Monthly Archives: March 2022

Wednesday with John – Life Now!

Posted on March 30, 2022 | Leave a comment

John 5:19 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 he 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, 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, even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.
24 Truly, truly, I say to you, he who 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, the hour is coming, and now is, 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 has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of man.

•What is the general theme of the passage? Jesus loves His Father and only does what He is asking of Him.  Together they have a purpose; to give life that begins in this hour, now, and into eternity!  God has given Jesus His own power of judgment over life and death so that we might see in Jesus the deity of God lived out in the humanity of man.

• What does it say about God (or Jesus or the Holy Spirit?)
The Father loves the Son, and shows him all that He is doing.  Jesus does only what he sees the Father doing. The Father raises the dead and gives them life.  The Father has given all authority and judgment to the Son to give life “to whom He will.” The Father has life in  himself. The Son also has life in himself.

• What does it say about people?
People honor a judge because they recognize He has the power to decide their fate.  What people hear from Jesus, now, will decide their final judgment later. Read verses 25 – 27 with a small rearrangement in the two phrases “Son of God,” and Son of Man . Truly, truly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and NOW is, when the dead will hear the voice of [GOD THE SON], and those who hear will live.  Got has done HIs power handoff to Jesus “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself, and has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is [GOD THE MAN.]

• Is there truth here for me?
GOD THE SON is GOD THE MAN who’s come to reveal He’s the identity of God’s life IN us “who do not walk according to the flesh but according the Spirit,” NOW.

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Exodus [The Road Out] – Three Curtains

Posted on March 27, 2022 | Leave a comment

Exodus 40 Then the Lord said to Moses, 2 “Set up the Tabernacle on the first day of the new year.  3 Place the Ark of the Covenant inside, and install the inner curtain to enclose the Ark within the Most Holy Place. 4 Then bring in the table, and arrange the utensils on it. And bring in the lampstand, and set up the lamps. 5 “Place the gold incense altar in front of the Ark of the Covenant. Then hang the curtain at the entrance of the Tabernacle. 6 Place the altar of burnt offering in front of the Tabernacle entrance. 7 Set the washbasin between the Tabernacle and the altar, and fill it with water. 8 Then set up the courtyard around the outside of the tent, and hang the curtain for the courtyard entrance.  NLT

Each of those three curtains: the entrance to the courtyard, the entrance to the Tabernacle within, and finally the entrance into the Holy of Holies – were designed to reveal God’s identity to people caught in the wilderness.  The purpose of each curtain was to make them physically aware of the separation between the wilderness of man and the Holiness of God.  The people’s words often proclaimed their desire to worship God and do all that He asked, but in reality they needed physical reminders it wasn’t their words that separated them from the presence of God but their actions, and so he gave them three curtains. The first curtain was at the entrance gate to the courtyard.
#1 So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most. Hebrews 4:16

They had to physically pass through that first curtain, with their offering, into a courtyard filled with visceral reminders of sin.  Sin that required a substitute of blood for God’s forgiveness. In that first-step place they would “see” the second barrier; the curtain before the Holy Place that only priests could enter.
#2 for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. 1 Peter 2:9

An finally, beyond their sight, but not their imagination was the last curtain. The curtain that hid the presence of God from them.  A presence so fearful that even the high priest entered with a rope tied about him so he could be pulled out in case he would be struck down because the blood of their sacrifices did not please God; the last barrier to forgiveness.
#3 Then Jesus uttered another loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain in the sanctuary of the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. Mark 15:37-38
And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus. By his death, Jesus opened a new and life-giving way through the curtain into the Most Holy Place.  Hebrews 10:19-20

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Posted in 1 Peter, Exodus, Hebrews, Mark, Matthew, New Testament, Old Testament, Sunday

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Wednesday with John – Some Thing More

Posted on March 23, 2022 | Leave a comment

John 5:1 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. 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. ESV 

What is the general theme of the passage?
The name Bethesda means either house of mercy or house of grace but it seems improbable that pool has any religious connection to the God of the Jews OR that the people there, were waiting for Israel’s God to heal them, especially on this Sabbath day.  Some versions have added to the ending of verse 3 and all of verse 4.  In many versions this addition is only a footnote a because the ancient manuscripts do not make that connection.  This pool would likely have always been a place of uncleanness to the Jews because “a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed were there.” The mystery of this water is healing happens only when the water is “stirred up.”  

