Making the Theological Understandable
As 2013 draws to a close, it’s a good time to reflect. There will have been 365 days of sunrises and sunsets that God has graciously given us to mark the time. What will have been this year’s highlights? What do-overs will you wish you had? The very best use of a day will be to trust God with your time going forward, to place your faith in Him, and to seek His heart on the best use of 2014. He’s already planning to mark the time with sunrises and sunsets. How will you mark your time?
John 3:17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.”
It’s Christmas Eve and our series on Emmanuel: When LOVE Showed Up In-Person will be concluding. In our passage for today, the Gospel writer John summarizes what he’s been saying about the reason Jesus came: to save the world!
Picture an entire pool of humanity under the cloud of sin since the Fall of Man. That whole group has been under the “you-will-surely-die” condemnation and has been awaiting God’s eventual and inevitable wrath. Each and every man, woman, and child has inherited a death sentence. We are all terminal since the day we were conceived. It’s a gloomy picture of darkness, punishment, and death.
But then God does something miraculous!
LOVE showed up as our Savior.
The Father sends Jesus—the Word made flesh—to come into the world,
not to add further condemnation upon an entire people as a judge and a punisher.
No, He comes in love and grace to make salvation possible.
Of course, not everyone will believe in His Name, or take His offer of grace as the free gift it is, or agree to being pulled up to eternal life out of the death spiral. But some will. The Light of Christ draws those who want to see more LOVE, more grace, and more Light to be found in Him. He draws us out of the gloomy despair of human life. The Light shows us the way to salvation even though some will reject it.
To those who are sick and tired of hearing (as from Phil Robertson and Duck Dynasty, for example) how the Bible condemns this group or that group and consigns them to hell, the truth is we were all destined for hell had Jesus not come to save us.
The question is not “Who is under the threat of condemnation?”
The answer to that is question is “All of us.”
The question becomes “Who among us can be saved?” The answer to that one is the one who believes in Jesus’ Name, obeys Jesus’ teachings, and steps into the light to live in the truth.
As you light candles at church tonight to sing Silent Night, think about Jesus’ being the Light of the World and how for the briefest moment, the aperture of the invisible opened…and we beheld the glory of the One and Only whose mission it was to save us. What will be your response?
John 3:1 Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2 He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.” 3 In reply Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” 4 “How can a man be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!” 5 Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” 9 “How can this be?” Nicodemus asked. 10 “You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? 11 I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. 12 I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?
Have you ever had a situation where you’re trying to think of something and a default answer pops into your head and then you can’t think of anything else? Then once someone tells you the answer, you recognize you’d created a box around your thoughts and it kept you from thinking of anything else. If so, then you can have some empathy for poor Nicodemus here.
Everything he’d ever been taught is that his birthright as Jew meant he was to be among God’s chosen people. Being born a Jew meant everything!
Then, along comes Jesus with some cold water. He says that’s not really what it’s all about. Your physical heritage as a Jew isn’t what counts. Being spiritually born into the family of faith is what matters.
You were thinking, I’ve been born a Jew, I’ve got it made.
Jesus tells you that you’ve been born a Jew, but you’ve got it wrong.
To make matters worse Jesus is a fellow Jew. He’s someone you’re acknowledging comes from God, is doing miraculous signs, but now is telling you that you need to be born of the Spirit. The fact that Jesus prefaces His statements in verses 3, 5, and 11 with “I tell you the truth” must have thrown Nicodemus’ whole worldview into complete turmoil.
Everything he thought was the right answer wasn’t. Every privilege he felt he had was stripped away. Every earthly, physical, and inheritance promise was pulled out from under him and he couldn’t see how anyone can be born again in a physical sense.
Jesus points to the spiritual realm and says,
I tell you the truth.”
John 2:23 Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name. 24 But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. 25 He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man.
We’re closing in on Christmas and our Advent series Emmanuel: When LOVE Showed Up In-Person will be concluding. Looking into these early verses of the Gospel of John, are we amazed, seeing the miraculous?
So what is our response?
Some people in Jesus’ day followed along like fans, gawkers, or prophet seekers. They wanted to be on-hand to catch the latest miracle. It’d be like us following Jesus around with our iPhones ready to capture a video of the latest sign and wonder to post to Twitter or Facebook. They’re in it for the celebrity and for being so close to a miracle man.
Or is our response to be less in awe of the miracles…and more in awe that God would send Jesus—the very glory of the One and Only—to come in-person to teach us what true faith and true worship look like?
In today’s passage in Greek, there’s a word play going on between the words believed (v 23) and entrust (v 24). Jesus’ entrusting wouldn’t happen just because a few people were following Him around for their own reasons. Jesus closes the loop only on real genuine faith.
