Tag Archives: witness

Truth Is Its Own Witness

Bible Study, , ,

TRUTH IS ITS OWN WITNESS 

“The Pharisees challenged Him, ‘Here you are, appearing as your own witness; your testimony is not valid.’ Jesus answered, ‘Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid, for I know where I came from and where I am going. But you have no idea where I came from or where I am going. You judge by human standards; I pass judgment on no one. But if I do judge, my decisions are true because I am not alone. I stand with the Father who sent me. In your own Law it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is true. I am the one who testifies for myself; my other witness is the Father who sent me.'” John 8:13-18 (NIV).

The Pharisees must have learned their lesson well. They had tried to catch Jesus out by bringing a woman caught in adultery and demanding that He authorize her to be stoned. According to the Law of Moses, stoning was the penalty for adultery. Jesus applied another law to rescue the woman from their cruel plot — the very same law that they were now appealing to, the law of two witnesses.

They pointed fingers at the woman while they were equally guilty of sin. When Jesus allowed their consciences to speak against them, they left and the woman was without witnesses against her and He was able to show her mercy and set her free. Now they accused Jesus of being His own witness.

Jesus was not fazed by their accusation. He knew that truth did not need witnesses. Human beings can never claim to know the truth in absolute terms because our witness is flawed by our faulty understanding and opinions. At best we can only judge by what we think we know or have seen. Jesus, on the other hand, IS the truth — His judgment is perfect, based on perfect knowledge because He is the embodiment of truth. Therefore His witness is true.

Jesus knew both His origin and His destiny. He knew that He had been sent by the Father and was returning to the Father. Because the Pharisees rejected Him, they did not believe that He had come from God. Therefore they kept asking, ‘Who are you and where do you come from?’

Jesus had many witnesses that testified to the validity of His claims. John the Baptist bore witness to Him as “the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” The Father audibly acknowledged Him at His baptism; the Holy Spirit visibly descended on Him; and His miracles testified that He was from God. Only Nicodemus, of all the Pharisees recognized that there was something different about this rabbi. He had both authority and power that no other rabbi had ever displayed. His conclusion was that God was with Him.

Unbelief is a powerful and effective block against the truth. On the other hand, faith is the only link we have with the knowledge of the truth. Faith opens the highway between us and God. Our faith is so precious to God that He continually tests us to strengthen and verify that our faith is genuine.

“In all this you greatly rejoice, though for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith — of greater worth than gold, which perishes ever though refined by fire — may result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed.” 1 Peter 1:6, 7(NIV).

How often, in our ignorance of God’s ways, do we attribute our trials to the devil instead of recognizing the hand of the Father working in us to strengthen our confidence in Him. How else can faith grow and become strong if we have no opportunity to exercise our trust in God when we cannot see one step ahead of us?

Because of the Pharisees’ hidden agenda, they refused to receive the witness to Jesus that was all around them if they had only wanted to believe. It comes down to one thing again — choice. They chose not to believe because Jesus interfered with their unholy ambitions.

We are also faced with the same choice. We do not need more proof that Jesus is the Son of God. We need to choose whether we want to be part of His kingdom or continue to be part of the kingdom of this world which is destined to perish along with everything that is not eternal.

Check The Fruit

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CHECK THE FRUIT! 

“There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.” John 1:6-8 (NIV).

Don’t you love the way John puts John the Baptist into the correct perspective? If you have travelled with me through Luke’s gospel, you will have seen how Jesus struggled to teach His disciples to interpret what was going on from the perspective of the kingdom of God. But at that time they just didn’t get it.

He promised them that things would be different after Pentecost — and they were! Once they had the Holy Spirit in them, they saw things from God’s point of view just like Jesus did. Although he was a prophet, John the Baptist’s ministry was unique and special. Just in case anyone mistakenly thought that he was the Messiah, John assures his readers that he was only a witness but a powerful one.

How did John the Baptist bear witness to the light? His preaching on repentance had a twofold purpose — to call God’s people back to a life of generosity and service and to prepare them for the coming of the Messiah who would immerse them in the Holy Spirit.

The religious leaders had led the people away from what God wanted into what they thought God wanted, religious people who meticulously kept the minutest details of the law at the expense of loving God by being kind and generous to all people. John’s preaching was fiery and explicit. He called his curious congregation who went to hear what he had to say, “A brood of vipers, a bunch of bastards — fatherless people!”

