Good Friday's Death to Resurrection Day Morn

We can imagine that it was hard for the disciples after Jesus' humiliating death on Good Friday. The mood of disappointment and grief that hung over the disciple band is well caught in Luke's portrayal of the two disciples (Luke 24.13-35) on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus.

I think we would have been no better than they were in their despondency and spiritual blindness.

This 3-day period was an important time but for them they could only think that his death spelled the END.

And of course it did but not in the way they thought.

Jesus' coming into the world did mean the END; it meant the END of sin and death, of the old age.


Acknowledgement to http://visualtheology.blogspot.com.au/2011_04_01_archive.html for the graphic I have used even though I have taken what was a visual regarding Lazarus' death and reminded us that from the disciples' point of view Jesus' death appeared to end in similar despair during the 3-day travail.

Believe Into Jesus

In the gospel of John in particular we meet that phrase often: believe in Jesus (e.g., Jn 3.16)

However, the problem with the translation 'in' is that it can so easily be misunderstood to mean believing certain things about Jesus and that's all.  Of course, it is critical that we do believe things about Jesus Christ because they are foundational to believing in Him.

If we don't believe that Jesus is the Son of God (Jn 20.31) then our belief in Him will be defective.

If we don't believe that He has settled the unrighteousness of world's sin (Jn 1.29) by bearing it away from us then we will scarcely know why Jesus' coming as the Man is even important for our lives.

Nevertheless, on knowing these things, it is still possible to remain outside God's salvation. To believe in Jesus = to believe into Him implying commitment, trust in Him; just as I am trusting the chair I am sitting on will hold me up.

Hence, believing in Jesus means to rely on him for salvation. Those who are lost in some way are rescued. That's what all of those who have turned to Christ in repentance by committing their hearts and lives to Him have been: rescued.

Rescued from the penalty of sin because final consequences of sin's rebellion is eternal life; rescued from the power of sin in this present life; and finally, rescued from the presence of sin when Christ returns in all his glory.

An Inspired Sermon On The Power Of Praise

Recently a gifted friend of mine sent me a sermon she had written in a few days before delivering it on a Sunday in January 2012.

The sermon is about praise and the power of praise to rout the enemy of our souls. It begs to be read! It touches on the theme of God's glory! Read it HERE.

The Revelation of Christ's Glory 2

I know I've already spoken about this theme in reference to first part of John ch2.

But the same three interwoven strands of SIGN-GLORY-BELIEF appear again in the pericope of the Cleansing of the Temple (Jn 2.13-22). This occurrence invites a further look at this triad.

The sign is less obvious but it's still there because the Jews ask Jesus 'what sign do you show [us] given that you're doing these things [driving out the money changers from the temple]?'

Jesus gives them the sign of his resurrection: 'Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up' (Jn 2.19).

They don't understand and significantly neither do the disciples!

The disciples only understand after Jesus is resurrected and the text says that the disciples remembered what He had said on this occasion, they believed the scripture and they believed the word which Jesus had said (Jn 2.22).

In this case, some 3 years elapsed before the disciples became more mature believers. No doubt the Holy Spirit brought to their awareness these words of Jesus and the effort on their faith was noteworthy.

It seemed to me on thinking about this passage and the earlier one, the turning of water into wine, that the signs given in John's account are written expressly 'that [we] might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and that believing [we] might have life in his name' (Jn 20.31).

Jesus gently rebuking Thomas says that those who have never seen him are blessed!!! How can that be true? We late-comers believe because of the Spirit's work within us as we listen to the preaching of the word of those who were eye-witnesses.

And God in his mercy surrounds us continually with providential signs of His presence in our lives, signs of his glory in Christ Jesus, that are designed to deepen our belief in the Lord.

However, often we have become dulled by affects of the world, the flesh and the devil that we don't perceive all that God is doing in our lives.

• The preached Word of God. Always the Word will if approached with an open heart heal us, challenge, change us or chastise us depending on our need. At a service yesterday, a priest (Anglican) spoke on Jas 1.19-27. I was arrested by Jas 1.21, 'Therefore, rid yourselves of everything impure and every expression of wickedness, and with a gentle spirit welcome the word planted in you that can save your souls'. Welcome the Word! What an important direction!
• Other Christians and their love towards us are a wonderful sign of His presence in our lives . 
• Answers to prayers. Sometimes we pray and the Lord replies but we don't notice and we fail to give thanks. In everything we are to give thanks. Of course we fail in this directive but we can pick ourselves up from the floor and start again. God is always merciful.
• The holy Scriptures. Perhaps our minds will be exercised on a particular issue and then this very point is raised in a meeting where no one knew about what was going on in our lives. Recently, I was thinking of 'glory'. My wife and I went to different church services where preachers spoke on different texts but both highlighted the issue of Christ's glory. In the service I went to, the preacher spoke about it right at the end of his sermon because the passage in 1 Cor 2.8 calls Jesus, the Lord of Glory. His point was that it is a singular title. That got my attention. But when I got home and my wife was enthusing about the sermon she had heard on Jn 1.14 my attention was even more fully on alert! 

