[Just] a Man?

PROPOSITION:

JESUS CHRIST IS THE MOST INFLUENTIAL MAN TO EVER WALK UPON THE PLANET.

True or false?

He’s one of the most respected, iconic, revered teachers ever. His teachings changed the world, and in so many ways the history, ethics, core morals of Western law have been built upon what Jesus advocated. His words are unforgettable: turn the other cheek. Go the extra mile. Suffer the little children. Get behind me Satan. Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.

You’d have to travel a long way before you’d meet someone who’d disagree with the proposition that Jesus Christ is one of the greatest men ever. Apart from a few hard-core atheists and extremist Bible-haters, Jesus has the respect of society at large. And that’s a good thing, isn’t it?

But if we push back a little, we’ll find that many people will have a hard time taking Jesus further. It’s a little bit like Mahatma Gandhi. Good guy, wise enough leader, led a huge country to freedom of a sort with his philosophy of non-violent resistance… but when you read a little further and see that some of his other aims were to disperse city-based society, and roll back into feudal village-systems where we’d all be spinning our own cotton and wool… would you really want to follow him all the way? To take Gandhi all the way would mean that we’d immediately suffer privation, poverty and powerlessness.

Here’s the problem: this is exactly what we expect people to do when we introduce them to the real Jesus – the Jesus beyond the popular myth of the popular man. The Jesus who said that he came not in peace but with a sword. The Jesus that said to look upon a woman with lust in the heart is every bit as wicked as committing full-blown adultery. The Jesus that said it’s better to pluck out eyeballs and to hack off limbs… the Jesus who said I am THE way, I am THE truth, I am THE life – no-one comes to the Father except through Me. The real Jesus is not an easy man to know. He’s not an easy man to follow all the way… and I think that we forget that sometimes.

            Why are we so surprised and disheartened when we see people looking at Jesus as a great man, a great philosopher, a beautiful teacher… but no more than that? Please – remember this when you’re sharing the real Jesus with your friends and family. Pray for them. Pray that the Spirit opens their ears and their eyes and their minds and their hearts. But don’t be angry or frustrated with them if they don’t immediately fall to their knees in adoration of Jesus singing “I Surrender All” in a loud voice. Okay?

We have to remember – with humility – that once upon a time the Spirit opened our ears and eyes and hearts and minds, so that we could know the truth. And without that Spirit, believing in Jesus all the way is, I’d argue, impossible.

It’s far easier to hold him as a good man… and leave it at that.

            Things haven’t changed much. The Gospels are full of things that shocked. Ideas that turned the world upside-down. Take John’s Gospel for example. First sentence: an idea that works magnificently for either Jewish-educated or Greek-educated readers. In the beginning was the Word.

If you were Jewish, you would know that the Word of God was the most powerful way of describing the force of God within the World. In Genesis, you would see God creating by His Word: And God said… and it was so. And more than that: Genesis 12 opens with the statement – “Now the Lord said to Abraham” – and the history of the Chosen People began. The prophets constantly testified not just about Yahweh, but his WORD.

For a Greek, the idea of the WORD – ho logos – is about the most powerful interaction between an all-good (but all-spirit) God and an all-evil physical earth. This logos, this WORD, acted as the intermediary that allowed an all-good God to act: creation, the beginning of life, the existence and immortality of your soul is all due to the work of the WORD. And it’s through the WORD that all the dualities on earth are brought together. Light/darkness. Good/evil. Life/death. Pizza/pineapple.

In the beginning was the WORD. Greeks and Jews together could make perfect sense of John’s opening statement – until he said that the Word was with God… and the Word WAS God. John drops the most blasphemous bomb. And as he unfolds his opening, the idea that this human, Jesus, is the divine Word springs to life. Both Jew and Greek would agree that this is madness. A human being can’t become a god – and who would imagine a god who becomes a mortal man? A stumbling block to the Jews, foolishness to the Greeks.

Matthew’s opening statement is just as hard if you’re a careful reader. His narrative almost immediately sets up an enormous difficulty. He begins with a lengthy genealogy stretching from Father Abraham to Joseph, linking in the great King David. The point of the genealogy is to present Jesus’ credentials as the rightful heir and Son of David – the rightful King of Israel, King the Jews. Fine, fine… until we realise that Joseph has no part in the genetic makeup of Jesus. In fact, he wants to quietly divorce Jesus’ mother, and is only compelled to stay by her side by direct command from an angel of God. He’s not the father. Mary is found to be with child…

It’s not just the concept of the Virgin Birth that gives us a big problem, although that will be a stumbling block for many people. I’m going to bypass that, because there’s a bigger problem. The biggest one is this: Joseph’s lineage holds the legitimacy of Jesus Christ as the heir to the throne. Mary’s virgin-pregnancy – with child through the Holy Spirit – is the powerful evidence of a human Son of God. But the two great streams, the two great lines of descent that Matthew gives us, haven’t actually met! If Joseph was the physical father, it rules out the God-Man, doesn’t it? And a Virgin Birth surely means that Joseph’s line of succession is NOT carried by Jesus. How do we arrive at Jesus-as-God? How can there possibly be Christ-as-human?

Digest all this for a moment. I want you to re-assess how difficult it is for people who are not Christians to accept what we know to be true… that Jesus Christ is so much more than a good man.

 

So where do we go from here? I want us to take a little walk and take a look at how a couple of people dealt with the problem of seeing Jesus as God, of seeing God the Son as human. Atheists might call it an attempt to square a very stubborn circle – or at least make the circle look a bit triangular. But that’s nothing new. From the very beginning of the church, people have wrestled with this paradox: the Bible contains the truth about the identity of Jesus; not just a mere human, not just a remote minor deity – but fully man in bone and blood as well as Yahweh, Lord of all. Some got it right, some got it wrong, and even today their conclusions (right and wrong) have had an effect that we can see today.

Some people thought that God was too holy to be made human, and so Jesus wasn’t really a human – he was God-in-spirit wrapped up to look like a human. But that couldn’t be right. How can a ghost die for our redemption?

Other people saw Jesus as being a normal man, divinely protected from sin, who was filled by the Spirit of Christ at his baptism – and in this way we can call this Jesus the Son of God. It’s not very clear how much say in the matter this poor human had (although that shouldn’t be much of an issue to us closet Calvinists…). But that can’t be right either. Go back to John 1:1 again – Jesus is called the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This one was in the beginning with God. Through Him all came to be, and without Him not one thing came to be that which came into being. (My translation from the Greek.) Not much wiggle room there. The identity of this Word, whom John claims is Jesus, is entwined with God himself from the beginning of everything – hardly something just dumped on a guy in a river. There must be another way.

IRENAEUS was one of the first guys to really see the picture clearly. He was a church leader in the early 2^nd Century. Here’s how Irenaeus saw it: There is ONE GOD. None of this Greek rubbish about a pure God here and a corrupt world there, and an intervening logos – i.e. Jesus – doing the creating and the redeeming. None of that: there is ONE GOD. But throughout the Scriptures, Irenaeus could see that God always had with him the Word and the Spirit – he described them as God’s two hands – and through the Word and the Spirit, He made, He sustains, and He redeems.

In the Incarnation – how God became carne, literally meaty flesh – the Divine Word, the Logos, became a complete human being. Why? Being a look-alike spirit wouldn’t cut it, no matter how much a spirit might look like a man, talk like a man, or smell like a man (badly, I guess). The Logos had to be a full-blooded human, or else there just wasn’t any point. How could a ghost possibly pay for our sins with blood? And we humans, stained and marred by sin and rebellion as we are, could never produce a person completely unstained by sin. The standard of perfection required by God the Father could only met by God the Son. And so, we find that God so loved the world that he sent his only Son – that whoever believes in him will never perish, but have eternal life. The answer could ONLY be that Jesus was all-God and all-human in the one body.

We owe a lot to another teacher – a man called TERTULLIAN. Tertullian worked with the problems of describing what he saw so clearly in the Bible – this apparent paradox of God’s one-ness and three-ness. God is one, but Scripture teaches us about God as Father, as Son, and as Holy Spirit. These three Persons inside the substance of the Living God are best described by one word – TRINITAS. God, one God, in three Persons. Or, three Persons within the one God. The three PERSONAE – Father, Son, Holy Spirit – can and do act individually (as we can see from the baptism of Jesus), but they do not act independently. God is One.

The PERSONAE don’t exist independently, but within the foundational unity of the One Substance of God. One divided by three equals one. Three into one is One.

And for all the attempts throughout the years to describe what the Trinity is, and how it all works, Tertullian really nails it. It passes any Scriptural test I can think of (if you can think of any, let me know!), and even though it’s a mouthful, it’s the simplest yet.

Is your head spinning yet? It’s hard work – it’s really hard work. And that’s using the guy who managed to make it as simple as possible. I’ve got overwhelming respect for Tertullian and Irenaeus – they seriously committed an awesome amount of brain-power to paper. Let me tell you, it’s hard enough to produce an essay on this subject in Moore College. It’s hard work prepping for a sermon.

But keep this in mind: these theologians were trying to answer a really fundamental question. And they weren’t doing it at Moore College or SMBC or Oak Hill or Sydney Uni. They were stretched out on an anvil, right under the hammer. They were leaders of a church that was under constant attack – either government-ordered persecution or mob riots. They were called atheists – literally, the ungodly. People thought that they practiced cannibalism. They were seriously under the gun of persecution. And while they were nutting out this great mystery, they were also running around trying to protect the believers, encourage them, teach them the Gospel in the face of very real danger and death. They tried their guts out to give their people the best understanding about the true value of Jesus Christ. They had a sense of urgency. Nobody would have needed to read The Purpose-Driven Life for motivation. They had lion’s breath for that.

They all understood something – even the guys who got it wrong – and that something was this: that Jesus took the sin that keeps us from God, took it all upon Himself, and died exactly like a slaughtered beast. They understood that because He did this, we will – one day, at the end of days – be with God the Father, and we will worship and enjoy Him forever. They didn’t all understand how Jesus managed to do this – but they worked away at it, and they worked hard. They didn’t always get it right, and their mistakes had lots of consequences. But they tried their best. And one of the gifts that they’ve given us is that they’ve wrestled Scripture and showed us how to see Jesus as a man, and Jesus as God. And it was worth the wrestle.

It’s almost the complete reverse of today. Today, we think we understand everything. And if we don’t, we can load up our laptops… or just drive to Koorong. We can pick up a book, if we so desire, and read up all of the mechanics of the Person and Work of Jesus. We can read scholarly arguments on Substitutionary Penal Atonement. We know it all. But I wonder if all of this makes our love for Jesus any richer. Deep knowledge doesn’t guarantee it. That great atheist, Christopher Hitchens, had a brilliant understanding of how the shedding of blood propitiates God’s holy wrath – and he thought it was one of the most wicked points of religion. Hitchens understood the importance of Jesus being seen as both the Son of God and the Son of Man, and in his brilliant use of rational thought, he rejected it all – flayed the lot of it as a vulgar fiction. He could apply his rich understanding of Christian theology effortlessly… usually to publicly flog those he saw as Jesus-loving idiots.

We can know everything there is to know about Jesus, but that doesn’t guarantee that we love Him. We’re on a delicate little wire, here. Which is why we need to be so careful. We can know lots about Jesus without necessarily loving him. We can love Jesus and still miss the truth so badly that we end up thinking the wrong things about Jesus – and teach the wrong things about Jesus to other people.

We can be so busy fighting the myth of Jesus-the-man that we can forget to see how absolutely vital that really is. Jesus WAS a man. In his fully-human body he sweated, was sleep-deprived, went to parties, was worked to exhaustion, was angered, filled with joy, cried, was tested by temptation. In other words, the best that life can give us – and the very worst that life can throw at us… Jesus has been there, too The one who took my place has felt every agony that I’ve felt, and will ever feel.

The one who loved me enough to willingly give himself over to violent death on my behalf – he knows better than I do what it means to hurt. Jesus WAS a good man. But he is more.

Do we treasure the human Jesus who was fully God?

Do we treasure the glorious Lord Christ who humbled himself enough to become a weak, breakable human? Who did it again in allowing himself, as a human, to become the object of shame and scorn – spat on, tortured, tried by a kangaroo court, executed in a publicly shameful way, hung like a piece of meat on a crude wooden cross-bar?

Do we treasure him as both God and man?

That’s the important question behind the myth. Some will hold firm that Jesus was a human. By saying that he was JUST a human, we’d put ourselves in a very perilous place. But we’d also blind ourselves to why it is that God became man.

To see Jesus as merely human is to never know the sweet relief of eternal rescue. To never know the inexhaustible joy of having the price on our heads removed.

We should be condemned for our own addiction to sin, and the punishment for that is eternal torment – Hell.

Do we remember what it’s like to have all of that lifted from us? Jesus is the only one who can lift it – bear God’s perfect justice upon himself, make us perfect before the Father. One of the great English Jesus-lovers, John Donne, wrote of this agony and this sweet relief:

WILT Thou forgive that sin where I begun,
    Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
    And do run still, though still I do deplore?
        When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
                    For I have more.

Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won
    Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun
    A year or two, but wallowed in a score?
        When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
                    For I have more.

I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
    My last thread, I shall perish on the shore ;
But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son
    Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore ;
        And having done that, Thou hast done ;
                    I fear no more.

I want you to do one thing this week. Take this chunk home. Colossians 1:10-23. Write it down somewhere. Some of it is familiar. Some of it is the very best creed I can think of for remembering who Jesus is and why we do treasure him above all else. And some of it is very practical – what it means for us. I’m going to close up shop with this verse. Take it. Wrap your prayer around it this week. Let its words sink in deeply. Feed on Him in your hearts by faith, and with thanksgiving. Colossians 1:10-23

He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the Kingdom of the Son He loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behaviour. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in His sight, without blemish and free from accusation – if you continue to in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the Gospel. THIS is the Gospel that you have heard and has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.

John 11 – One More Thing…

Death is a good teacher. One thing that death has taught me is there’s almost always the feeling that you wish for one more thing. And no matter how much you wish, that one more thing will simply stay that way – a wish.

Some people call it closure – the opportunity to do, or say, that one more thing is the opportunity to make it all right. The chance for someone to hear you say that you love them… to hold their hand as they go… to sort out the wrongs… to forgive, or to ask for forgiveness… and the fact that we so rarely get that opportunity to have that one more thing is something that so many people find hardest to cope with. It can make the seeking for closure an impossible task. What would we give for one more thing?

I got the phone-call late one afternoon – my grandmother had died. I dropped everything, jumped in the car and drove down to Shellharbour Base Hospital. All the way down, I got angrier and angrier. The thought had crossed my mind earlier that day to drop in and see her. But I didn’t, and now it was too late. It sounds strange, but I was angry that I wasn’t there with her as she passed away. One thing I’d learned about her is that she hated death – hated talking about it, hated funerals, hated dealing with any aspect of dying. She wasn’t worried about the next life, but stepping from this life into the next was something that frightened her deeply. And I wanted to be there, hold her hand, let her know that she wasn’t alone – either in this world or in heaven.

My one more thing would be to have been there for her. But, of course, when I got there, she’d passed away a couple of hours earlier. So my mum and I sat there in a curtained-off ward in Shellharbour. Too late! my mind kept saying, too late!

Of course, it wasn’t too late at all – God’s the only one who sets the time for these things. But whispering bon voyage into the ear of a dead person isn’t quite the same as holding their hand as they make the journey. One more thing…

Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.[1] So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.” Jesus had moved away from Jerusalem: at the end of chapter 10, we’re told that he went where John had first started baptizing, on the other side of the Jordan. That’s probably a two-day hike in heavy hill-country.

Verse 4: When he heard this, Jesus said, “this sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory, so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.”

Jesus’ reaction to the news has puzzled people for a long time, and – on the surface, at least, appears pretty cold. It really appears quite callous. It’s pretty obvious from the text that Jesus knows that Lazarus will die. His friends have faith that he can heal any kind of sickness. We saw in chapter 9 that he healed a man born blind, and nobody had ever been healed of that before. They send for Jesus, with the expectation – the faith – that he will drop everything and heal their brother, who’s on death’s door. Verse 5 and 6: Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. Yet when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was for two days.

“If God is a God of love, why does he allow bad things to happen?” That’s a pretty familiar question, isn’t it? And, let’s be honest, it’s never an easy question to answer to the satisfaction of the person doing the asking. It’s a harder question to answer when the person doing the asking isn’t just as smart-mouthed atheist, but someone who’s really in the throes of suffering… when the person who’s doing the asking is caring for someone suffering… when the person doing the asking is a believer, but is finding just how hard life can really be.

Here we have the Son of God – if we’re thinking of God as Trinity, here we have God – being told of suffering, being begged for help… yet… he stayed where he was for two days. In every service today we approach God as a church, as a family, and ask for God to listen. “We ask you in your mercy… to receive our prayers which we offer to Your divine Majesty.”[2] And here we see it in its most direct form, and the reaction of Jesus is… to do nothing.

A very good friend of mine has so much trouble with this passage. She’s a Christian, and she’s endured a lot over the years – mental and physical abuse, drug addiction, abandonment. She has a terrifically active faith in God and His saving power. And she has a terrible time reading this passage. Verse 6 and 7: [H]e stayed where he was for two days. Then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea”.

Verses 11-12: [H]e went on to tell them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going to wake him up” His disciples replied, “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.” In other words, it’s a trivial reason to go sticking your head into the lion’s jaw. I can’t see the sense in you walking for two days to tap Lazarus on the shoulder and offer him a morning cuppa and some toast. They hadn’t really thought about Lazarus at this point – maybe they took Jesus at his word that this sickness will not end in death and simply assumed that Jesus had healed Lazarus long-distance. It was something they’d seen him do before.

The disciples took Jesus at his word. Verse 14: So he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead.” This is the sentence that my friend had so much trouble with. “[A]nd for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe.”

We move on. Verse 17: On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. This is important for a couple of reasons. The disciples needed to see something that should be obvious, but isn’t immediately clear. The messenger probably travelled for two days (minimum) before finding Jesus, bearing the news of Lazarus’ sickness.

If they left immediately, they still would have found Lazarus dead. If he had been in the tomb four days, Lazarus had probably died even as the messenger was giving them the news that he was sick. They would still have been too late.

There was another important reason here. There was a Jewish superstition about the dead. A couple of commentaries pointed this out, although I couldn’t get hold of a source. There was the belief that the soul, or the spirit, of someone who had died would hang around for three days – hoping for the body to be able to be resuscitated. After three days the body would really start to decompose, and the spirit really wouldn’t have much to come back into – so it would choof off to Sheol, or wherever spirits went, and the person was truly considered dead.

What Jesus did could never be written off as a resuscitation. There wouldn’t be any swoon-theories here. If you saw Lazarus rising from a tomb, you would know with absolute certainty that it was no revival – a really, truly, dead stinking corpse has truly been given life again, and is now living and walking among us.  But that’s to come… sorry if I spoiled the ending.

