R.P. Nettelhorst's Blog, page 26

Protection

“ I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth. (John 17:11-19)

Joy is not the same as happiness. Joy lasts longer and runs deeper: it’s happiness on steroids. Jesus prayed that his disciples—you and I—would have the joy Jesus had. Jesus was God, creator of the universe and owner of a bunch of cattle on a bunch of hills–so that’s some good joy.

On the night Jesus was betrayed, he told his Father that he was “no longer in the world.” He knew that he was about to die. So he focused on those who would remain in the world after he was gone: his disciples. Jesus did not pray that they would become wealthy, have power and fame, or live in big houses. He asked for something better: that they would be protected, not from poverty or pain, but from the Evil One. Jesus asked that they would be “sanctified.”

What does “sanctified” mean? It means to be devoted to God and his purposes. Sanctification isn’t just a matter of righteousness, which comes from God. Sanctification means that they would do God’s work and be used for God’s purposes, whatever those purposes might be.

You are devoted to God. You belong to him. You are his property, his prized possession. Watch and see what wonderful things he’ll do with you.

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What He Said

The whole body of got up and brought Him before Pilate. And they began to accuse Him, saying, “We found this man misleading our nation and forbidding to pay taxes to Caesar, and saying that He Himself is Christ, a King.”

So Pilate asked Him, saying, “Are You the King of the Jews?” And He answered him and said, “It is as you say.”

Then Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowds, “I find no guilt in this man.”

But they kept on insisting, saying, “He stirs up the people, teaching all over Judea, starting from Galilee even as far as this place.”

When Pilate heard it, he asked whether the man was a Galilean. And when he learned that He belonged to Herod’s jurisdiction, he sent Him to Herod, who himself also was in Jerusalem at that time.

Now Herod was very glad when he saw Jesus; for he had wanted to see Him for a long time, because he had been hearing about Him and was hoping to see some sign performed by Him. (Luke 23:1-8)

Just because you do what God wants, doesn’t mean you won’t be punished. Israel’s religious establishment was attempting to get Jesus executed for being the leader of a rebellion. Hadn’t Jesus just admitted his guilt by answering Pilate’s question with a “yes?” Why then did Pilate conclude that he was not guilty?

Pilate could see through the accusations and understood that the disagreement between Jesus and his accusers was purely religious. And the Roman government had absolutely no interest in getting involved with religious disputes. Therefore, Pilate saw no point in entertaining the charges.

When he learned that Jesus was from Galilee, Pilate thought he might be able to solve his problem by making him someone else’s problem. Herod was in charge of Galilee. Pilate, who only had jurisdiction in Judea, wasn’t responsible for Galileans. But Herod just sent him back.

Pilate, like most government officials anywhere, was concerned primarily with keeping his job. The issue of Jesus could easily blow up in his face. In the end, for the sake of for civil order and thereby keeping his job, he was willing to sacrifice Jesus.

Pilate carried out the will of Jesus’ Father: Jesus was supposed to die on that Roman cross. Pilate actually made the right choice. But he did it for all the wrong reasons and in all the wrong ways. Just because you do God’s will doesn’t mean you’re not doing the wrong thing.

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Justice

“The Spirit will come and show the people of this world the truth about sin and God’s justice and the judgment. The Spirit will show them that they are wrong about sin, because they didn’t have faith in me. They are wrong about God’s justice, because I am going to the Father, and you won’t see me again. And they are wrong about the judgment, because God has already judged the ruler of this world.

I have much more to say to you, but right now it would be more than you could understand. The Spirit shows what is true and will come and guide you into the full truth. The Spirit doesn’t speak on his own. He will tell you only what he has heard from me, and he will let you know what is going to happen. The Spirit will bring glory to me by taking my message and telling it to you. Everything that the Father has is mine. That is why I have said that the Spirit takes my message and tells it to you.” (John 16:8-15)

We don’t need to do the Holy Spirit’s job. In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit was a part of the creation, hovering over the primeval waters of the Great Deep. The Holy Spirit empowered prophets, judges, kings, priests, and artisans. But after the resurrection of Jesus, the Holy Spirit was about to take on a new task.

And what was that task? Jesus said the Holy Spirit would convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment. What is sin? To not believe in Jesus. What is righteousness? Jesus returning to the Father. What is judgment? Satan standing condemned.

