing, scandalous, shocking, almost unimaginable conclusions and implications would have begun impressing themselves on the minds of these amazed disciples. Do we not see this in the question that Mark records the disciples asking in Mark 4:41 when Jesus rebukes the waves and the sea: “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
 
Indeed! Who is this? Who can this be?
For deep in the minds and hearts of these watching, trembling disciples they would have gone even further back into their childhoods, back to when a loving mother or father or grandparent opened up and read the very beginning of the Hebrew scriptures to them. Perhaps as they saw Jesus walking on the water they dared even to remember those first words of holy scripture from Genesis 1:
1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
 
The Word of God begins with a declaration that at the beginning of creation “the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” At the very beginning of all things, God was over the chaotic waters.
Who can this be? What can this mean?
If God is the God who calms the storm and conquers the waters, what should we conclude about this Jesus doing the very same?
Yes, dear church, there is a miracle here. But as miraculous as it is, the primary miracle here isn’t Jesus walking on the water. That’s a miracle, to be sure. But the bigger miracle, the really jaw-dropping miracle, the truly amazing miracle is Jesus Himself.
He is God among us.
He is God the divine friend.
He is God the amazing conqueror.
And He is calling you today to come to Him.
 
 
 

[1] Joel C. Elowsky, ed., John 1-10. Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. vol.Iva. gen. ed., Thomas C. Oden (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006) p.219.
[2] Sara Goudarzi, “Jesus Could Have Walked on Ice, Scientist Says.” (April 4, 2006)https://www.livescience.com/othernews/060404_jesus_ice.html
[3] Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of John. Volume One (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003), p.674.

John 6:1-15

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John 6:1-15

 
1 After this Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. 2 And a large crowd was following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing on the sick. 3 Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples. 4 Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. 5 Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” 6 He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he would do. 7 Philip answered him, “Two hundred denarii would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” 8 One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, 9 “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?” 10 Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.” Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, about five thousand in number.11 Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated. So also the fish, as much as they wanted. 12 And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, “Gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost.” 13 So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten. 14 When the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, “This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!” 15Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.
 
 
I have entitled this sermon “Trouble at the Church Picnic.” I do find it wonderfully ironic that this is our text and that today is our church picnic. Indeed, nothing could be worse at a church picnic than for everybody to arrive and find that there is no food! I hope that is not the case later this afternoon at our picnic, though it certainly was the case here in John 6.
You may have noticed that the first six chapters of John seem almost inordinately concerned with food, drink, and there being enough of both. Of course, Jesus’ first miracle was the miraculous provision of wine when the wine scandalously ran out at the wedding feast. Also, Jesus encounters a woman at the well who is seeking to put water into her empty vessel. He uses the occasion to speak to her of the water of eternal life. In the same story, Jesus’ disciples have found a convenient excuse to absent themselves from the Samaritan episode so that they could – you guessed it – go shopping for food.
John is a good gospel to read if you’re hungry, for John talks a lot about food and drink. Obviously, it’s talking about much more than mere food and drink. John’s gospel is consistently showing empty people how to be filled, not with food, but with the life-giving gospel of Jesus Christ.
This morning some of you likely feel filled-to-overflowing. Life is going great and you can barely contain your joy this morning. Others of you, however, feel like the men described in T.S. Eliot’s poem, “The Hollow Men”:
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form,
shade without colour,
Paralysed force,
gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes,
to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.[1]
Some of you feel like this. Some of you feel empty. If so, this story is the story you need to hear. More than that, this Jesus is the Jesus you need to meet.
Let’s talk about this miraculous meal.
A Meal of Expanded Expectations (vv.1-9)
1 After this Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. 2 And a large crowd was following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing on the sick.
Let me encourage you to take note of the detail provided in verse 2 as we begin. Verse 2 provides us with the people’s motive for following Jesus: “because they saw the signs that he was doing on the sick.” This does not necessarily mean that the faith of most or all was merely miracles-based, but we find once again that many followed Jesus less for who He was than for what He might potentially do for them. File this observation away for a moment, particularly John’s use of the word “signs.” It will be significant for us at the end.
3 Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples. 4 Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand.
This is no mere incidental observation. This miracle was performed when Passover was at hand. One commentator has noted that Passover meant more to the Jews than the 4th of July means for Americans. I suspect that is right. Passover was that time when the Jews remembered their miraculous release from bondage in Egypt. It was a time when they remembered that Yahweh God could overcome any obstacle, no matter how seemingly insurmountable. It is significant that it was at the time of this remembrance of miraculous provision that Jesus likewise miraculously provided for the hungry people.
5 Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” 6 He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he would do.
Jesus sometimes questions us to offer us opportunities to grow in our walk with Him. Have you ever experienced this? Jesus never asks us anything for His benefit. He does not need our insights to learn more. When He asks us questions, He asks for our benefit. He is wanting to offer the disciples an opportunity to show that they have learned the point of the miracles preceding this one.
7 Philip answered him, “Two hundred denarii would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.”
Philip fails the test. Jesus wants to know if he is now prepared to think on the upper-story-level of God’s sovereignty or whether he is still bound to the lower-story-level of man’s own earthly view of things. Philip shows that his mind is still tragically bound to the earth. Jesus next turns to Andrew.
8 One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, 9 “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?”
R.C. Sproul, commenting on this passage, points out that “the boy was carrying the lowest quality of bread available to people at the time. Only those who lived in poverty, for the most part, ate bread made from barley.” Furthermore, these “loaves” are really more like small cakes, “similar in size to Twinkies, if you will.”[2]
In other words, these were meager offerings indeed! It is not surprising that the disciples were skeptical. We would be too, had we lived on that side of this miracle.
Jesus’ question, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” was not accidental. It was a question leading to an answer that transcended the obvious surface answer to the question. Jesus knew what was going to happen and He also knew that this little boy was going to come forward with his lunch box and little lunch.
Jesus not only knew this was going to happen, Jesus, as sovereign Lord and God of all, orchestrated that it would. Jesus relished the seemingly impossible task and the apparently insurmountable obstacle.
Jesus drew attention to the big problem to see if the truth about Himself that He had already demonstrated and taught the disciples was beginning to take hold in their lives. In other words, would the disciples dare to believe that Jesus was bigger than this problem? Would they dare to trust that this Jesus truly was Lord and King? Jesus wanted to know if their expectations had expanded to accommodate His glory or whether their expectations had merely encrusted around their own paltry understanding of this, or any other, situation.
Do you see how Jesus takes the disciples into a moment of crisis here with an eye toward expanding their expectations? Do you see that what to the disciples was a logistical catastrophe and nightmare was to Jesus an arena for the further display of His glory? Can you begin to grasp and accept that some of the moments we fight the hardest to avoid and some of the moments we fear the most are the very moments that Jesus wants to take us into to mold us?
The disciples saw a puzzle that could not be solved instead of a Savior that could not be contained…and guess what: so do we, oftentimes.
Oh, listen: it’s in the crisis that He meets us and it’s in the silence of our own lack of answers that He whispers, “I am here!”
The point wasn’t the bread and the fish. The point was Jesus. The point wasn’t the predicament. The point was the Savior. The point wasn’t the problem. The point was the provider.
Some of us miss the growing moments of crisis because we cannot hear Jesus over our own protests about the crisis! We are like Philip: “We don’t have enough money.” We are like Andrew: “We don’t have enough food.”  Except that oftentimes we keep the protest going so long that we miss the teaching moment with Christ. How often do we miss Christ in our complaints? How often do we miss Jesus in the midst of our moaning about how unfair this or that situation is?
Do you know what the disciples could have said? They could have said, “I don’t know how we’re going to do this Jesus, but I know You can do it! We don’t have enough bread, but we do have enough Jesus! Show us, Lord, and teach us.”
We can say the same. Learn to see the crisis moments not as the absence of God but rather as the desire of God to expand your expectations about who He is and what He can do.
A Meal of Revealed Power (vv.10-13)
Having failed the test, Jesus next presses His disciples to prepare for an amazing miracle.
10 Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.”
I would suggest that Jesus’ tone in verse 10 is markedly different from his tone in verse 5. In verse 5 His tone likely had an edge of excitement to it. “How are we going to feed them all?” It was said with a twinkle in His eye and knowing smile on His lips. It was an opportunity for the disciples to join with Him now on the inside track of God’s glory and sovereignty. The question of verse 5 drips with delicious rhetorical flavor. They should get it now! The question in verse 5 was perhaps said with a knowing wink. Jesus knew, of course, that God could overcome this. He wanted the disciples to know it too. In fact, by now they should have known it.
On the other hand, when we come to Jesus’ words in verse 10, it is perhaps not inappropriate to read this sentence with an air of exasperation: “Have the people sit down.” As if to say, “Have we really been through so much and you still fail to see what I’m continuously trying to show you? Do you really still think that the central issue here is money and food? Have you not yet grasped the point that my Father can overcome any problem? Ok. Have the people sit down.”
Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, about five thousand in number.
There were five thousand men, not five thousand people. (I’m sorry ladies, but they did not count women and children in this day.) So who knows just how many people were actually here for this event: ten thousand, fifteen thousand? Regardless, it was an amazing crowd of people.
11 Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated. So also the fish, as much as they wanted. 12 And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, “Gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost.” 13 So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten.
And here we have it: an amazing, spectacular, unfathomable, display of the problem-solving, obstacle-overcoming sovereign power of almighty God. We are not given the “how” of it, we are simply told that He did it. Jesus miraculously multiplies the bread and the fish and feeds not only this vast multitude but also His own doubting disciples.
There is more happening here than meets the eye, though. Recall that John has already told us that this is happening at the time of Passover, at the time of remembering the Jews’ deliverance from Egypt. It was a time of remembering when the door of slavery in Egypt was obliterated and the children of God were allowed to exit. But remember that they exited to forty years of wilderness wandering. They faced many trials in the wilderness with Moses, not the least of which was a concern about food. In the wilderness, God Himself miraculously provided sustenance for His hungry children.
That Jesus performed this miracle at the time of the Passover was no accident. Yahweh God miraculously provided for the children of Israel in the wilderness. Now this Jesus miraculously provides for the children of Israel here. The implication would not have been lost on most of the people: in Christ God Himself was still working to provide for His children.
The Jews were still in the wilderness, a spiritual wilderness of darkness, and this Jesus, who was greater than Moses, came to lead them home. In this, Christ Jesus revealed His power and also His person. To see Christ work was to see God Himself work.
A Meal of Misunderstanding (vv.14-15)
Tragically, however, even the assembled crowd failed to understand what was being said.
14 When the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, “This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!”
Do you remember that I asked you to file verse 2 away, especially its use of the words “signs”? Here is that word again: “When the people saw the sign that he had done…”
We have seen this before. We have seen before that many people loved the signs of Jesus more than the person of Jesus. We have seen before that many loved the miracles and the power more than the One who performed the miracles and had the power. In doing so, they completely missed the point, as Jesus’ reaction illustrates:
15 Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.
Jesus left the crowd because the crowd saw in Jesus a miracle worker and a solver of problems. As such, they saw in Jesus a solution to their problem of foreign domination by Rome. They saw in Jesus a way out of a predicament. After all, if Jesus could get this many people out of a predicament of hunger, then surely Jesus could get all of them out of the political, cultural, and religious predicament of their time.
The Jews wanted to make Jesus king, not because they loved the King but because they loved what the King could do for them.
I am always weary of people who run here and there to this or that “revival” looking for some miraculous display of power. I am weary of any movement that exalts gifts over the Giver of gifts and miracles over the Jesus who works miracles.
Let me ask you outright which of these you love more: Jesus or the miracles of Jesus?
The point of the miracles was not the miracles. The point of the signs was not the signs. The signs pointed to something beyond themselves. The signs pointed to the Jesus that worked the signs.
Earlier this year NPR reported on a “Pew Forum on Religion” study showing that 80% of Americans believe in miracles. Interestingly, the same report also showed that “young adults, the so-called millennial generation, don’t attend church services regularly, are less inclined to express religious preference or affiliation than their elders, but profess widespread belief in the afterlife, in heaven and hell and in miracles. Nearly 80 percent of all Americans, in fact, say they believe in miracles.”[3]
This is very interesting, because it shows that people today believe more in miracles than they do in a solid, biblical understanding of Jesus and the body of Christ. People have stronger feelings about signs than they do about a relationship with Jesus.
Church, your God is the God of signs and wonders and power. But the signs are simply that: signs. If you love the signs more than the One to whom the signs point, have you not perverted the signs into something monstrous almost?
Marvel at the miracle-working Jesus. But marvel at Jesus more than the miracles.
 
