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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Tom Wright
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October 22, 2019 - January 2, 2020
That event, for John, is the ultimate moment when heaven and earth meet. That is when it takes all the faith in the world to see the glory hidden in the shame: the creative Word present as a weak, dying human being.
He came, as he says later, that we might have life in all its fullness
If you see the signs Jesus is doing, then trust him. Believe in him. Jesus, after all, is the one who knows you through and through.
it’s more important to feed and nurture it than to spend much time going over and over what happened at the moment of birth.
What mattered was being a child of Abraham.
God is starting a new family in which this ordinary birth isn’t enough.
born ‘from ...
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baptism in water,
baptism in the spirit,
required for membership in God’s kingdom.
open to anyone and everyone.
no human family, tribe, organization or system can keep up with it.
he is now the ladder which joins the two dimensions of God’s world, the heavenly and the earthly.
we must listen to him, and walk with him on the road he is now to take.
God gave Moses the remedy: he was to make a serpent out of bronze, put it on a pole and hold it up for people to look at. Anyone who looked at the serpent on the pole would live.
it wasn’t the bronze serpent itself that had saved the Israelites, but the saving power of God
Here it points clearly to the death of Jesus.
the son of man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.
when Jesus died on the cross, that was the full and dramatic display of God’s own love.
the God who is both father and son, and the son is revealed, ‘lifted up’, when he dies under the weight of the world’s evil.
The cross is the ultimate ladder set up between heaven and earth.
is to look and trust: to look at Jesus, to see in him the full display of God’s saving love, and to trust in him.
coming to the light, the light of God’s new creation.
preventing people coming forward into God’s new world
the sign says: believe, and live.
Messiah was seen as the bridegroom par excellence, the one who would come and make Israel his bride.
YHWH, Israel’s God, would betroth Israel to himself as his bride.
play great parts without pride and small parts without shame.
So too, today: who do people trust? Who do they listen to and follow?
is giving the spirit through him, is pouring out his love through him into the world – such a person already has within himself or herself the life that, like the son, comes from heaven.
yet Jesus is talking to this woman.
yet Jesus is asking this woman for a drink.
yet he engages her in conversation – conversation with a teasing, double-meaning flavour to it.
He is referring to the new life that he is offering to anyone: as this conversation shows, anyone at all, no matter what their gender, their geography, their racial or moral background.
he’s referring to the spirit
He has living water to offer all right, but when you start to drink it it will change every area of your life.
What the gospel does is to administer a sharp jolt, to shine a bright light, to kick-start the brain, and the moral sensibility, into working properly for the first time.
in this case, there’s no time lag at all! No sooner sown than reaped! Don’t delay, it’s harvest time already!
there would be nobody there to sneer or mock. Now she has become the first evangelist to the Samaritan people.
as they have come to see Jesus for themselves, they have become convinced.
‘Have you believed because you’ve seen? Blessed are those who haven’t seen, and yet believe!’ This is the challenge
But if we listen, through the roar of the waves and the wind, we may hear the voice that says, ‘It’s me – don’t be afraid.’ And if we are ready then to take Jesus on board, we may find ourselves, sooner than we expected, at the harbour where we will be calm and secure once more.
What matters is not just what Jesus can do for you; what matters is who Jesus is.
Until they recognize who Jesus really is, they may be fed with bread and fish, but there is a deep hunger inside them which will never be satisfied.
the prayer that we all need to pray if our deepest needs are to be met.
come to terms with the fact that the one you are now dealing with is equally at home in heaven and on earth.
Israel’s God was at last bringing into being the new Exodus, the great movement that would set the whole world free from sin and death.