What does that mean? Because Jesus died for the sins of the world, Satan has been defeated and condemned. Because Jesus died, rejecting what Jesus accomplished is the definition of sin. Since the Holy Spirit could not come until Jesus left, righteousness in the lives of people was the consequence of Jesus leaving: his departure allowed the Spirit free reign in their lives. The Spirit would then convict people of sin, lead them to repentance, and change them so that their behavior was righteous.

The Holy Spirit is real and powerful. The Holy Spirit doesn’t need our help. We don’t have to make up rules, or establish supervision, in order to force people—or ourselves—behave better. You can’t have the Holy Spirit in you without that having a profound impact on your behavior.

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Help is Coming

“When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me. And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning.

“All this I have told you so that you will not go astray. They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God. They will do such things because they have not known the Father or me. I have told you this, so that when the time comes you will remember that I warned you. I did not tell you this at first because I was with you.

“Now I am going to him who sent me, yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ Because I have said these things, you are filled with grief. But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.” (John 15:26-16:7)

Wherever God is, there is his kingdom. The promised Counselor was the Holy Spirit, whose purpose was to testify about Jesus. Jesus also warned his disciples to expect persecution, ranging from expulsion from the synagogues, to actual physical harm. The Jewish people revolted against Rome barely forty years later. The Christians—still mostly all Jews—refused to participate, so the Sanhedrin officially expelled them all.

Jesus let them know ahead of time so that they could understand that what they faced was not something God didn’t anticipate. Like a dog at the vet, who can see nothing and understand nothing beyond the discomfort and pain, the poking and prodding without ever understanding the reason for the situation, so Jesus was attempting to let his disciples see the bigger picture. He wanted them to understand that as painful as it might be, God was always with them.

We don’t have to face the problems of life by ourselves. Jesus is always with us, because his Spirit lives inside of us. We’re never separated from God’s kingdom.

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Bright Lights

Then Jesus spoke to them again: “I am the light of the world. Anyone who follows Me will never walk in the darkness but will have the light of life.”

So the Pharisees said to Him, “You are testifying about Yourself. Your testimony is not valid.”

“Even if I testify about Myself,” Jesus replied, “My testimony is valid, because I know where I came from and where I’m going. But you don’t know where I come from or where I’m going. You judge by human standards. I judge no one. And if I do judge, My judgment is true, because I am not alone, but I and the Father who sent Me judge together. Even in your law it is written that the witness of two men is valid. I am the One who testifies about Myself, and the Father who sent Me testifies about Me.”

Then they asked Him, “Where is Your Father?”

“You know neither Me nor My Father,” Jesus answered. “If you knew Me, you would also know My Father.” He spoke these words by the treasury, while teaching in the temple complex. But no one seized Him, because His hour had not come. (John 8:12-20)

Many people fear the dark. Jesus offered to get rid of what we fear. At the time of creation, God created light from the darkness and provided the sun and moon to give light by day and night. Jesus claims to be the light of the world, not in a literal, physical sense like the sun or moon, but in a metaphorical sense. By “light of life” Jesus means that he is able to give meaning and purpose to people. He can give them the direction they need for making better decisions.

Bad things happen to people in life just because life is that way. But sometimes bad things happen to people because they make poor decisions. Jesus announced that he could bring people out of such darkness. The past bad decisions did not have to mean that your future would necessarily have to be dark, too. The Pharisees, in the dark but not realizing it, cringed from the light that Jesus offered. Jesus told them that he and his father were offering them a unified way to life.

Jesus said that he and his Father were one. If you know the Son, you know the Father and vice versa. Because the religious leaders didn’t really know God, they failed to recognize the Son just the same. The Pharisees continue to stumble about in the darkness.

