You have to ask yourself as you read through the gospels, why was Jesus ultimately crucified by the religious leaders of the day? John makes one of the issues fairly clear in two stories not found in the other gospels. Here’s the first:

Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew, Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had. Now a certain man was there who had an infirmity thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, He said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” The sick man answered Him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your bed and walk.” And immediately the man was made well, took up his bed, and walked. And that day was the Sabbath. (John 5.2 – 9, NKJV, emphasis mine)

I like several aspects of the way this story was presented in The Chosen.

• The episode is built around an envisioned backstory of the cripple, including what it might be like to lay at that pool waiting for the “stirring of the waters.”
• Chosen takes the position that we don’t know what stirred the water – it could have been a hot spring – and that no one was really healed anyway, including the first one into the pool.
• When Jesus asks does he want to be healed, and the man starts talking about the pool, Jesus says, “You don’t need this pool. You need only me.”
• After the healing, and the inevitable outcry of the Pharisees that Jesus healed the man on the Sabbath, the story ends with this exchange:

“Well,” John adds, “the Pharisees were pretty upset.” Simon says, “That was almost as much fun to watch as the miracle.” “This week should be fun, huh?” John says. “I do have a question, Rabbi.” “Yes, Matthew?” “Waiting thirty more minutes would not have mattered to that man. Why did you do this on Shabbat?” Jesus stops and turns to face the three of them. “Sometimes,” he says, “you’ve got to stir up the water.” – Jerry Jenkins, The Chosen: Come and See

“Sometimes, you’ve got to stir up the water,” and that’s exactly what Jesus does in the story we’ll look at tomorrow.

So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ. (Colossians 2.16, 17, NKJV)

For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.” (Matthew 12.8, ESV)

Back to the Gospel of John. I still love the way The Chosen handled the opening of John 4:

He left Judea and departed again for Galilee, and he had to pass through Samaria. (John 4.3, 4, ESV)

The Chosen showed a long discussion with the disciples ending with Jesus saying,

Listen, if we are going to have a question-and-answer session every time we do something you’re not used to, it’s going to be a very annoying time together for all of us. …So, follow me.”  (Text from The Chosen, Volume 1 by Jerry Jenkins)

You can read the whole discussion in my July 19, 2021, blog.

Today, I want to look at the end of the story. Jesus went to Samaria to reach, not just the woman at the well, but the whole village:

Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest…Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.” (John 4.35, 39 – 42, ESV)

Who is out there, ready to believe, waiting to hear the word? Who are the unexpected converts? The disciples didn’t like Samaritans, but here they were, believing – more than in Israel. There are disciple-making movements in Iran documented in Sheep Among Wolves, Volume II. Who would expect all those believers in Iran!?

And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. (John 10.16, ESV)

When they heard these things they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.” (Acts 11.18, ESV)

Please permit me one more sports blog – a valuable lesson on self-control. 

In the October 30 game between NFL’s Charlotte Panthers and Atlanta Falcons, the Falcons scored a touchdown with just over two minutes left and a field goal with just 36 seconds left to lead the Panthers by 6 points, 34 – 28. But the Panthers came right back and completed a stunning 62-yard touchdown pass to tie the game with only 12 seconds left. They were one (nearly) automatic extra point from winning the game. 

However, 12 seconds left means the game isn’t over. The receiver, #2 in the picture, ripped off his helmet in celebration. There’s a rule against that (which this veteran receiver would know), and the Panthers were penalized 15 yards, making the extra-point attempt 48 yards instead of 33 yards. The kicker missed. The Panthers lost in overtime.

An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. (2 Timothy 2.5, ESV)

Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. (1 Corinthians 9.25 – 27, ESV)

This is too good a sports story not to share…

I don’t follow the Baltimore Ravens of the NFL, but their kicker, Justin Tucker, seems to be one of the best ever at his position, and, he’s a believer. After kicking the winning field goal with no time left a few weeks ago, his post-game interview has highlights of its own:

• He gave full credit to the guy who snapped the ball and the holder: “his first career game-winning hold.” Plus the blockers, of course.
• He acknowledged that he prays before each kick “Not for results, just for peace.”

