John 18:13-27

 John 18:13-27

In verse 22 we see the first of the physical attacks on Jesus.  As with all of the physical abuse we can think, “If you only knew who you were abusing?”  Eternal God made flesh slapped by His creation.  Turning the other cheek was not a theoretical discussion, it was the principle which would lead from slapping to crucifixion to resurrection.  We are fools to think that non-violence will result in changing the heart and attitude of the attacker.  That is not the point of turning the other cheek.  The point of turning the other check is obedience; the results are not the objective.  From this point on the violence will only grow and Jesus will respond in obedience to the Father.

Obedience is obedience only if disobedience is a real possibility.  Jesus could have responded with the cosmic power that created the universe or an army of angels.  But obedience to the Father precluded those responses.  I don’t have that kind of power at my disposal as evidenced by the fact that the world has not been destroyed.    I don’t have an angelic army to command, I am not even a member of a gang.  But I do have the capacity to hate, to have an inner universe in which I am divine.  In this universe I can rally those people who adore me to join together in hating those who offend me.  Law, culture and relative strength limit our capacity for violence and revenge.  But nothing from the outside can restrain secret hates we harbor.

Turning the other check literally or metaphorically is no big deal if we have no other options.  What we see in Jesus throughout the passion is an outward sign of an inner love.  To restrain self from anger and bitterness because of love is what Jesus did and what we are called to as well.

“Lord, help me to love those who hate me, with the love Jesus has for those who hate Him. AMEN”

John 18:1 - 12

 John 18:1 - 12

We must never imagine for a second that Jesus was a victim of what happened that night. He was the master of all that transpired; do not feel sorry for Jesus.  Love and worship Him but do not think that he was the victim of all that transpired.

With a fear of rebellion Pilate releases a “cohort” to be put at the disposal of the arresting party. This represents 600 men. Not all would have been in the garden. At this point the garden would have been surrounded, checkpoints would have been along the roads and any crossroads secured. This Jesus of Nazareth wasn't going to disappear into the desert and raise an army.

With this massive contingent before and around Him Jesus demonstrates the real power of the situation. In response to asking whom they were looking for and they answered “Jesus”. Jesus tells them “I AM”. That is the personal name of God. At that moment the arresting party falls to the ground. This was not out of respect for the name of God. This was the might in the power of God's presence overwhelming men. It was a clear demonstration of who was in charge. Again Jesus asked who they wanted? Again they answered “Jesus”. No one in this party could claim that they were unaware of Jesus' Divinity; they had just experienced it. 

There is another point for us here.  Faced with such odds we have to respect the misguided courage of Peter, he had no chance of winning and he knew it, but perhaps we could buy time, cause a distraction and give Jesus a running start. But let’s not miss the point that it is as the arresting party is recovering themselves that Peter strikes, he hits them when they are all weak. Makes sense in terms of a fight. But like us Peter is using the Divine moment for his agenda. It is as if Peter is attempting to co-op the encounter with Christ to accomplish his plan for Jesus. Believe it or not that is not the last time that this happens. In fact we often see the work of God stolen by men to accomplish their own program. But like Peter and the arrest team we are without excuse; we have seen the resurrection,

“Lord never allow me to use Your Kingdom for my purpose.  AMEN”

John 17:20-26

 John 17:20-26

In this final section of Jesus's prayer we see His appeal for the unity of all believers through the whole church age. This prayer for unity has been the impetus of more than one movement. Nevertheless there are few that would say that unity among believers exists. We might even ask what are the implications of Jesus earnestly making a request of the Father and that this prayer was not fully answered. What do we see in Jesus's unanswered prayer? 

In fact there is not even an agreement about what this unity would mean or would look like. Would we say that this unity is a mystical unity that exists at a spiritual and supernatural level? That can't be all there is to it because the unity of which Jesus speaks is visible to the unbelieving world and causes them to come to faith. If we say that unity is a functional and ecclesiastical unity we miss the spiritual description of it being like the Son being in the Father and the Father in the Son. This unity, whatever it is, is at least as easy to understand as the doctrine of the Trinity. In fact the marvel of the church's unity is based on the Trinity.

