We wrote a couple of days ago about the resurrection of Lazarus and resulting belief/unbelief of the people and the leaders. The theme continues in John 12.

So Jesus said to them, “The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.” (John 12.35, 36, ESV)

“Believe in the light that you may become sons of light.” But they didn’t.

Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: “Lord, who has believed what he heard from us, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said, “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I would heal them.” (John 12.37 – 40, ESV)

It’s all about believing. Some do. Some don’t. If you and I do believe, thank God for that.

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God. (Ephesians 2.8, ESV)

 

This blog is for those of us who speak in public: let’s keep it short, shall we? And if your pastor tends to think more is better, you might share this.

I was struck by two sentences in an article entitled “Lincoln’s Vision of Democracy” by Allan C. Guelzo, published in the Wall Street Journal, November 8, 2022. What struck me had little to do with the main points of the article, which is worth reading. Rather, I was struck by the contrast between the two speakers at Gettysburg. It sets up this way:

The featured orator would be the august Edward Everett. But for the actual dedication sentences—a “few, appropriate remarks,” as David Wills described them in his invitation letter—the organizers turned to Lincoln.

Later the author remarks:

Lincoln’s address at Gettysburg wasn’t an explosion of rhetorical fireworks. That kind of speaking was reserved for Everett’s 13,000-word oration, teeming with classical allusions to Thucydides and Pericles but without a single sentence anyone could remember afterward. – emphasis mine

13,000 words! My longest book has about that many words, as I recall. It took two hours to deliver, “without a single sentence anyone could remember afterward.”

By contrast, Lincoln’s speech was 271 words in this version and lasted about two minutes. And part of it was incorrect. Lincoln said, “The world will little note nor long remember what we say here…” True about Everett’s speech but not about Lincoln’s!

My friend the late Skip Gray said, “A sermon does not have to be eternal to be immortal.”

The more words that are spoken, the more smoke there is in the air. And who is any better off? (Ecclesiastes 6.11, MSG)

Let your words be few. (Ecclesiastes 5.2, ESV)

It’s hard to figure out the persistent unbelief of the religious leaders of Jesus’ day, but Jesus never seems to give up on them. For example, consider the raising of Lazarus as recorded in John 11. It starts this way:

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha…So the sisters sent to him, saying, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” But when Jesus heard it he said, “This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. (John 11.1 – 6, ESV)

“He stayed two days longer” even though Jesus loved the family. Why? So he could do the resurrection miracle. Why? So God would be glorified and the Son of God would be glorified. Why? As I say, to give one more chance for people to realize who Jesus was and believe in him. So what happened?

When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.” The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.” Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him, but some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.

So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all. Nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” …So from that day on they made plans to put him to death. (John 11.43 – 53, ESV)

Many believed…others told the Pharisees who saw Jesus as a problem to be solved, not the son of God to be followed. Jerusalem…the place where no good deed goes unpunished.

When [Peter and John] were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them. And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, “‘Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord and against his Anointed’—for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. (Acts 4.23 – 28, ESV)

Today we have an inspirational 2-minute video that supports one of the better-known metaphors that Jesus used:

Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers… My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. (John 10.1 – 5, 27, ESV)

Do the sheep really recognize their shepherd’s voice? See for yourself.

¹  The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
²  He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters.
³  He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. (Psalm 23.1 – 3, ESV)

Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” (John 18.37, ESV – emphasis mine)

John records a lot of misconceptions that the crowd had about Jesus:

The officers then came to the chief priests and Pharisees, who said to them, “Why did you not bring him?” The officers answered, “No one ever spoke like this man!” The Pharisees answered them, “Have you also been deceived? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd that does not know the law is accursed.” Nicodemus, who had gone to him before, and who was one of them, said to them, “Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?” They replied, “Are you from Galilee too? Search and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.” (John 7.45 – 52, ESV)

So many misconceptions: 

• No prophet comes from Galilee
  • First, Jesus wasn’t from Galilee; he was born in Bethlehem as predicted.
  • Second, Jonah was from Galilee. Jonah was from Gath-Hepher (see 2 Kings 14.25), and Gath-Hepher was in Galilee! Therefore, some prophets do come from Galilee.
• No authority or Pharisee believes in Jesus
  • But Nicodemus does. (See the conversation above as well as John 19.38 – 42)

And that’s the end of the chapter. No consensus. No mass conversions. Some believe. Some don’t. And the religious leaders are outright opposed.

And do you seek great things for yourself? Seek them not. (Jeremiah 45.5)

If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: “A servant is not greater than his master.” If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you… (John 15.18 – 20, ESV)

What was the crowd’s perception of Jesus? Among other things…

About the middle of the feast Jesus went up into the temple and began teaching. The Jews therefore marveled, saying, “How is it that this man has learning when he has never studied?” So Jesus answered them, “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me.” (John 7.14 – 16, ESV)

It’s a presumption that Jesus had never studied! He hadn’t studied under one of their known teaching rabbis, apparently. That’s an interesting choice by the Father. Jesus may have wanted to study. That’s what the incident at the Temple was about when he was 12. But God preferred that his Son be a layman! I wrote about this before.

Of course, they said the same thing about the apostles in Acts chapter four.