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Witnesses

“If I were to testify on my own behalf, my testimony would not be valid. But someone else is also testifying about me, and I assure you that everything he says about me is true. In fact, you sent investigators to listen to John the Baptist, and his testimony about me was true. Of course, I have no need of human witnesses, but I say these things so you might be saved. John was like a burning and shining lamp, and you were excited for a while about his message. But I have a greater witness than John—my teachings and my miracles. The Father gave me these works to accomplish, and they prove that he sent me. And the Father who sent me has testified about me himself. You have never heard his voice or seen him face to face, and you do not have his message in your hearts, because you do not believe me—the one he sent to you.” (John 5:31-38)

Who are you going to believe? My words or your lying eyes? Affirming something doesn’t make it so. When the Iraqi Information Minister stood before the cameras claiming that no American troops were in Baghdad, the rumble of tanks in the background made it hard for anyone to take him seriously.

In the Old Testament, Moses specified that for a crime to be proven there had to be at least two witnesses. A lone witness to an event could not be trusted. A single witness could be mistaken or malevolently biased. Jesus agreed with his critics, therefore, that if he alone were claiming to be the Messiah, it proved nothing.

But Jesus wasn’t the only one claiming he was the Messiah. John the Baptist claimed Jesus was the Messiah. But even more powerfully, the twin witnesses of his words and his miracles were enough to prove that the Father had sent him.

The fact that the religious establishment was standing as a witness against Jesus did not prove that Jesus wasn’t the Messiah. Instead, it demonstrated the spiritual bankruptcy of the religious establishment of Israel. If they had really been the people of God, then they would recognize God when he showed up. Their failure to recognize Jesus as the Messiah—and their failure to actually keep God’s words—demonstrated that they were clueless about God.

You can deny reality only for so long. Eventually it catches up with you.

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Confusion

Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?”

Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (John 3:10-15)

The Pharisees were very good people and were very well respected by everyone. They took God and the Bible seriously, and their lives were consumed by being religious. Nicodemus belonged to that strict sect, and he was also a member of the Great Sanhedrin in Jerusalem, an assembly of seventy-one religious leaders, both Pharisees and Sadducees, who met six days a week, except during holidays. Those who became members of the Sanhedrin were the best of the best. To them was given the task of settling all disputes relating to the Bible and its interpretation.

The majority of the members of that Sanhedrin did not like Jesus. So Nicodemus approached Jesus under cover of darkness one night. He was worried about what the other members of the Sanhedrin would think, but he needed to hear from Jesus directly. He was uncomfortable with relying on second hand, and clearly biased and contradictory accounts of Jesus’ activities.

Jesus explained that what he was teaching were things that Nicodemus, given his position and education, should have already known. Jesus wasn’t offering new, strange ideas. His teachings came from what the Law and the Prophets—that is, the Bible—presented. The Bible had promised that the Messiah would finally take the sins of the world away, because God loved the world and didn’t want people to perish.

By the time Nicodemus had finished listening to Jesus, not only did he understand him, he believed in him, too. Even a Pharisee can believe when he really hears Jesus and really understands what he has taught.

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Where You Come From

Jesus decided to go to Galilee. There he met Philip, who was from Bethsaida, the hometown of Andrew and Peter. Jesus said to Philip, “Come with me.”

Philip then found Nathanael and said, “We have found the one that Moses and the Prophets wrote about. He is Jesus, the son of Joseph from Nazareth.”

Nathanael asked, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”

Philip answered, “Come and see.”

When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said, “Here is a true descendant of our ancestor Israel. And he isn’t deceitful.”

“How do you know me?” Nathanael asked.

Jesus answered, “Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.”

Nathanael said, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God and the King of Israel!”

Jesus answered, “Did you believe me just because I said that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see something even greater. I tell you for certain that you will see heaven open and God’s angels going up and coming down on the Son of Man.” (John 1:43-51)

Jesus can’t be ignored. People have to make a decision about him, one way or the other. Philip quickly became convinced that Jesus was the long awaited Messiah, so he asked Nathanael—elsewhere in the Bible referred to as Bartholomew—to come and meet Jesus.

Nathanael was doubtful. Nazareth had a bad reputation and he couldn’t see how Israel’s Messiah could call such a place home. When Jesus saw Nathanael, he said something that Nathanael probably thought was mere flattery. So he asked Jesus a simple question, “how do you know me?”

Jesus’ answer about seeing him under a fig tree convinced Nathanael that Jesus was the Son of God and the king of Israel. Why did Jesus’ few, and rather mundane words convince Nathanael of so much? Because no ordinary person could have known where Nathanael was or what he was doing. It meant Jesus really was the Messiah.