That experience among others has spurred me to write this post.

The Revelation Of Christ's Glory

The marriage feast described in John 2.1-11 at Cana of Galilee ran out of wine and was in disarray.

We don't realise but this situation is a potential social humiliation for the bridegroom the shame of which will follow him all his days. His marriage feast will always be characterised as the one that ran out of wine!

Jesus takes the opportunity to meet this situation by providing a mighty sign, a superabundance of wine out of water and reveals his GLORY.

My key verse is Jn 2:11, 'This beginning of miracles [signs] did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested [revealed] his glory; and his disciples believed on him.' Let's focus on--
 
The Revelation of Christ's Glory 

When we look back in the gospel to John 1.14 it says, 'And the Word became flesh and dwelt [or 'tabernacled'] among us and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten Son of God, full of grace and truth'.

What does 'glory' mean to you? It's not easy to define. Honour, renown, esteem, fame, importance, eminence, celebrity, dignity, distinction, exaltation, grandeur, greatness, honor, illustriousness, immortality, kudos, magnificence, majesty, nobility, praise, prestige, renown, reputation, splendor, sublimity, triumph are some of the words suggested by it.  CS Lewis, the great Christian academic and writer said that 'glory' suggests 'luminosity'.

But the glory of God in Jesus Christ is of such a character that it can cause people to fall down (e.g., Rev 1.17; 2 Chron 5.14) because of its 'weight' (2 Cor 4.17) or just because the people realise in Whose presence they are. 

David Wilkerson, author of the famous The Cross and the Switchblade (who died last year incidentally) said that the glory of God is indefinable because it is 'the fullness of God'.

So the glory theme is found looking back to Jn 1.14 but also looking forward to John 17, a whole chapter framed around glory. In chapter 17 we find Jesus praying, 'O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was' (v5, words in italics mine).

1. The Revelation of Christ's Glory Changes the Ordinary
Jesus was The Sign of an Open Heaven (Jn 1.32, 51). When the heavens are open the extraordinary appears, the glory appears; and when the glory appears the ordinary is changed.

In the first four chapters of John's account, ordinary water gets changed in Wine; the Temple gets a makeover in Christ's Resurrection; ordinary birth becomes new birth and ordinary water by New Water or Living Water (Jn 4).

The glory was first revealed with creation 'the heavens declare the glory of God' (Ps 19.1). The glory was then seen in the glory cloud that led the people of Israel to the Promised Land. The glory was seen by the priests in the Tabernacle and then in Solomon's temple. After that, nothing is said about the temple and glory.

Do we realise that we ordinary people are going to share in Christ's glory one day too?

In one sense we already do because are we not already seated with him in 'heavenly places'?

But we are going to be gloried in a far greater sense when he comes in his glory with all his angels (Matt 25.31).

2. The Revelation of Christ's Glory Calls For A Response
The disciples believed on him when they saw this mighty sign of the water changed into wine. Does that strike you as being slightly odd?

It's the disciples on whom John focuses. I would have thought they had already believed on Jesus, wouldn't you?

What do you think?

Well, perhaps their faith as followers of Jesus was as yet ill-formed and indefinite; yet in seeing this sign their faith was raised to a new level.

This is no idle speculation because in the next pericope (Jn 2.13-22), the cleansing of the temple, Jesus' words about raising up the temple (his body) in three days John says of the disciples that after the resurrection, 'they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had said'.

What is John telling us by saying this?

It's the case that we followers, disciples of Christ Messiah, must deepen our faith in our Lord Jesus because he is the only way to the Father (Jn 14.6).


Listen to A Wonderful Song From The Salvation Army! Glory!

Keeping The Heart 2

John Flavel (1627-1691) was a great puritan preacher who, along with more than 2000 other ministers, was turned out of his pulpit in The Great Ejection of 1662. He famously wrote, Keeping The Heart which is a mastery exposition of Prov 4.23.

'Keep and guard you heart with all vigilance and above all that you guard, for out of it flow the springs of life' (Amp).

Like all the Puritan writers his work is dense and doesn't lend itself to easy summarisation. However he opens his short book which can be found here on the internet with these words:

The heart of man is his worst part before it is regenerated, and the best afterward; it is the seat of principles, and the fountain of actions. The eye of God is, and the eye of the Christian ought to be principally fixed upon it.
 

The greatest difficulty in conversion, is to win the heart to God; and the greatest difficulty after conversion, is to keep the heart with God. Here lies the very force and stress of religion; here is that which makes the way to life a narrow way, and the gate of heaven a strait gate.