He was later interviewed by Jason Gay of the Wall Street Journal. His article is worth the read in its entirety. Here are some snippets:

But of course they wear his number in Baltimore. Tucker’s the MVF, Most Valuable Foot, central to the identity of his team and this city. That’s Tucker in commercials for the local convenience store heaven, Royal Farms. That’s Tucker, a trained bass-baritone opera singer, a music major at Texas, singing “Ave Maria” at the Baltimore Basilica over Christmas. [Note: the Ave Maria is fantastic – click on that!]

Did you catch Tucker’s generous postgame interview on TV, in which he nerded out about the pleasure of getting the football delivered with “12 o’clock laces” and deflected glory to Ravens snapper Nick Moore and rookie holder Jordan Stout? Tucker seemed to invent a new statistical category when he credited Stout with his “first career game-winning hold.”

“From there, I’m just a system kicker,” Tucker said. “The ball kicks itself at that point.”

Yeah, right. System kicker. Ball kicks itself. By almost every metric, Tucker’s the best there is, the best there’s ever been, already, at age 32. He’s a lifetime 98.9% on extra points, hovering over 91% on field goals, and that winner against the Bengals was his 61st successful fourth quarter or overtime kick in a row. Over his eleven seasons, he’s 17 for 17 on kicks in the final minute of regulation or OT. 

“The ball kicks itself” because Justin is disciplined. He trains. His skill is not accidental. Jason Gay goes on:

Sitting here at a table inside the Ravens practice facility, Tucker describes his methodical approach. Practice is a critical, offseason tinkering routine. In the “lab,” as he calls it, Tucker may tweak his approach. Once a modification is made, repetition is essential. It sounds dull. He loves it. 

“The Bruce Lee principle,” he says. “Practicing one kick 10,000 times, not just practicing kicking 10,000 times.”

The kick itself, Justin says, is 1.3 seconds:

One point three seconds. It’s a Tucker mantra, the time he says he needs, from snap to kick, to lock in and get it done.

Before and after those 1.3 seconds, Tucker allows himself to be human. All those edgy feelings you feel at home, watching a kicker get ready? Tucker thinks it’s healthy to feel those. “I’ll have all of the thoughts, from anxiety and fear to confidence, excitement, exhilaration, joy, celebration with my teammates and my coaches,” he says. “All of those feelings exist and they’re important. They need to be acknowledged.” “They can be put away for 1.3 seconds while I see the snap, see the hold and see the ball off my foot.” 

My son Mark observed that if each kick is just 1.3 seconds, all those field goals and extra points over his 11-year career amount to less than 20 minutes of kicking on the field. “Gotta be the job with the single biggest preparation-to-performance ratio in history.”

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. (1 Corinthians 9.24, 25, ESV)

 

The other day I got a note from a good friend and fellow disciple maker asking this question about someone he’s working with:

Has been a believer for 2 years, but is so busy with school & now work, I may need to update my “software” if he is going to grow spiritually. Any suggestions?

For better or worse, here is my answer. What do you think?

What’s the minimum? We’re all busy, but we find time to do what’s important. I often use Matthew 4.4 in teaching daily time with God: “Most of us find time to eat every day although I suppose that one could dash out the door without eating breakfast.” Then I follow that with Romans 13.14, “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ…” But I use the Message: “Get up and get dressed!” I say, ‘You might go to work having skipped breakfast, but no one shows up at work naked…Sorry I didn’t have time to get dressed this morning.’”

I was working with a man named Steve once, and he showed up for our second meeting and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t read this week like you told me to.” So we just worked through his schedule:

– What time do you have to get up in order to be out the door on time?

– So can we back that up 15 minutes so you’ll have time to read?

– And what time do you have to go to bed so you can get up 15 minutes earlier?

I often share that any discipline can go through these stages: drudgery, discipline, delight. Exercise is a good example. As I was sharing this with a group of men, Steve was there. He said, “May I say something? I went through this very progression. Daily time with God was pure drudgery at first. Then I saw the benefits of it and it became a necessary discipline for me. Finally, I came to delight in it. It took two years to reach that point.”