The members of the council were amazed when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, for they could see that they were ordinary men with no special training in the Scriptures. They also recognized them as men who had been with Jesus. (Acts 4.13, NLT)

What can we learn here? I don’t want to put down seminaries, but it’s apparent that Jesus himself and his original followers presented themselves as laymen. Only Paul had studied under a rabbi, but that teaching was medium useless. (His exposure to the Old Testament wasn’t useless, but he wouldn’t have learned anything from Gamaliel about Jesus.)

The major lesson is that God can and will use any of us!

Then Amos answered and said to Amaziah, “I was no prophet, nor a prophet’s son, but I was a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore figs. But the LORD took me from following the flock, and the LORD said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’ Now therefore hear the word of the LORD…” (Amos 7.14 – 16, ESV)

When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?” (Mark 16.1 – 3, ESV)

My wife, June, and her friend Phoebe were asking a similar question when they met at a restaurant the other day. June had two 50-pound bags of wheat in her car that we had picked up for Phoebe, who lives in Denver. “Who is going to transfer the wheat from June’s car to Phoebe’s car?” We all prayed for an angel.

While they were having lunch and studying the Bible together, a man walked up and said, “Are you all women of God?” They replied, “Yes, we are!” The man continued to talk with them and somehow the subject of angels came up, and June responded, “As a matter of fact, we asked the Lord to send us an angel, are you him?”

He laughed and said, “What do you need done?” Within a few minutes, he had transferred the wheat! Mission accomplished…by an angel whom God sent. An angel who introduced himself as “Pastor Steve.”

An angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. (Matthew 28.2, ESV)

I’ve already posted today’s Veterans Day blog: God Values Warriors. But I can’t not post what my son Mark sent to our granddaughter’s school for their Veterans Day Assembly this morning.

As Mark wrote:

Lt. Col. Robert Ewell, USAF ret. (color photo)

MW4 Hugh “Mac” MacDonald, US Army ret. (B&W photo with helicopter)

Grandfathers of Kesley Ewell

“We were soldiers once, and young.” – from the title of a book by Harold Moore and Joseph Galloway

It’s Veterans Day, and I don’t think I can improve on what I wrote last year…

It’s important to remember that God values warriors. Consider:

• God is referred to in scripture as a warrior: But the LORD is with me like a mighty warrior… (Jeremiah 20.11, NIV)
• One of the last pictures we have of Jesus is as a warrior.

Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. (Revelation 19.11 – 14, ESV)

• Many of God’s key men were warriors:
  • Abraham led his men on an armed mission to rescue Lot. (Genesis 14.11 – 16)
  • Joshua was a general who led a series of campaigns to capture the promised land.
  • Gideon (and most of the judges) led the Israelites to conquer their oppressors.
  • David, of course, was a warrior demonstrated first in his defeat of Goliath. (1 Samuel 17.31 – 49)
  • A significant chunk of scripture is devoted to Davd’s mighty men. (1 Chronicles 11:10 – 12:22)
  • The first recorded Gentile convert was Cornelius, a Roman centurion. (Acts 10)

I’ve been challenged in adult Sunday School classes about being “too military.” But I don’t write this stuff…I just report it! If God didn’t value warriors both for what they do and for the fact that warriors remind us of spiritual warfare, God wouldn’t have devoted so much space to honoring warriors. Here are some snippets of 1 Chronicles 11:

• He wielded his spear against 300 whom he killed at one time.
• He took his stand in the midst of the plot and defended it and killed the Philistines. And the Lord saved them by a great victory.
• He wielded his spear against 300 men and killed them.
• He struck down two heroes of Moab. He also went down and struck down a lion in a pit on a day when snow had fallen. And he struck down an Egyptian, a man of great stature, five cubits tall. The Egyptian had in his hand a spear like a weaver’s beam, but Benaiah went down to him with a staff and snatched the spear out of the Egyptian’s hand and killed him with his own spear.

Those were some tough men!

This is a day to honor all the men and women who have served and are serving in our armed forces. God bless them.

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. (Ephesians 6.10 – 13, ESV)

We continue watching Jesus deliberately antagonize the Pharisees even while doing good. It’s one of my favorite stories, and I love the way it starts:

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. (John 9.1, ESV)

A great story, and “Jesus saw a man” is a lesson of its own. As you read the rest of the chapter, you’ll see that the Pharisees hadn’t seen him. Even his neighbors had never looked at him closely enough to know whether the seeing man was the same as the blind man.

Then what happened? Let’s take a close look at the means Jesus uses to heal him:

And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” Having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing. (John 9.2 – 7, ESV, emphasis mine)

“He spit on the ground and made mud…” and…wait for it…

Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. (John 9.14, ESV)

You’ve got to be kidding! Again? Nearly the same sentence as in John 5 that we read yesterday.

Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. Now that day was the Sabbath. (John 5.8, 9, ESV)

“We must work the works of him who sent me…” whether it’s the Sabbath or not! And I’ll even heal him by working: making mud. There’s probably a rule against that somewhere!

It’s the religious people who missed Jesus. “He came to his own, and his own received him not.” Let’s not make the same mistake, elevating our traditions above ministering to real people. Chuck Smith, founder of Calvary Chapel, set us a good example. Jesus said:

I’m here to invite outsiders, not coddle insiders. (Matthew 9.13, MSG)