 
 

[1] T.S. Eliot. The Complete Poems and Plays,1909-1950. (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1980), 56.
[2] R.C. Sproul, John. (Lake Mary, FL: Reformation Trust Publishing, 2010), p.101.

Pee Wee Gaskins Talks About a Friend’s Conversion

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I have heard the name Pee Wee Gaskins all of my life.  Gaskins murdered my Dad’s first cousin, my Great Aunt Gladys’ daughter, Patricia Ann Alsbrook, in 1970.  He lived in and around my hometown of Sumter, South Carolina, and, from the mid-60’s to mid-70’s, murdered possibly over one hundred people around Sumter and up and down the coast of SC.

He was put to death in the electric chair in SC the year I graduated from high school.  I remember watching people cheering and other people protesting the electrocution on TV when it happened.

I did not know until recently that, before he died, Gaskins left his story in audio.  It is entitled Final Truth.  I will not link to it.  The relish with which Gaskins tells his story coupled with a complete lack of remorse made it a truly vile and hellish reading experience.  I read it because of our family connection, though I skipped portions of it that were just too much.

Wilton Earle, who transcribed the tapes and who listened to Gaskins tell his story, said that he did not believe in evil or in the death penalty when he began the project, but he believed in both when he finished.

Gaskins was maniacal, hellish, and almost boundlessly wicked.  At the conclusion of his story he says:

“No one, and nobody, and no thing can ever touch me.
I have walked the same path as God.
By taking lives and making others fear me, I become God’s equal.  Through killing others, I become my own Master.
Through my own power I come to my own redemption.
Once I seen the miracle light, I didn’t ever again have to fear or obey the Rules of no Man or no God.”

Gaskins’ crimes, like all crimes, were ultimately crimes against God.  Interestingly, Gaskins recounts how he was finally done in by the conversion of his friend Walter Neely with whom he had shared a great deal of information about his murders:

“I just wish there had been some way we could have talked before he went to his Preacher…Because of all that was happening to him, Walter went and talked to a Preacher about everything…so Walter and the Preacher prayed and prayed until finally Walter was ready to make his confession to God and get redeemed and be borned-again into the salvation of Jesus Christ – all of which would’ve been fine if he had just stopped right there – but then the Preacher convinced Walter that they also ought to go one step higher and have a talk with The Law…in December of nineteen-seventy-five, the Coroner had the bodies, and Jesus had Walter, and The Law had me…Walter surely weren’t real bright, and he did pretty much anything I asked him, up until he got borned-again and forgot all about what loyalty and friendship meant.”

It’s an interesting observation he makes about Neely’s conversion to Christianity:  “all of which would’ve been fine if he had just stopped right there.”  But, no:  Neely, for all of his own problems, at least thought coming to Christ meant a full confession of his deeds and of his knowledge of Gaskins’ deeds.

So Pee Wee was done in by another criminal meeting Jesus.  When all is said and done, our crimes against God do not go unnoticed.

I have gotten this vile story out of my house, and, in time, I pray, I will get it out of my mind.  But even in the dark pit of this terrible story we see that the gospel has power to save and to bring justice to the enemies of God.