One more thing to help get him started: “You won’t want to do something until you’ve done it when you didn’t want to.” Again comparing exercise, you could answer test questions on the benefits of exercise, but until you’ve experienced those benefits for yourself, you won’t want to exercise. So you have to start when you don’t want to. Compare Hebrews 12.11.

I hope some of that is helpful. The minimum? Anyone can have a 15-minute quiet time and memorize one verse/week. Max Barnett, a long-time Navigator-trained Southern Baptist pastor (he’s 85 now, I think) advocates one verse/week. You work really hard the first day until you can say the verse. Then you review it every day for 8 weeks. The second week, you do another verse, etc. So your daily review consists of only 8 verses. 

Let me know how it goes.

Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to understand doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts. For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little. (Isaiah 28.9, 10, KJV)

Yesterday I introduced the possibility that John 1.11 might still be going on today, even in “Christian” churches.

He came unto his own, and his own received him not. (John 1.11, KJV)

When I first asked myself how this might be happening today, I didn’t have an answer in mind. A few days later, however, I heard that Jemar Tisby, author of The Color of Compromise, would be speaking in Denver: a local congregation had been studying his book about the American church’s ongoing complicity in racism and invited him to speak this weekend. I already had the book and had read most of it.

Tisby makes the point early and often that Christian churches and Christians, in general, have not been effective agents of fighting racism. By and large they have participated in it. I’ve written about this problem before, but it’s worth a quote or two to make the point that we’re not living out, for example, 1 John 3.11 – 15, might be in order.

On the kidnapping of unsuspecting Africans and their separation from family, Equiano asked, “O, ye nominal Christians! Might not an African ask you, learned you this from your God, who says unto you, Do unto all men as you would men should do unto you?” Black people immediately detected the hypocrisy of American – style slavery. They knew the inconsistencies of the faith from the rank odors, the chains, the blood, and the misery that accompanied their life of bondage . Instead of abandoning Christianity, though, black people went directly to teachings of Jesus and challenged white people to demonstrate integrity. – Color of Compromise, page 30

Here’s a story from the early days of the republic:

One of the founders of the AME denomination, Richard Allen, was born a slave in Philadelphia in 1760. He came of age during the American Revolution and was undoubtedly influenced by the message of liberty and independence circulated in pamphlets and speeches. Having been given permission by his white owner to attend church meetings, Allen converted to Methodism in 1777. He purchased his freedom in 1786 and began preaching in various Methodist churches.

Allen received an invitation to become a regular preacher at St. George’s, an interracial Methodist church in Philadelphia. Despite the racially mixed composition of the congregation, white Christians treated black worshipers as second class. Under Allen’s preaching the number of black attendees increased dramatically. Racial tension increased as well. Allen tried to gain support to purchase a new church building to accommodate the growing number of black worshipers, but white leaders of St. George’s insisted on segregated seating and relegated their darker-skinned brethren to certain sections of the sanctuary. – Color of Compromise, pages 52 – 53

Sounds like a clear violation of James:

My brethren, do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with partiality. For if there should come into your assembly a man with gold rings, in fine apparel, and there should also come in a poor man in filthy clothes, and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes and say to him, “You sit here in a good place,” and say to the poor man, “You stand there,” or, “Sit here at my footstool,” have you not shown partiality among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? (James 2.1 – 4, NKJV)

Which also reminds us, for what it’s worth, that American churches past and present don’t have a monopoly on bad behavior. It goes back to the first century! And, as a story I told in a blog on purity, I think God is saying, “Cut that stuff out!”

Going back to the original observation in John 1, if Jesus came to some of our (white) churches disguised as a black man, would we receive him? Or, if he challenged us, as he did when he walked the earth, to “Love our neighbor as ourselves,” would we receive him?