What does it say about God (or Jesus or the Holy Spirit?)
Jesus chooses to go to this pool to find this man. It seems so similar to what He chose to do when he offered “living” water to the outcast woman at the well.  Jesus’s assurance is “My Father is working until now, and I am working” even on the Sabbath.

What does it say about people?
Here are some questions to read and ponder: Why did the crippled man not just say “yes” when Jesus asked him “Do you want to be healed?”  If he IS a Jew, what’s he doing there on the Sabbath?  If he’s NOT a Jew, why did he go to the Temple after his healing?  This invalid man may be yet another story of someone who is not necessarily Godless, but not Godly either.  He knows some of the essentials: the water in this pool is identified with the grace and mercy of some mysterious power.  He knows there is some miraculous healing possible. He knows he needs some thing more, some one who can get him to that “stirred up” water.

Is there truth here for me?
How many times has this man been taken to this same pool and been disappointed?  Jesus is not just the some one who will put that invalid into the pool to be healed.  HE IS the “stirred up” water”  that man cannot reach on his own.  Jesus has given that invalid man the one  thing that pool could never offer, a healing that is something more — a connection to Him.  Jesus is the missing verse 4! 

a “waiting for a certain movement of the water, for an angel of the Lord came from time to time and stirred up the water. And the first person to step in after the water was stirred was healed of whatever disease he had.”

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Exodus [The Road Out] — The Rock

Posted on March 20, 2022 | Leave a comment

Exodus 33:18 Moses said, “I pray thee, show me thy glory.” 19 And he[the Lord] said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord’; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. 20 But,” he said, “you cannot see my face; for man shall not see me and live.”

“Rock of ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee”

21 And the Lord said, “Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand upon the rock; 22 and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; 23 then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.”

The old hymn, Rock of Ages, is what inspired my painting.  God chose to reveal the truth of His moral code, written from His heart on a surface physically made by His own hand.  Can you imagine the Lord of all Creation busily speaking every perfect thing into reality; and yet purposefully carving broken fissures and clefts into that solid, immovable mass of rock and calling it “good?” 

We don’t have those stone tablets but we still have the ten truths for life that were on them.  Can you imagine the permanence of God’s message as much more than two [or four] lost tablets but a message from the stone itself?  Those Words have never been lost!  Instead they have become a good and perfect place to hide as the Lord of all Creation passes by to reveal Himself amid the broken fissures and clefts. It’s a very different solid, permanent and immovable place of safety from which to witness the Glory we cannot bear to see — THE Rock.

Trust in the Lord forever,
for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.
Isaiah 26:4

 

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Posted in Exodus, Isaiah, Matthew, New Testament, Old Testament, Sunday

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Wednesday with John – Advantage Takers

Posted on March 16, 2022 | Leave a comment

32 DAYS TO EASTER!

John 4:43 After the two days [in Samaria]  he [Jesus] departed for Galilee. 44 (For Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in his own hometown.) 45 So when he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, having seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the feast. For they too had gone to the feast. ESV

What is the general theme of the passage?
Jesus has narrowed the scope of his influence by moving from the big city of Jerusalem, through the in-between place of Samaria, to zero in on His home territory.  Jesus isn’t fooled into assuming the basis of the welcome in Galilee is prompted by anything more than the “actions speak louder than words” stories of His time in Jerusalem.  Those miracle-working realities are meant to be actions that emphasize the Words of truth behind them.  His recent time in Samaria shows us the stark contrast of the “Samaritans welcoming Jesus because of His Words and the people of Galilee focused on the signs and wonders.”a

What does it say about God (or Jesus or the Holy Spirit?) Jesus has come to His home for one prophetic purpose: to help those who could not see past the power His actions to hear and recognize the truth of His Words. 