Jack Sparrow Discusses His Eternal Salvation in the New Pirates Movie

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Mrs. Richardson, Miss Richardson, and I went and saw the new “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie today.  It was really very good.

One of the characters in the movie is a young missionary who has been taken captive by Blackbeard.  To my utter astonishment, the missionary is articulate, good, noble, faithful, strong, and is held up as an admirable character.  (One would expect a movie depiction of a missionary to be decidedly much more negative.)

Anyhoo, in one scene Captain Jack Sparrow comes to him to discuss his own eternal salvation.  Below is my own paraphrase.  I haven’t seen the exact wording of the exchange, and I’m doing this from memory, but it’s pretty close to what was said:

Jack Sparrow:  Listen, I just wanted to tell you that I’m willing to believe in whatever I need to believe in to get to go where all the goody-goodies go when they die.

Missionary:  There’s a word for that, Jack.  You can “convert.”

Jack Sparrow:  I was thinking of it more in terms of an “as needed” basis.

It was humorous but it got me to thinking.  In reality, many people do want Jesus around on an “as needed” basis.  Unfortunately for those who do, Jesus came to possess the hearts and minds of men and women totally and to draw them ever deeper into fellowship with himself.

As I say, a humorous moment…but I only laughed for a few moments.

Something to ponder.

An Open Letter to the Followers of Harold Camping

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May 18, 2011

To The Followers of Harold Camping,

I am not writing this letter to offer you more of the condemnation you no doubt are already receiving from many quarters.  I am writing instead to plead with you to think clearly in what will soon be the aftermath of the failed prophecy that you have embraced.  I do so not to rub salt in the wound, but because you will soon find yourselves at an interesting crossroads in life at which you will be faced with many options.  I am writing to encourage you to reject the bad options and embrace the wise ones.

I believe that you are sincere people.  I believe that many of you sincerely believe in the Lord Jesus and I believe that many of you sincerely trust in the scriptures.  Unfortunately, in embracing the prophecies of Harold Camping, you have sincerely believed in a false prophecy and a false prophet.

On Sunday, May 22nd, many of you are going to face feelings of confusion, loneliness, isolation, and even shame.  Many of you will likely become objects of derision and punchlines in jokes made at your expense.  You will reach a point where you will begin to wonder how what you previously believed in with such certainty could have been so very untrue.  In light of this fact, let me offer you some words of perspective and encouragement for the future:

  • Please face honestly and courageously your error and repent sincerely.  You will be tempted to claim, when this prophecy fails, that it really did not fail.  You will be tempted to claim that the prophecy happened but perhaps in an “unseen” or “spiritual” or “invisible” kind of way.  You know that is not the case.  Your pride will tempt you to rule out the possibility that you were simply and clearly wrong.  This will lead you to any number of ingenious ways of claiming you were, in fact, right.  Please, I beg of you, do not go down that path.  When your error is definitively confirmed, embrace it, acknowledge it, and admit that you made a mistake.  Your pride will protest, but please argue down your pride.
  • Some of you will be tempted to reject the truthfulness of the Bible in the aftermath of the failure of the teachings you have embraced.  But let me encourage you to remember this:  when Judgment Day does not occur on May 21, it does not mean the Bible is untrue, it simply means that the theories of Harold Camping have (once again) proven to be untrue.  The Bible remains the Word of God even when those who claim to be preaching it faithfully are proven to be untrue.
  • Many of you will be tempted to go back to the scriptures in search of new clues for a new date.  Let me plead with you to consider instead the importance of solid, basic, principles of reading and interpreting the Bible and stop looking for hidden or secret “truths.”  In particular, let me encourage you always to be suspect of any major emphases in any person’s teachings that are founded on allegorical teachings.  In particular, be very careful around those who push numerological interpretations.  Numerology has some basis in truth, but it is highly subjective and should be approached very humbly, very cautiously, and definitely with a “less-is-more” attitude.  The Bible is not a puzzle to be unraveled or a set of hidden numerical clues.  What God says He says openly.  Live in the clear passages of the Bible and be very suspect of those who claim to have discovered major truths in some of the more obscure portions.
  • Please use this occasion to question the other teachings of Harold Camping:  particularly his teaching of the complete apostasy of the visible churches.  In fact, what you most need at this point is (1) a return to the simple gospel of Christ and (2) the nurturing fellowship of a strong Bible-believing church.  If Camping is wrong yet again on his date for the end, there are legitimate reasons to look at his other unorthodox opinions, namely concerning the churches today.
  • Let me encourage you not to be utterly destroyed by the undoubtedly intense scrutiny, criticism, and derision that is about to come your way.  Not everybody, including not everybody in the church, is going to treat you with grace.  I fear that many of you are going to have some tough days ahead.  But remember this:  there are believers in Christ who sincerely grieve over the error into which you have fallen and will be willing to help you put the pieces back together again should you allow them.  I trust that you will not be driven to despair.
  • Learn lessons from this unfortunate incident that will change you from here on out.  Be careful who you follow.  There is a healthy sense of questioning without lapsing into outright cynicism.  This healthy sense of questioning would likely serve you well.  Ask appropriate questions of those who claim to be speaking for God and do not take at face value what your favorite “teacher” claims is true.
  • Remember:  sincere humility and repentance is your best and only path.  Do not calcify in pride or seek to justify what was, in the last resort, a lie.

Many of us are praying for you, especially after May 21st.  Just because you have embraced a lie does not mean there’s no such thing as the truth.  Come back to the Lord who loves you, who will forgive and restore you, and be better for having gone through this tragic experience.

Most Sincerely,

Wyman Richardson

Pastor, Central Baptist Church

North Little Rock, Arkansas

John 5:30-47

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John 5:30-47

30 “I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me. 31 If I alone bear witness about myself, my testimony is not deemed true. 32 There is another who bears witness about me, and I know that the testimony that he bears about me is true. 33 You sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth. 34 Not that the testimony that I receive is from man, but I say these things so that you may be saved. 35 He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. 36 But the testimony that I have is greater than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me. 37 And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen, 38 and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent. 39 You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. 41 I do not receive glory from people. 42 But I know that you do not have the love of God within you. 43 I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. 44 How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? 45 Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. 46 For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. 47 But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”

 

Os Guinness has passed on a fascinating story about looking for answers in the wrong places:

One of the most celebrated personalities of the Middle East is Nasreddin Hodja, the endearing holy-man-cum-scholar of Turkish folklore.  His famed wisdom is often threatened by his equally famed stupidity.  One day, so a particular story goes, the Hodja dropped his ring inside his house.  Not finding it there, he went outside and began to look around the doorway.  His neighbor passed and asked him what he was looking for.

“I have lost my ring,” said the Hodja.

“Where did you lose it?” asked the neighbor.

“In my bedroom,” said the Hodja.

“Then why are you looking for it out here?”

“There’s more light out here,” the Hodja said.[1]

In truth, many of the religious leaders of Jesus’ day were making a similar mistake.  They were looking for the answer, but refusing to look in the one place where it could be found.

In fact, this entire lengthy discourse by Jesus on His nature and person is occasioned by opposition from the Jews (which was itself occasioned by the scandal of Jesus healing a paralytic man by the pool of Bethesda on the Sabbath).  So Jesus is here explaining to those who oppose Him why He is indeed the Son of God.

In our text this morning, Jesus is responding to a common legal mindset among the Jews.    It was commonly asserted by the Jews that evidence was not to be accepted on the basis of just one witness.  Furthermore, it was asserted that no man could bear testimony to himself.  He needed witnesses to corroborate his claims.

Let us begin by observing how Jesus reasserts his primary claim in verse 30:

“I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me.”

That Jesus was sent by the Father was the great claim that the Jews found so offensive and which they were unprepared to accept.  Jesus recognized and defined their hesitation by articulating their legal objections to His claims:

31 If I alone bear witness about myself, my testimony is not deemed true.

The Jewish authorities knew well that the scriptures forbade making a final verdict on a matter in the absence of more than one witness in Deuteronomy 17:

6 On the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses the one who is to die shall be put to death; a person shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness.

