Tag Archives: betray

He Is The Word

Bible Study, , ,

HE IS THE WORD 

“Aware that His disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, ‘Does this  offend you? Then what if you see the Son of Man ascend to where He was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you — they are full of the Spirit and life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe.’ For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray Him. He went on to say, ‘This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him.'” John 6:60-65 (NIV).

Sobering words!

If there were among His disciples those who were offended by the talk about His death and the effect it would have on them, how would they swallow the reality of His return to the Father. They were already grumbling because He insisted that He had come from the Father but, to go back to where He had come from would be just too much for them. Little did they know that they would be witnesses of that very event!

Jesus brought these men to the heart of what He was all about — His Word. He and His Word are inseparable. John introduced Him to his readers as the Word who was with God in the beginning and who was God. According to Hebrew understanding, God’s Word is a manifestation of Himself in another form. Jesus was God in another form — in the flesh and the Word.

It is difficult for the human mind to understand the intimacy between the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit and the Word. What the Father speaks and what the Son speaks are the perfect expression of who they are. The Spirit equally participates in and energizes the Word to speak and effect what they say.

Faith in God’s Word is equal to faith in God. To believe what Jesus said is to stake one’s life on the one who said it. It was John’s purpose to present all the evidence necessary to authenticate Jesus’ claim to be the Son of God so that His readers would have confidence in His Word and therefore in Him.

How difficult it is for human beings to take the words of Jesus seriously! We are conditioned by the fickleness of our nature, to mistrust one another’s words because of experience. The word of human beings has proved so untrustworthy that we have to record on paper, sign and have witnessed every agreement for it to be believed.

“When God made His promise to Abraham, since there was no one greater for Him to swear by, He swore by Himself, saying, ‘I will surely bless you and give you many descendants.’ And so, after waiting patiently, Abraham received what was promised.” Hebrews 6:13, 14 (NIV).

Nowadays, not even an oath is trustworthy. It has to be recorded with ink on paper and signed for it to be binding.

“Men swear by someone greater than themselves, and the oath confirms what is said and puts an end to all argument. Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of His purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, He confirmed it with an oath. God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged.” Hebrews 6:15-18 (NIV).

If Jesus is God and His word is the essence of who He is, then His promise is infallible and unbreakable — “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.”

What anguish, what sorrow, what frustration went into the words He spoke. His constant refrain was, ‘You will not believe.’ Judas walked with Him for more than three years and he chose not to believe and walked away. What will it take for us who have all the hindsight we need to be convinced that He is who He said He is, to believe and to respond to what He had promised?

Do you believe?

Stay With It

Christian Life, , ,

STAY WITH IT

“‘You’ll even be turned in by parents, brothers, relatives, friends. Some of you will be killed. There’s no telling who will hate you because of me. Even so, every detail of your body and soul — even the hairs of your head! — is in my care; nothing of you will be lost. Staying with it — that’s what is required. Stay with it to the end. You won’t be sorry, you’ll be saved.'” Luke 21:16-19 (The Message).

How terrible is that, that a parent will betray a child and siblings each other for the sake of an ideology that has no foundation in truth! Such is the power of deception that it even overrides family loyalties.

There are countless stories of these kinds of betrayals from the Communist era, for example, that ripped family and friends apart. There are devotees of other religions today that are equally ruthless in the name of their god and teach that anyone who is not one of them must be destroyed.

But, unlike the gods who ‘require’ this kind of behaviour to protect them, Jesus assured His followers that He was in charge and would protect them, even down to the hairs on their head! Herein lies the difference between lies and truth. If a god cannot take care of him and demands that his followers go on the rampage and riot and murder to guard his name, does he sound like the sort of god that attracts both trust and security?

What if you did something to annoy him? If he requires you to kill even your own family for him, what guarantee do you have that he won’t take you out for some infringement? How much security is there is a god who is capricious and unpredictable?

Once again, Jesus was utterly truthful. He faithfully warned His followers that there was trouble ahead for them if they remained loyal to Him. He gave no guarantee of physical safety if they followed Him but He did assure them that no part of them would be eternally lost. How many times have we already seen that He always viewed life from the perspective of eternity? Life did not end at the grave. It was only a part of the whole, a preparation for what lay ahead beyond death.

Persecution would not destroy them, however tough it was, but it would weed out those who were only in it for what they could get out of it. It would be part of a refining process by which faith in Him would be stripped of props and false expectations and would be anchored in His trustworthiness alone.

Jesus wanted His followers to trust Him so completely, in His character and His promises, that they would stake their very lives on what He had said. And they did! History reveals the story of many thousands during the first three centuries of the church who gave their lives rather than denies Jesus, and they did it joyfully because they believed His promises.

People foolishly follow the words of someone who claimed to speak for their god with no proof of their authenticity. Jesus Himself spoke these words, “‘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. Do you believe this?'” John 11:25-26 (NIV).

Once again we are left with a choice — to believe and follow the teachings of a god who never speaks for himself and who offers no infallible proof or his existence and has to rely on fallible humans to speak for him, or to believe in the one who said He would die and rise again and did it, not for Himself but for us, so that we can entrust ourselves to His proven trustworthiness.