It comes back to our response. What will we do with Jesus at Christmas and beyond? Will we sing a few carols, light candles, and then move on to New Year’s? Will we believe until the presents are unwrapped and the tree is out at the curb? Or will His coming change our lives? Jesus knows what is in us and how we’re responding to miracles. He closes the loop only on real…genuine…faith.
Jeremiah 17: 5 This is what the LORD says: “Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the LORD. 6 He will be like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes. He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives. 7 “But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. 8 He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.” 9 The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? 10 “I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve.”
“Just who the hell do you think you are?” (That’s a Barbara paraphrase of John 2:18 to show the attitude behind the question.).
John 2:18 Then the Jews demanded of him, “What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” 20 The Jews replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” 21 But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.
This is what “the Jews” (not all the Jews, but specifically those engaged in the marketplace and the leaders at the temple) wanted to know. Think of it this way: Jesus was a Jew and so were His disciples, but to those specific Jews whose livelihood was engaged in the commerce and religiosity associated with temple worship, they wanted to know “What gives you the right to disrupt what we’re doing?”
Jesus points out that the glory of the LORD is not in the temple.
It hasn’t been there since Ezekiel. The lights are on, but there’s no one home.
No glory dwells there, though God the Father meets with people in prayer.
No glory dwells there, but the Word was made flesh and made His dwelling among us.
The real glory dwells in Jesus, the Unique Son of God.
He is Emmanuel: When LOVE Showed Up In-Person! He IS the glory of the One and Only. The glory in the temple would be shown when Jesus’ body was crucified, dead, and buried…but would rise again from the dead. That would prove He was Emmanuel (God with us) for His time among us. His bodily resurrection would prove He is God and Messiah with all authority to cleanse the temple and more than that, to pay for human sin, the very corruption that caused God’s glory to leave the temple in the first place.
The Jews demanded credentials.
To them, without credentials, Jesus was just a law-breaking vandal and a rebel.
But Jesus’ authority didn’t come from any man-made means.
His authority existed from before time began because He was sent from the Father,
He is God, and after dwelling with us, He would be returning to the Father.
It is nothing short of audacity to look the Son of God in the face and ask, “Just who the hell do you think you are? What gives you the right to disrupt what we’re doing?”
Questions to ponder:
Zeal…Zealot. Not words we often associate with anything good. It’s ironic because many of the synonyms of zeal are remarkably positive. Only fanaticism and mania can be considered negative among a whole listing of positive words like ardor, eagerness, perseverance, passion, sincerity, diligence, etc.
Zealot on the other hand has synonyms like activist, diehard, extremist, fanatic, maniac, militant, nut, radical, and fiend.
So, what do we think of Jesus when we read John 2:17?
His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me”
The Scripture is a quotation from Psalm 69:9 and it is likely that it wasn’t an immediate response of the disciples to the cleansing of the temple but probably only occurred to them after Jesus’ death. Otherwise quoting this Psalm of deliverance seems kind of random and like the disciples are stretching things a bit, looking for Jesus under every Old Testament rock. But in the theme of deliverance from persecution, this Psalm makes sense, especially since it is mentioned in the Crucifixion scenes. Like the Psalmist, Jesus would pay a high price for being passionately concerned for God’s honor, therefore, this Psalm makes sense. Jesus wanted the Temple to be His Father’s house–a place of sincere worship and prayer–and nothing less. Jesus would pay the ultimate price for that devotion.
Emmanuel: When LOVE showed up in-person means that Jesus came to be God with us. Consequently, Jesus was a revolutionary in every sense of the word—His actions upset the broken world’s chaos that had existed since the fall of man. Then after turning the religious status quo upside down, He embarked upon instituting a new sense of order in our lives. Jesus spent His days living, teaching and then dying to help us remember to have an order with God in charge, not sin. An order in which God has the last word, not death. And an order with God receiving worship, not man.
The covenant people had become corrupted and that’s why God’s glory left the Temple. In Jesus, God’s glory was returning, Jesus’ own body would be the Temple, and He’d deal with mankind’s corruption on the Cross. It’s no wonder Jesus was consumed with the mission for which He’d been sent.
Jesus was zealous about our proper worship of the Father, our Creator God, and He was fixed upon the Cross, making it possible for us to have a relationship with Him. Maybe we could all be a bit more zealous for this.
Questions for pondering:
John 2:12 After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. There they stayed for a few days. 13 When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15 So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!”
This is one of those pictures of Jesus that doesn’t quite jibe with the Jesus who loves little children and the Good Shepherd who carries little baby lambs on His shoulders. Yet this picture of Jesus is recorded in all 4 Gospels (although admittedly in different places). I like this picture of Jesus because it’s thoroughly Messianic. The Jews of Jesus’ day were looking for a revolutionary figure…just not the variety of revolutionary Jesus was sent to be.