He came unto his own, and his own received him not. (John 1.11, KJV)

“I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.” Then they also will answer Him, saying, “Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?” Then He will answer them, saying, “Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.” (Matthew 25.42 – 45, NKJV)

I’m reading through John, which at one chapter per day, has more content than I can address. I’ll pull some highlights beginning with a startling observation in chapter 1, confirmed in chapter 3:

The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. (John 1.9 – 11, ESV)

And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. (John 3.19, ESV)

Jesus said later, “I am the light of the world.” We’ll look at that in a few days. But for now, here is the light, but people reject the light. Again, from John 1.9 – 11:

• The true light, which gives light to EVERYONE, was coming into the world.
• But the world did not know him. He made the world, and the world did not know him. Today, people don’t even believe that God made the world. The world doesn’t know its God.
• But neither did God’s own people know God in the flesh when they saw him. Might that be true even in our churches today? Churches have Jesus’ name on them, but do the members know Jesus? And receive Jesus? And embrace his way of life?

Church people, Christians(!), rejecting Jesus’ way of life? Perhaps. More tomorrow.

For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother...We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. (1 John 3.11 – 15, ESV)

Something extraordinary happened at the World Series last night – you may have missed it since most of the Series this year is being played in November, and we’re already deep into football season. Anyway, the Astros pitched a no-hitter, only the second no-hitter in World Series history, after Don Larsen’s perfect game on October 8, 1956.

Re last night’s game: Cristian Javier of the Dominican Republic pitched 6 no-hit innings, and three relievers pitched one inning each for the no-hitter. Apparently, Javier throws an “unhittable fastball.”

I remember Don Larsen’s perfect game. I was 9 years old and didn’t see the game, but I remember clearly asking my dad that afternoon, “Did the Dodgers win?” (We are National League fans.) Dad, a former minor league pitcher, replied, “No, but something wonderful happened.”

In those days, the World Series score was the above-the-fold headline. The October 9 edition of The Greenville News the next morning not only had the score but a giant picture of Don Larsen.

I cut that picture out, glued it to cardboard, and kept it for a very long time. There’s more perspective on that game in this blog from last October.

Is there a lesson? In addition to “something wonderful happened” even if it wasn’t in favor of the team I was rooting for, I think the lesson is, “Counts for one.” It’s one game in a best-four-out-of-seven series. Tuesday night, the Phillies set a record of their own with five home runs in five innings, beating the Astros 7 – 0. Counts for one.

Whether you’re coming off of a once-in-a-lifetime triumph, a crushing defeat, or something in-between, it’s good to remember that it only counts for one.

One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3.13, 14, ESV)

We continue with lessons learned from Sheep Among Wolves, Volume II, a documentary about disciple-making movements in Iran.

The film was released in 2019, but some of what I heard about the Ayatollah I’m hearing today. An October 6, 2022, editorial in the Wall Street Journal said that the Ayatollah’s actions are a “gift to secularism,” declaring correctly that “religion doesn’t flourish when it’s compulsory.”

But the Iranian believers were saying several years ago:

The best evangelist for Jesus is the Ayatollah. People are finding out that Islam is a lie. They’re 40 years into their “utopia,” and it’s not there…Mosques are empty in Iran. – From Sheep Among Wolves, Volume II

Their philosophy of ministry is that they are always discipling people, even before they become believers. Jesus did. They point out that there was A LOT the original twelve didn’t understand. With a large number of new believers, pre-believers the “church” is messy. But that’s ok:

In the graveyard, there is perfect order. Nurseries are messy. Samson wouldn’t be a leader in our churches: he had character issues, anger issues, and lust issues.

The bottom line?

The “software” of the gospel will not run on the “hardware” of the west in the Middle East. (It doesn’t run well in the US either!)

Again, it’s a film worth seeing on many levels.

Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing—as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth. (Colossians 1.5, 6, ESV)

As I wrote last year, I don’t know why this is the only “holiday” in which the “eve” gets more attention than the day! Halloween = “All Hallows Eve” or the Eve of All Saints’ Day.

All Saints’ Day is a celebration of all Christian saints, particularly those who have no special feast days of their own, in many Roman Catholic, Anglican and Protestant churches. In many western churches, it is annually held on November 1…It is also known as All Hallows Tide, All-Hallomas, or All Hallows’ Day.

I can’t do better than the writer of the Hebrews:

And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets—who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated—of whom the world was not worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 11.32 – 12.2, ESV, emphasis mine)