Furthermore, the Mishnah stated that “None may be believed when he testifies of himself for no individual can be deemed trustworthy in himself.”  The Jewish historian Josephus also wrote, “Put not trust in a single witness, but let there be three or at the least two, whose evidence shall be accredited by their past lives.”[2]

So Jesus is going to meet their superficial demands for more evidence.  He is, in short, going to offer the testimony of many who bear witness to His claims of deity and divine commission.  Let us understand that Jesus was acting mercifully here.  He no more owed the Jews an explanation than He owes us one.  But His desire for the Jews was that they be saved, so He meets their legal demands for extra witnesses.

Furthermore, we should acknowledge that Jesus knew fully well that the problem with the Jews was not a lack of evidence, it was the wickedness of their own hearts.  So it is with us today.  When we reject Christ, it is never because we don’t have enough reasons to believe.  The witnesses to Christ surround us everywhere we turn.  Rather, it is that we are born in a state of perpetual rejection of Christ.  Nonetheless, Jesus speaks to the Jews and to us of the evidence of His deity and person and work.

In verse 32, Jesus offers an umbrella statement concerning the ultimate witness concerning the validity of His own person and work:

There is another who bears witness about me, and I know that the testimony that he bears about me is true.

While its proximity to verse 33 may lead us to believe that Jesus is here speaking of John the Baptist, verse 32 is actually speaking about God the Father.  Christ’s validity is ultimately and fundamentally granted in the fact that He has come from the Father.  That is enough.  Nothing else is needed.  Now, He is going to offer the testimony further witnesses, but all of these are simply meant to supply further support to this amazing claim of God’s commission on the life of Christ and God’s testimony concerning the person and work of Christ.  In reality, the witness and testimony of the Father concerning the Son is above all other witnesses and testimonies.

I.  John the Baptist’s Witness to Jesus

To begin, Jesus points out that His cousin, John the Baptist, bore witness to Him:

33 You sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth.

We know that John was the bright star on the religious scene before the arrival of Jesus on the scene.  All of Jerusalem was going out to John at the Jordan.  Jesus reminds them of this.  He reminds them that while they reject Him, they still flocked to John to see what he had to say.  But John, of course, came only to bear witness to Christ.  So while many flocked to John, they ultimately rejected his message by rejecting the Christ to whom John pointed.

34 Not that the testimony that I receive is from man, but I say these things so that you may be saved.

Once again, Jesus points out that John’s witness does not establish Jesus’ glory.  Jesus’ glory comes from the Father and no other testimony is needed.  But John came so that more people could know of the coming of Christ, come to know Him, and be saved.

35 He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light.

Here again we see the irony of the Jews’ rejection of Jesus.  “You were willing to rejoice for a while in his light.”  Meaning, “You liked John.  You were attracted to the wonderful, odd, and appealing ministry of John.  You all went to see and hear John.  But John’s entire ministry was about Me.  When it comes right down to it, you all enjoyed the religious show more than you enjoyed the point of John’s message.  You were willing to believe that John was a light…until, that is, you saw what John’s light was illuminating.”

John the Baptist bore witness to Christ, and Jesus appeals to his witness as evidence of His claims to divinity.

II.  The Miracles’ Witness to Jesus

But there is more.  Not only did John bear witness to Christ.  Jesus’ own works bore testimony as well.

36 But the testimony that I have is greater than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me.

We have seen miracles of Jesus already in the first five chapters of John:  the turning of the water into wine at Cana, the healing of the officials’ son, and the healing of the paralytic at the beginning of chapter 5.  Jesus now points out that the miracles not only accomplished certain results in individual cases, they also offered a cumulative witness to His own deity.  The miracles “bear witness about me that the Father has sent me.”

This is equally the case today, by the way.  It is always the case that the works of God revealed in a life given to Christ bear greater testimony than our mere words about Christ.  The greatest witness we have to offer is the evidence of Christ in us:  a changed life, a transformed character, and a new heart.

Mothers, would you like to convince your children that Jesus is real?  Let them overhear you on the telephone refusing to gossip about somebody else.  Let them hear and know that their mom’s speech has been changed by the Christ who lives within you.  Dads, would you like your children to believe and know that Christ Jesus is real and true?  Let them see that you value them more than you do your job or your hobbies.  Let them see that you invest time in their lives and interests.  Let them see that their dad’s life is different than the lives of dads who do not know Christ Jesus.

Church, the world may dispute our words, but they cannot dispute our lives.  They cannot dispute the miracle of a changed heart.  The works of Jesus bear witness to the person of Jesus.  It has always been true.  It is true today as well.

Let the works of Christ bear witness to the truth of Christ in your life today.

III.  The Father’s Witness to Jesus

Above all else, God the Father bears testimony to God the Son:

37 And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen, 38 and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent.

Jesus is not trying to be provocative, but this is indeed a provocative thing to say!  If the Jewish authorities thought anything, they thought they knew the mind and heart of God.  But Jesus  reveals to them that their rejection of Him ultimately meant their rejection of the God they claimed to know.

God the Father has etched His testimony concerning the truthfulness of Jesus into the very fabric of the universe.  Everywhere you look you can see God’s witness to His Son.  Nature itself proclaims the truthfulness of the gospel of Christ.  Consider the cycles of nature:  birth in Spring, life in Summer, the dying lights of Fall, death in Winter, and resurrection in Spring!  The earth itself speaks of the person and work of Jesus.

I believe that the testimony of the Father concerning the Son is so etched in and on our hearts that even people who may not know Christ cannot help but bear witness.  For instance, Roni and Hannah and I recently saw the new movie “Thor.”  It was a fun and entertaining movie about a popular comic book hero:  Thor, god of Thunder.  The next day my brother Condy watched the movie and texted me these words:  “Father sends the son to earth.  He loves the people.  Gives his life to save them.  Rises from the dead.  Reclaims power.”  I had missed it, but he was right:  even here the basic contours of the story of Jesus is being told.  We see this all of the time in popular culture, don’t we?  The Father’s witness to the Son is everywhere, and life cannot be lived without its proclamation!

“The Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me.”  The Father did so at the baptism of Jesus when He proclaimed Jesus His beloved Son in whom He was well pleased.  More than that, the Father’s affirmation rested on the Son like a prayer shawl.  The voice of the Father proclaimed, “Behold my Son!” over Jesus at every turn.

IV.  The Scripture’s Witness to Jesus

Jesus also pointed out the profoundly ironic truth that the scriptures bore witness to Jesus.

39 You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me,

These Jewish leaders treasured the Old Testament scriptures and searched them with a meticulous care that would astound us today.  They poured over the scriptures and they saturated everything the Jews were.  But the tragic irony was that the very scriptures they poured over bore witness to the very Jesus they were now rejecting.  Furthermore, they searched the scriptures because they were looking for eternal life, but eternal life was standing in front of them in the person of Jesus.  Thus, the tragedy of verse 40:

yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.

The scriptures joined with the testimony of John the Baptist and the miracles of Jesus to make a canopy of testimony to the glory and power and truthfulness of Christ.  The Jewish leaders, however, while in possession of each of these witnesses, rejected the One to whom witness was borne.

41 I do not receive glory from people. 42 But I know that you do not have the love of God within you.

The rejection of Jesus the Son meant the rejection of the love of God the Father, for God’s love was manifested supremely in the Son.  The Jewish leaders who opposed Jesus were characterized by fervency for the law, knowledge of the scriptures, and a zeal for God, but they missed the very heart of God when they missed Christ.  Their rejection of Christ was utterly heartbreaking:

43 I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. 44 How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?

The Jews heaped glory on the great Bible scholars of their day.  They lived in a day and culture that relished knowledge of the scriptures.  There were celebrated celebrity Bible scholars in that day in much the same way that there are celebrated athletes or movie stars today.  Jesus pointed out, once again, the amazing irony of this fact.  The Jews heaped glory and praise on those they thought knew the scriptures while simultaneously refusing glory and honor to the One to whom all of scripture bore witness.