What does it say about people?
People are advantage-takers and Jesus has come home for the express purpose to give the people in His home territory the opportunity to take advantage of Him.

Is there truth here for me?
I wrote that line above about Jesus giving the opportunity to take advantage of Him as a play on words before it actually dawned on me how true those words were. Jesus is just 32 days from this year’s reminder that He has overcome a desperately broken and negative sin of humanity – to be users of each other and God.  Easter is the action He took to speak the reality of His Words and His Spirit into my past, my present and my future so that I might recognize His purpose for me is to take full advantage of Him and never be satisfied with anything less.

a https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/go-your-son-will-live

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Exodus [The Road Out] – Jesus

Posted on March 13, 2022 | Leave a comment

Exodus 32:7 And the Lord said to Moses, “Go down; for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves; RSV

It’s easy to see how obvious the idolatry of THOSE people is.  How in the world could they miss that the golden calf looked just like the idol the Egyptians worshipped? These are the same people who’d repeatedly sworn to Moses that whatever God told them to do, they would do.  These are the people who knew they were to serve God on this mountain.  These are the people who were willing to settle for making the Glory of God into their own image.

Imagine the heartbreak Moses must have felt as he began his journey down the mountain after being told by the Lord “Go down, for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves.”    Therein lies the lesson of how waiting, suspicion and impatience can so easily become the sin that corrupts the mind first and then the heart.  This golden calf was made from the willing offering of the people’s treasure.  Their treasure was what they chose to worship as the god that brought them out of Egypt even though only one day before that idol hadn’t even existed.  

The challenge of my mind and heart as a descendant of THOSE people, who’s inherited this sad and shameful moment as part of my history, is to find the thread that connects those truths to the truth of the Sovereign and Eternal Glory of God revealed in Jesus for believers today. “For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin,[as a sin offering] he condemned sin in the flesh,  in order that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” Romans 8

“Fallen people are capable of great sacrifices,
but not out of love for God.”
 John Piper

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Posted in Exodus, Matthew, New Testament, Old Testament, Romans, Sunday

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Wednesday with John – In Between

Posted on March 9, 2022 | Leave a comment

John 4:39 Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s  testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42 They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of your words that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.” RSV

What is the general theme of the passage?
I suppose because I’m studying both John and Exodus at the same time, this familiar story seems like another story about an exodus to me – the road out of a wilderness on the journey home. Jesus has chosen this direct route that connected the wilderness with the tainted land of Samaria on his way home to Galilee.  Somehow that seems important.  Jesus’s own baptism and the place of God’s proclamation of His Sonship took place in that Judean wilderness.  That is also the place Satan hoped, and failed, to disgrace both Jesus and God with desperate temptations about food, faith and power.  Jesus survived that wilderness and now He’s become the saving link for Samaria, the “in-between” place, filled with people who’ve lost their right to even claim the title “Jew” and He can offer them a greater Home. 

What does it say about God (or Jesus or the Spirit?)
Jesus was able to combine their remembered facts with experience and truth in a way that reached into the history of their heart to turn their facts into faith that He was their way out of that “in-between” place. 

What does it say about people?
The practical truth about Jesus is that He is God and capable of saving people caught “in between” their wilderness and their true Home.  The woman at the well knows old “facts” but is less interested in instructions about eternity than she is in not having to haul water every day.  She acknowledges “our father Jacob, who gave us the well” and “our fathers worshiped on this mountain.”  She obviously has knowledge that affects her mind without her having a conscious awareness her facts are the “kindling” of faith. One new fact has ignited something of faith for her,  “He told me all that I ever did.”

Is there truth here for me? I thought about my own moment of recognizing Jesus, and all the “facts” I’d had for a long time before that day came.  Doubt was not my wilderness, I believed those facts!  But someone else’s facts are only the “in-between” part of faith.  It’s when Jesus enters the “in-between” and turns facts into kindling that ignites faith that you recognize you’ve survived the wilderness and have a Home to aim for.