Verse 19: Many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. Here, people from Jerusalem have travelled out to Bethany to support two friends who were facing a very uncertain future. Presumably they are both unmarried, and the brother that supported the household was dead. If Mary was as “sinful” as the Gospels suggest – that she was a lady of negotiable affection[3]-  then the prospect of her getting married was pretty low – and it’s possible that her sister Martha would be tarred with the same brush. They would be in the same bag as widows. Mary and Martha have lost everything when they lost a brother.

I think that’s worth keeping in mind when we see Martha, then Mary, almost rebuking Jesus for arriving too late. Verse 21: “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” It’s a rebuke, but with Martha it’s a testimony of faith.

Martha and Mary believe truly that there is no sickness that Jesus can’t cure. And they’re right. “But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

It’s a wonderful comfort to know that. We see Paul give that beautiful, encouraging comfort to the Thessalonians – the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.[4] They are powerfully comforting words. Telling (or reminding) our fellow brothers and sisters that your brother will rise again is incredibly comforting.

And we see that Martha is comforted, and she at least has that knowledge that death isn’t quite the end. I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day. Then Jesus says the most incredible thing. Martha’s faith is deep – deeper than we give it credit for, sometimes. We’re used to the addicted-to-housework Martha – the Martha too busy with the small things to listen to Jesus – and we can miss this.

Listen to Jesus’ words, and put yourself in Martha’s place. Verse 25: Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” Forget for just a moment that we know that verse really well. Put yourself in Martha’s shoes.

What an extraordinary thing to say to someone mourning their brother!

But Martha’s faith is as solid as any of the disciples. I’m not entirely certain that she understands everything that she confesses here – but in verse 27 we see her simple, glorious faith in her friend and her Saviour. “I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.” And off she goes.

If Mary thought that she’d be able to talk privately with Jesus, she was mistaken – the people who had come to mourn with her followed her right out the door. And now Jesus is surrounded by one of the hardest things to deal with – the grief of everyone. Verse 33: When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. Older translations say he groaned in the spirit. It’s actually a hard word to translate – it could be translated that he was angry and severely agitated. And one of the commentaries, I think, nails it. “The Jews were grieving, as St Paul said, ‘like the rest of men who have no hope.’ (1 Thes. 4:13). He was angry with death itself, the consequence of sin, which caused such pain…”[5]

Here is the Son of God. John tells us that he was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. Jesus was there as Adam took his first breath and he was there when they took that terrible step into sin. And he knew that this terrible step would bring all the horrors of death – including what he himself would endure to redeem us all.

Surrounded by people mourning without hope, surrounded by the full effect of sin, listening to people’s broken hearts… he groaned in the spirit, and was deeply agitated. And as he lets Mary lead him to the cave that Lazarus was laid in, Jesus wept.

John shows us the thoughts of some of those watching. The people watching all misread Jesus. See how he loved him. True, but Jesus had already said to his disciples that this sickness would not end in death – I don’t think Jesus was weeping for Lazarus. But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind have kept this man from dying?” Yes – he could have kept this man from dying. But he didn’t.

I said toward the beginning that a lot of people find Jesus’ actions and speech callous. He let him die. He stayed a couple of days, knowing that Lazarus was about to die, and he didn’t raise a finger to stop the death of his friend.

Mary and Martha both wanted one more thing – for their friend whom they called Lord to come and save their brother. But he didn’t.

There was one final sign for the world to see. John has given us quite a few signs – not just miracles in and of themselves, but great big signboards pointing to the glory of God the Father, pointing to Jesus the man as the Son of God, the Christ, the messiah, the rescuer of us all.

We see Jesus baptised by John, praised by the Father and landed on by the Holy Spirit.

We see Jesus healing sickness, bringing the healing of God to earth, being the one who heals us and makes us clean and whole.

We see Jesus as Living Water, refreshing us and cleansing us, the Living Water who knew the heart and the mind of the woman at the well.

We see Jesus as the all-sustaining Bread of Life, who is our only true food, who creates food for thousands from a couple of strips of fish jerky and a few pieces of bread.

Before Jesus re-enters Jerusalem to begin the final stage of his rescue-mission of the world, John shows us one last sign. Here is Jesus – the resurrection and the life. He said to Mary that he who believes in me will live, even though he dies

His signs physically back the authority of who he says he is.

And so Mary leads Jesus to a cave. There’s a huge stone covering the hole, keeping the smell of death and decay from polluting the air. Take away the stone. Martha protests – he’s been in there four days. He’ll stink. They could only afford wrapping-cloth for the body – no preserving spices or embalming stuff. It’s a horrifying way to see a relative for the last time. But Jesus talks softly to Mary, and we begin to see the reason for the sign, and the reason that he waited so long, and had let death take its course with his friend. Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?

Some people roll the stone clear from the cave’s entrance, and Jesus prays to his Father, Yahweh Elohim, Creator of heaven and earth. And his prayer shows us the other purpose of the sign, and which way the sign points. I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.

Not so that people would believe – and make Jesus the man to replace Herod as king. Not so that people would believe  – and treat Jesus as a miracle-working rock-star. Why, then? For God so loved the world that he gave his only son – that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

People knew that only God can forgive sin – Jesus forgave sin. People knew that only God can create – Jesus created sustaining food. People knew only God has power over the dead, and would resurrect people on the last day… People knew that only God can make life – that in Genesis he said let there be… and there was.

Verse 43: Jesus called out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen and a cloth around the face. It seems as though everyone has been frozen to the spot – nobody wants to go near this lurching mummy. Jesus has to order people to help unwrap him.

We see how Jesus treats death. He ends death in exactly the same way as his Father creates – simply the power of his voice obliterates that terrible, final, terrifying thing called death. He just annihilates it.

One thing that death has taught me is there’s almost always the feeling that you wish for one more thing. What’s your one more thing?

Ultimately there is only one more thing. Jesus. Jesus is the only one who can be the one more thing.

One day we’ll see that death itself is going to get thrown away. John shows us the signs. Jesus stops sickness – the sickness of the body and the sickness of sin. Jesus stops and reverses death – he has the authority and the power of his Father to simply say stop, and death stops. The son of God wept, and one day God Himself will wipe away every tear – as John himself would later write in Revelation.

Make sure – make absolutely certain – that Jesus is your one more thing.

Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to wake him up. We live and move in a world where too many of our friends have fallen asleep. And that hurts – it hurts terribly. We live in a world where we know that our Lazaruses – our brothers or sisters, or parents, or children – will fall asleep. Sometimes we’ll have time to say goodnight. Sometimes we won’t. And at some point, we’re going to fall asleep ourselves. Sometimes we need to take seriously the line in the Litany in the Book of Common Prayer: from dying suddenly and unprepared, Good Lord deliver us.

Can we remember that it’s sleep, in the eyes of our Saviour? Can we remember that he can wake us up from that sleep as easily as I can wake up my kids? Can we remember one more thing? Listen to Paul again.

We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort – therefore encourage – one another with these words.[6]

Amen.

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[1] John 12:1-11, Matthew 26:1-13, Luke 7:36-50

[2] An Australian Prayer Book: First Order of Holy Communion, Intercession, p120

[3] Thanks to Terry Pratchett for a supremely delicate phrase.

[4] 1 Corinthians 4:16b-18

[5] John, Colin G. Kruse p253 Tyndale New Testament Commentaries

[6] I Thessalonians 4:13-18

Who are you? Genesis 2

One of the things I looked forward to the most when I started at Moore College was tackling Philosophy. I couldn’t wait. I wasn’t the only one, either – I think it was the most eagerly-anticipated course for a lot of us. And so, six months into the first year, after we’d all recovered from our first experience of exams, we filed into the main lecture room. Our lecturer walked straight in, and without so much as an introduction, fired off his first question.

“Who are you? Why are you here? Discuss with the person next to you. You have five minutes.”

An interesting thing happened. After about two minutes, most of the conversations had stopped. And it was pretty obvious that after three minutes, we were pretty stumped about what to say. So the lecturer went around the room. “Who are you?”

There were some amusing answers. One anonymous voice said “Cookie Monster!” And one person held up a driver’s licence. “Why are you here?” produced more answers – because God willed it was a good Calvinist answer, and because my timetable said this is where I have to be was a good, honest answer.

I posted the same two questions on Facebook a couple of days ago, and some of the answers were priceless:

I’m Grammy, or Mum, or Tick, or Lucy, or Annistacia – oh dear multiple personalities ….. I’m here because where else would I be? Too stubborn to go anywhere else.

I’m me and I’m here because one day my mummy and daddy decided they loved each other very much….

I’m Simon and I’m told I’m here to do what God has planned for me to do. Stuffed if I can work it out yet…

I am no one and I am not here

I’m Andrew and I’m here because Mark’s mummy and daddy decided they didn’t get it right the first time.

I’m Robyn, and I am here to be your friend.

I am Peter, and I am here to help Dave reduce his smoking by shamelessly bludging smokes off him……

My name is Liz and I’m here (right here right now) because I’m too tired to move.

I’m Kyle and I am here to pave the way for my daughters future.

Here’s the kicker, though. That exercise confirmed something I’d suspected for quite some time – it’s a lot easier to answer those two questions with humour, deliberately making an effort to deflect the seriousness of the questions… and possibly to avoid the fact that, after two minutes, we’re out of things to say.

Who are you? Why are you here? The lecturer turned around and announced that this was the single most important UN-answered question for most people today. And then he followed it up with this very dry, quiet observation: “The fact that these questions remain unanswered goes some way to explaining why there’s such a massive statistical blip in fatal single-vehicle car accidents involving males between 17 and 25.” The room went deadly quiet, and we suddenly realised that there’s a lot more to philosophy than witty arguments at the pub. Philosophy’s most basic question is simply this – who are you? Why are you here? And we seem to be completely bereft of good answers.

So many people ask themselves the question, and have absolutely no answer. And not having an answer explains some of life’s strange horrors. Why cutting and self-harm is such a feature of the culture of young women between 15 and 25. Why successful men and women turn to alcohol, unfaithful sex and illicit drugs, and other behaviours that we would normally pass off as absolutely stupid. Why kids join gangs and do whatever it takes to belong to a warped image of family – in the hope of forging an identity.

Who are you? Why are you here? Simply lacking an answer can have a devastating effect on the most secure, the most wealthy, the most intelligent people, as well as the poor and the outcast in society.

Who are you? Why are you here?

Let’s wrestle with the most basic question in philosophy… and see what the Word of God says about us.

 There was a Frenchman by the name of Jean Cauvin (we know him as John Calvin), and he made this point as an opening statement: “Without knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God. Nearly all wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.”[1] And immediately Calvin shows us the problem. We need to have knowledge of God before we can truly begin to understand ourselves – but at the same time we need to have knowledge of ourselves so that we can see our place in God’s world and in God’s great heart.

And that’s true, isn’t it? We need to understand something of God’s holy justice and right-ness before we can begin to appreciate why sin is so abhorrent to Him. We need to come to grips with how much God loves us before we can understand how hurtful our sin is to God. And we have to face both our place in His great heart and our own helplessness in sin before we realise how painfully expensive grace is to God the Father.

We need knowledge of God to begin to understand ourselves. And we seriously need to understand who we are and why we’re here to understand God more clearly. Hang on to that whenever you read the first few chapters of Genesis. Genesis is more than creation-mythology. It’s more than an account of how everything started. Far more importantly, this is an account of the why, and the who, of creation.

Genesis 2 is one of the very few places where we see man and woman exactly as they were made by God. Sinless. Blameless. Walking with no barrier between man and woman, no barrier between Creator and His finest creation. Naked, not ashamed. It’s like peeping through a tiny hole to see the splendour of the world as it was supposed to be… before evil and temptation and sin and separation ripped up the picture.

Let me read from a translation by Robert Alter: On the day the LORD God made earth and heavens, no shrub of the field being yet on the earth and no plant of the field yet sprouted, for the LORD God had not caused rain to fall on the earth and there was no human to till the soil, and wetness would well from the earth to water all the surface of the soil, then the LORD God fashioned the human, humus from the soil, and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the human became a living creature.[2]

For me, this is one of the most beautiful images that I’ve ever read or seen. The writer paints virgin land, full of water and vitality. Even the earliest readers and hearers would know that without rain there is no life at all. Without rain there’s lifeless desert. But at the beginning of all things, life doesn’t need rain… and rain, and crops and sustaining food would be made for the man… The things that all humans need will be given to them.

And then the LORD God – Yahweh Elohim – does the most extraordinary thing. He descends upon his newly-created earth, stoops low and scoops, moulds, and forms with His hands­… a human. If we look back to Genesis 1:26, we see a change in God’s pattern. There’s a change in the language – instead of let there be, He says let Us make.

And… here He makes. Here He forms. Here He fashions.

There’s a beautiful, tender cleverness to the words now. You can hear it in the Hebrew, and in Robert Alter’s translation, he captures a gentle pun… the human, humus from the soil… In Hebrew, man/human is ’adam, and the soil (or dust, in some translations) is ’adamah. And we’ll get the name Adam from this construction a little later.[3] I like the way that this guy calls the earth humus – you get both the pun and a picture of moist, rich, life-holding soil. Who does gardening? Do you see the way the writer almost makes you smell the richness?

But that’s not the most extraordinary thing. He fashioned the human, humus from the soil, and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the human became a living creature. This isn’t mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. This isn’t one equal to another. This is a little like how we’re taught in first-aid to breathe life into a tiny baby – breathe into the nostrils. It’s a gentle, tender, unbelievably loving picture. Man’s first-ever breath is the Spirit of the Living God.

Think about the sense of smell for a second. I think we write it off as the least strong of all our senses. It’s nowhere near as strong as sight, or hearing, or touch – and probably not as well-regarded as taste. But it’s the unsung gift, the unsung sense. It is the sense that is most keyed to the memory. A baby, who can hardly make any use of any other senses, instinctively knows – and bonds to – the mother by smell. A baby knows who Mummy is.

Now – hold that thought in your head for a moment. It’s really important. The first thing that the human ever smelled is the breath – the Spirit – of the Living God. The human is born by the breath of God – and the human became a living creature. Hebrew and Greek both use the same word for breath, or wind, or spirit – Ruach in Hebrew, pneuma in Greek.

Who are you? Now our minds should be racing a little. From the lips of Jesus, from a famous passage, we should be able to connect the two. John 3 – Jesus to Nicodemus: You shouldn’t be surprised at my saying, you must be born again. The wind [same word for breath, for Spirit] 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 [same word again] the Spirit.

Wow. Every time I read it. Wow. Our first breath was when God first filled our lungs – and our being – with his breath, pneuma, Spirit… and we become living beings. You must be born again. The Greek is more emphatic, more urgent. John 3:3 – If someone is not born again, he is not able to see the Kingdom of God. Verse 6-7 – The thing having been born of the flesh is flesh, and the thing having been born of the Spirit is Spirit. Don’t marvel that I said to you, it is necessary to be born again.[4] We must be born a second time… no longer dead in sin, but alive – brought back to life – in Christ, by the Spirit, to the Father’s great glory. Wow.

Who are you? Genesis 2 tells us about… us. We are most highly treasured in God’s great heart. If we didn’t see it in Genesis 1 when we are made in the image, we can see it now. We can almost swim in the picture. We are made. We are formed. We are fashioned by the deliberate, creating will and hand of God Almighty. The same One who made black holes and planets of solid diamond made you. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. The Psalmist had it so right (Psalm 139):

From behind and in front You shaped me, / and You set Your palm upon me.

Knowledge is too wondrous for me, / high above – I cannot attain it.

Where can I go from Your Spirit, / and where from before You flee?

If I soar to the heavens, You are there, / if I bed down in Sheol – there You are.

If I take wing with the dawn, / if I dwell at the ends of the sea,

There, too, Your hand leads me, / and Your right hand seizes me.

Should I say, “Yes, darkness will swathe me, / and the night will be light for me,”

Darkness itself will not darken for You, / and the night will light up like day, the dark and the light will be one.

For You created my innermost parts, / wove me in my mother’s womb.

I acclaim You, for fearfully and wonderfully am I made.

Wondrous are Your acts, / and my soul knows it very well.[5]

Who are you? Nothing less than that. Nothing less than that. Don’t ever, ever forget that.

This is how much God loves his most magnificent creation, Jesus goes on to tell Nicodemus. He sent His only, unique Son… on a rescue mission that would see that Son tortured, hung like a piece of meat, butchered… so that whoever believes in that Son will not perish. Don’t ever forget that. That’s how much God loves you.

Who are you? You are made – fearfully and wonderfully made – and the breath of the Almighty has given you life.

 Moving on… Verses 8 and 9: And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, to the east, and He placed there the human He had fashioned. And the LORD God caused to sprout from the soil every tree lovely to look at and good for food, for the tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge, good and evil. [6]

For His most precious creation God plants a garden. He does the ultimate Backyard Blitz – he has already proclaimed everything very good, but now he goes one better, and gathers together such a collection of botanical wonder… not just to provide this human, this ’adam with physical provision and keep him nourished and alive, but to please the human! Not just in taste and smell, either – pleasant to the sight and good for food, as the NIV puts it. Every tree lovely to look at and good for food. How strange. God didn’t make it just for His own pleasure, but for the human’s pleasure and enjoyment as well.

Genesis 2 tells us something about us. Why are you here? He designed us to be pleased, to be able to be happy, to be content, to be stimulated by beauty. There’s something about us – and something about how thoughtful this designing, creative, loving Almighty God is, and the strange gifts He lavishes upon us. What an odd gift – the ability to be pleased and satisfied! But it makes sense, doesn’t it?

One of the things I love about being a daddy is seeing the kids smile – really beam. And they do it when (surprise, surprise) we give them stuff. It’s not as crude as that, though. Example… Grace got her Pen Licence from her teacher on Friday. I’d never heard of a Pen Licence, but it’s apparently a big deal. When the teacher considers that your handwriting is good enough, you get an official Licence to use a pen in class. When I heard about this, I got a nice pink pen, and I engraved her name on it. And on Friday we gave it to her. Her face was just… the surprise was priceless. It seriously lifted my heart to do something that made Grace happy. It lifted my heart that she was happy. I didn’t get the pen just to get that pleasure, even though I knew that it would happen… but the sheer act of doing something that gave Grace a lot of joy brought me joy as well.

Here’s a question – is that how God feels whenever we enjoy His goodness? Is that how God feels whenever we say thank you, and we praise His name? Is that how God feels when we fall in love with His Son, Jesus?

Who are you? You are made – fearfully and wonderfully made – and the breath of the Almighty has given you life. Why are you here? We’ve been designed to enjoy every good thing that our Father God has willingly, gladly, generously made for us. God Himself has given us the ability to feel happiness, to experience and love beauty and beautiful things. To taste and go WOW, to smell and to smile. God’s master plan was for us to be a happy people, and to KNOW that we’re happy. And that our outrageous happiness brings great pleasure to His heart.

Moving on… Verse 15: And the Lord God took the human and set him down in the garden of Eden to till it and to watch it… to work it and take care of it, in the NIV. Before there was sin, before there was labour, before there was slavery and exploitation and mortgages to repay… there was work. We have this enduring image of Eden as some sort of nudist luxury resort – but that’s a fiction. Adam gets his hands dirty in Paradise – but that’s okay, because so did his Creator.

God makes the earth, God comes to earth, God makes Adam out of the earth, Adam works the earth – he tends it and takes care of it. Remember verse 5? We had a hint – no shrub of the field being yet on the earth and no plant of the field yet sprouted, for the LORD God had not caused rain to fall on the earth and there was no human to till the soil… The language we see is actually quite agricultural: field, till, take care of – tend and keep would be better translations. So what does this say?

Adam worked. Not for food, because all the best food in the world was at his fingertips; God surrounded him with all the food that he could eat. Not as God’s slave – the God who made the universe, and made Adam, and made a garden for Adam’s pleasure doesn’t need anything that man can make by his hand. Not for a wage – not to repay any debt to his Creator. Why?

God gave Adam satisfaction. And that’s an odd thing to say about work, because our society has this picture of Paradise as sitting on a cloud eating Philly cheese, or sitting on a beach in Bondi or Bali – either way, doing nothing. But that’s a fiction, too.

I like mowing my lawn. Actually, I’m not a huge fan of stone-chips whacking me on the shins, or getting grass up my nose and sneezing like the dickens. And I hate the whipper-snipper. But I do like mowing the lawn. And – at least for me – there’s a lovely satisfaction in switching off the mower and listening to the quiet, having a cool shower, then going back outside with a cup of tea or a beer, sitting down and just going aaaahhh. Watching the pigeons and the pee-wees and the willy-wagtails coming and eating all the disturbed seeds and bugs and worms or whatever. Smelling that new-mown grassy smell. There’s a very real, physical, visceral satisfaction in doing good work, and in enjoying it afterwards. For some people it’s physical. It might be helping a neighbour out, or donating time… but there’s satisfaction, and that satisfaction is, again, a gift from God.

The curse after sin wasn’t being made to work. The curse wasn’t being evicted from a 500-star lazy-town resort. The curse wasn’t being made to work. Adam was a worker from the start. The curse was this: having to survive by his labour. We see it in Genesis 3: By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food. That was the curse – not the work itself. God wanted humans – people – to be fulfilled, satisfied, content.

We have to remember that. There is satisfaction in work. Work is not the evil thing that our society often makes it out to be. Talk to someone who’s looking for work; the unemployed people I regularly deal with end up being unfulfilled, discontent, dissatisfied and unsatisfied. I think I’ve said it before – I suspect that one of Satan’s dirty tricks is to keep some people from being fulfilled, content and satisfied by denying them the opportunity to work.

Who are you? You are made – fearfully and wonderfully made – and the breath of the Almighty has given you life. Why are you here? We’ve been designed to enjoy every good thing that our Father God has willingly, gladly, generously made for us – and to do the work that He sets for us, and to take satisfaction from that, too.

Last stop. Verse 18 – And the LORD God said, “It is not good for the human to be alone, I shall make a sustainer beside him.” There’s an odd sound here, isn’t there? It is not good… In Genesis 1, light was good, land was good, veggies were good, sun and moon were good, birds and fish were good, animals and creepy-crawlies were good… and the sum total was very good. And now there’s something that sounds like a discordant note. It is not good for the man to be alone. I think that God is signalling that He hasn’t finished yet. All things are declared very good when they’re completed, but we’re not quite there yet.

God isn’t suddenly filling-in a gap in the plan. He’s not scratching his head and saying, I really should do something about that. No. And I don’t think Adam is getting bored or lonely or in any way dissatisfied. He’s not going up to God, saying that porcupine I tried to hug… uh, not good. Worse than the shark… No.

Verse 21 – And the LORD God cast a deep slumber on the human, and he slept, and He took one of the ribs and closed over the flesh where it had been, and the LORD God built the rib He had taken from the human into a woman and He brought her to the human. God brings her to the man. Not as some afterthought. Not as an improvement on the prototype. Not made from the clay that Adam walked on, but made from Adam. Shaped, like Adam, by the hands of God. And God brings her to the man. Who gives this bride away?

And the man knows instantly who she is, where she’s come from – and the words are of such longing fulfilled! I love how the first speech of Adam (that we’re given) is when there is another human to respond to. We see that he has obviously talked before – God brought him all the animals to name, so speech is implied… but the first words that we are privy to is when the man has another human to respond to. What does Adam say?

This one at last, bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. And, we read on, they become one flesh. One flesh. It’s not a yucky morph. It’s not a prudish euphemism for sex. It’s completion. The two become one flesh. It’s completion, it’s fulfilment, it’s the delight of God to give His most precious creatures this happiness beyond expectation… but such a perfect creation that Adam recognises her – knows her – straightaway.

Who are you? You are made – fearfully and wonderfully made – and the breath of the Almighty has given you life. Nothing less than that. Nothing less than that.

Why are you here? You’ve been made in God’s image, and in His pleasure, and to have pleasure. You’ve been made to revel in His company and in His creation. You’re made for relationship with the Lord God, and for relationship with each other.

Genesis 2 is a glittering gem. I want to live in Genesis 2. I want to stay there. But I can’t. In Genesis 3 we see why. We see what happens when we’re no longer fulfilled or content or satisfied. We see what happens when we hunt for satisfaction without God – when we try to wrestle control away from God. When we sin. And that sin scars up everything. This earth still has so much beauty, but it’s so tainted, so poisoned, that it’s hard even to hold the image of Eden in our minds without a little bit of cynicism. We know that we’ve been so bent and so warped that we can hardly recognise ourselves as we were made. We can hardly recognise the concept of glorifying God and enjoying Him forever. But we can sneak a peek. Here it is, in Genesis 2. Here we get a picture of God creating perfection. One day at the end of days, there will be a new heaven and a new earth, and they will be made perfect, and those whom Jesus has rescued will be with Him, glorifying God and enjoying Him forever. This is what God intended all along, and this is what He wanted us to be, and this is what He still wants us to be.

John Piper put down a very deep line: Christ did not die to forgive sinners who go on treasuring anything above seeing and savoring God… The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven; it is a way to get people to God. It’s a way of overcoming every obstacle to everlasting joy in God.[7]

I want Genesis 2 back. I want it. I keep hearing that expression: “the church is the bride of Christ” and seeing that intimacy – bone of His bone. Flesh of His flesh. Brought to Christ by God, and enjoying each other forever in the love of the father.

This is who you are.

This is why you’re here.

Genesis 2 is where God tells us about us – and it’s a love song.

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[1] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion. Louisville, Kentucky: the Westminster Press, 1960. Translator: Ford Lewis Battles, Editor: John T. McNeill. p35

[2] Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2004. p20-23

[3] Or, possibly, a lot later. Many translations do not name Adam until Genesis 5:1, and translate ’adam as man/human up to that point.

[4] Translation from Greek New Testament, United Bible Societies’ Fourth, Corrected Edition. Carol Stream, Illinois: Tyndale House, 1990. p325. Italics mine.

[5] Psalm 139:5-14. Robert Alter, the Book of Psalms, A translation With Commentary. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2007. p480-481

[6] Alter, Five Books of Moses. p21

[7] John Piper, God is the Gospel. Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2005. p47

Witness to Truth – John 8

A young man riding his bike was hit by a car. The bones in one leg were pretty well smashed – the x-ray just showed a string of busted pottery. His pelvis was in pieces. His helmet split in two: it almost certainly saved his life, but he was heavily concussed. He left a huge amount of skin on the road – you could see bits of him embedded in the tarmac. Two months in intensive, twelve months before he could begin to think about walking on crutches. Eighteen months later, he was still on crutches… and it was awkward for him to get into the witness box. He was taking on the driver who hit him. He’d obviously suffered a great deal, and he wanted to be compensated for this. Sounds fair enough.

He told the court, essentially, that he was simply riding his bike, and then he woke up in a hospital, wondering where all his skin had gone. He had no memory of the accident itself. He was always a careful, cautious rider – it must have been sheer blind negligence on the driver’s part.

The driver gave his version. He was driving along, carefully observing all the rules of the road, carefully obeying the speed limit, carefully paying attention to the traffic and the conditions ahead… BANG! There was a bicycle on his bonnet, and a body flying forward through the air like Superman. He didn’t see any cyclist on the road before. Had no idea how he got there… The driver was horrified, and since then was very sorry to learn the extent of his injuries. But the bicycle rider just came out of nowhere, and there was nothing that the driver could do – not even to begin to slam on the brakes.

The judge obviously had a problem here. Two versions of essentially the same story… two perspectives… but both couldn’t be completely true, could they?

What the judge did was call forward any witnesses. And, because I was foolish enough to start first aid on this poor guy and give a statement to the police a couple of days later, I had to get into the witness box and try to remember every detail of a two-second event that had happened 18 months ago.

What had happened was this: there were two lanes of traffic, and one lane was full of cars waiting to turn left. The boy on the bike was cycling along pretty rapidly, and he just piloted the bike off the curb between two of the stopped cars. The driver was driving an old Mini. The bike boy never saw him, because the car was too small – so he never tried to slow down. The Mini driver never had a chance to react – the bike just shot out from between two stationary cars right in front of him. There was no time left – all he could do was to lock up his brakes so he didn’t hit the guy a second time.

I had my recollection and my honesty challenged by the young man’s lawyer. I had my memory challenged by the driver’s lawyer. But I was the only witness to the court (out of ten people who helped out until the ambulance departed, I was the only sucker who actually gave a statement). And, in this case, a witness was needed for the truth to be verified.

When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”[1] What an extraordinary thing to say! What an extraordinary claim to make. If I said that, if I claimed that, I suspect that I’d be carted away to a place with nice soft walls. And I suspect rather strongly that if I made such a claim you would pretty instinctively know that I’m hardly telling the truth. I might very well believe it, but it would hardly make it true.

And that’s pretty well what the Pharisees were thinking as Jesus claimed that he was the light of the world. But the Pharisees were smart. They didn’t simply call him a liar… but they challenged his ability to say what he said. What was their reply?

Here you are, appearing as your own witness. Your testimony is not valid.[2] You’ve made an outrageous claim, but you don’t have a single person to back your claim up. It’s the old story – the worst thing you can possibly do on a golf-course is to score a hole-in-one with no-one else around… when you’ve taken a sck-day… Who are you going to tell? That’s what the Pharisees are really saying – you’ve made a claim without anyone to back you up.

Make no mistake – what Jesus just said was enormous. When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world.” It sounds massive. But Jesus was claiming something bigger. And to see that, we really need to steal a time-machine to take us back to Jerusalem - specifically, the night before Jesus said this.

There are three really big Jewish festivals, and Jerusalem gets jam-packed for all of them. In the passage from John’s Gospel that we just read, we’re at one called the Feast of Tabernacles. It’s a really happy festival – lots of food, lots of parties, lots of remembering where the nation of Israel had come from, lots of thanking God for rain and for harvests and food and all the blessings of life. On the last day of the feast, everyone would try to cram into (or at least be near) the Temple. It’s a massive complex in its own right – Flemington Market-sized floorspace. The central building itself is one of the Seven Wonders of the World: an enormous gold-plated brick that could reflect the sun for miles.

This is where the Jews say that God has made His home. They know that God is everywhere, of course, but there’s enormous symbolism in this House of God. This is the last night of the Festival. A Jewish day begins at sundown, not dawn, so this is the beginning of the very last day of the Feast of Tabernacles. And a beautiful ceremony is underway.

It’s dark – no lights are on, no torches, no candles. Everyone in the city is trying to cram into the Temple complex. One tiny red spot appears – most people won’t be able to see it. It’s a priest, carrying a taper. And he lights a candle with it. Then the candle lights another candle, and these candles light more and more and more candles. Candles are being lit all over the Temple. The massive seven-pronged candelabra glows, and the flames from these candles are used to light still more. Thousands and thousands of candles now make the Temple look radiant, a warm golden glow in a sea of pitch-black. Now there’s movement in the crowd, as people come forward. They’re bringing little oil-lamps to these candles. They light them, and begin to move away. They’re carrying their oil-lamps back home, and they light up their houses from a flame that came from the Temple of the Most Holy God. It’s beautiful – a slow glow from inside the Temple, the glow getting brighter and brighter, then thousands and thousands of tiny little fairy-lights bobbing and weaving through the streets, and gradually the whole city filled with warm light, radiating out from the golden Temple. I think it would be well beyond pretty – it would look awesome, but in a hushed, gentle, warm way.

Having seen this magical night, the crowd who heard Jesus would have no doubt about what he was saying. I am the light of the WORLD! Now do you see the magnitude of what Jesus was saying?

I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. The Pharisees call him on it, but they do it in quite a clever way. They know that Jesus is very popular, and that a lot of the crowd are on his side. They know that he was the talk of all Jerusalem – firstly, that he didn’t come as they expected, and, when he did come, they talked about who he was and what he said. Calling Jesus a liar publicly wouldn’t be a good PR move… it would make the Pharisees look like jealous politicians. And we all know that jealous politicians hate looking like jealous politicians! So instead of defamation, they take the lawyer’s approach: question the evidence.

Here you are, appearing as your own witness; your testimony is not valid. Someone else should be making that claim for you. Look around – I don’t see anyone backing you up on this. So, by the rules, we can’t accept what you’re saying as true.

It’s a really clever play. They’re publicly saying that, even if they wanted to believe Jesus and his claim, the rules said that they weren’t allowed to. The rules – at least for a court of law – stated that someone else had to declare who you were and what you were if you were speaking to give evidence. Here you are, appearing as your own witness; your testimony is not valid.

But testimony is something that this book’s writer, John, has been working on for a long time. There are valid witnesses everywhere. By the time we’ve moved to chapter 8, we’ve read about quite a few witnesses who declare the identity of Jesus, and their witness is every bit as valid as the Pharisees could ask for.

Right at the beginning of John’s work, we get a premonition of this passage: In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it… the true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.[3] John, as the writer, is providing us with testimony. John moves on, and reminds us of another John – the Baptist.

John want us to understand, right from the get-go, that Jesus has all the witnesses that he needs, and John the Baptist is a pretty big name to drop. He was massively popular, and tens of thousands came to hear him preach. Lots of people thought he was going to be the Messiah, and he virtually had to beat people off with a stick. He kept telling people that he was only here to announce the coming of the man from God.

And that’s exactly what he did.  He came as a witness concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe… he came only as a witness to the true light.[4] He went further than that – when John the Baptist actually saw Jesus, he shouted Look! the Lamb if God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is the one I meant when I said, ‘he who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’[5] And John the Baptist gives his account of the biggest testimony of all – God Himself declares that this man Jesus is the one who will baptise with the Holy Spirit. In the other Gospels, we see Jesus being baptised by John: heaven is broken open,  living Spirit of God comes down as Jesus comes up from the water. And a voice comes from the heavens – Mark’s Greek puts this so beautifully: You are the Son of Me, who I love; with you I am delighted.[6] And I don’t think I could come up with a better witness than that. John the Baptist gives his own testimony immediately: I have seen, and I testify that this is the Son of God.[7] He said this a long time before Jesus made this claim, and John does so in a very public way.

John the writer gathers more witnesses in his account. As Jesus begins to call his disciples, we see Andrew immediately rush off to find Peter. We have found the Messiah![8] (In fairness, the Messiah had found him, but you know what he’s saying.) And he drags Peter to Jesus. A woman from a despised ethnic minority called the Samaritans gets talking to Jesus at the side of a well. The conversation wasn’t exactly a pleasant one, because Jesus brings up her shady past pretty directly. But her reaction is just like Andrew’s – she goes back to town and tells everyone she meets: Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did (and what she’d done wasn’t really a nice story, either). Could this be the Christ?[9] The people from the town come to meet Jesus – John wrote down their testimony: they said to the woman, ‘we no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Saviour of the world.’[10] Everywhere that Jesus goes, people’s eyes are being opened, and they act as witnesses. They say what they see, and John writes down their testimony. And here, in Jerusalem at the Feast of Tabernacles, there are murmers and whispers ribboning their way through the dense crowds: have the authorities really concluded that he is the Christ? …Surely this man is the Prophet …He is the Christ.[11] If there’s one thing that should be really obvious as you read John’s Gospel, it’s this: there is no shortage of witnesses. There’s no shortage of testimony.

But the leaders, the Pharisees, will never acknowledge that. They don’t have time for what the people in the streets are saying – in chapter 7 they talk of this mass of people listening to Jesus and his teaching as this mob who knows nothing of the law – there is a curse on them.[12] They hold them in contempt… which, when you think about it, doesn’t say much for the Pharisees themselves, because their job was to teach the people well! If you’re measured by your results, how would you assess these teachers? The people are listening to Jesus teach in ways that they’ve never heard before – but the teachers slam the crowd. They’re not listening, and we see in all the Gospels that they’ll never listen, right up to the end. They’ll never listen to Jesus. They’ll never listen to anyone who talks about Jesus. They’ll never listen to anyone bearing witness, giving their testimony, telling people what Jesus has done for them.

Here you are, appearing as your own witness; your testimony is not valid. Jesus’ reply cuts their words to ribbons. You have no idea where I come from or where I am going… I am one who testifies for myself; my other witness is the Father who sent me. And their answer says a lot about them. They don’t ask “who is your father?” Their reply is where is your father?[13] It’s as if they want to bring this Father into the dock. They’re not interested in who he is at all. They just want to discredit Jesus’ words. But whether they believe Jesus and his words doesn’t change anything, because the reality is that (whether they know it or not), they are in no place to judge the Son of God; it’s the other way around. I have much to say in judgment of you. But He who sent me is reliable, and what I have heard from Him I tell to the world.[14]

The world is, in a lot of ways, completely different to the one Jesus walked and talked in. But in just as many ways, things are exactly how they were. There are a lot of people who will never listen to Jesus. They’re not interested in the thought of sin or judgment or hell or heaven. They don’t want to listen. The Pharisees put up one big hurdle: your testimony is not valid. And so many people – educated, well-spoken, clever people – put up a similar hurdle: you can’t prove this. You can’t put your trust in the Bible. It’s an old book from days long ago. You don’t know who the authors really are. You’re reading a myth. Fine, Jesus may have been a real human… we’ll even accept that someone called Jesus existed, that he preached his brand of strange pseudo-Jewish philosophy in an unimportant corner of a huge empire, amongst illiterate, gullible, unsophisticated villagers. He may very well have been executed for sedition or treason or blasphemy… whatever. What has that got to do with us? You can’t prove resurrection. You can’t prove a thing. You want me to listen to you? Fine – give me proof.

It’s the wrong question. Proof is overrated, and, truth be told, we’re pretty selective about how we accept proof anyway. I could have walked into that courtroom and said almost anything. I could have told the truth, I could have told a lie. Let’s face it – who’d know? I wasn’t actually able to prove anything. I didn’t video the accident, I didn’t have any photographs, I didn’t have any documentation. And I wasn’t asked to prove anything, either. I was just asked to give witness – to testify – to the truth. And that was enough to satisfy the legal procedures. I didn’t think of it at the time, but a lot hung on what I said in court. A young man, possibly crippled for life, might have been denied legitimate compensation. A driver might have been forced to pay damages through absolutely no fault of his own. But, as strange as it sounds, I wasn’t asked to prove anything. Just to tell it as it was, to be truthful. To testify to the truth.

Jesus is far, far more reliable than I am. His words are true. You can trust him. You can trust him when he says that the only way to the Father is through him. You can trust him when he says that your sins are forgiven. You can trust him when he says that’s so very important. You can trust him.

But one of the reasons why we’ve got this big, thick Bible here is that we don’t just have Jesus’ word for it. This book is crammed full of… witness. Of people giving testimony. It’s the whole story of how much God loves the world. It’s the whole story of how the world spat in God’s face and turned its back on Him. It’s the whole story of how God will deal with a world that will never listen to Him or His Son. It’s the whole story of Jesus takes the punishment for that world God lovingly made that rejects Him outright, so that anyone who puts their trust in Jesus will be saved from the frightening anger and justice of God.

Proof will only get you so far. Can I prove any of this? No. Can I prove that the Bible is as trustworthy as I say it is? No. But I can’t prove the speed of light, either. I can’t prove that my watch is accurate. I can’t prove how accurate the speedo in my car is – I have to trust that it’s accurate. I can’t prove to you that the sky is blue and that space is black. But I can tell you. I can testify to the truth.

One of the best ways to learn something about God and Jesus is to talk to other Christians. Listen to how they talk about what God has done for them. They can’t prove much either, but they testify to the truth. Some of the things you’ll hear aren’t happy stories – there are tragedies, there are brutal stories, there are angry stories. But you will hear Christians tell the truth, and giving testimony to the truth.

To the Christians, know this about your life – you bear witness to the truth. Be prepared to be a witness, to give your statement. It’s so valuable. Older Christians, you’ve had a life of experiencing God’s mercy and love and grace – even when life has been brutal.

Young Christians, you talk about your love for your Saviour who has plucked you out of the fire – when you talk about Jesus like you talk about love’s fire, you testify to the truth.

If you’re new to all of this, and you want to know more… this book is a brilliant place to start. Read it, and think of it like you would think of statements given in court – a witness to the truth.

You can place your trust in this testimony, the testimony of a man who met Jesus at the very beginning. The same John who wrote down the testimony of all those people, wrote this toward the end of his life: That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched – this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you may also have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son, Jesus Christ.[15]

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[1] John 8:12

[2] Verse 13

[3] John 1:4-5,9

[4] John 1:7-8

[5] John 1:29-30

[6][6] Mark 1:11 “su ei ho uios mou ho agapetos, en soi eudokesa” (Nestle-Aland). Eudokeo: I am well-pleased, I take great delight. John Piper suggests translating with great passion (The Pleasures of God, p36).

[7] John 1:34

[8] John 1:41

[9] John 4:28

[10] John 4:42

[11] John 7:26, 40, 41 Italics mine

[12] John 7:49

[13] John 8:19

[14] John 8:26

[15] 1 John 1:1-3

John 7:1-13 The Gospel of Fame vs. The Gospel of Jesus

 There’s a science and an art to getting your name known. Advertisers spend millions of dollars to try and get us to remember a certain product’s name. Sometimes the cleverest ones are really simple: “We’re happy little Vegemites.”

Politicians need to get their message across, but they also need to get their names and faces recognised. Some are blessed with good looks and fine voices– the Kennedy family was famous for that. Some are masters of words, and they get remembered for their speeches – Churchill and Lincoln were hardly beautiful men, but their speeches are still seen as masterpieces, years after their passing. Very rarely, some can combine the two. I watched Barack Obama through his Presidential campaign, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so richly gifted: handsome in his own way, greatly blessed with his words, and one of the richest public-speaking voices I’ve ever heard. I watched him on the eve of the Presidential election, on a stage. His grandmother had died the night before. It was a miserably wet night. He was exhausted beyond any sane limits.  And he held the crowd, simply and gently. The most captivating moments happened when he quietly asked the crowd a few rhetorical questions… and quietly gave the answer, along with the crowd: “Yes we can.”

Having said that, Lincoln, Churchill, Kennedy and Obama spent millions and millions to get their names remembered, their faces known, their words heard… and their message believed in. The gospel of the world – if you have a message, do whatever you can, take every moment, spend every dollar to get your face out there.

                By any measures that the world uses today, Jesus had something that magnetized everyone. Mark 3:7 – A great crowd followed, from Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem and Idumea and from beyond the Jordan, and from around Tyre and Sidon. When the great crowd heard all that he was doing, they came to him. In John 6, we saw Jesus being pursued by thousands and thousands – all hungry for his words, all believing in his name. Now, in John 7, we’re on the eve of one of the three great festivals of the Jewish calendar. The Feast of Tabernacles was one of the times where everyone throughout the country and throughout the empire would try to get to Jerusalem. It was a celebration of abundance and blessing. It was a reminder that they once lived in nothing more substantial than tents before the Lord blessed them with the Promised Land. It was a time of thanksgiving for God’s richness at the harvest that year. It was a joyous time – an eight-day party.

Jesus’ brothers have a good grasp on the mechanics of fame. They understand the way publicity works. Grab your Bibles and have a look at John 7:3. Jesus’ brothers said to him, ”You ought to leave here and go to Judea, so that your disciples may see the miracles you do. No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.” There’s a statement that should be engraved on every publicist’s doorposts right there: No-one who wants to be a public figure acts in secret. The logical follow-on: Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world. Sensible advice, wouldn’t you say?

Well, if you’re a careful reader of John’s Gospel, you might begin to form a different picture. John gives us a massive clue in the very next sentence: “Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.” For even his own brothers did not believe in him. John uses a critical word here – for. “For” explains the sentence that goes before (like “therefore” tells us what it’s there for). Jesus’ brothers gave him this advice because they did not believe in him. They wish him well, they want him to succeed in whatever it is that he’s doing… but they did not believe in him.

Effectively, they’re telling Jesus that his message needs to be taken to the people on their terms. Thousands have been fed – now go to the Feast. Talk to people while they’re thinking of feasts and food and blessing and plenty… they’ll listen. Do some of those miracles… they’ll believe. But go to the people on their terms.

And Jesus will have none of it.

This isn’t news. If we’re careful readers of John, we should have picked up on this. This is something that John has been trying to tell us for a long time. Back in chapter 2 we’re given the picture of people beginning to believe in Jesus. 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. Wonderful! Isn’t that what we want? Isn’t that what our hearts should stir to see? John says NO, and he says it emphatically. Verse 24: But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. People want to hear Jesus on their own terms, see Jesus on their own terms, love Jesus on their own terms. And he’ll have none of it.

We read on, as five thousand men had their hunger satisfied. It’s an unexpected sign, because they’d actually come to hear him teach. But it was a shockingly powerful sign, and the people witness Jesus as God, creating food from nothing. John has already told us that all things were created through Jesus.[1] They see something that can only be great good news: God, in flesh, creating and nourishing His people. 6:14 is the real climax of the feeding story: After the people saw the miraculous sign that Jesus did, they began to say, “Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.” This has got to be one of the highest points in the history of God and Israel! But John warns us off again, and (again) in no uncertain terms.

So we read on: Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself. John is trying to be as forceful as he possibly can: people are taking Jesus on their own terms. And he will not be taken like that. They’re chasing Jesus all over the countryside, from Jerusalem to the wild hill-country. Everyone has seen the signs, thousands believe in his name – and the Son of God disappears. He leaves them. He gets up and hides in the mountains. And now, in chapter 7, he declines to go to the joyful festival. You go to the Feast… I am not yet going up to this Feast, because for me the right time has not yet come.

If we’re thoughtful readers of John, we should see that there’s a gospel of the world – a gospel of fame, if you like – and the gospel of Christ Jesus will have nothing to do with it. Jesus will not be taken on our terms. If we read deeply and reflect deeply, we might find ourselves seriously unsettled at this point. Here, at three points in John, people are eagerly, gladly, anxiously following Jesus and believing in his name. But… Chapter 2: Jesus puts no trust in them. Chapter 6: Jesus gets up and walks out on them. And now, Jesus refuses to go up and join the people who believe in him most.

As followers of Jesus – as eager, glad, anxious followers of Jesus the King – are we not just a little bit worried about this? We should be…

But when the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles was near, Jesus’ brothers said to him, “You ought to leave here and go to Judea, so that your disciples may see the miracles you do.” There would be something appropriate here, wouldn’t there? What would be more appropriate than the man who could make bread from nothing, who could change water into wine, to go up to Jerusalem? To appear at a festival that celebrated the blessings of land and security and crops and flocks and abundance and goodness…

There’s that doctrine of fame again – that gospel of the world. And I’m frightened that we’re often encouraged to approach Jesus in the same way as the people in Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem. Ask yourself a question: What do you want from Jesus? What brings you to this table? What brings you to a poorly-catered wedding, where Jesus turns well-water into rich wine? What brings you to the back-streets of Jerusalem to eavesdrop on Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus? What brings you to the Jesus who heals at a touch, or with a word? What brings you to the desert-places as Jesus feeds the many crowds of people that come to hear him speak? What brings you to Jesus today? What do you want from Jesus? What would you have him do?

You ought to leave here and go to Judea, so that your disciples may see the miracles you do. Is that what we want? Do our hearts hunger for a miracle, so that we can be reassured that Jesus really is who he claims he is? John says be very, very careful. The crowds saw signs – miracles are signs, as far as John is concerned, big signposts pointing straight to Jesus as God – and they believed in his name, and Jesus walked out on them. Jesus’ brothers witnessed the signs, but they only saw the miracles. For even his brothers did not believe in him. It’s a really important point, and in John’s Greek, it’s even more stark.

John calls each miracle a sign – semeion – but here, the word his brothers use is quite different: they call the miracles a work – ergon. Properly translated, his brothers tell him to go so that your disciples may see the work that you do. It’s just something that Jesus does… like it’s his job. The miracles haven’t acted as a sign for them at all. The signs haven’t directed their eyes towards Jesus. The signs haven’t directed their hearts towards God the Father Almighty. The signs are just… work. And so we read: For even his brothers did not believe in him.

What’s changed? Follow Jesus, and he’ll give you everything your heart desires? Johns says, be very, very careful. Our hearts desire some pretty dangerous stuff. Our hearts desire much more than our daily bread.

Remember back to the feeding of the 5000, when the crowd wanted Jesus… believed in Jesus… and wanted to make him king. The mob wanted to smash the invading Romans. Wipe out the hideous, pagan Greek culture that had invaded the land as thoroughly as the Romans had. Restore the kingdom that David had built and Solomon had made the envy of the world. And for that you need a king. A king will give us security. A king will give us strength. A king will give us power. And that’s the problem right there.

You don’t call for revolution because you want to serve. You don’t toss out a government because you want to obey different leaders. You don’t want to have a king unless a king can give you what you want. You don’t want to serve a king unless he’s going to serve you.

They didn’t want a king – they wanted political independence. And when Jesus came through the countryside, preaching about the Kingdom of God, performing signs that displayed the power of God, they followed him. Of course they did. This guy could set hearts on fire. He had power – serious power. He spoke with authority. The signs he did led them to remember Moses, and the Great Prophet that Moses talked about. Who else would give them their freedom?

In the centre of their desire for Jesus was a desire for self. They wanted Jesus for their own reasons. They saw Jesus as good news, and they couldn’t hear his Good News at all. They wanted Jesus on their own terms.

Things haven’t changed much, have they? The majority position of the world outside these walls is that Jesus and his miraculous signs don’t matter. But there’s a minority position inside the church that encourages us to see Jesus in the same light as this crowd on the hill saw him, that encourages us to be like the disciples in Jerusalem, and see Jesus as a passport to the desires of their hearts.

Christ can give you what you want in life. You’re favoured by God, and He wants you to be successful – so ask, in His Son’s powerful name, and expect everything you ask for. Don’t accept second-best.

You’re the son of a King, aren’t you? You’re a King’s daughter, princess, and you should see yourself as royalty. Health, wealth, all that you can be blessed with… it’s yours. Just claim Jesus for yourself – believe in his name. Show your loyalty and gratitude and glad obedience by sowing your money into his Kingdom (collection plate coming shortly), but don’t worry, because God will bless you abundantly if you give. And if you’re not being drowned in blessings… well, maybe there’s a problem with your faith. Maybe there’s still some sin in your life. There’ll be a reason why you don’t have the Lord’s anointing, and that reason will be you – not God, because Jesus is faithful, isn’t He?

That’s a mindset that frightens me. This is what it tells me: God’s a sugar-daddy, that the Holy Spirit is a great big ATM, and that Jesus is the pin-number into God’s account for you.  That’s a really offensive way of putting it, but that is, in effect, what the doctrine of the Prosperity Gospel reduces the Trinity to. For all His might and majesty and splendour and justice and mercy, God’s sole purpose is to serve and obey us… you’re joking.

I have no idea how the people who preach this Prosperity gospel can explain the existence of the persecuted church… how they can explain martyrdom… how they can possibly explain the saints under the altar in Revelation, those souls who have been slain because of the word of God, crying out how long, O Lord? [2] How could you possibly explain the way that the persecuted church prays for us in the prosperous West because they see us as being under murderous spiritual attack?

We follow Jesus. We hunger for Jesus, we thirst for Jesus, we want Jesus… But when was the last time we checked ourselves and asked ourselves why? Why are we following Jesus?

If you go back and read through the rest of chapter 6 – and I can’t encourage you strongly enough to spend a lot of time in John 6 through the week – you’ll see that the crowd follows Jesus even more. They follow him back to Capernaum, and they want more: Jesus tells them that [t]he work of God is this: to believe in the one He has sent. And their first response is stunning: What miraculous sign then will you give us that we may see it and believe you?[3] Tragic. They’ve just watched him heal the sick, drive out demons, feed a vast crowd by an act of creation… and they ask for a sign so that they can believe… That’s a tragedy. And as you work your way through that chapter, you’ll see Jesus turn around and say things that frighten so many of that following mass. I am the bread of life. It is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. No-one comes to the Father but through me. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life… my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Truth be told, it’s not just the crowd of followers that get frightened by these words. You try it – try telling people that the only way that God will allow Himself to be accessed is through Christ Jesus. Try telling people that without the blood and the flesh of the slain Lamb of God there will be only an eternity of pain and punishment and Hell. Try that – and you’ll see people walk away from you… The Gospel, the saving Good News is horrifically offensive to the human spirit, the sinful human spirit. When people hear it, they walk away, they run away, they flee.

The people who had chased Jesus… walk out. They get away. This is a teaching that they can’t stomach. And in the end, it’s just Jesus and the Twelve. Jesus looks at twelve men. “You want to leave too? You want to go back home as well?” It’s Peter who breaks the silence. Where else have we to go? You have the words of eternal life.[4]

His answer sounds like desperation. But it’s the right answer, isn’t it? Where else have we to go? Why are you following Jesus? Where else have we to go? Jesus is the Bread of Life, and he’s the only Bread that will satisfy what your soul needs. Where else have we to go?

He’s the only Living water that will satisfy the cracked, parched throat of anyone who realises that they’re truly dying of thirst. Where else have we to go?

And now, finally, we begin to approach the Lamb of God on his terms.

When God the Holy Spirit opens our eyes, we finally see that we have nowhere else to go. And we see that we have nothing to eat, and that almost all of our appetites just lead us to destruction. And before us is the King of all Creation – the Son of God – who, despite his staggering power and his unbearable glory, is happy to take into his hands something as low as peasant-food barley bread and some strips of dried fish… to feed his people. The King who offers us himself, so that we might live, and live with him, and he in us.

This is not a king who would go to Jerusalem to preside over the great religious feast, even though he’s the only one who can give us our daily bread. This isn’t a king whose throne is at the head of a banquet table.

This is a king who would go to Jerusalem for the Passover. And while the children of Israel would slaughter a lamb and paint their door-posts with blood, so that they could remember that they were only spared from the angel of death because of the blood of that slain lamb, this King was stripped and flayed and butchered and hung like a piece of meat.

You go to the Feast. I am not yet going up to this Feast, because for me the right time has not yet come.

This is Jesus, on his own terms. Obedient to the Father, to the point of death, even death on a cross.[5] John the Baptist was absolutely right, even at the very beginning – behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.[6]

Are we prepared to follow him – follow him on his own terms? Despite what some preachers say, it won’t make life easier – it may well make life harder. Jesus warns us about that, too. He tells us repeatedly that to follow him is to sacrifice, to suffer, to take up a cross – not that piece of jewellery, but that hideous, murderous instrument of torture and death. But where else have we to go?

Please – take the time this week – or even today – to think. If taking Jesus on his own terms is frightening, if following Jesus is something that you find hard to do, if accepting the bread that Jesus offers you is something that you haven’t done… please – take him up. The wrestle is worth it.

If you say that you do follow Jesus, take the time to examine your heart and ask why.

If you find yourself troubled when you ask yourself why, think it through. Pray. Read John 6, deeply, and take a good amount of time to let the Word of God work itself into you.

If you know that it’s because we have nowhere else to go, then thank and give praise to God the Spirit who opens eyes and hearts. Thank and give praise to the Father, who loved the world so much that he gave his only, unique Son. Thank and give praise to Jesus – God the Son.

Amen.

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[1] John 1:3

[2] Revelation 6:9-10

[3] John 6:29-30

[4] John 6:68

[5] Philippians 2:8

[6] John 1:29

Mission… Impossible?

Mission Impossible. It’s a good phrase, isn’t it? The original TV series was really a lie… of course they weren’t impossible missions; the good guys completed the missions, the missions were just hard enough to be over in time for tea, and that there were enough gadgets in the cupboard to overcome the opposition. The TV series ended up in the movies – now everything looked far more spectacular, and it took two hours to get to the end of the story… but, even though the details were all different, the story really stayed the same.

So, if I was paying attention, there was actually no such thing as Mission Impossible. There was Mission Difficult, Mission Expensive, an awful lot of Mission Unfeasable, one or two hundred Mission Stupid and (and to date) three “Missions That Require Tom Cruise Or We’d Simply Lose Interest.”

But we knew that, didn’t we? One thing that Hollywood teaches is that nothing is impossible. Bad guys have unlimited resources, good guys have unlimited resourcefulness. We don’t even have the expectation of an impossible mission. We know the ending, we just want to know how it’ll get done. Lesson from Hollywood – you can do anything. If you’ve had a massive car crash, you can still run like a maniac, use a pistol accurately, and come up with witty things to say. Fall through the roof of a building while having a fight? No problem.

Sure, Wilbur. I slipped in a bath a few years ago and I nearly snapped my leg in half. Obviously I’m not buff enough, because instead of wrestling my bath with my bare hands and throwing it clear through a wall, I just… fell over and clutched my leg like the wuss that I am. I howled – it hurt! It hurt for a few days! I never saw that in the movies…

I like the real Mission Impossible stuff that I find in the Bible. Things that are absolutely impossible in real life. Things that Hollywood won’t touch, because they’re just too incredible (i.e. they lack credibility, and credibility is everything in Hollywood).

Try this on for size. You might know the story from Sunday School… Judges 7: Mission Impossible for a man named Gideon…it reads like the movie 300, doesn’t it? 300 men, up against a Superdome-sellout-sized army. And if that doesn’t sound impossible enough, each of the 300 soldiers is armed with a candle, a jar and a trumpet. If Gerard Butler yelled this is Sparta, brandishing what he won in last year’s Christmas cracker, would you pay to see it? But that’s the whole point of the story, isn’t it?

Judges 7 makes it clear, over and over again, that the Lord alone would have the credit here. The enemy literally chopped itself to destruction, and only when the remnant fled did Israel give chase with weapons. Gideon’s army was stripped of any way of claiming victory – they had to be seen in the impossible state, so that God alone would get the glory… no-one else.

Sometimes we know the Mission Impossible story so well that we miss the heart of the story. We remember the story, but we miss the workings of God.

We remember the story, but we miss the workings of God.

 I wonder sometimes if we take this attitude with Jesus, with his Gospel, his euaggelion, his Good Message. I wonder if we acknowledge that yes, his mission wasn’t easy – but because we know the story so well, we again miss some of the brutal realities. Jesus was attempting an enormous Mission Impossible. And, in missing that, we once again miss the workings of God – Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

How do we see Jesus’ early ministry? How do we consider the first year or two of Jesus’ teaching and preaching? I think what often comes to mind is the series of miracles – some spectacularly public, some quiet and intensely private.

The woman who had been haemorrhaging for years… the feeding of lots-more-than-five-thousand… a legion of demons destroying themselves as Jesus threw them out of a suffering man…

I think what often comes to mind is the series of brilliant teachings – the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), the Lord’s Prayer, Luke 6, Nicodemus and the idea of being born again (John 3).

We often see the high points – and that’s good, because they really are high points. But what we can do is miss how much of a Mission Impossible it was.

• Matthew 8:34 And behold, all the city came out to meet Jesus, and when they saw him they begged him to leave their region.
• Matthew 12:14 But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him. (In the Greek, DESTROY is far more emphatic than merely STOP.)
• Mark 3:6 The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.
• Mark 3:21 And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, “He is out of his mind.”
• Luke 4:29 And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff.
• John 5:18 This is why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him
• John 7:20-21 “Why do you seek to kill me?” The crowd answered, “You have a demon! Who is seeking to kill you?”
• John 7:25 Some of the people in Jerusalem therefore said, “Is not this the man whom they seek to kill?”
• John 10:33 The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.”

Please notice something. None of these verses come from the last week in Jerusalem, where we graphically see how Jesus was opposed. All of those quotes come from the front-end of his ministry – the one that we normally think of as being the most successful time of Christ’s life on earth.

Here’s a mission, should you choose to accept it. Go to a place, as a missionary. Tell people that you are the one that the great prophets spoke about. Tell people that the Bible was written specifically to point the way to you. Tell people that you are THE way, THE truth, THE life. And just to make it all the harder, tell all this to a people who know their Bibles inside out, firmly believe that they are doing the right thing by God, are very wary of false teaching, and have a very real sense of how wrong it would be to take the name and the Word of the Lord God in vain. In other words, people a lot like us. Try it. How do you like your chances?

I’ve used this picture before, but… picture this. If somebody came through the doors at the back, came up to the lectern, flipped open the Bible to Isaiah 61, read aloud, sat down and then announced that he was the fulfilment of that prophecy… how many people here would be likely to go “oh, cool – we’ve been waiting for you”? How would you react? What would you say to such a man? I’d try to get him out of the building as fast as I could, I’d probably pray for his delusional (or deluded) soul… but I wouldn’t want his voice anywhere near here.

Jesus came to God’s people, those who knew the Law, those who thought that they knew God. And he showed them where they stand in relation to the law, how far away from obedience their hearts truly are, how that even in their rigid obedience to the letter of the law they constantly broke it in their hearts and minds. John absolutely nails it, right at the start of his gospel – He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognise him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.[1]

Nothing has changed, has it?

Mission Impossible – to preach the coming kingdom of God to a people who think they know all there is to know about God’s justice, mercy and wrath.

Mission Impossible – the rescue of humanity from itself.

Mission Impossible – turn hearts around and save them from the wrath that is to come.

Do we begin to fathom just how difficult the task that God gave to Jesus really is? Do we appreciate how hard Jesus worked, how constantly he spoke, appeared, walked, taught, preached, chatted, lectured, told stories, healed, argued, persuaded, debated… for people to begin to understand how his teachings were not only different from all the other itinerant preachers that were also around, but that his words were the words of God? Do we get it?

We sometimes say – very easily and quickly – that Christ died for my sins. We rarely say that he walked, exhausted himself, taught, taught, taught and taught… so that I might understand what it is that he’s saying… so that I might KNOW that he died for my sins.

One thing that we see over and over and over again in Jesus’ early ministry is how much preaching he did, how the Devil got in his way wherever he preached, and how determined Jesus was to keep on preaching non-stop – no matter what obstacle was thrown into the path.

Matthew 5:23 And he went through all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom of God.

Mark 3:20 Then he went home, and the crowd gathered again, so that they [Jesus and the Twelve] could not even eat [bread].

Luke 4:42-44 And when it was day, he departed and went into a desolate place. And the people sought him and would have kept him from leaving them, but he said to them, “I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose.” And he was preaching in all the synagogues of Judea.

No highway, no car, no public transport, no hotels overnight. No marketing campaigns, no radio ads, no guest appearances on breakfast TV.

No microphones, no public-address systems, no pre-recorded messages. No internet to post blog-notes. No podcasts, YouTube, iTunes, Facebook,  or Twitter, no laptops, no typewriters, no printing presses. Just a pair of feet covered by leather sandals, the message of the Lord God to stir up the hearts and minds and souls of men… and this.

The Bible.

Mission Impossible. The mission that Jesus had was, simply, impossible for one man. One man can certainly pull a crowd, and we saw a few weeks ago (when we looked at the feeding of the lots-more-than-five-thousand) that crowds chased him through the hills and the wild desert-places, not just in the towns and villages. But crowds aren’t everything. Crowds get it wrong, and when John points us to crowds following Jesus because of the signs that he’d performed, he’s actually setting up a warning flag. John 2:23 – Many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name. Excellent – a successful mission… isn’t it? No. Next verse: But Jesus did not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men.

John 6:15 – they intended to come and make him king. Well, that’s what we want to hear, isn’t it? Not quite – opening out the verse a little more, we see that Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself. He walked out on them.

Jesus’ mission looks pretty successful in our eyes – particularly when we associate Gospel success with huge revivals, Billy Graham crusades, sell-out crowds, mega-church numbers in the House any given Sunday… the sheer volume of people being reached with pay-TV channels, podcasts, book-sales or whatever.

Jesus walked out on them.

Mission Impossible.

We know how the story  ends. We talk about it every Easter. Next week is the start of Lent – which makes Easter about seven weeks off. We know how the story ends. We know the ending so well that we can miss the working of God. As Jesus’ mission is terminated, we see eleven men who knew Jesus more than any other men. We see eleven men who should have understood, who should have grasped it all… but what did they do? They fled in horror and terror, and they let their Master and their Lord be arrested by the people he came to save , judged in a heathen military court, tortured, used as a political pawn, and finally hung like a piece of meat from some lumber set as a cross-bar…

The Mission is impossible for men, and every man that knew and loved him had vanished. But nothing is impossible for God. Christ Jesus returned, appeared to the disciples who ran away in terror and fear – and he said to them: it’s your turn. You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.[2] We then begin to see one of the most extraordinary transformations in the Bible.

Those men, those who ran away from their teacher, took hold of the saving gospel of Christ crucified and risen. They were given the Spirit, and they went forth. Look at Peter – a clumsy oaf who seemed to spend most of his time in the Gospels with one foot (or both) in his mouth. Now he’s still fearless, but he’s quick with his words, articulate, and he speaks with the authority of God.

The Jewish leadership tried very hard to beat the Gospel into submission. But the more pressure they put on the believers, the more the Good Message of God simply spread from Jerusalem right around the Roman world. In Paul’s letter to the Romans, we see plans for him to head out to Spain… less than 25 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus.[3] It grew and spread. It wasn’t a Jewish problem anymore. The Roman leadership classed it as a dangerous cult and tried to stomp it to death – and even under the most barbaric persecution, the Message grew and spread, and within three hundred years a Roman general took the symbol of the Cross as the standard to fight under. Constantine became Emperor, and he declared that Christianity was the religion of Rome

What has changed? In some ways, a lot has changed. In some ways, nothing has changed at all. Today we can communicate with almost anyone, anywhere in the world. I’ve been in contact with people in London, Dubai, Ireland, all corners of Australia this week – but I haven’t said hi to my next-door neighbour. Education levels are far higher than they’ve ever been, and our kids are getting smarter and smarter. But finding the time to sit down and read my Bible is… hard. Two years at Moore College taught me great things – but when I sat down on my front porch for half an hour with a Jehovah’s Witness, nothing I said seemed to make a difference. I could happily debate theology all day… I’d much rather do that than get off my backside and take the Gospel to the ends of the earth – or even the middle of my own street.

It’s hard work to take the Gospel to the ends of the street. It’s hard, hard graft. It’s a lot easier to be a good example of how a Christian should live than to actually tell people why we do what we do. And we can fall into that trap really easily – quietly let it be known at work that we’re Christians, then try to live as righteously and as virtuously as we can. Let our lives be above reproach so that others may see our good works and give glory to our Father in heaven. I should make it clear that there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s exactly how we’re told to live. But that’s not the whole story – or, at least, it shouldn’t be.

 Mission Impossible. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is simply this. Preach Christ crucified and risen to the whole world.

Preach Christ crucified and risen to the whole world.

It’s a message that doesn’t make sense to so many people. There were times when Jesus’ family thought he was nuts. Why should we expect any different? The idea that God became man, took all the sins upon himself, was sacrificed – butchered, really, just as atoning sacrifices were – so that we might live forever in purity and peace with God… it’s not an idea that flies well. The idea that this is the only way to be saved from the justice, the anger and the wrath of the very same God… so many people just see it as arrogance and stupidity. It’s a foolish message.

Paul knew that. He knew about Mission Impossible. The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing.[4] Paul went on, though; For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

It’s impossible. So what?

Preach Christ crucified and risen to the whole world.

Preach Christ crucified and risen to the whole world.

We preach. We must preach. This is what we are called to do. This is what we’ve been commanded to do. Preaching isn’t being able to deliver a sermon – what I’m doing isn’t the preaching that we’ve been ordered to do. Telling people of the love of God, or the justice of God, or the mercy of God, or the righteous rage of God – that’s preaching. Telling people of what it cost God for our salvation – that’s preaching. Telling people of Jesus’ love, Jesus’ death, Jesus’ power over death, Jesus’ saving name, Jesus’ return – that’s preaching.

Two questions – who do we say that Jesus is? Who do people outside these walls say Jesus is? Until those answers agree, we’re on mission. We’re on a mission that is just about impossible. It’s a mission that might take us anywhere. A few years ago, the notion of preaching the risen Christ would have scared me senseless. The thought of preaching Christ in Penrith would have… scared me a lot more. Some of you will be taken further than that, to places that you have no normal earthly desire to go. Some of you will go home and preach. But you’ll know, and you’ll go, because your heart will burn.

Burn with the love of Jesus.

Burn fiercely for the hearts of those who don’t know him.

Burn because the Spirit set it on fire.

That’s when you don’t care about the impossible mission. That’s when the ending doesn’t matter. Mission impossible, should you choose to accept it. Take the saving message of God’s grace and Christ’s love to the whole world.

Your time starts now.

---

[1] John 1:10-11

[2] Acts 1:8

[3] Running on the assumption that Romans was written AD57

[4] 1 Corinthians 1:18

What Brings You To This Meal? John 6

John Piper approached this chapter and reckoned he could quite easily spend a year preaching here. I think he’s got a point. There is a lot going on – some of which we recognise, some of which is strange and unfamiliar – but even as we begin to deal with the most famous episode here, we should begin to notice something else. This chapter is a deeply unsettling piece of writing. It begins with Jesus being pursued by people who couldn’t get enough of him. It ends with so many people turning away from Jesus that he turns to the Twelve and asks them if they want to leave him as well.

We’re going to simply look at the first fifteen verses, and even here – if we read deeply and reflect deeply – we might find ourselves unsettled, deeply. Scripture does that sometimes. We have, set before us, a story that almost everyone knows. Five loaves and two fishes – it’s one of the things that Jesus is most famous for in the world at large. We learned it in Sunday school, or at home… or we just absorbed it as we absorb all the famous stories of our culture. The trouble is that we always seem to learn half the story. And I’m not convinced that we learn the important half.

The back-story is found scattered through the other three Gospels. Matthew tells us that Jesus had just heard the news of the brutal, wasteful murder of his cousin, John the Baptist[1]. Mark reports that Jesus was insistent that he and his disciples get some rest, because there were so many people crowding around them that they could hardly scratch themselves: literally, Mark 6:31 translates that they had no leisure so much as to eat. So Jesus was in retreat. But the retreat was a pretty short-lived one: people were so desperate for a piece of this great miracle-worker that they ran around the north shore of the Sea of Galilee, and then up into wild hill-country, to get to him.

Verse 2 is a really useful marker – if you’ve got your own Bible, get a pencil out… And a great crowd of people (lit. many crowds) followed him because they saw the miraculous signs he had performed by healing the sick. The NIV says “miraculous signs”, which I suspect can concentrate our minds on the miraculous rather than the sign. John, however, spends a lot of time drawing our eyes to signs: signs Jesus did, signs that healed, signs that drew people towards Jesus, signs that pointed to Jesus as God’s promised Christ, signs that pointed to Jesus as the Son of God, signs that pointed from Jesus the Son to Yahweh the Father. Signs isn’t a code-word for supernatural acts – we think it is, indeed we still talk of signs and wonders as shorthand for miracles. No. Signs are what they say they are… traffic signals, billboards on the side of a freeway. Signs direct our eyes and our hearts… at least, they should. It doesn’t matter how small or spectacular the miracle – feeding thousands, raising the lame, making the blind see, healing the sick, bringing the dead to life – in John’s mind, the sign is merely a marker to a bigger reality. And a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the signs he had performed by healing the sick. So underline signs. Maybe put a bracket around miraculous…

Jesus looks up and sees this huge mass of people coming for him. One thing is clear – they will need feeding by the end of the day. They had just chased him. In the other Gospel accounts we read that Jesus welcomed them, preached and taught, and healed even more sick people. It turned out to be a long day. But Jesus knew this from the beginning. Verse 6: He asked this only to test (measure, weigh) him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do. Jesus had it well under control long before anyone had realised the extent of the problem… or even that there was one.

Philip had no idea how serious the problem was. Verse 7 – Jesus turned to Philip and asked him where they could get their hands on food to feed the crowd. I’ll go straight from the Greek this time: Philip responded to him: “Two hundred denarii of loaves is not sufficient, if each takes a little.” Philip saw the size of the crowd and did the maths. A denarius is what the average worker was paid for a day’s labour. I did some maths and came up at about $20-30,000. That’s still a lot of money for a quick feed – try that through a Macca’s drive-through. Besides – who’s likely to carry that kind of money on them? No credit cards, no EFTpos…

But Philip didn’t actually answer Jesus’ question.

What did Jesus ask? Where shall we buy bread? Philip gives him a cost analysis, not an answer. The truth of the matter is that there was no place to go. Nobody in that region would deal with anything like that quantity of food, on short-notice or not. Where shall we buy bread? It’s a question worth giving thought to.

Andrew takes Philip’s answer one step further by tracking down food that he could find. Verse 9: Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many? I’ve never made my mind up about Andrew’s question. It sounds stupid. He could be trying to crack a joke. He might have been a little bit cheeky – or even irritated or just plain frustrated. Either way, the question stands: how far will five loaves and two fishes go? By the way, the fish in the boy’s lunch-box isn’t a lovely, plump thing that had just been pulled out of the sea. Here’s a fish that John West really would reject. John’s Greek is pretty specific on that[2] – remember that John is a fisherman, so for him it’s an important detail. Fish jerky is the best I can do… think of something dried, preserved, like a smoked fillet. Cheap barley peasant-bread and two strips of fish jerky. It’s not an impressive lunch for one, let alone five thousand. 

Verse 10, now. How far will five bread-rolls and two strips of fish-jerky go? Here’s Jesus’ answer. Have the people sit down – literally, recline. The custom was to lay on your side to eat, not to sit as we do, so Jesus tells them to recline – they are to sit in anticipation of eating. [A]nd the men sat down, about five thousand in number. Women and children don’t count – literally, in this case. The other gospels give the 5000 figure, plus women and children. Verse 11: Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish. So what happened?

What happened was that God had provided, and everyone’s hunger was satisfied. And here was a sign. Here was a huge sign. Really, the how it happened – the mechanics of the miracle – is irrelevant. The five loaves and two fishes… of course Andrew was right; How far will they go among so many? The answer – nowhere. And so Jesus creates. The world and everything in it is created through him and for him, so creating bread and fish is no issue at all… but as far as the how-of-it goes, John is silent. That’s not where our eyes should be. He wants our eyes on the sign. God had provided, and everyone’s appetite was satisfied.

Verse 12 – When they all had enough to eat (lit. when they were satisfied… underline that, make a note), he said to his disciples, “Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.” So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten. Again, to adjust the mental picture, the baskets probably weren’t those enormous washing-baskets that you see in kiddy-Bible pictures. Why anyone would bring 12 washing-baskets along would be a mystery, too. Think more like the size of a large plate – something fishermen would likely keep in their boats, something to keep lunch in. I suspect that this was a sign for the benefit of Jesus’ closest disciples. After all is said and done, after you’ve worked and spent yourselves sharing the Bread of Life with the world, there will always be enough to satisfy you, too. The servants will never go hungry feeding the guests of the King, no matter how many come towards the Kingdom.

But the public sign was certainly seen by the public. There was no sleight-of-hand. There was no hocus-pocus. The crowd watched Jesus give thanks, had watched him break the bread and the fish, and had watched amazed as outrageous quantities of food appeared in front of them, dealt-out by Jesus. Everyone is seeing something absolutely breathtaking.

Verse 14 – After the people saw the miraculous sign that Jesus did, they began to say, “Surely this is the Prophet, who is to come into the world!” They saw the miracle for what it was – a sign that pointed to something even bigger… That’s what the sign is for. That’s what a sign is designed to do. Surely, this is the Prophet who is to come into the world!

 This is the climax of the story. Here’s where the chapter pivots. Right in the space-bar gap between verse 13 and 14…

 Logically, there are three choices that they can make.

The first choice is to recognise that only the Living God can create something out of nothing, to recognise that one with the power of the Living God stands before them, and to bow low before the King – seek mercy at the feet of the King, and ask what the King would have them do.

The second choice is to watch the miracle without being moved. See the sign, but dismiss it completely – see it as neither sign nor miracle. Or worse, credit the miracle as the works of Beelzebub; by the prince of demons he casts out demons. We see this happen throughout Jesus’ life, as the Jewish leadership attempt to come to terms with signs.

Third choice: the man before your eyes just created bread from out of nothing. It’s just before Passover. What do you think? The great prophet Moses saw that Israel was fed in the wilderness. Moses led them from the brutal enslavement that they had endured in Egypt for 400 years, led them right up to the doors of the Promised Land. Now a prophet appears, miraculously feeding them in the wild… right before Passover, a feast that always brought out fiery feelings of nationalism. The Promised Land is once again overrun with pagans; Greek culture is creeping into everyday life, and the Children of Israel are under Rome’s thumb. Now – here is the Prophet! He’ll free us from the vulgar, pagan chains of the Roman Empire! The conquering King has finally arrived! He preaches about the Kingdom of God… What’s the next step? Get him! Hold him up! Acclaim him! Make him known! Rally the people around him! Support the mission of the new king – gather men and arms together and establish the Kingdom of God! Proclaim the New Kingdom loudly!

Three choices. We can see how the crowd chose: Verse 15 – [T]hey intended to come and make him king… by force. There we see their motive. There we see their hearts laid bare. And now we see the dark side of the wonderful Sunday-school story. The dark side is this: after he’d spent the day teaching them, after he’d fed their hearts and souls as well as their stomachs, Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself. Jesus walks out on them. Jesus simply gets up and leaves. What just happened there?

The next day, the crowd realises that Jesus has disappeared, so they came charging back around the lake to Capernaum. And Jesus opens fire: I tell you the truth, you were looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs, but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Wait a minute – is that fair? They saw signs – in verse 2 we saw that a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the miraculous signs he had performed on the sick. They followed him because they saw signs… didn’t they? Why did they follow Jesus? What did they see when they watched miracles being performed so many times?

There’s no doubt they saw signs, and that Jesus had acquired a great reputation because of signs. In chapter 2, we read that many people saw the miraculous signs that he was doing and believed in his name.[3] That’s good, isn’t it?

Not if you read John carefully. Flip back and take a look: many people saw the miraculous signs that he was doing and believed in his name. Next verse – John 2:24: But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people. And here, despite the fact that vast amounts of people are wildly enthusiastic in believing in Jesus – ready to proclaim King Jesus – we see Jesus retreat once again.

I think this should disturb us. I think this should make us feel uneasy. We’re in a series called “A Taste of Heaven”, we’re looking at “Meals With Jesus” and, to be sure, this is one big meal – mass catering, if you will. But what brought these people to this meal? What drove the great crowds to chase Jesus around a lake, into the hills? How did they read the signs? What brought them to this meal?

And if we can answer that question, I wonder if we can ask the question of ourselves: what do we see as we read these miracle stories – these signs? Why are we following him? What brings us to this table?

We can read the miracle, without being moved at all. There are two very real possibilities here. The first one is obvious, and it’s the majority position of the world: see the sign, but dismiss it completely. Put it in that cute category of folklore and myth. We hear that all the time. We’re in a scientific, rational age now, and we should grow up, put away childish things, appreciate the stories for their great literary value… and simply ignore them.

 The atheist that I pay most attention to is Christopher Hitchens. He’s a devastating debator, he’s about as articulate as they come (he was the editor of Vanity Fair magazine for years), and he’s a very sharp observer. Here’s his take on the miraculous signs in the Bible: “Let me invite you for a moment to look at the pictures taken by the Hubble Telescope… the extraordinary revelations of swirling, yet somehow beautiful, new galaxies, in colour and depth and majesty. Turn away from that if you wish… It’s really awe-inspiring; a lot more, say, than a crowd of pigs infested by devils running down a hill into the sea, which is a piece of sorcery and cheap magic of the sort that shouldn’t impress any thinking person.” He’s a nasty thinker, but he’s a thinker, and I suspect that he’s managed to paraphrase how inconsequential miracles, or signs, are in many peoples’ minds. I might add that calling Christ’s power over the demonic “sorcery and cheap magic” is no different to the Pharisees saying loudly that “he casts out demons by the prince of demons.” It’s about as dangerous as blasphemy gets.

Almost as dangerous is our own apathy as we read the Bible. We know the stories. Some of us have lived with these stories our whole lives, and we know all the surprise endings. We’re not surprised anymore. Today some of us have listened to the Gospel reading, and almost automatically thought; “oh, yes, I know this one.” We’ve just read how the Son of God broke one of the fundamental laws of physics: matter can be neither created nor destroyed– and we barely raise an eyebrow. Because we know that one. We know it’s a sign. We know that it points to Jesus as the all-sustaining Bread of Life. We know that the answer that Philip should’ve given to Jesus’ question – where can we go to get bread – is simply this: go to Jesus, because he’s the only one who can give us, today, our daily bread. We know that there’s only one that can sustain us, we know how parables and miracles and signs work.

 And it’s entirely possible to know all of this, and yet not be moved. Familiarity might not breed contempt, but it can certainly breed a certain kind of local anaesthetic, where we see everything but feel nothing. Be careful. Be careful in your reading, and watch your heart as you read.

 The crowds that followed Jesus around the Sea of Galilee were moved. They saw the signs, and their hearts leaped, and they believed in his name, and they followed him. And Jesus walked out on them. Their reactions are no different to a lot of people’s reactions today. Follow Jesus, and he’ll give you everything your heart desires. The trouble is, our hearts desire some pretty dangerous stuff. Our hearts desire much more than our daily bread.

The mob wanted to smash the invading Romans. Wipe out the hideous, pagan Greek culture that had invaded the land as thoroughly as the Romans had. Restore the kingdom that David had built and Solomon had made the envy of the world. And for that you need a king. A king will give us security. A king will give us strength. A king will give us power. And that’s the problem right there.

You don’t call for revolution because you want to serve. You don’t toss out a government because you want to obey different leaders. You don’t want to have a king unless a king can give you what you want. You don’t want to serve a king unless he’s going to serve you.

They didn’t want a king – they wanted political independence. And when Jesus came through the countryside, preaching about the Kingdom of God, performing signs that displayed the power of God, they followed him. Of course they did. John 2:23 – Many people saw the miraculous signs that he was doing and believed in his name. And right at the front-end of our reading, John 6:2 - a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the miraculous signs he had performed on the sick. This guy could set hearts on fire. He had power to burn. The signs he did led them to remember Moses and the Great Prophet he talked about. Who else would give them their freedom?

Things haven’t changed much, have they? The majority position of the world outside these walls is that Jesus and his miraculous signs don’t matter. But there is a noisy minority position inside the church that encourages us to see Jesus in the same light as this crowd on the hill saw him – a passport to the desires of their hearts.

Christ can give you what you want in life. You’re favoured by God, and He wants you to be successful – so ask, in His Son’s powerful name, and expect everything you ask for. Don’t accept second-best. You’re the son of a King, aren’t you? You’re a King’s daughter, princess, and you should see yourself as royalty. Health, wealth, all that you can be blessed with… it’s yours. Just claim Jesus for yourself – believe in his name. Show your loyalty and gratitude and glad obedience by sowing your money into his Kingdom (collection plate coming shortly), but don’t worry, because God will bless you abundantly. If you’re not being drowned in blessing… well, maybe there’s a problem with your faith. Maybe there’s still some sin in your life. There’ll be a reason why you don’t have the Lord’s anointing, and that reason will be you – not God, because Jesus is faithful, isn’t He?

That’s a mindset that frightens me. It tells me that God’s a sugar-daddy, that the Holy Spirit is a great big ATM, and that Jesus is the pin-number into God’s account for you.  That’s a really offensive way of putting it, but that is, in effect, what the doctrine of the Prosperity Gospel reduces the Trinity to. For all His might and majesty and splendour and justice and mercy, God’s sole purpose is to serve and obey us..? you’re joking.

I have no idea how the people who preach this can explain the persecuted church… how they can explain martyrdom… how they can possibly explain the saints under the altar in Revelation, those souls who have been slain because of the word of God, crying out how long, O Lord? [4] How could you possibly explain the way that the persecuted church prays for us in the prosperous West because they see us as being under murderous spiritual attack?

Many people saw the miraculous signs that he was doing and believed in his name.

A great crowd of people followed him because they saw the miraculous signs he had performed…

Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself.

That’s something we should find deeply unsettling. We follow Jesus. But when was the last time we checked ourselves and asked ourselves why? Why are we following Jesus?

If you read on through the rest of John 6 – and I can’t encourage you strongly enough to spend a lot of time in John 6 through the week – you’ll see that the crowd follows Jesus even more. They follow him back to Capernaum, and they want more: Jesus tells them that [t]he work of God is this: to believe in the one He has sent. And their first response is stunning: What miraculous sign then will you give us that we may see it and believe you?[5] Tragic. They’ve just watched him heal the sick, drive out demons, feed a vast crowd by creating… and they ask for a sign so that they can believe… That’s a tragedy. And as you work your way through the chapter, you’ll see Jesus turn around and say things that frighten so many of that following mass. I am the bread of life. It is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. No-one comes to the Father but through me. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life… my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Truth be told, it’s not just the crowd of followers that get frightened by these words. Try telling people that the only way that God will allow Himself to be accessed is through Christ Jesus. Try telling people that without the blood and the flesh of the slain Lamb of God there will be only an eternity of pain and punishment and Hell. Try that – and you’ll see people walk away from you… The Gospel, the saving Good Message is horrifically offensive to the human spirit, the sinful human spirit. When people hear it, they walk away, they run away, they flee.

The people who had chased Jesus… walk out. They get away. This is a teaching that they can’t stomach. And in the end, it’s just Jesus and the Twelve. Jesus looks at twelve men. “You want to leave too? You want to go back home as well?” It’s Peter who breaks the silence. Where else have we to go? You have the words of eternal life.[6]

His answer sounds like desperation. But it’s the right answer, isn’t it? Where else have we to go? Why are you following Jesus? Where else have we to go? Jesus is the Bread of Life, and he’s the only Bread that will satisfy what your soul needs. Where else have we to go? He’s the only Living water that will satisfy the cracked, parched throat of anyone who realises that they’re truly dying of thirst. Where else have we to go?

When God the Holy Spirit opens our eyes, we finally see that we have nowhere else to go. And we see that we have nothing to eat, and that almost all of our appetites just lead us to destruction. And before us is the King of all Creation – the Son of God – who, despite his staggering power and his unbearable glory, is happy to take into his hands something as low as peasant-food barley bread and some strips of fish… to feed his people. The King who offers us himself, so that we might live, and live with him, and he in us.

Are we prepared to give it all away and follow him? Despite what some preachers say, it won’t make life easier – it may well make life harder. Jesus warns repeatedly that to follow him is to sacrifice, to suffer, to take up a cross – a murderous instrument of torture and death. But we have nowhere else to go.

Please – take the time this week – or even today – to think. If following Jesus is something that you find hard to do, if accepting the bread that Jesus offers you is something that you haven’t done… please – take him up.

If you say that you do follow Jesus, take the time to examine your heart and ask why. If you find yourself troubled when you ask yourself why, think it through. Pray. Read John 6, deeply, and take a good amount of time to let the Word of God work itself into you. I

f you know that it’s because we have nowhere else to go, then thank and give praise to God the Spirit who opens eyes and hearts.

Let me close with the words of Jeremiah: “Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart.”

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[1] Matthew 14:13

[2] Opsarion, not ichthus

[3] John 2:23

[4] Revelation 6:9-10

[5] John 6:29-30

[6] John 6:68

Matthew 1 – Joseph the Man

          For those who don’t listen to classical music, the overture is a piece of music at the start of a long opera or a symphony. It’s an introduction. It’s designed to prepare the listener for the music that is coming. An overture proclaims the content. It sets the scene.

Beethoven was a genius with an overture, and he took this idea to another level completely. Instead of a mere summary of the music, he would set up themes, but the themes were so rich that it would take a two-hour symphony to tease those themes out fully. Now before you worry that I’m going to give a lecture on old archaic music, let me explain.

          All of the Gospel writers knew how that worked, and their opening chapters are like excellent Beethoven overtures. They all wrote introductions that tell us, clearly, what their great themes will be. And their Gospels would slowly unpack those themes in greater and greater detail.

Luke writes an orderly account for you, the most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.[1]

Mark wants his readers to know, before anything else, that this is the beginning of the good message about Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God.[2]

John wants us to see, even before we see Jesus the man, that Jesus is the Word, and was with God at the beginning of everything – and that through him, all things were made.[3] And not only was Jesus with God in the beginning of everything – he WAS God. Three Gospels. Three overtures. Three rich, rich themes.

          Matthew, meanwhile, begins… strangely. It’s such an odd beginning that we often skip it – we miss it out completely. We take little bits of it for Christmas cards – the three Wise Men and their equally-scriptural camels – but we tend to overlook the way that Matthew opens his Gospel. Which is a shame, because one of the very important characters in the Gospel narratives is found here. Here’s the story of Joseph, the son of Jacob, the husband of Mary, the father of Jesus the Son of God.

Father of Jesus the Son of God. That sounds a little odd, doesn’t it? We’ll come back to this in a second.

          The overture actually begins in the eighteen verses that we don’t generally read aloud. Matthew really begins with a genealogy of 49 names covering 42 generations. And I think that’s one of the reasons why we ignore the beginning of this book. Who wants to read out a roll-call? I suspect people who try to read the Bible from cover to cover glaze over when it comes to the big genealogies. If you don’t believe me, here’s a good one – read the first nine chapters of 1 Chronicles. In one sitting. With no coffee. Aloud, so you don’t skip a verse…

          But Matthew’s genealogy is part of his overture, part of his great theme, and part of how he wants us to see this man Jesus. What does Matthew want us to know? Verse 1 – a record of the genealogy of Jesus, Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham. There’s a clue. Three titles.

Here is one of Matthew’s themes; Jesus is the Anointed One, Meshiach to the Hebrew, Christos to the Greek; “Christ” to us.

Jesus is also the Son of David, and the Son of Abraham. A Son of David can trace his roots all the way back to David, the great King of Israel. A son of Abraham can trace his lineage all the way back to Abraham, who was the grandfather of a man named Isra’el. This is important for Matthew, because Matthew is writing with an audience in mind – a Jewish audience, people who knew themselves as the children of Israel.

               So the first eighteen verses – as boring as we might find them – are the first credentials that Matthew offers. They’re gold-plated credentials, too. The lineage covers some major characters in the history of the Jewish people, from the man who first entered into a covenant agreement with God, to great men of power and influence, but also through men like Boaz who were pretty ordinary, but had an influence on the future direction of Israel.

               To a First Century Jew, these credentials were very important. Lineage was very important – not for “good breeding” or for “class” but because they recognized authority that came through family lines. Anointed authority could be hereditary (the Levites, for instance). God had cut a covenant with King David; he would establish David’s kingdom forever through his offspring. Matthew laid down this family-tree for Jesus’ credentials to be known – he had the right to be known as “the Son of David”.

               Matthew now turns the spotlight on the birth of Jesus, at least according to the heading in our NIV Bibles. I’m not sure if that’s totally fair, though. Truth be told, seeing this as a Christmas story is a bit of a myth. Almost all of this happened a good nine months out from Christmas. It might be the story of the origins of Jesus, but it’s really Joseph’s story. Matthew, as we’ve seen, links Joseph to David, and then to Abraham. What Matthew now sets out to do is to link Joseph to Jesus. But, surprisingly, that’s nowhere near as easy as it sounds.

               Joseph’s story is not an easy story – if anything, it’s very uneasy. He is betrothed to a young lady named Mary. Betrothed is a little bit more serious than an engagement today – it implied that one was, legally, married to the other, but not yet living together or enjoying the full riches of married life. It was a done deal – literally. It would have involved a written contract, with consequences if either side broke faith.

               Mary becomes pregnant. And while the narrative tells us (verse 18) that she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit, I think it would be safe to assume that the only one who really knew this at the time was Mary. I have no idea how the conversation would have played-out between Joseph and Mary, but it didn’t go well. Because his next decision is (verse 19) to divorce her quietly.

               The legal options that Joseph had available to him ranged from quietly annulling the contract to having this obviously promiscuous woman stoned to death. Joseph’s choice tells us a lot about the man. Verse 19: he had in mind to divorce her quietly. This is a man of extraordinary mercy and compassion, even when something as sacred as his honour and his sexual integrity is in question.

               Consider Joseph for a second. How painful do you think this would have been to Joseph? In all that pain, he chooses the gentlest possible option. Mercy. Compassion. Righteousness. Because Joseph was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. But the problem remains – the connection between the lineage of Joseph and the unborn Jesus still rests on the edge of a knife.

               Verse 20: But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. It’s probably safe to say that it wasn’t like any dream you or I have. This dream is very different. It didn’t fade away like morning mist. Joseph acts immediately and obediently after his dream. And to a point, I’m not surprised – he was visited by an angel of the Lord. Now – do yourself a favour. Ditch the normal mental picture of pretty wings and halos and wearing white pillow-cases. Real angels like these don’t sit on the tops of Christmas trees. These things are powerful, and they are terrifyingly real. And they speak with authority, because they carry messages directly from the Lord God Almighty himself. Verse 20: An angel of the LORD appeared to him in a dream, and said, “Joseph, son of David [notice that the angel greets Joseph in exactly the way the genealogy defines him] Joseph, Son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus.”

               You are to give him the name Jesus. This is massively significant on two counts. The name of a child was more than just a name – it was a signifier of what parents wanted and wished their child could be. You are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.

               Jesus: The English translation of the Greek Iesous. The Greek is a transliteration of the Hebrew Yeshua. And this means, literally, the Lord saves. You are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. Matthew shows us the value of names as he quotes the Isaiah prophecy that is being fulfilled – Immanuel, which means God with us. It’s pretty rare for people these days to call Jesus Immanuel, although quite a few 19^th Century writers do – often. Anyone who uses Spurgeon’s Morning & Evening will be pretty familiar with it. In this case, the truth of the man to come gives the name. Immanuel. God with us.  

               What is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. That takes away one of Joseph’s immediate problems. But it gives us a big one – and the problem’s big enough to drive a boat through. Can you see it yet? Matthew insists on a Virgin Birth. He is insistent –verse 25, he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. Mary is not related to Joseph; if there was a connection, it would have been mentioned in his careful genealogy. Can you see the problem? If this is true – that Joseph had no union with her – how can this child claim descent from David and Abraham – descent that comes from Joseph’s side of the family? Matthew has used those credentials specifically to establish Jesus’ temporal authority – we just saw that a moment ago. That’s one great strain in the overture. Now he uses Virgin Birth (divine conception – conceived by the Holy Spirit) to establish Jesus’ heavenly authority as the Son of God – Matthew’s other great theme. Lord of Heaven and Earth… here’s one of the things the writer strives to make his readers to understand.

               But logically, how can he have it both ways? He has to have it both ways, because if you only have one without the other, you’ve significantly reduced the authority that Matthew is trying to claim for this man Jesus. How on earth can the great strand from Joseph meet with the great strand from Mary if Joseph had no biological part to play?

               At points like this, at points where there are difficulties, at points where belief is hard, we are actively encouraged by the world to put our faith in these things aside. You hear the little voices everywhere: God wouldn’t really do that, would he? It’s not scientifically sustainable. The Virgin Birth is a legend – a myth. The resurrection isn’t really believable… the authors of these books are hardly credible historians, are they? Christianity is an inclusive religion. There must be a misunderstanding when Jesus said that no-one can come to the Father without him. You Christians don’t do your religion any favours by reading all of your Bibles, much less literally believing it… believe in God, but stop worshipping the Bible.

               Which is harder to believe? That Joseph was related to everyone in that genealogy? Or that before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit? Certainly, one idea is historically debatable but plausible; it is quite possible for Joseph’s family tree to be reasonably accurate. But the idea that the Holy Spirit acted as The Agent in a pregnancy is so far out of our experience…  In an age where more and more theologians and bishops are encouraging Christians to not worry about believing in the hard things, this is a vital question that we MUST be prepared to wrestle with. Because at stake, right now, right at the start of Matthew’s book – at the start of the New Testament, in fact – is the truth of what Jesus says about himself in this Gospel.

The most dangerous myth surrounding the Virgin Birth is that it doesn’t matter.

               Matthew records Jesus saying: Anyone who receives you receives me, and anyone who receives me receives the One who sent me.[4] Matthew records Jesus saying: All things have been committed to me by my Father, and no-one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.[5] And, crucially, when Peter declares to Jesus: You are the Christ, the Son of the living God, Matthew records Jesus saying: Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man but by my Father in Heaven.[6]

               What are we to make of these claims that Jesus makes of himself? What are we to make of these claims that Jesus makes if, as more and more people are content to believe, he was just the son of two normal humans? There are so many of Jesus’ sayings and parables that he certainly deserves titles like “a great teacher” and “the most influential philosopher” and “a wise man.” And, to be sure, most people today are more than happy to accord Jesus that honour. But can he still be called a great teacher as he makes these claims of himself? Can a teacher be half-wise and half-delusional? If he’s a liar, can we trust any of his wisdom?

               Going back to our reading, we can see that Jesus isn’t the only one claiming this. Matthew makes the outrageously strange claim that (verse 18) before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Luke makes a similar claim. There we find an angel telling Mary the same things that were revealed to Joseph in his dream; He will be great and called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David. Mary’s response was simple – How can this be since I am a virgin?[7]

               Clearly, we’re not the first people to wrestle with the problem. How can this be? Can I give you scientific, rock-solid, absolutely irrefutable evidence that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit instead of by normal human involvement?

                No. In an age of science and reason, where scientists declare that if it can’t be proven it cannot be believable, I have to say… no. There is no scientific, rock-solid, absolutely irrefutable evidence that I can provide for you. I can’t be Grissom from CSI and say – “Here’s the evidence.” Unless you’re prepared to accept that this book speaks the truth.

               All that I can do is point to the Scriptures. And there are one or two things that should be considered here. If these writings about Mary and Joseph and Jesus’ miraculous birth were an invented myth, devised by the early Church… they shouldn’t look like this. There certainly were many myths concerning Greek and Roman gods who used all sorts of tricks to sleep with humans. In these stories a child often appeared afterwards, and in these mythological stories, the resultant unwanted child would wreak vengeance upon the father as he grew up – or be destroyed by the god who fathered the child. But they were very elaborate tales; they were stylised legends. There is, in the whole of mythology, nothing like this. A God, through a woman, sending His Son to earth. The Son working in perfect obedience and harmony with the will of the Father. The old 1662 Book of Common Prayer puts it very simply. Being of one substance with the Father – who, for us men and for our salvation came down from Heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man. There is simply nothing like this anywhere else. Matthew and Luke don’t give any stylised details of how this might have happened. It was enough to note that it occurred. The how is utterly irrelevant to them. The why becomes apparent as you read the Gospels – only the Son of God has the authority to forgive sins. Only the Son of God can take every sin and place it upon his perfect self. Only the Son of God can save me.

The most dangerous myth surrounding the Virgin Birth is that it doesn’t matter.

               We are still left with the two great themes. From the line of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, King David and Joseph will come the Son of David. From the Holy Spirit and Mary will come the Son of God. The two strands still haven’t met. Yet.

               I said earlier that Joseph naming the child “Jesus” was massively significant in two ways. We read verse 21 with the emphasis on the name. Here’s the second way. Back to verse 21 – YOU are to give him the name Jesus… The emphasis – the command of the angel – is for Joseph to name this child. This is critical.

               Here’s one remarkable thing within Jewish culture: a child becomes a man’s son not so much because of blood and straight genetics, but from the acknowledgment on the part of the man. If a man adopted a child and then named the child, by law the child would now be regarded as his child. All inheritances due, all titles and honorifics held, all property… anything held by the man that one would ordinarily expect to be handed down through the family… a child named by the father becomes the rightful heir, even if there’s not a drop of blood, or DNA or any other biological data, shared between father and son.

               If you’ve ever wondered why Jesus, born of the Virgin Mary, is entitled to be listed on Joseph’s side of the family tree… here it is. Here’s where the two great themes meet. Matthew’s Jewish audience would understand this far more quickly than we do. But our Western mindsets still have trouble here. Bear with me: I may have to explain this further.

               My name is David Adrian Claridge. My father’s name is William Frederick Claridge. He is the son of Robert Arthur Claridge. Now something unusual happened when my dad was a young lad – my grandmother separated, divorced, and re-married. Both Dad and his older brother were given a really unusual option – retain their old surname of Dermott, or take up the name of their mum’s new husband: Claridge. My uncle decided to remain a Dermott. My dad, however, chose to take the new name. It was a difficult decision, and it had consequences. But he did it. Now – let me move things one step forward. It’s an irrefutable fact that there is not a drop of Claridge claret in Dad’s veins. There is absolutely no biological or genetic connection between Robert Arthur Claridge and David Adrian Claridge. And yet…

               He was always Grandpa to me. And I remain a Claridge. Fiona Joy Deayton changed her name to Fiona Joy Claridge nearly 12 years ago. And the morning after I first wrote this sermon, Bishop Reg Piper held my youngest daughter in his arms and asked me to name this child; I publicly named my little daughter. And so I did; Margaret Ruth Claridge.

               There’s more to family than mere genetics. Blood might be thicker than water, but love beats blood any day. I know several people who were adopted as kids, and I know the people who adopted them, and there is no doubt in my mind that they are family. One of my good friends was ordained a couple of years ago, and his parents were there at St Andrew’s, weeping with joy as they saw bishops lay hands on their son’s head. If you didn’t know that he was actually adopted, you would never have known – he was most certainly their son; basic biology took a back seat and I witnessed a family’s pride and a family’s sweet joy.

               Joseph was a merciful, compassionate, righteous man. There was nothing easy in this story for him. I can’t begin to comprehend what he must have thought as he dealt with the news that his wife-to-be was pregnant. To be ordered in a dream to not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife. To accept a child that is not, technically or biologically, his. To name this child and claim this child as his own. His world must have turned completely upside down. Joseph is one of the Bible’s least-praised heroes. He doesn’t swing a sword, he smites no enemies, but, for me at least, he’s one of the Bible’s towering men.

               For those with long memories, the genealogy began with Abraham. At nearly a hundred years old and childless, Abraham was promised by Yahweh that he would be the father of nations. And, says the writer of Genesis, Abraham believed the Lord, and God credited it to him as righteousness. Throughout the Psalms we see David desiring, chasing, aiming at righteousness – and mourning when he missed. We see righteousness in Joseph.  And because Joseph is a compassionate, merciful, obedient and righteous man, he gave him the name… Jesus.

               “To us a child is born. To us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne, and over his Kingdom, establishing it and holding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.”

These were the words of the prophet Isaiah, hundreds of years before. And as these two great themes meet, the son of Joseph, the son of David, the son of Abraham, the son of God… is born.

               And Joseph gave him the name… Jesus.

               Matthew has closed off the overture. It’s time for the first movement.   What happens next? You’re going to have to read on.

               Can we bust all the myths? Can we crack all the hard bits? It’d be good, wouldn’t it? I’d love to say we can. But the truth is, there are things in this book that will, from time to time, give us all difficulties. The Bible will throw up all sorts of things that challenge our perception of reality, our perception of God, our ethics, our actions, our morals, our identities, ourselves. And we’ll come to meet other people who are finding difficult things in here. This is really important to know… there’s nothing wrong with that. It is not an easy book. It will, when we dig away, force us to ask all sorts of questions. Hard questions. Painful questions. And that’s okay. God has given us questioning, curious, intelligent minds. Having said that, I urge you to never give up looking for the right answer. Just because we find a few different ideas that don’t seem to align, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the Bible is inconsistent. It might just be that our vision’s faulty.

               Never give up. Never give up reading the hard bits. More importantly, never give up trusting it. The Word of God is something we can trust, even when we don’t understand it all. I doubt Abraham understood God’s purposes when the Lord promised him that he would be the father of nations. But Abraham believed the words of the Lord, and it was credited it to him as righteousness. Joseph had no rational reason to stay by his betrothed-but-pregnant Mary; but Joseph was a righteous man, and an obedient man, even when he didn’t understand. He heard the words of the Lord that were announced by an angel in his dream… and… we finally see in verse 25… he gave him the name Jesus.

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[1] Luke 1:3-4

[2] Mark 1:1

[3] John 1:3

[4] Matthew 10:40

[5] Matthew 11:27

[6] Matthew 16:16-17

[7] Luke 1:32=34

The Invisible Man: Genesis 26

In Genesis 25, we read about the death of Abraham (I love how the old Bishop’s Bible phrases this: And then Abraham waxyng away, beyng an olde man, dyed in a lustie age, when he had liued ynough, and was gathered to his people.).[1] We’re made witnesses to the birth of the next generation – Esau, the first-born hairy redhead, and his younger brother, Jacob the heel-sneak. Somewhere in between lies a man named Isaac. Now we move into Genesis 26. And after a couple of weeks of wrestling though this, I’m almost prepared to call Isaac the Invisible Man.

The Bible throws us quite a few invisible men. Some people are absolutely pivotal in the Scriptures, and yet we get only glimpses of them. Melchizedek is one: we know he was a king and a priest of El-Elyon – God Most High. But we know him only from one verse – one reference in Genesis. And yet David regards him highly enough to set him as the head of the highest order of priests, and the writer of Hebrews keeps circling Melchizedek – eight times. [2] Clearly, this is one invisible man who’s really important in Scripture. Enoch gets a few more mentions, but (apart from one sentence) they’re either in the genealogies of Genesis or Luke. We learn that Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him,[3] and – again, he’s important enough to be talked about in Hebrews. But we don’t know much about him at all, except that his dad was called Jared, he was the father of Methuselah, that he got to 365 years of age… and that he was – and then he wasn’t.

 Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, Thaddeus, Simon the Cananaean – two-thirds of the 12 Apostles – we hardly know a thing about. Even Judas Iscariot, who is arguably the most pivotal of all the disciples, is a blank.

 Isaac is one of those real mystery-men. His story begins in Genesis 21, when he was born to Abraham and Sarah – the son of a promise. He dies in Genesis 35, fifteen chapters and 180 years later (old and full of days).[4] His life-span covers a fair chunk of Genesis, and, after his death, his name will become one that God uses regularly to identify Himself – the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Isaac’s name is immortal. And yet… and yet… trying to glean anything more than a pencil-sketch of the man himself is surprisingly difficult.

The problem, really, is this: Isaac’s 15-chapter story throughout Genesis is almost always the story of other people.

His miraculous birth is the story of the power of Yahweh, and his faithfulness to his word – and to Abraham and Sarah. The great drama of “the sacrifice of Isaac” is really the climax of the relationship between God and Abraham. The wooing of his wife Rebekah has more to do with Abraham’s faithful steward, Rebekah herself and a man named Laban (who will become a very influential figure in Jacob’s story). Isaac is almost invisible at his own wedding.

In the next chapter we’ll see a tottering, trembling, elderly man on his deathbed. But even here, as we watch Jacob stealing Isaac’s final blessing from the firstborn Esau, Isaac is really seen as the setting for a picture of Jacob’s deception, Rebekah’s cunning, Esau’s anger and God’s choosing.

Almost all the high points of Isaac’s life are high points of other people.

He’s the only one of the Three Patriarchs whose name remains unchanged. He’s the only one of the Three Patriarchs who doesn’t travel outside Canaan. He’s the Invisible Man.

 Genesis 26 comes pretty close to being an invisible chapter. It’s another one of those chapters that almost disappears between some of the famous chapters in the Bible. And – just to camouflage it even further – it sounds very familiar. These stories – haven’t we been there? If you’ve been paying attention during the reading, you’ve probably shaken your head a couple of times, thinking “I’ve heard this before somewhere, haven’t I?” What’s familiar? Think back over Abraham’s story and the similarities are startling.

Famine forces Abraham to move away from the land that God had just promised him and his descendents.

Abraham passed off Sarah as his sister twice: in chapter 12 (when a famine prompted him to relocate to Egypt) and chapter 20 (where Abraham is afraid of the king of Gerar, who has the name of Abimelech). Sounding familiar?

Abraham became immensely wealthy, and the surrounding kings – particularly Abimelech and his chief-of-staff, Phicol – recognised his power and were anxious to make peace treaties with him.

And, of course, we see the Lord God speaking with Abraham, establishing a covenant with Abraham, sustaining and reassuring Abraham.

There’s not much that is “news” in Genesis 26. It’s very easy to overlook it. It sounds like a repeat episode, and instead of being detailed over several chapters, it feels like a Foxtel highlights-package of Abraham’s life, run at high speed. And quite a few scholars have said exactly that – what you see in Isaac is… Abraham. Abraham-lite. A collection of anecdotes that link the Abraham-stories to the Jacob-Israel/twelve-sons story cycle. Isaac might even be a fictional character - evidence of various authors and sloppy editors.

So where does that leave us?

I think that there’s something we need to be prepared to do when we find a chapter like Genesis 26 – a difficult, or possibly even repetitive, chapter. Remember 2 Tim 3:16 – All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. The verse following it (while less famous) gives the reason… that the man [and woman] of God may be competent, equipped for every good work. One question that I’ve found to be really helpful is this: why has God allowed this particular piece of the Bible to be preserved so that I can read it? The hard bits have been preserved over an extraordinary amount of time for a reason – a good reason.

But sometimes we have to do a bit of digging. So… let’s dig.

Verses 1 & 2: Now there was a famine in the land… The Lord appeared to Isaac and said: “don’t go down to Egypt; live in the land where I tell you to live.”

Why would you go to Egypt? Abram got into quite some trouble there, and was booted out of the country by the Pharaoh. It was probably the biggest military player of the day… why go there? Sounds like trouble… Here’s why.

Here’s why you go to Egypt when there’s a famine. Because Egypt is drought-proof. Except for very rare occasions, the Nile is a constant source of life. It floods regularly enough to base calendars off. Look at the contrast in the colours – and this photo was taken in a non-drought period! The Nile Delta – that’s the green triangular area – has almost always been a productive area for growing, and during periods of drought it was a magnet for foreigners needing to eat. So Abraham went there during a famine. We’ll see Jacob send his sons to Egypt – and then go himself – during another famine, but that’s another story, and I don’t want to spoil the surprise.

But God tells Isaac to stay. He has faithfully promised Abraham that the land will be for his descendents, and Isaac is – at this stage, at least – the only evidence of God honouring his sacred word to Abraham. More descendents than stars in the sky or sand on the seashore… so far, there’s just one. So God tells Isaac to stay, and God repeats, or confirms, the oath that he swore to Abraham: offspring and land are yours, and – more importantly – through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because Abraham obeyed me and kept my requirements, my commands, my decrees and my laws. So, obediently, Isaac stays put. He’s made it as far as Gerar.

Gerar is roughly in the area that we’d call the Gaza Strip. The people in Gerar are used to strangers – the Gaza Strip acts like a highway to and from Egypt. But they’re not so familiar with the idea of strangers who stay. And they’re not particularly comfortable with the idea, either. Abraham was tolerated – partly, I think, because he was the richest man for miles, and partly because he could, if he needed to, flex a surprising amount of muscle.

Despite the fact that he was born here, and has lived here for a good many years, Isaac is still a stranger in a strange land . Isaac is aware that there’s danger here, and he responds to the danger in the same way his father did. He thought of protecting his wife first – but instead of asking Yahweh for protection and relying upon it, he lies. And, like a lot of our own lies, his lie is found out.

It’s an interesting point of difference in Isaac’s story here. Sarah was twice protected supernaturally. This time, Isaac gets himself busted. Verse 6: When Isaac had been there a long time, Abimelech king of the Philistines looked down from a window and saw Isaac caressing his wife Rebekah (NIV). Where the word “caressing” is, underline it and write the word “laughing”. The Hebrew text actually reads that Abimelech saw Isaac laughing with his wife. The implication is there that they were probably canoodling, or doing something that husbands and wives do that unmarried people shouldn’t – certainly not brothers and sisters (embarrassing Star Wars moments aside). But there’s a beautiful play on words that isn’t immediately obvious in English, and that the NIV version misses. Isaac’s name means “he laughs” and it seems that, here, anyway, we see a glimpse of his character – in laughter, in playfulness, with his wife. But… he’s busted by the king.

It’s interesting to note that the Philistines seem to be in far better moral order now than in the past few chapters. The days of Sodom and Gomorrah have well-and-truly passed. The king could not only tell that they were married (and not, say, simply immoral), he thought that if anyone had committed adultery with Rebekah they would bring a curse down upon his kingdom. Have a look at verse 10: What is this that you have done to US? One of the men might well have slept with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon US. He immediately puts the death penalty upon anyone who touches either Isaac or Rebekah. Once again, the promise of that God made to Abraham has been put under threat by a man under God’s covenant, but God’s protection is absolute. In a place that was once morally bankrupt, Isaac’s lie is discovered by the way he laughs with his wife: it marks him out as a married man. And they are both immediately placed under royal protection. God blesses them with protection.

God blesses Isaac in other ways, too. As Isaac settles more permanently in Gerar (you don’t plant crops if you plan to move quickly), he reaps bumper crops, his livestock forget that they’re livestock and go like rabbits…. God pours blessing after blessing on Isaac. The neighbours certainly sit up and take notice. It’s like watching the next-door neighbour taking a $50 million Lotto win. And the neighbours aren’t happy. The first thing that they do is shut off the water.

Abraham almost certainly moved his livestock around – if you have a lot of animals, you can overgraze the land really quickly. It appears as if he’d set up a network of wells around Canaan to support the livestock as they moved around. And, all of a sudden, Isaac is prevented from doing the same thing. Someone went around and destroyed the wells.

The blessing is under threat. The threat suddenly gets worse as Abimelech tells Isaac that he’s not wanted: Move away from us; you have become too powerful for us. And there’s the trick – at the same time as Isaac is ordered away by the king, the only way that Isaac can move has been destroyed. Where are the animals – and for that matter the humans – going to get water? Make no mistake: Abimelech’s actions here are hostile. He may or may not have an army big enough to attack Isaac, but he can certainly starve him out. It’s a deadly tactic. Almost every direction is desert, and someone’s vandalized the water supply.

What does Isaac do? He retreats. He moves into a nearby valley, and begins repairing the vandalised wells. And he gives them names – importantly, the names that his father Abraham gave them. Why give them names? It sounds a bit like giving names to letterboxes or bathtubs. My uncle was a regular visitor to the Middle East. We used to talk a lot online, and he mentioned once that wells are very individual. Some have warm water, some are colder, some are salty or bitter or sweet. (The idea of naming wells isn’t so strange, and – knowing this – Jesus talking about the Water of Life while he was at a well suddenly becomes one of the most startling images in the Bible.)

The neighbours are obviously keeping a close eye on Isaac, because as soon as he struck water, the locals would suddenly jump out and say “Oi! That’s my water! Go and find your own!” What does Isaac do? He moves away again. And again. And again. Finally, he finds a well that no-one chases him away from, and, once again, sets up house there.

It’s worth noting here that a lot of commentaries on Isaac see him as being somewhat timid – maybe even cowardly. This would never have happened to Abraham. When there was a dispute over a well, Abraham initiated action immediately.[5] Isaac simply retreats. The implication is that Isaac doesn’t have the same strength or faith of his father.

I think that is a misreading, and I think it sells Isaac’s faith short.

 He’s in a dangerous place – there’s no doubt about that. But Isaac seems to have faith that the God who came to him and talked with him would protect him and keep his promises. After he had moved for a fourth time in this chapter, he found a well that no-one fought him for. And he gave the well a name – Rehoboth (meaning room). And he said (verse 22), Now the Lord has given us room, and we will flourish in the land. He’s not angry. He’s not bitter. He’s thankful and he has full faith that God is a God of his word.

Maybe sometimes the meek really do inherit the earth.

How does that sit with us? How much do we trust God? How much do we trust him when he says things like “do not worry”?

One of the most famous things that Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount is this: Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Jesus goes on to assure us that God holds us much closer to his heart than grass, which he clothes in amazing colours. And yet the thing we forget about Jesus’ saying here is that it is not simply a comforting platitude – it’s a command, and it’s a command to trust.

I find this one of the hardest of all of Jesus’ teachings. It’s one that runs completely counter to the way of the world – the way life works. How can we not worry? When there’s bills and debts and expenses and not enough money to go around, how can we not worry? When our workplaces only seem to promote the fast, aggressive people who get results, how can the meek inherit the earth? How do we keep our heads above water, how do we manage to get any sort of security when we turn the other cheek, carry someone else’s load for an extra mile? How on earth can we think about retirement when we know how far our superannuation will go – and yet we’re told to not store up treasures on earth? In the days when there just doesn’t seem to be enough to keep food on the table and the bank away from the door, how are we supposed to feed the hungry and clothe the naked?

To trust in God is hard. How much do you trust God? I have no trouble admitting that I find it a really hard question to answer – at least honestly, or publicly (or both). I worry. I get stressed. I go through the wringer with bouts of depression, and depression is something that really stretches the line of trust. Logically, I know that I can’t do it on my own – not even close.

But it can be so hard to give it all over into the hands of God – and trust. 

Isaac tried to do it on his own. A stranger in a strange land, he knew God’s promises. He didn’t even have to read a Bible to know of the reassurance of God’s Word – God came down to him and spoke to him. God personally gave Isaac his word that he would honour his oath and his vow and his promise and his covenant.

But he tried to do it on his own. It didn’t improve the situation, and his morals were upstaged by a pagan king.

Oh, for the amount of times that I’ve tried to do it on my own, only to have my own example and witness crumble. I end up bearing witness to the one I truly trust – me – and it’s a witness that faithfully proves how pitiful that can be.

But Isaac learned. He learned to place his security, his livelihood, his family, himself in the care of a trustworthy, faithful, saving God. And he didn’t do it when things were going sweet. He did it when he had a hostile king at his front, a desert at his back and his precious wells destroyed. And he did it without drama, without violence, without retaliation.

He makes an interesting counterpoint: Abraham was a man of a commanding physical presence; Jacob was the master of rat-cunning. But Isaac, the man in the middle, is a man of quietness and trust. He’s meek. And, compared to both his father and his son, he’s certainly an invisible man. But sometimes this relative invisibility isn’t so bad. Wesley wrote an interesting comment as he looked into Isaac’s life: Those that follow peace, sooner or later, shall find peace: those that study to be quiet seldom fail of being so.

Trust God. You can place your trust in him. You can place your trust in his Son and his Spirit.

God is as good as his Word – he will always honour his promises. “The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.”

Amen. Soli Deo gloria

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[1] Genesis 25:8, Bishop’s Bible (slight reordering by author)

[2] Genesis 14:18;  Psalm 110:4;  Heb 5:6, 10, 6:20, 7:1, 10, 11, 15, 17

[3] Genesis 5:24;  1 Chronicles 1:3,  Luke 3:37,  Hebrews 11:5,  Jude v14

[4] Genesis 35:29

[5] Genesis 13:5-9

The Problem with Promises: Genesis 23

Yahweh said to Abram: Go-you-forth from your land

From your kindred, from your father’s house,

To the land I will let you see.

I will make a great nation of you

And will give-you-blessing

And will make your name great.

Be a blessing!

I will bless those who bless you,

He who curses you, I will damn.

All the clans of the soil will find blessing through you! [1]

The last eleven chapters have shown us how a man has walked with this promise. We’ve seen Abram – and then Abraham – stumble badly, we’ve seen him as a decisive warrior, a wise man, a moral coward one moment and an uncompromising negotiator the next. He’s wealthy, he’s strong, and yet strangely weak as well. He’s a loving husband who put his wife out in the market to save his own hide more than once. He was master of an estate where well over 300 of his servants were actually born into the household and yet still considered himself an outsider. He’s faced down kings but sometimes couldn’t stand up to his own wife.

And yet this is the man God cut his covenant with. And we have seen Yahweh, the Living Lord God, honour his promises in the most unbelievable fashion.

The story is about to move onto the next generation, and we’re going to see the Lord God continue to honour his covenant-promise through Isaac, the beloved son of a promise. Last week we saw God re-affirm the great promise of chapter 12. Next week we’ll see the narrative begin to pass from Abraham to Isaac.  But in between last week and next week is this week – and Genesis 23 is a passage that really slips under the radar. It doesn’t have the drama of the sacrifice of Isaac, or (for that matter) romance of what you’ll read next week. It’s easy to overlook. What have we got? One death and one property transaction. Which is fascinating if you’re an auditor or a forensic accountant, perhaps, but for the rest of us…?

Verse 1, 2: Now Sarah’s life was 127 years: these were the years in Sarah’s life. She died at Kiriath-Arba in the land of Canaan. That’s a long life by any measure. She was beyond old when she gave birth to Isaac, and she managed to live another 37 years after that. It would be a little surreal if you went to Isaac’s 21^st birthday: Mum’s in the rocking chair in the corner (she’d be 101), and Dad is shuffling on the dance-floor at the mighty age of about 111.

Sarah has just been given a rather unusual honour, and as far as I can work out, the honour is unique. Sarah is the first woman that we are told has died. We don’t even hear this about Eve. Sarah is also unique in that we get to know her age – I don’t think we learn the age of any other woman in the Bible. Now I know that there’s a thing about ladies being slightly coy about their age (I don’t pretend to understand that, and I’m not going to go there at all), but there must be a little flag here: Sarah is important enough to be accorded this unique honour in Scripture. We have how old she was, and where she was when she died. That’s a huge honour.

She wasn’t perfect – far from it. She could be manipulative, vindictive and bitter. She was complicit in Abraham’s schemes to pass her off as his sister, and she put herself recklessly in the path of adultery as a result – she came very close to wrecking everything by allowing herself to be taken by Pharaoh and then Abimelech.

But God keeps his promises, and for all of her recklessness and mistrust, her faith should be remembered. Scripture certainly remembers it. We can find Sarah in Hebrews 11 – the “by-faith” chapter  – and here we read: By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered [God]  faithful who had promised. Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven…”[2] The famously anonymous author of Hebrews wants to make it clear that Sarah and her faith were instrumental in the whole plan of salvation.

There are good parallels between Sarah and Mary. Sarah’s pregnancy was supernatural, and it was a promised pregnancy that would begin the fulfilment of Yahweh’s promise to save the world through the promised offspring. If Abraham is a Christ-type figure, then surely Sarah can be seen as a type-figure of Mary. Even though her faults and imperfections set up an anti-type, Paul holds Sarah up as a covenant model (Galatians 4:21-31). For all the things that went wrong, and for all the wrong she did, Sarah’s faith was one of the great elements in God’s plan and promise.

Abraham set about to lament for Sarah and to weep over her. Sarah had been at his side when the Lord God told Abraham to move to a strange land – that was well over sixty years ago. What follows next needs to be understood in the light of Abraham’s love for Sarah. Finding and negotiating for burial ground was just as much an act of love as anything Abraham had done for Sarah. And in Genesis – a book of firsts – we see that the first person really mourned for is Sarah.

The grief of old people is different, I suspect. I’ve been to a few funerals now. The brother of a very good friend of mine took his life, and there were a lot of young guys and girls in shock and grief – and their emotion was loud, raw and very visible. Not long after, one of the eldest of the elders from my church passed away, after a long battle with quite a few cancers. There was no shock, and the funeral was, certainly by contrast, quiet and reflective and almost joyful that an old servant of the Lord was free with Him now. But his widow’s grief was piercing in her quiet acceptance. They’d been married for around sixty years, and… there was more to miss, I guess.

Verse 3: Then Abraham arose from the presence of his dead, and spoke to the Hittites (lit. the Sons of Heth), saying: I am an immigrant settled among you. Give me possession [title] of a burial site, so that I may bury my dead from my presence. The NIV says “an alien and a stranger”… Almost all of the older translations use the word sojourner, which is a bit of a dead word. Immigrant is probably the best-fitting word. Abraham wasn’t exactly an alien or a stranger. He was rich, influential and strong if it ever came to war. We’ve seen how strong he was after the kidnap of Lot, when he sent out servants who effectively mugged an army to bring Lot back. We’ve seen kings and priests honour him. He was a resident immigrant, and, while he was very rich by any measure, he was never taken as a local. It may have been over sixty years since he left his father in Haran, but he didn’t possess any land at all.

And now he needs land to call his own.

So he meets with the Hittites and asks them a very important question: Sell me some property for a burial site. Their response is beautiful, respectful and compassionate: You are a mighty prince [lit. prince of God] among us. Bury your dead in the choicest of our tombs. None of us will refuse you his tomb for burying your dead.

And so the strangest form of haggling begins.

You know how haggling goes. You’re in a marketplace in Bali or Tijuana and you see something. You ask how much, and the stall-owner tells you that it’s a billion dollars, or something equally outrageous. You dismiss it – tell ’im ’e’s dreamin’! – and you offer twenty cents. He lowers his price, you raise what you’re prepared to pay, and before you know it, you’ve acquired a stuffed purple donkey that you have to lug around for the rest of your holiday.

Abraham’s got it all backwards! He offers to pay, the locals basically bow before him and offer him his choice of burial sites. For free. Nix. Gratis. Just take one. Now, I probably would’ve said thanks. But Abraham hasn’t got the hang of it yet. “Look”, he says, “if you’re happy for me to bury my dead here, do me a favour – talk to Ephron, and tell him I’ll pay top dollar for a cave at the back of his field… and the field, too.”

So Ephron comes forward, and he tells Abraham: “Mate… maaate… it’s yours. Take it.” And he says it in front of plenty of witnesses.

And Abraham replies: “No, seriously. What’s it worth? I’ll pay you full price. No discounts. No mate’s rates. Let me pay.” Ephron looks at Abraham: “Well, it’s worth a stack of silver – but what’s that between mates? Seriously – just go and bury your wife. Don’t worry about it.” But Abraham is absolutely insistent. So as soon as Ephron names his price – 400 shekels – Abraham publicly weighs it out, and the whole of the property – cave, field, trees and all was deeded to Abraham as his property in the presence of all the Hittites.[3] He’s done it. Fair and square, witnessed by the public, approved by Ephron and the Hittites. The only notable things seem to be that this is the first real-estate deal in the Bible, and that, like any real-estate story, Abraham probably paid 400 shekels more than he had to. Can you imagine buying a car like that? No, sir, I insist – take the Bentley, no repayments for a thousand years… Or going to a real-estate agent that deals like this? Happy days! So has Abraham blown a freebie? Obviously.

 The question is one of why.

Or, to ask the question another way, remember that God has promised all this land to Abraham. All the land you see I will give to you and your offspring forever… Arise, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I give it to you.[4] That’s what God promised Abraham (when he was merely Abram), after Lot had picked out the fat of the land. And now here’s his first opportunity to seriously claim back on that promise that God made to him. There’s the land – plus a field thrown into the mix as well. Free. Take it.

But that’s not how Abraham works now. If he accepts the land – either taking his pick of land offered to him by the Hittites, or the cave and field offered by Ephron – there’s one problem. It won’t be his. Look at the first offer in verse 6: bury your dead in the choicest of OUR tombs. None of us will refuse you HIS tomb for burying YOUR dead.[5] There’s still a great separation between his and theirs. Abraham is a man of faith… and Abraham firmly believes the promise that God made to him. In Abraham’s eyes, the land isn’t theirs to give him. If he accepts their generous offer, the land itself won’t be his – and the final resting place of his beloved will only be secure as long as there is goodwill between himself and the owners.

The land isn’t theirs to give to him. It’s God’s.

The land isn’t his to take – God hasn’t given it to him yet. And by now Abraham knows that God’s sense of timing is very different to any man’s (which is why he was 111 at Isaac’s 21^st party).

The land won’t come to his descendants for generations – he won’t live to see the promise fulfilled. And he knows it.

 Hidden away in this episode is one of the most remarkable reflections on the depth of Abraham’s faith. Remember back to chapter 15, when God cut his covenant with Abraham – the animals were cut in half, the fire-pot and the smoke of God passed between the pieces – God made this oath to Abraham: Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated for four hundred years.[6] Abraham remembered. And he believed. And he believed God when he promised that they’d return. His faith was such that he wouldn’t try to force God’s hand. He had faith in God’s timing, and when this strange offer for free land came up, he knocked it back.

But he did buy it. He bought for his beloved Sarah.

All these people were still living by faith when they died, the writer of Hebrews tells us. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were strangers and exiles on earth.[7] Hebrews 11 is a mighty chapter. It re-focuses Genesis powerfully. And it re-focuses us on the nature of God’s promises, too.

Here’s a question. Is a promise still valid if we never see it fulfilled? Right now, we would easily say Yes. In a church, listening to the example of Abraham, it’s easy to say yes. We faithfully believe that God is a God of words, he’s a God of the Word, and he’s a God who keeps his word. Good. So we should.

But we live in a world that has shorter-term expectations.

We live in a world where we expect promises to be broken. We pick up the papers and read how often politicians are caught breaking promises – either by expedient policy or moral cowardice. We read journalists who sniff through mounds of human garbage to try and show us why people shouldn’t be trusted (ironically, they expect people to believe them). At the time of writing, my local community is facing a by-election: we’re handed stuff at the train station and the shopping centre which I doubt we’ll read, because we simply don’t trust it to mean anything. We live with a divorce rate of over 40%. Promises made before God and man simply evaporate. We’ll sue if the promise made on a product’s warranty is broken – but we don’t trust lawyers that much, either.

The problem with promises is that, practically, we don’t trust them. And we’re taught in the playground that simply crossing our fingers means we can break our own. Any time. No comebacks.

To trust in the promises of God – to really trust in them, hold those promises so close to our heart that they affect everything that we do and everything we say – is hard. It’s really, really hard. To trust God when he says that all things will be perfected in his Son… To believe him completely when he assures us that soon he will dry every tear… To believe him when he says that all things will be made new…

It’s hard. That’s why I love (and get huge encouragement from) people I know so well who are in the midst of suffering great hardship, still clinging to the promises of God, still bearing testimony to the faithfulness of God to his promises.

That’s why I hate hearing people stand in pulpits and lecterns, proudly holding a Bible, declaring that God’s people should be fat, full and fulfilled – that personal affluence and a healthy body is the evidence of God’s pleasure or approval. That God’s greatest desire is for you to be the successful, positive go-getter, that your destiny awaits. Devils. These devils preach from just enough Scripture to light up what they say… I have no idea how they explain the persecuted Church, or the desperately poor Dalit churches of India, or why people would go to work in the Fistula Hospital, or Christians who wrestle with mental illnesses and yet serve the Living God, or friends of mine who lost their unborn baby and yet could still give thanks to God for his goodness.

Jesus said to take up your cross. That was a hugely offensive thing to suggest. It would be as tasteless as saying make your own gas-chamber and follow me. And yet he said it, and he meant it. Don’t ever tell me that God’s core business is making me a happy bunny in this world.

I’m torn between rage and joy and crying to know that twenty-six million people were martyred in the 20^th century – twenty-six million people were murdered for their allegiance to Christ. They’re with God now, and through the witness of their words and their faith in promises they would never live to see fulfilled, millions more souls have been saved from the wrath that is to come.

Abraham trusted God. He took God at his word, and he had the trust – the faith – to let God be God and fulfil his promises in his own timing. He doesn’t ask God to bring his promise of land forward. Nor does he commit the body of his beloved to strangers. He acts decisively, fairly and honestly – a little ironically, mainly because he and Sarah had so much difficulty acting decisively and honestly throughout their life together.

Abraham has changed, and changed profoundly. Back in chapter 15, we saw Abraham talking to God: O Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless…? You have given me no children, so a servant in my house will be my heir. Life has been hard for him. He’s wealthy, but he’s been through very harsh times. Watching his wife and his concubine tear each other apart. Watching Ishmael grow, only to see him walk into the desert. Watching his beloved Sarah grow older and older. Watching Lot destroy himself.  Watching his son Isaac climb the hill with him, carrying the wood on his shoulders.

And yet Abraham walked with God, and trusted God – took God at his word, and took God’s word to his heart. And he bought the cave and the field for his beloved Sarah. It would be another thirty-five years before he himself would be buried with Sarah. But he knew that one day – one day beyond his reckoning, but one day – God would fulfil his promise, and all the land that he could see would be filled with his offspring forever…

Hold firm. Trust him. He is faithful beyond our ability to imagine. He will wipe away every tear, and we who have been saved by the blood of his Son will be with him and each other forever.

AMEN

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[1] Genesis 12:1-3 Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses. New York/London: Schocken/The Harvill Press, 1995

[2] Hebrews 11:11-12 ESV

[3] Genesis 23:17

[4] Genesis 13:15, 17 ESV

[5] Genesis 23:6 NIV, emphasis mine

[6] Genesis 15:13

[7] Hebrews 11:13