Jesus’ response to Nathanael’s expression of faith was to let him know that, in effect, “you thought that was impressive? You ain’t seen nothing yet.” Jesus would perform far more impressive miracles than something akin to what Sherlock Holmes or a stage magician might have been able to figure out.

Jesus inspired passion in the hearts and minds of everyone he came in contact with. They either accepted him or rejected him. You can’t stay on the fence about Jesus.

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Kingdom Now

Jesus, grilled by the Pharisees on when the kingdom of God would come, answered, “The kingdom of God doesn’t come by counting the days on the calendar. Nor when someone says, ‘Look here!’ or, ‘There it is!’ And why? Because God’s kingdom is already among you.”

He went on to say to his disciples, “The days are coming when you are going to be desperately homesick for just a glimpse of one of the days of the Son of Man, and you won’t see a thing. And they’ll say to you, ‘Look over there!’ or, ‘Look here!’ Don’t fall for any of that nonsense. The arrival of the Son of Man is not something you go out to see. He simply comes.

“You know how the whole sky lights up from a single flash of lightning? That’s how it will be on the Day of the Son of Man. But first it’s necessary that he suffer many things and be turned down by the people of today. (Luke 17:20-25)

People look for God in all the wrong places. When Jesus announced that the kingdom of God was at hand, he really meant it. He wasn’t speaking metaphorically, he didn’t mean that it was “soon” in the sense that for God a thousand years is like a day, so that “soon” could be a really, really long time as far as mere mortals were concerned. Jesus was very clear with the Pharisees: he told them that the kingdom of God had arrived. It was right here, right now.

The Pharisees and for that matter, Jesus’ disciples and the bulk of the Jewish population thought that the kingdom of God was a physical kingdom. They believed that when the Messiah arrived, he would raise an army, defeat the Romans, and sit down on David’s throne in Jerusalem, replacing Caesar, and making the world a perfectly wonderful place. They thought they would all live happily ever after—well, except for the sinners—and the Pharisees had a list of who those were—who would all die miserably.

Jesus explained that they all—from the Pharisees to his own disciples—simply didn’t get it.

God’s kingdom wouldn’t be like the Roman Empire at all. The kingdom of God existed in the hearts and minds of those who believed the Gospel. It wasn’t physical, even though it did have real world implications that would be as obvious as a flash of lightning.

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Divided Loyalties

No worker can serve two bosses:

He’ll either hate the first and love the second

Or adore the first and despise the second.

You can’t serve both God and the Bank.

When the Pharisees, a money-obsessed bunch, heard him say these things, they rolled their eyes, dismissing him as hopelessly out of touch. So Jesus spoke to them: “You are masters at making yourselves look good in front of others, but God knows what’s behind the appearance.

What society sees and calls monumental,

God sees through and calls monstrous.

God’s Law and the Prophets climaxed in John;

Now it’s all kingdom of God—the glad news

and compelling invitation to every man and woman.

The sky will disintegrate and the earth dissolve

before a single letter of God’s Law wears out.

Using the legalities of divorce

as a cover for lust is adultery;

Using the legalities of marriage

as a cover for lust is adultery. (Luke 16:13-18)

You can do all the right things, follow all the rules, and still be wrong. The religious leaders in Israel were concerned that they always did the right thing. Not because they wanted to be right, so much as they wanted to protect themselves and their reputations.

So they consistently missed the point of the law, which is something that escapes the notice of all legalists everywhere. Legalists like the Pharisees were really only concerned with figuring out how not to get into trouble for whatever it is they did.

Jesus pointed out that this attitude arose from a divided loyalty. To illustrate the problem, he used as an example how they treated their wives. The religious leaders knew that adultery was forbidden and that adultery meant having sex with a woman they weren’t married to. But what if they wanted to have sex with a woman other than their wives? They found a way. They would divorce their current wife and then marry the other woman. When they tired of the other woman, simply repeated the process. They could then have sex with whomever they wanted, whenever they wanted, and they never broke the law. The religious leaders were very good at making the law work for them.

And that was the problem: it was all about them. They didn’t love God. They didn’t love other people. They were misusing the law for their own selfish purposes. Their loyalties were divided.

Who do you serve? God or yourself? You can’t do both.

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