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Exodus [The Road Out] – The Blood

Posted on March 6, 2022 | Leave a comment

Exodus 24:1-8

He [The Lord] said
Come —
Aaron, Nadab, and Abhiu, and seventy of the elders
and worship afar off.
Moses alone shall come near
and the people shall not come up with him.
Moses came and told
all the words of the Lord and all the ordinances.
The people answered with one voice
“All the words which the Lord has spoken we will do.”

Moses wrote all the words of the Lord,
and built an altar at the foot of the mountain.
He sent young men of the people of Israel,
who offered burnt offerings
and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord.
Moses took half of the blood,
he threw against the altar.
He took the book of the covenant,
and read it in the hearing of the people.
They said,
“All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.”
Moses took the blood and threw it upon the people
and said,
“Behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord
has made with you in accordance with all these words.” RSV

The contrast between the Lord’s instruction for some to come and worship “afar off” but that Moses alone should “come near” was the thing that caught my attention.  That separation is such a different idea than what we understand when Jesus says “Come to me ALL who are weary…”   My modern-day heart is looking for clues from this episode of “back to the future”  because I recognize that contrast still exists.  “Afar off” was the trigger phrase that reminded me these people are homeless, weary prodigals,  people who want, even need, to worship but they are lost in the circumstances of life. This is the Word of the Lord, and He’s the only one who knows the future.

Moses took half of the blood,
he threw against the altar.
Moses took the blood and threw it upon the people
and said,
“Behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord
has made with you in accordance with all these words.”

The unpleasant visceral images of Moses’s application of that long-ago gory, blood sacrifice as part of worship have done their work in reminding me there are two important truths about blood sacrifice that have forever changed the future for ALL prodigals and I see the reality of them for today.  Jesus IS the Blood of Sacrifice that identifies both the PLACE of worship and the the PEOPLE who  worship there.

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Posted in Exodus, Matthew, New Testament, Old Testament

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Wednesday with John + The Locus

Posted on March 2, 2022 | Leave a comment

John 3:22-30 NIV

Jesus and his disciples
spent some time
and baptized.
John also was baptizing
This was before John was put in prison
An argument developed
over the matter of ceremonial washing.
They came to John and said
the one you testified about
is baptizing,everyone is going to him.
John replied, “A person can receive only
what is given them from heaven.
I am not the Messiah
The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him,
That joy is mine,
He must become greater; I must become less.

• What is the general theme of the passage?
This is the same desert place where Jesus’s triumphed over His own temptations. That fact, and this place has now become the meaningful locus of the ministry of these two cousins that begins to merge their parallel tracks into the Cross of Christ.  There is some competitive controversy brewing between John’s disciples and a certain Jew[?].  Was baptism a process for purification by the symbolic removal of things determined by a set of rules that made you unclean OR was it an action of repentance with sincere regret and remorse for the unclean things only the heart knew?  John clearly settles the controversy with his own recognition of the greatness of Christ and His joy that he’s been given his role as the friend who attends the bridegroom.

• What does it say about God (or Jesus or the Spirit?) It’s year one of both Jesus’s and John’s ministry.  Jesus has been baptized by John who identified Him as the one sent from God.  Jesus has been through the preparation of His own temptations. Peter, Andrew, Philip and Nathanael have been called, the water has been turned into wine, the temple has been cleared and Jesus has begun his ministry of transforming faith from a corporate expression of worship to a personal one with a nighttime conversation with Nicodemus. 

• What does it say about people?
Human nature is competitive and competition can breed controversy.  The desire to control circumstances of obedience and observance happens because of the parallel tracks of faith and personal behavior. 

• Is there truth here for me?
Reading about Judea being the place Jesus returned after His own temptations made me think about my own baptism.  I was about 12, but it was a meaningless process until I met Jesus twenty-one years later. That was my own time in the desert of temptations that made me realize life is like parallel tracks for many of us who know there IS a God but that’s about it!  I knew enough to want to try to keep those two tracks somewhat parallel but still didn’t recognize that was my desert until the action of a repentant heart revealed there was more to life than  being “not Godless, but not Godly either.” That’s when my two parallel lines began to merge into the locus that looks more and more like a Cross to me.

 

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Posted in John, Matthew, New Testament, Not Godless but Not Godly either

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