45 Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. 46 For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. 47 But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”

The Jewish scholars claimed to be masters of Moses’ teachings, but they missed the very heart of Moses’ teachings when they missed Christ.  In this way, their adoration for the writings of Moses (i.e., the first five books of the Bible) did nothing but condemn them as they refused to accept the very embodiment of Moses’ teachings when they rejected Christ.

What is more, Moses was the recipient of the law of God.  In rejecting Christ, the Jews were committing the ultimate act of lawlessness by refusing to receive fulfillment of all the law in Christ.  As such, these Jewish leaders were in a strange trap of their own making:  they were rejecting the Jesus who was proclaimed in all of scripture.  They were searching for salvation but refusing the only One who could save them.

Ravi Zacharias has pointed to the failed 1996 Mt. Everest expedition as a powerful example of a dying man rejecting life itself:

John Krakauer, in his book Into Thin Air, tells a gripping story.  His book recounts the ill-fated ascent of Mount Everest in 1996, in which many lives were lost, including those of the most adept leaders.  At one point he recounts an episode with Andy Harris, one of the expedition guides, who had been exhausted by his conquest of the summit.  On his descent, Harris started to run out of oxygen when he came across a cache of oxygen canisters.  But, though starved for oxygen, he argued with his fellow climbers that all the canisters were empty.  Those to whom he was speaking shouted back that these canisters were indeed full – they themselves had left them there for just such a time as this.  But Harris was beguiled by a brain devoid of oxygen and made the false judgment that that which he held in his hand could not help him.[3]

This is a perfect illustration of the Jewish leaders who opposed Jesus.  They of all people should have known and seen in Christ Jesus the fulfillment of the scriptures they so highly esteemed.  They of all people should have seen how the prophets’ many prophecies about the Messiah were being fulfilled in their very presence in Christ.  They of all people should have seen (as others saw) the hand of God in and on Christ.  But they did not.  They, the leaders, the experts, the guides, were standing in the very presence of life but were refusing to embrace it.

Like Andy Harris on Mt. Everest dying from lack of oxygen while holding a canister of oxygen, these religious elites were dying a slow spiritual death while standing in the presence of the very One who could grant life!

In truth, so are some of you.  Some of you are so close to Jesus, but you will not take Him.  Some of you are dying from the inside out, but you refuse to take the nail-pierced hand of the One who said He was “the resurrection and the life.”

He is right here, right now, and His arms are open to you.  Do not refuse to see what you know is true.  Do not refuse to listen to the message you most need to hear and embrace.  Do not reject the many witnesses that all bear testimony to this great and glorious fact:  that Christ is Lord and King and God and Ruler of Heaven and Earth.

 


[1] Os Guinness, Fit Bodies, Fat Minds (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1994), p.132.

[2] Andreas J. Kostenberger, “John.”  Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary, vol.2. gen. ed., Clinton E. Arnold (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002), p.60.

[3] Ravi Zacharias in This We Believe (Grand Rapids, MI:  Zondervan Publishing House, 2000), p.45.

John 5:19-29

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John 5:19-29

19 So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. 20 For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel. 21 For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. 22 The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, 23 that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. 24 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. 25 “Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. 26 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. 27 And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. 28 Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice 29 and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.

 

Many in the religious establishment of Jesus’ day claimed to love God but to hate Jesus.  They did so because they felt that Jesus was twisting and perverting the truth of God into something diabolical.

Many people today hold the opposite position:  they claim to love Jesus but don’t care much for God.  They claim that the God represented in the Bible is ultimately unlikeable and unlovable, but that Jesus, on the other hand, is a character they can admire.

In his novel, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, Umberto Eco has a character named Gragnola explain to a character named Yambo why he respects Jesus but doesn’t respect God:

“When we go to mass, I sit quietly in the back of the church, because Jesus Christ I respect even if I don’t God…To tell the truth, I’m not sure Jesus was God’s son, because it doesn’t make sense to me that a good guy like that could be born from such an evil father…if you read the Gospels closely, you’ll realize that in the end even Jesus realized that God was bad:  he gets scared in the olive grove and asks, Let this cup pass from me, and nilch, God doesn’t listen; on the cross he shouts Father why has thou forsaken me, and zilch, God turns his back.  But Jesus showed us what a man can do to offset God’s wickedness.  If God is evil, then we at least have to try to be good, forgive each other, refrain from doing each other harm, heal the sick, and turn the other cheek.  We’ve go to help each other, seeing as God doesn’t help us.  Do you see how great Jesus’ idea was?  Imagine how much it must have irritated God.  Forget the devil, Jesus was the only true enemy of God, and he’s the only friend us poor wretches have.”[1]

This, obviously, is an extreme example, and likely nobody in here today would be comfortable with such outlandish thoughts, but if you listen closely even to some who call themselves Christians, they seem to care more for the Son than for the Father, and oftentimes on the same grounds expressed by Gragnola in the statement above.  Dallas Willard recently wrote, “We have people today in ‘Christian’ settings who believe in Jesus but not in God.”[2]

The truth is, though, that claiming to love God but not Jesus (as many of the Jewish leaders did) or claiming to love Jesus but not God (as many today claim to do) are both impossibilities.  Jesus made this truth abundantly clear in our text this morning.  In John 5:19-29, Jesus begins one of the most profound and illuminating discourses on the Son’s relationship with the Father that you will find in all of scripture.

Before we look at our text, however, it will be important for us at this point, if we are to understand what is being said here, to grasp three important truths about the Lord Jesus:

1.  For starters, the Bible speaks of Jesus as eternally pre-existent.  Jesus was born in Bethlehem, but Jesus did not begin in Bethlehem.  Jesus Himself spoke of His divine, eternal nature in John 8:58 where He said, “Truly, truly, I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am.”  This is significant because Jesus reveals His uncreated, eternal nature.  Furthermore, He applies the divine title, “I am,” to Himself.

The ancient Christian statement, The Nice Creed, speaks of Jesus as “the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.”

That’s well said, and is hard to improve upon.  Jesus in His person is eternal, divine, uncreated, God the Son, “of one substance with the Father”

2.  When Jesus was born in Bethlehem, however, he embraced a position of subordination or submission to the Father.  Paul explained this in Philippians 2 when he wrote the following about Jesus and His incarnation:

5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Jesus, then, when He became a man, “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,” or “hoarded,” we might say.  Furthermore, Jesus “made himself nothing” and “humbled himself.”

What this means is that Jesus the Son is God, but He limits Himself in His enfleshment to a position of subordination to the Father.  He does not abandon His deity, but, in taking on humanity, He enters into a subordinate relationship so that, in His incarnate state, He can speak of watching the Father and doing nothing outside of the will of the Father.  As the second person of the Trinity, He likewise watches and works in harmony with the Father, but the language of subordination is attributed to His incarnation.

And, finally,

3.  It is important to remember that Jesus used terminology, especially in regards to His relationship with the Father, that was intended to inform and benefit us.  He described the deep and profound relationship between Himself and the Father – a relationship that would otherwise be beyond our own limited understanding – in words and images that we could grasp and see and understand.

This is not to say that the words of Jesus are not true and accurate, only that they are not exhaustive.  The words of Jesus about His relationship with the Father give us an accurate picture, but let us not assume that we could ever even grasp a complete picture. The Son’s relationship with the Father is so utterly complete and perfect that the only thing minds like ours can do is be gracious for what God chooses to reveal.

With this in mind, let us learn from Jesus this morning about his relationship with the Father.

I.  A Relationship of Perfect, Loving Reflection (vv.19-21)

To begin, Jesus spoke of his relationship with God the Father as being one of perfect, loving reflection.  The Son observes the Father and perfectly reflects Him.