John’s Gospel specifically points to this as being a second Christological sign, Jesus’ displaying His divine glory.
The Jews of Jesus’ day probably compartmentalized their lives into religious and secular/political just as many of us do today, reserving our spiritual lives for Sundays and keeping that part in a drawer Monday through Saturday while we go about our daily lives. For many Jews, Jerusalem was far away from daily thoughts.
At the time of the Jewish Passover, tradition would awaken and men would travel from far away lands, coming to Jerusalem to go to the Temple to participate in the annual sacrifices there. Rather than try to bring and preserve one’s own sacrificial animal in good shape on the long journey, they took a short-cut and bought one there on-site. Of course, it involved exchanging money and paying a premium for the convenience of a suitable sacrificial animal. Consequently, the courts became more like a theme-park than a place to offer devotion to God.
Of course, it had been a long time since God’s glory left the former temple known as Solomon’s Temple, famously ornate and opulent. We read about the glory of the Lord departing in Ezekiel 10:1-18 and His doing so because of the spiritual corruption of the covenant people. Later, Solomon’s Temple was destroyed and it was many years before two other temples would be built on that same site (the Temple of Zerubbabel followed by Herod’s Temple which is the one in existence at the time of Jesus).
God’s glory didn’t come back to dwell simply because structures were rebuilt. God wasn’t waiting for a temple extravagant enough before He’d come back in all His glory and dwell among His people. That said, the practices of sacrifices went on, the Holy of Holies, the sanctuary, the Court of the Israelites, etc.
Never mind that God’s glory wasn’t there. Until Jesus…
So Jesus, who is the very glory of God—the One and Only, looks at what is going on. He is Emmanuel (God With Us) and LOVE showing up in-person. He sees the buying and selling and exchanging of money and all the commerce going on in the courts that were supposed to be places of prayer. Prayer was the way God met with His people even when His glory could not dwell among such a corrupted covenant people—but now even this place of prayer had become something far less than holy.
It had become commercialized. God wasn’t at the center. Ritual had become the center.
Now in Jesus, the Word made flesh, God was making His dwelling among us. The glory of the LORD is in Jesus and shows up at the temple built by Herod and what does He see? People going through the motions. People who preferred convenience over devotion. People who would rather have salesmen hawking goods and changing money for a convenient sacrifice instead of keeping this place of prayer sacred (as it ought to be).
Jesus displays His glory—in a Messianic revolutionary way—by overthrowing the status quo of theme park religiosity and by calling people back to genuine worship of God.
Worship that involved true devotion, honest and humble prayer, and truly committed personal sacrifice. He called them to personal holiness as His revolutionary act in this Christological sign. He does this as the glory of the LORD back at the temple, the glory of the LORD who dwells among His covenant people in Jesus Christ.
Questions for pondering:
Years ago, I worked in the garden department at Home Depot. One early morning in the midst of what was to be an all-day downpour, I got a call at work from a couple who were understandably desperate. They were hosting their child’s wedding at their home and it was supposed to be an outdoor wedding. Given the time of year, all the rental places had tents already rented and they could not get any more tents to help to overcome the rainy day. I found a few white pop-up tents in stock and found other ones at other area Home Depot stores on the computer and we called and secured them for this couple. After the wedding, the couple wrote a thank you to the store entitled, “Barbara Saved the Wedding.” It was a very nice thought and made many people happy to read it, but it wasn’t a miracle. I didn’t really save the wedding. I was just doing my job–with prior practice, some computer know-how, and a bit of decent follow-through.
Jesus, however, did save the wedding!
John 2:1 On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, 2 and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3 When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.” 4 “Dear woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My time has not yet come.” 5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” 6 Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons. 7 Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim. 8 Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.” They did so, 9 and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside 10 and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.” 11 This, the first of his miraculous signs, Jesus performed at Cana in Galilee. He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him.
He performed His first miraculous sign at a wedding feast, turning water into wine. This is not something that with practice and know-how any of us could do. Jesus didn’t make a quick run out to the liquor store or the mini-mart with a divine debit card.
Jesus did a miracle that only God could do.
To those who were paying attention to what was going on, He revealed His glory (remember that this is the glory of the One and Only God) and as a consequence of doing so, His disciples put their faith in Him.
Jesus saved the wedding (and prevented a huge embarrassment to the bridegroom), but more than that, He demonstrated that He is Emmanuel (God with us) and that LOVE showed up in-person when Jesus came. His miracles–including this first one–proved He is the Messiah, that His ministry that would be attested to by miraculous signs, and that our rightful response to such LOVE is faith.
Questions for pondering:
