Compassed About Me

Do You See What I See?

Joh 9:41  Jesus told them, "If you were blind, you would not have any sin. But now that you insist, 'We see,' your sin remains."

The man who was blind from birth was considered by the Pharisees to have been born in sin.  [cf 9:, where the disciples no doubt parroted the party line.]

Ironically, Jesus judges the Pharisees guilty because they claim they can see.  The problem for the Pharisees is that they really do SEE who Jesus is, but nevertheless reject Him as the Messiah.  If they were truly blinded, then Jesus would have mercy on them, but in asserting their self-righteousness, they themselves are rejected.  As Jesus said:

Mat 9:12  ..."Healthy people don't need a physician, but sick people do.
Mat 9:13  Go and learn what this means: 'I want mercy and not sacrifice.' For I did not come to call righteous people, but sinners."

Chris

Mud: The Matrix of Life...

Joh 9:1  As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth.
Joh 9:2  And his disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"
Joh 9:3  Jesus answered, "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.
Joh 9:4  We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work.
Joh 9:5  As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world."
Joh 9:6  Having said these things, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud
Joh 9:7  and said to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing.
Joh 9:8  The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar were saying, "Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?"
Joh 9:9  Some said, "It is he." Others said, "No, but he is like him." He kept saying, "I am the man."
Joh 9:10  So they said to him, "Then how were your eyes opened?"
Joh 9:11  He answered, "The man called Jesus made mud and anointed my eyes and said to me, 'Go to Siloam and wash.' So I went and washed and received my sight."
Joh 9:12  They said to him, "Where is he?" He said, "I do not know."
Joh 9:13  They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind.
Joh 9:14  Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes.
Joh 9:15  So the Pharisees again asked him how he had received his sight. And he said to them, "He put mud on my eyes, and I washed, and I see."

As we were going through this passage in church this morning, I couldn't help but noticing the repetition John employed concerning Jesus healing the blind man.  As I pondered this God drew my thoughts to these verses:

Gen 2:6  and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground--
Gen 2:7  then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

Although I realize that the verse says God formed the man from the DUST of the ground, I can't help but see that water was coming up from the land and watering the whole face of the ground.  In other words, it was wet.  In other, other, words...it was mud.

I don't think it is hard to see the point John is trying to make here in the context of the gospel he wrote:

This Jesus, the man who took the mud and healed the blind man was able to do this because the Jesus is also the GOD who took the mud and created man in the first place.

Chris

Do You Want to be Healed?

Joh 5:1  After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
Joh 5:2  Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades.
Joh 5:3  In these lay a multitude of invalids--blind, lame, and paralyzed [waiting for the moving of the water;]
Joh 5:4  [for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool, and stirred the water: whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was healed of whatever disease he had.]
Joh 5:5  One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.
Joh 5:6  When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, "Do you want to be healed?"
Joh 5:7  The sick man answered him, "Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me."
Joh 5:8  Jesus said to him, "Get up, take up your bed, and walk."
Joh 5:9  And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. Now that day was the Sabbath.

The mention of an angel stirring the waters echos of Hebrews 1, don't you think?  The One who is superior angels has arrived!

But, more to the point, what is being undone here?  I think it's along the lines of what Paul says in Romans:

Rom 5:12  Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned--

Sin came into the world, and death through sin.  There is no doubt, I think, that the main thrust of Romans 5:12-21 is SPIRITUAL death, but it also must encompass physical death as well, especially in verse 12, because Paul is saying that the fact that people physically die is a sign that sin is in fact in the world and that sin, because everyone does die, has spread to everyone.  To carry this thought further, I don't think it is a stretch at all to say that physical infirmities are merely a subset of death.  That is to say, that just as everyone is affected by sin and will die everyone is affected by sin and suffers from sickness.  To be sure, some are sicker than others, but we are all affected by it. 

So, this man, although he is obviously not dead, suffers from the sin that Adam brought into the world just as surely as all the generations who have come before him, who are now dead. 

Jesus, comes to undo this.  He asks the man, and He asks us:

DO YOU WANT TO BE HEALED? 

And although the man, in a roundabout way says, "Of Course!" and Jesus does in fact heal him, and Jesus does continue to work miracles like this, these kinds of miracles are a light thing compared to the real kind of healing that Jesus brings, the eternal kind...

And so we come around, again, to the SPIRITUAL nature of Jesus' ministry, that while He certainly performed these SIGNS, the SIGNS in and of themselves are not what are significant, for SIGNS are not meant to be wondered at in and of themselves but rather are to be wondered at in terms of WHAT THEY POINT TOWARDS!

Adam didn't just give up lush gardens, nice weather, abundant food and cool walks in the evening when he ate the fruit of the tree...he gave up ETERNAL LIFE...

Jesus offers you a way to get it back...

DO YOU WANT TO BE HEALED?

Chris

Undone Unbelief...

Joh 4:46  So he came again to Cana in Galilee, where he had made the water wine. And at Capernaum there was an official whose son was ill.
Joh 4:47  When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death.
Joh 4:48  So Jesus said to him, "Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe."
Joh 4:49  The official said to him, "Sir, come down before my child dies."
Joh 4:50  Jesus said to him, "Go; your son will live." The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way.
Joh 4:51  As he was going down, his servants met him and told him that his son was recovering.
Joh 4:52  So he asked them the hour when he began to get better, and they said to him, "Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him."
Joh 4:53  The father knew that was the hour when Jesus had said to him, "Your son will live." And he himself believed, and all his household.
Joh 4:54  This was now the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee.

The thing that strikes me the most about this miracle is the resoluteness of the father.  He asks Jesus to come and heal his son.  Jesus questions his motivation.  The father [ironically in a manner that Jesus himself often displays with people] completely ignores Jesus' comment and presses forward with his request.  In doing so he displays faith in Jesus.  In light of what John had to say in chapter 3 concerning being born again, it is plain that this father is able to see the Kingdom of God and that this faith has been given to him.  This exchange shows the restoration of what was lost in the Garden of Eden:

Gen 3:1  Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God actually say, 'You shall not eat of any tree in the garden'?"
Gen 3:2  And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden,
Gen 3:3  but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'"
Gen 3:4  But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die.

By inference, God told Adam and Eve that if they refrained from eating from any tree in the garden except the one in the midst of it, they would live.  Yes, the serpent manipulated Eve and then Adam into eating from it, but this manipulation only succeeded because they did not believe God in the first place.  They did not believe God loved them or cared about them so their solution was to be LIKE Him so that they would not need Him.

The first man rejected God out of lack of faith.  The second man gives faith, not in a sense of something that can be later cast aside but in a real concrete way that becomes a permanent part of us.  Because of this faith we know God does love us and will take care of us, and that we can approach the throne of Grace knowing we have a sympathetic High Priest. 

Did the father know all these things when he approached Jesus?  Of course not.  But that is the beauty and simplicity of faith.  Faith does not require reason or understanding or deep theology. 

It only requires Jesus. 

Chris

Scarcity Undone...

Joh 2:9  When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom
Joh 2:10  and said to him, "Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now."

In this miracle, Jesus shows that in the Kingdom of God, there is no want.

 Adam sinned and God said:

Gen 3:17  And to Adam he said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, 'You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
Gen 3:18  thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field.
Gen 3:19  By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

Jesus says, "in Me there is all you need."  Jesus reverses the curse, or maybe it is better to say that He completely bypasses it.  The cursed ground did produce the grapes that were used to make the wine, but it was neither good in quality or sufficient in quantity.  Jesus showed He needed neither ground or grapes to make the best wine of all. 

In any case, the the idea of scarcity, and the reversal of it, does not really apply to food and drink, does it?  It really applies to spiritual things, doesn't it?  The water and the wine are symbols of life and plenty, and Jesus provides SPIRITUAL life and SPIRITUAL plenty to all who believe in Him.  This is symbolized best in Revelation:

Rev 22:1  Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb
Rev 22:2  through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
Rev 22:3  No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him.

In this miracle, Jesus inaugurates the process that will lead us to this reality. 

Chris

Glory!

 

...and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

In keeping with the idea that God is no longer simply content to live among His people but to live as a PART of His people, John extends the idea to how we see Him. 

If you'll remember, in the OT Moses saw the GLORY of God and it caused his face to shine so that the people were afraid of him. 

NOW, though, God is not interested so much in how we SEE Him but in how we EXPERIENCE Him.  That experience is based not on a bright white light that shows what He looks like but in the Grace and Truth of who He is.

That's what Jesus came to do.

Chris

...and dwelt among us...

G4637
σκηνόω
skēnoō
skay-no'-o
From G4636; to tent or encamp, that is, (figuratively) to occupy (as a mansion) or (specifically) to reside (as God did in the Tabernacle of old, a symbol fo protection and communion): - dwell.

As a quick sidenote, the only other use of this word is in Revelation, which provides some good evidence that John wrote both books.

You have to be careful when using Strong's Concordance because sometimes, as with looking up words in a regular dictionary, the meaning of a word is dependent just as much on the context in which it occurs as it does on the strict definition of the word. 

However, in this instance, the Strong's definition is right on target. 

Jesus, as John alludes to here by using a word that means to tent or encamp, fulfills the Old Covenant foreshadowing of GOD dwelling with MAN, by hearkening back to the TABERNACLE in the desert.  Like the writer of Hebrews, John reminds us that it has ALWAYS been God's desire to be WITH us.  [On His terms, of course!  Just take a moment to review the regulations surrounding the Tabernacle and I am sure you will agree.] 

God walked with Adam in the Garden.
God lived in the Tabernacle as the Jews wandered in the desert.

Jesus came to dwell with us to reveal God to us.

I think the most pertinent question to ask at this point is:

What does that mean? 

As we watch the Gospel unfold we will find out.

Chris

Joh 1:14 And the Word became flesh...

Not that this is the main point of John's writing in this Gospel, although He certainly tackles it more head on in John 2: 

[2Jn 1:7  For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist...]

that here is the foundation for the argument against gnosticism. 

According to the gnostic:

All religious traditions acknowledge that the world is imperfect. Where they differ is in the         explanations which they offer to account for this imperfection and in what they suggest might be done about it. Gnostics have their own -- perhaps quite startling -- view of these matters: they hold that the world is flawed because it was created in a flawed manner.

Therefore, for the Gnostic, no redemption of the flesh that is possible.  But Christianity says differently.  All that God created was GOOD and only ruined by the sin of Adam [Romans 5:12-21].  Jesus came not to REPAIR a mistake that He had made.  Oh no!  He came to REDEEM.  Indeed to He came to GLORIFY the flesh, by defeating the power of sin and death and giving us the gift of Eternal Life, that we might reign with Him, in our indestructible resurrection bodies, forever. 

And it all started with a little baby in a manger.

Chris

And the Word became Flesh...

Joh 1:14  And the Word became flesh...

So many places to go with this...

Let's start here:

God was no longer satisfied to speak to humanity through proxies, that is, prophets.  He determined, once and for all, to speak to us directly Himself. He chose to speak to us through the Word, the One who had been together with Him from the beginning and who is God.

Chris