19 So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing.

The point here is not that the Son has been stripped of His deity.  Rather, He has embraced what we call “divine self-limitation.”  Jesus chose to be in a relationship of humble subordination to the Father.  He did not begrudge His sonship.  He continues:

For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.

The Son does only what he sees the Father doing.  The Son observes and perfectly reflects the character and actions of the Father.  The Son, then, is a perfect, unerring, flawless depiction and reflection of the Father.

This is why it is impossible to love the Father but not the Son and it is impossible to love the Son but not the Father.  Perhaps you remember that in John 1:18, John says that nobody has seen God, but Jesus makes Him known.

If you would like to know who God is and what He is like, you need only look at Jesus, for Jesus was a perfect reflection of the Father.  But this reflection was not mechanical of impersonal.  On the contrary, it is a relationship of perfect love:

20 For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing.

Do you see?  The Father and the Son love one another.  If somebody were to ask you, “What is the greatest bond of love in all of existence and reality?” what would you say?  Would you say, “A parent’s love for a child?”  Would you say, “A spouse’s love for a spouse?”

In truth, the greatest bond of love is the bond of love that exists between the Father and the Son.  Indeed, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost abide in a relationship of mutual, perfect, love and harmony.  Theirs is a love untainted by fickleness, pride, or conflict.

The Father loves the Son and the Son perfectly reflects the Father to us.  The Son then tells the Jews that the Father will show Him even greater work:

And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel. 21 For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will.

The relationship between the Father and the Son, then, is one of perfect, loving reflection as the Son reveals the Father.  This reflection is so utterly perfect, that Jesus the Son likewise has the power to give life.  “So also the Son gives life to whom he will.”

This final statement in verse 21 was an amazing statement of Christ’s divinity, as D.A. Carson points out:

“The Old Testament writers presupposed that the raising of the dead was a prerogative belonging to God alone:  ‘Am I God?  Can I kill and bring back to life’ (2 Ki. 5:7).  The same presupposition is amply attested in later Jewish tradition.  Rabbi Johanan asserted that three keys remained in God’s hand and were not entrusted to representatives: the key of the rain…the key of the womb…and the key of the resurrection of the dead.”[3]

This relationship of reflection, then, was more than mere imitation.  It spoke of a deep and profound union in the Godhead.  The Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Father, but both the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are equally God.

II. A Relationship of Agreed-Upon Judgment (vv.22-23)

It is also a relationship of agree-upon judgment as the Son’s judgment becomes the determining factor in deciding who comes to the Father:

22 The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, 23 that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.

To reject the Son is to incur the judgment of the Son.  To reject Jesus, then, is to reject God the Father.  To have Jesus pronounce judgment upon you is to be cut off from God forever.

As the Son perfectly reflects the Father, so the Son is the determining factor in whether or not we come to God the Father.  Nobody comes to the Father except through the Son (John 14:6).

In this sense, Jesus tells us that the Father judges no one, but the Son does.  The Son’s judgment is the determining judgment.

In one of his last albums before his death, Johnny Cash released the amazing song, “The Man Comes Around”:

 

There’s a man goin’ ’round takin’ names.

An’ he decides who to free and who to blame.

Everybody won’t be treated all the same.

There’ll be a golden ladder reaching down.

When the man comes around.

 

The hairs on your arm will stand up.

At the terror in each sip and in each sup.

Will you partake of that last offered cup,

Or disappear into the potter’s ground.

When the man comes around.

 

The Son’s judgment is perfect and true.  The Father gave judgment to the Son.  This goes against our popular image.  We think of the Father judging and the Son dispensing grace.  Of course, in another sense, this is true.  But the Father and Son, let us not forget, are one in purpose and intent.  In another sense, as the Lord Jesus tells us here, the Son is Him who judges, for the favor or disfavor of the Son, received either through accepting or rejecting Him, determines whether or not we come to the Father.

Do you realize that you must embrace the Son to come to the Father?  Where do you stand, now, with Jesus?

Oh I plead with you, this morning, to come and embrace Jesus the Son!

III. A Relationship of Agreed-Upon Salvation (vv.24-29)

Just as the Son judges, He also saves.  For if rejecting the Son brings death, accepting the Son brings life:

24 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.

Jesus speaks of “hearing” and “believing.”  We hear the words of Christ and we believe that Christ has come from the Father for us.  This is what it means to be saved.  To be saved is to receive the favor, grace, mercy, and forgiveness of Jesus through hearing and believing.

It is possible that some of you have heard but have not believed.  Some of you have heard all of your life.  Some of you have grown up around the gospel and near the gospel.  But it is one thing to be around and near the gospel and another to believe it.

Can you say that you have trusted in Christ?  Have you accepted Jesus the Son?

I do pray it is so!  Why?  What is at stake?  Jesus tells us:

25 “Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. 26 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.

Ah!  Do you see?  To receive the Son is to receive the hope and sure knowledge that death will not have victory over you, that you will rise again with Christ!  How amazing!  The Son has “life in himself.”  He is life!  To be in the Son is to be in that life over which death has not victory or authority.

To be in Christ is live!  To reject Christ is to be separated from God for all of eternity in the eternal judgment of hell.  Christ makes the choice explicitly clear:

27 And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. 28 Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice 29 and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.

There are two resurrections.  Everybody is going to live forever, somewhere.  There is a resurrection of life and a resurrection of judgment.  To accept Christ is to receive the resurrection of life.  To reject Christ is to receive the resurrection of judgment.

Do you understand how very important it is that you accept and receive the God-explaining, judgment-pronouncing, life-granting Jesus?  Have you bowed before the King of Kings and given Him your life?

 

 

[1] Umberto Eco.  The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. (New York: Harcourt Inc., 2004), p.336; 351.

[2] Dallas Willard, The Great Omission. (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2006), 47.

[3] D.A. Carson, The Gospel According to John. The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1991), p.252-253.

John 5:1-18

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John 5:1-18

1 After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. 3 In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. [waiting for the moving of the water; 4 for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool, and stirred the water: whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was healed of whatever disease he had[i]] 5 One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” 7 The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.” 8 Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” 9 And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. Now that day was the Sabbath. 10 So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed.” 11 But he answered them, “The man who healed me, that man said to me, ‘Take up your bed, and walk.'” 12 They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk’?” 13 Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place. 14 Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.” 15 The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. 16 And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. 17 But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” 18 This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

 

 

On January 30, 2000, a fascinating and controversial commercial by Nuveen Investments aired during Super Bowl XXXIV.  The commercial showed the late actor Christopher Reeve walking.  This would not have been controversial had it not been for the fact that Christopher Reeve suffered a cervical spinal injury after being thrown from his horse on May 27, 1995, and was, until his death in 2004, paralyzed from the neck down.  It was a shocking injury, especially to those of us who grew up watching Christopher Reeve play Superman in the movies.  But Reeve turned his efforts in the years after his injury to raising awareness for people who had suffered such injuries, and he won a lot of admiration and respect for doing so.

The Super Bowl commercial showed Christopher Reeve getting up out of his chair and walking.  Of course, it was a computer generated effect.  Christopher Reeve never walked again after his injury.

The commercial was controversial in some quarters because it seemed to offer false hope to many people suffering from incurable disabilities.  Others questioned the commercial being for an investment firm, wondering if perhaps Reeve was being shamelessly used by this company to play on people’s emotions so that the company could reap the profits.  One news source reported that a number of phone calls were coming into hospitals wanting to know how Christopher Reeve had been healed, apparently confusing the commercial for reality.

Regardless, Reeve said that he did the commercial because he believed that with enough money invested, attention given, and effort directed toward overcoming the effects of these injuries, those who had suffered them could, in time, be healed.

It was an interesting episode in American culture:   an image of a paralyzed man being healed leading to controversy among those who witnessed it.

It was not the first time such an episode had happened.  We find a similar situation in John 5, with the exception that the paralyzed man really was, in fact, healed.  The man healed in the beginning of John 5 actually walked again and without the benefit of computer generated effects.  What he had was an encounter with a mighty Savior who actually and really healed him!  In the aftermath, the man and the Savior found themselves in the midst of a storm of controversy.  What came out of it revealed a great deal about the man, but more so, about the Jesus who healed Him.

A Powerful Miracle

What sets this amazing scene in motion is the working of a powerful miracle by Jesus.  The historical exactness of the description of the scene of this miracle reveals that the place was well known.

1 After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades.

Craig Blomberg, in his wonderful book The Historical Reliability of John’s Gospel, tells of the archaeological discovery of this site:

“John 5:2 was dramatically corroborated by archaeological discoveries in the 1890s, as the site of the pool of Bethesda was located in Jerusalem…Identification of the name of the site was later made possible by the reference in the Copper Scroll from Qumran…to Bet esdatain.”[ii]

This is interesting, of course, but not nearly as interesting as what actually happened at the pool of Bethesda.  This pool was a gathering place of the sick, the infirm, and the suffering, as verse 3 tells us:

3 In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed.

There are many places in the world where the sick come in hopes of being cured or helped by healing waters.  This was one such place.  The scriptures tell us that “a multitude” gathered at this pool, but our attention, this morning, is going to rest on one man in particular:

5 One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.

Thirty-eight years?!  That is one year longer than I have been on the earth.  For thirty-eight years this man suffered as an invalid.  How very sad!  What had his life been like?  What indignities had he suffered?  How many dreams of a better life had he seen squashed?  There was an air of despair and resignation about this man, and Jesus saw it in his eyes:

6 When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?”

It is an interesting question, is it not?  “Do you want to be healed?”  We might protest:  “But of course this man wants to be healed!”  To which we might respond, “Not necessarily!”  After all, the world is full of people who do not want to be healed of their sicknesses.  Oh, they would never say it, but, deep down, some people become friends with that which is killing them and have no desire for healing at all.  Perhaps they prefer the pity and attention they get to the idea of being healed of the actual problem.

I once heard a joke in which Jesus goes up to a man who cannot walk and attempts to heal him.  “Don’t do that!” the man shouts as he recoils from Jesus.  “I’m drawing disability and you’ll ruin everything!”

No, some people really do not want to be healed.  But there was a reason Jesus approached this man out of all the crowd assembled there.  He did want to be healed, but he despaired of ever being so?  Why?  Listen:

7 The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.”

How very pitiful!  Yes, he wanted to be healed, but the reality was that the surging crowd blocked him from getting into the waters, so healing wasn’t an option.  His was a life of constant frustration.  He was close enough to the healing waters to see them, but, in reality, he might as well have been one hundred miles away, for the crowd kept him from drawing near.

8 Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” 9 And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. Now that day was the Sabbath.

Perhaps with the miracles of Jesus more than anything else familiarity has bred contempt in the modern Christian mind.  We read this so blandly, so matter-of-factly:  “And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.”

Church!  Hear me!  Thirty-eight years!  Thirty-eight years!  Thirty-eight years of pain and frustration and misery gone…in an instant!  Boom!  Just like that!  Thirty-eight years of suffering, of loneliness, of agony, gone!

Let us never grow accustomed to the miracles of Jesus!  It is an awesome thing that the Son of God could speak a word and a man could be healed in a moment!

When we look at this sudden, explosive event, let us remember that Jesus is displaying the nature of God.  It is as if He is saying, “This is what God is like!  You are healed NOW!”

I believe Jesus can do so today, and sometimes does, though not always. He may or may not do this physically in your case or in the case of a friend for whom you are praying, though He always does this with our hearts and souls.  It is how God saves us when we turn to Him in repentance and faith.  When we repent Jesus does not say, “Ok, the support group meets on Tuesday nights and, in twelve months, if you pull it off successfully, you’ll get your certificate.”

No, He saves in a moment, in an instant.  It is how God works.

Sometimes people are delivered from terrible habits in just this way as well.  I have heard many people say that they drank for many years, or smoked for many years, or used profanity for many years, only to have God deliver them from even the desire to do it in a moment!  That is an amazing thing.

Even so, others who come to Christ have to journey to recovery.  They are forgiven in a moment, but they have to walk to victory over a period of time in this or that area of their lives.  But this, too, is a miracle, is it not?

God works in various and sundry ways, but I would like to remind you all that this is one of the ways He works.

Jesus heals this man in one brilliant moment of glory!

An Outraged Protest

One would expect, of course, that the religious leaders of the day would be thrilled about this, right?  Surely those who studied the ways of God would rejoice at a movement of God, correct?

Hardly.  In fact, history has shown that “religious folk” are oftentimes the last to see exactly what God is doing in the world.  You can see this dynamic time and time again in the New Testament as people completely missed the point of Jesus, or ascribed His divine work to the devil, or saw Jesus as being in conflict with God instead of in concert with the Father.

Oftentimes, as in our text this morning, this happened around the Sabbath.  In fact, Jesus’ divine work on the Sabbath usually elevated the tension between Him and the religious authorities of the day.  This was because of how the Sabbath was understood by many Jews and because of what the Sabbath had been allowed to become.

For one thing, as Gerald Borchert has pointed out, “it was thought at least minimally that the coming of the Messiah was linked to the perfect keeping of one Sabbath.”[iii]  By linking the perfect observance of the Sabbath with the coming of the Messiah, the Jews were especially watchful of any would-be-Messiahs, particularly on the Sabbath.

Jesus knew this.  His healing work on the Sabbath was in no way accidental or incidental.  He oftentimes chose to heal on the Sabbath precisely because that day in particular provided Him a uniquely charged stage from which to challenge the mistaken understanding of the Sabbath and of God and of God’s Messiah that was held by the religious authorities.

The Sabbath was precisely that day that the religious leaders were most sure they understood.  If they knew anything, in their minds, they knew the Sabbath.  Likewise, it was precisely the day on which Jesus chose to challenge their errors.

Coupled with the heightened sense of religious tension that surrounded the Sabbath (especially in regards to the coming of the Messiah and the perfect observance of the Sabbath) was the absurd proliferation of stifling rules and regulations that had grown up around it.

God’s word called for the holy keeping of the Sabbath in the fourth commandment (Exodus 20:8).  This was and is right and good.  This is a divine commandment!  But the religious establishment had consistently attempted to define what it meant to keep the Sabbath holy by the multiplication of rules to assist in this endeavor.  Over time, these rules came to choke the very heart out of the fourth commandment and reduced this holy day of rest and worship into a stifling and impossible observance of multiple laws.

R. Kent Hughes has offered a list of some of the more fascinating rules and traditions that grew up around the fourth commandment.  For instance:

You were forbidden to look into a mirror on the Sabbath lest you spot a grey hair and be tempted to pluck it out.  Plucking grey hair would be working on the Sabbath.

You were forbidden to wear false teeth on the Sabbath lest they fall out and you pick them up and put them back in.  That would be working on the Sabbath.

You were not allowed to carry a handkerchief on the Sabbath.

There was an open question about whether or not a man with a wooden leg could carry it outside in the event his home caught on fire.

You were allowed to spit on the Sabbath, but not on the dirt.  If you spat on the dirt, and your foot scraped where you spat, that would be considered cultivation of the soil, which would be work.[iv]

On and on it went.  In the name of keeping the Sabbath holy, the day had been perverted into a legalistic circus of rule-keeping and judgment.  This can be seen in the fact that the Pharisees are outraged to find this man carrying his bed:

10 So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed.”

Observe here the blindness of the religious leaders!  Here in front of them stood a man who had been an invalid for almost forty years.  It is almost impossible to imagine that they did not know who he was and what his condition was.  And here he is walking!  He is healed and walking!  And what do they do?  Do they marvel?  Do they rejoice?  Do they see that God has been honored on this most holy of days?  Do they praise God’s name because here, on the Sabbath, this man was now given a miraculous occasion for greater joy?

No.  No they do not.  What they do is immediately and instinctively bemoan his violation of the lesser laws they had encrusted to the fourth commandment.  “It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed.”

R.C. Sproul has offered the very interesting observation that “the rabbis…had enumerated thirty-nine specific types of work that were illegal on the Sabbath day, and the thirty-ninth rule of Sabbath observance – the very last one on the list – was the prohibition against carrying something from one place to another.”[v]

So there you have it.  This man has violated Rule #39.  So the Pharisees press him in their outrage.  The remaining conversation is intriguing:

11 But he answered them, “The man who healed me, that man said to me, ‘Take up your bed, and walk.'” 12 They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk’?” 13 Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place.

Seeking to defend his technical violation of the rules, the man points out that he is simply obeying the one who worked a miracle in his body.  There may be a subtle implication here from the man to the religious elites that perhaps he was simply obeying God since God had healed him.  But this is offered timidly.  The religious authorities were not to be trifled with.

Imagine the conflicting emotions in this man’s heart and mind!  He had been gloriously healed by God only to be smacked with a rule book.  He handles himself pretty well, all in all, though he obviously would prefer the leaders harass the one who healed him instead of harassing the one who was healed.  When pressed on the identity of his healer, the man cannot answer because he does not know Jesus’ name.

At this point, the man’s uncertainty as to the name of the one who healed him is incidental to the more outlandish point that the religious leaders were blinded to the work of God…by their religion!

Dear church, it is a sad state of affairs when people love religion more than God.  It is a sad condition to be in when we are so blinded by our traditions and secondary customs that we cannot see the work of God that is being manifest under our very noses!

How heartbreaking this is!  It is the very nature of legalism that it causes those perpetrating it and those suffering under it to focus on man-made rules more than God-worked miracles.

To be sure, there are rules, but God’s Word and the immediate and obvious implications of it should be sufficient in this regard without having to resort to an unending catalogue of contrived laws and customs.  We marvel that the Pharisees could miss God because, in their minds, they were serving God.  Even so, this happens all the time in our day as well, doesn’t it?

How often in our lives as individuals and perhaps in our life as a church have we been more concerned about the religious machine than about God Himself?  How often have we missed His mighty power and awesome strength because we were too busy reading the footnotes of our own religiosity?

We dare not cast off or minimize God’s Word because we find it difficult.  However, neither should we add to God’s Word because it makes us feel more righteous to do so.

Make no mistake:  the Pharisees were convinced they were doing the work of God.  The only problem was that they had become so blinded by their own devotion that they missed God in the name of God!

Beware, brother and sisters, the leaven of the Pharisees.  Beware the seductive whisper of self-righteousness.  Beware the sweet prison of legalism.  All of these things kill in the end.  They kill the spirit and they kill joy and they kill authentic relationship with Jesus Christ.

A Scandalous Claim

The Lord Jesus, of course, does not flee the controversy.  The controversy was no doubt one of the points.  He worked a miracle then used the occasion to teach more about Himself.

14 Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.”

This is a very interesting statement because Jesus reveals that this man’s physical condition was a result of sin in his life.  And, of course, sometimes sickness is a result of sin.  For instance, in addition to our text here, in 1 Corinthians 11:30, Paul tells the Corinthian believers that the reason many of them were “weak and ill, and some have died” was because many of them were making a public mockery of God in the way they were perverting the Lord’s Supper to their own glorification and their own physical gratification.

Clearly, then, sickness can be a result of sin.  But let us be careful here.  The fact that Jesus links this man’s sickness to his sin does not mean Jesus is teaching a universal principle for all sickness.  In fact, in John 9, when the disciples assume a blind man is blind because of his sin, Jesus responds, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” (v.2)  And, of course, we likewise have the example of righteous Job, whose sickness and suffering were the result of reasons other than sin.

But this man had sinned, and Jesus cautions him to do so no more.  In doing this, Jesus was making an amazing claim about Himself.  He was claiming to know the man’s spiritual condition, to have the authority to comment upon it, and to have the authority to forgive the man’s sins.  The forgiving of sins would get Jesus into hot water with the religious authorities elsewhere in the gospels, but certainly the implication was not lost on the man in this story.

So the man goes and reports back to the Jews on the identity of his healer:

15 The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. 16 And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath.

The Jews respond with incensed outrage.  This is one of the many episodes that heighten the tensions between Jesus and the religious establishment.  What Jesus says next does not ease those tensions in the least:

17 But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”

Ah!  If only we could understand how unbelievably incendiary and offensive this statement was!  It is as if Jesus is setting fire to a powder keg.  But He does not do so arbitrarily.  Jesus is not trying to pick a fight or offend for offense’s sake.  He intends to teach them about the true nature of the one they hate.

This statement was difficult for the Jews for a number of reasons.  For one thing, Jesus calls God “My Father.”  It was not out-of-bounds to call God “Father,” but it was out of bounds to call God “My Father.”  To do so was to claim a familiarity with God that was deemed offensive and implied a status for the one saying it that was deemed blasphemous.

God was not “the Father” to Jesus.  He was “My Father,” Jesus’ Father, making Jesus the unique Son of God.  This was entirely inappropriate in the minds of the religious authorities.

More than that, Jesus said that His Father “is working until now, and I am working.”  In doing so, Jesus was entering an ancient religious debate that was raging among the Jewish religious elites about the nature of the Sabbath and how it was to be observed.

The question centered around the meaning of the word “rest.”  What did the scriptures mean when it said that God “rested” on the seventh day (Genesis 2:2)?  Some Jews interpreted rest as complete passivity.  Therefore, in their minds, God literally did nothing at all on the Sabbath.  Thus, to honor God, we must literally do nothing either.  So out of this understanding the various legalisms of the Jews arose.  The laws were there to assure that you likewise did nothing!

Other Jews, however, argued that God could not have literally done “nothing” since that would mean He would have failed to keep the created order going through the power of His providential hand.   In this understanding, “rested” meant that God consecrated this day and set it apart as holy.  This meant that we are to do the same:  consecrate the day and set it apart as holy.  This meant that the day was less about keeping legalistic minutia than honoring God in a spirit of rest and worship.

Jesus enters this debate by saying that God is always working.  He is saying that God did not literally cease from all activity.  He did not cease from being God.  He is God.  And here is the key:  God was also at work on this Sabbath in the healing of this man.

If the point of the Sabbath is to honor God, then what is more honoring than celebrating the miraculous work of God in this man’s life?  If the focus of Sabbath rest is to draw deeper in the presence of God, how better to do that than to see, recognize, acknowledge, and rejoice at where and how God is working in the world today?

“My Father is working until now,” Jesus says.  He then adds:  “and I am working.”  When, in other words, they see Jesus working, it is because God is working, and he who sees the Son sees the Father.

This was an astounding claim!  Jesus is claiming nothing less than that He and the Father are one (John 10:30).  The reaction to this statement was swift and extreme:

18 This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

Here, then, is the great decision of this passage:  do we see Christ as God or do we see Him as the devil who is warring against God?  Do we accept His work, even when it conflicts with our own assumptions about God, or do we deny His work?  Do we change for Jesus, or do we seek to make Jesus change into our understanding of what we think He should be?

God is at work.  He is at work in His Son Jesus.  You may reject Him or you may come to Him.  I do pray that you will come to Him today.


[i] Some translations include these words.

[ii] Craig Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of John’s Gospel (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001), p.109.

[iii] Gerald L. Borchert, John 1-11. The New American Commentary. vol. 25A (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1996), p.228.

[iv] R. Kent Hughes, John (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1999), p.154-155.

[v] R.C. Sproul, John (Lake Mary, FL: Reformation Trust Publishing, 2009), p.79.