One attempt at unity has been the statement, “In matters of Faith Unity and matters of opinion Liberty that in all things love”. This is pretty good as far as it goes in III John we see that if a person is a heretic we can't receive them, clearly there are limits to unity. But conversely we are not in agreement with what are matters of faith and what are matters of opinion. We have a remarkable ability to fight over almost anything. I once heard of a church split that occurred over whether the new roof on its building should be shingle or metal. Nothing tells the world, “We have nothing you want” like a church fight.

The issue of church unity is about 2,000 years old and has been studied, prayed over, and argued about by some very smart and godly people and we still don't have it figured out. But there is one starting point and one thing we can do and that is love. As Jesus concluded this prayer, “…that the love where with Thou dids’t love me may be in them and I in them.”

“Lord, if nothing else help me to love those who love you. AMEN”

John 17: 8 - 19

 John 17: 8 - 19 

What is the reality of the relationship of the disciple and the church in the world? What is the fundamental experience of the people of God while they live between their conversion and their personal Resurrection? The fundamental relationship between the world and the people of God is one of hostility. The world hates the Christian and the church. For its part the church is not in the world to coddle and soothe but to challenge the world to continue the message and the work of Christ.

Jesus does not call us out of the world to a safe Christian Cloister. Rather He sends us into the world, into the midst of struggle and hostility and opposition but under the Father's protection by His word. We err equally when we, as disciples, believe we ought to sequester ourselves in the safe confines of Christian Community, seen especially in the church. When we believe that we can reform the world with our optimistic view of a better world now.  If we imagine that we can affirm and endorse the world’s values, morals and ethics as they are. There is equal folly in each.

If the foundational problem in the world is that it is in rebellion towards God we will not be able to see resolution until the rebels surrender. That surrender will not occur by our escapism, surface superficial reforms, or agreement with the world’s terms of surrender. The rebel may never repent but he can be told he needs to. That telling is as apt to produce hostility, as it is repentance, maybe more. In either case we are under Divine protection. That protection is the source of our joy in the midst of the suffering.

“Lord, grant me courage under Your protection in this hostile world.  AMEN”

John 17:1 - 8

 John 17:1 - 8 

The Son is glorified by the Father for what He will do and what He has done. In verses 1-2 we see that Jesus asked His Father to glorify Him because of the future action of giving eternal life to men. The work of Salvation on the cross is only hours away but it will rescue men for eternity. In versus 4-5 Jesus asked that the Father glorify Him for what He has already been accomplished. Jesus accomplished the work that the Father had given Him: the Incarnation, life, ministry, teaching, miracles and sinlessness of the Son were completed. Between these two statements of glorification is the description of eternal life to know the one true God and Jesus Christ sent From Heaven.

Declaring of the glory of God is never more complete and full than it is when men accept the gift of eternal life and become disciples or followers of Christ. The great sermons and lessons, the music and songs, the interjections and expressions of praise all have their place. But they remain sign posts pointing to, they are explanations and descriptions of the person and work of Jesus who came to save the lost. The marvel and tension of perfect forgiveness and perfect justice are worked out on the cross. How can a perfectly holy God at the same time fully punish the most grotesque sin and forgive the perpetrator? By the Incarnation, perfect life, and sacrificial death of God the son. The greatest composer, singer, speaker, writer, or musician glorifies God less fully than the one who says “In the Cross of Christ is God's plan of eternal life. Come follow Christ!"

“Lord, grant that I will follow faithfully and simply. AMEN”

John 16:25-33

 John 16:25-33

Jesus’ teaching on Earth comes to an end. The next chapter is Jesus's Priestly prayer, then it's to the Garden, the trials, and the cross. In this passage Jesus gets to the core of our struggle in faith. "...for the Father Himself loves you..."   There is more difficulty with these words than we care to admit, imagine, or accept.   The love of God towards us is the fundamental point of our faith.  “For God so loved the world...” But there is a change in this passage. In John 3:16 Jesus used the word Agape for love. Agape is the self-sacrificing love for the well being of the other. God loves the pedophile, and the pimp, God loves the lust-filled adulteress, and the drug lord He loves the liar and a thief. He loves them so much that He gives His Son as a sacrifice for them and for us. But the word love here is different. The word here is Philia.  It is the word for the love of a friend. Being a friend of God is different from being the object of His salvation sacrificial love.

God wants to be with us, He likes us, our company and doing stuff with us, we are delightful to Him. This frankly is hard for us to wrap our minds around. We have no trouble seeing God as the holy judge who punishes sin. We have very little trouble seeing God as one who saves us by the cross motivated by Agape.   But God as a friend who wants to be rolling through life with us that's harder for us to comprehend. Especially when we struggle with hardships, frustrations, failures, and questions, and we wonder why God doesn't come riding in on a charger and save the day. Perhaps that is the wrong image, the wrong way for us to think about God.

Like all analogies this one will break down if pressed too hard. But hear me out. There is a redneck saying that goes, “A good friend will come and bail you out of jail in the middle of the night.  A great friend will be sitting beside you saying, ‘Man wasn't that great’”. We tend to think of God as a friend who will come and post the bail and sign us out of jail. But He wants to be the one who is in jail with us. Now only a fool would propose that we should engage in riotous behavior that lands us in jail. But the best times of life are the times of high-risk shared with friends. Close companionship plus difficulty or suffering equals a bond closer than all others. I have read numerous accounts of men who have fought wars together.  They report a bond that is closer than the bond of family.  Sports teams that survive the trials that are the hardest have friendships that last the longest.

Perhaps the struggle with being a friend of God is because we play it too safe. We risk too little so that we will never struggle. Maybe what we need is not more cushions on our pews, or better climate control in our sanctuary, or nicer music in our ears.  Maybe what we need is more blood on our knuckles, sweat in our armpits and more adrenaline in our blood.  In our grasping for security at home, at church, and in life we have removed the very thing that will help us understand God as a friend.  Jesus concluded his teaching on Earth by saying, “In this world you will have tribulation but take courage I have overcome the world.”  We work really hard at trying to avoid tribulation.  So our friendship with God is bland and insipid.  Maybe we should engage those Kingdom things where we may get bloodied but we will walk away saying, “Man was that great or what?”

“Lord, grant me a great heart to risk great things with You. AMEN”

John 16:12 - 24

 John 16:12 - 24 

Everyone who has unanswered prayers looks at verse 24 with a questioning or a dubious eye. We read, “Ask and you will receive”, and we wonder why we don't get the answers to our prayers. The marriage doesn't recover, the child is never conceived, the cancer wins, we never get that date we asked for or the pony we wanted when we were six years old. My friend Rob died.  I never knew one person who was such a combination of Christian Grace and love and warmth. From when he told me he had pancreatic cancer till he died was about one year, a painful year of chemo and decline. In those last 365 days of my praying for Rob, me and perhaps 1,000 other people, he was not healed at all. Some of those people praying were holy saints that had dramatic prayers answered with startling frequency. By the way I, for one, don't want to hear “he got his healing in heaven”. That is not what we asked for. Our prayer was that stage 4 pancreatic cancer would go away and Rob, with a healthy cancer-free body, would live out many years of helping us know Jesus better and love Him more. 

Jesus tells the disciples that before the cross there were things they could not understand. After the Spirit comes He would guide them. This is not a promise of new revelation, rather the Spirit would guide them in application of what Jesus had revealed. At this time the disciples were still thinking of the Kingdom as a political-military  Earthly affair. Even after the resurrection they were looking for an Earthly Kingdom. It is only after Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit that they begin to understand that the kingdom of Christ is something entirely different. And this, by the way, was only one of their confusions. The Holy Spirit comes to our lives to give us the application of truth that leads us to holiness and righteous living. 

The Holiness of the disciple is superior to that of the self-righteousness person because the Spirit guides it. On the outside they may look very much the same. The self-righteous person may tithe and be so conscientious about it that to the point that they count their seeds. The Spirit guided disciple may be equally conscientious but it is supremely different because of the motivation, the Holy Spirit guides them. The disciple will never live immorally and claim that God's will.  His behavior is righteous and seen but he is empowered by the Spirit, which is unseen. Which brings us back to Jesus's promise of answered prayer. When we want to know what is righteous, what is Holy, what is the right thing to do; Jesus guides us by the Spirit. That does not violate our free will, because we want to be righteous.  It may be that we may not want to know God’s will or obey Him. But when we seek righteousness Jesus always answers and gives us what we asked. This passage is more about getting what we want when what we want is righteous living. It isn’t about getting the things or earthy pleasure or selfish ambition.

So my friend died in spite of all the prayers of a lot of godly people.  Perhaps we didn’t get what we wanted because it wasn’t what God wanted.

“Lord, help me want what You want more than anything else.  AMEN”