“Return,” he urged them. “There is someone coming who is far greater than I. My baptism in water is only a preparation for His baptism of fire.” What Jesus was about to do would be like the fire that consumes the chaff that is beaten off the wheat — He would expose and get rid of everything in His people that was incompatible with God – greed, selfishness, unkindness, pride and arrogance. He was not interested in religious rigmarole. He wanted real people who would love God and love their neighbour.

John the Baptist had no desire to promote himself. His only mission was to prepare the way by alerting the people to their need to get back to the simplicity of God’s way and to recognise the Messiah when He arrived because He would continue what John began.

“The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. 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. Yet to all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God — children born not of natural descent or a husband’s will but born of God.” John 1:9-13 (NIV).

There is a sad note in John’s story — in spite of what John the Baptist preached and testified to, neither the world at large nor God’s people recognised or acknowledged the Messiah when He came. His own people, who should have known Him because they had been taught His Word from their mother’s breast, refused to receive Him.

Since the day when they were taken into covenant relationship with God at Mount Sinai, they persisted in rebelling against God’s best way to live and going their own way with disastrous consequences; yet they never learned. And here they were, repeating history all over again.

Except for a few. In God’s story there are always those, few in number, yes, but true children of God who take what God says seriously, act on it and are welcomed into God’s family as dearly loved children. John hastens to add that this is not about natural birth. The Jews assumed that, because they were born Jews and had been circumcised — an external sign of their Jewishness, they were “in” and everybody else was “out”.

John made sure that he told them that it didn’t work like that. There had to be another “birth”, a supernatural one that brought them back into the family of God and reproduced the character of God in them.

How tragic that this erroneous thinking has crept into the church as well! Some branches of the church bring their babies into the family of God by “Christianising” them and “confirming” that ritual when they are of age and yet they have never been supernaturally “born” into God’s family by receiving Jesus as the Son of God and the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of sonship (Romans 8:14-16).

Jesus said, “Check the fruit. That’s the real test.”

Revealing Christ

Pastor's Desk,

Dear Family,

I recently attended a very dear friend’s funeral. I had known him for over 30 years. It was a huge shock to my system when I received a call from his children to say that he had died as I did not realize that he had even been sick. I felt this deeply as some of the best memories of my early twenties were made with him. We spent many hours doing all sorts of things together. He was a musician of note and wherever we went, people knew him and it did not take long before his guitar was out and the crowd was being entertained. He also happened to be around when I had my very first kiss with my wife-to-be, in Main Street, Port Elizabeth; he was the one who fetched my wife-to-be from her pad and brought her to mine so I could propose; and he was the MC at our wedding. A very special friend indeed. Shortly after I received Christ I wrote him a letter (as I did to all my friends) telling him about my faith and the hope I had in Jesus. I do not recall him ever responding to that letter, but whenever we met up again through the years, he was always respectful of my standing. Last time I saw him, about 6 months ago, he told me he had started attending a little church close to where he lived and that he and the pastor had many discussions over a whisky or two. God is faithful!
I received an email from another mutual friend following his death and in it she said, “He was such a special soul, a gentle person, never a harsh word to say about anyone, never heard him swear or skinner (gossip) or tell a rude joke, music ran through his veins.” This summed him up completely. But it got me thinking….how would someone sum me up? How would someone sum you up? The fact is that the Bible calls upon us to “Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life…” Mmmmm…..shine like stars? Everything without complaining or arguing? Shu! I have such a long way to go. But this is not optional for us. God calls upon us to allow Him to shine through us so that He can be revealed to the earth.

We may not all go to China or elsewhere to tell people about Jesus, but we can all allow Him to shine through us! Reveal Him today, everyday!

Light Up Your World

Christian Life, , , , ,

LIGHT UP YOUR WORLD

“’No one lights a lamp, and then hides it in a drawer. It’s put on a lamp stand so those entering the room have light to see where they’re going. Your eye is a lamp, lighting up your whole body. If you live wide-eyed in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light. If you live squinty-eyed in greed and distrust, your body is a dank cellar. Keep your eyes open, your lamp burning, so you don’t get musty and murky. Keep your life a well-lighted room.’” Luke 11:33-36 (The Message).

As a Jew, Jesus would have used the words, ‘light’ and ‘darkness’ from the understanding that they would be interpreted functionally, not literally. The ‘eye’ represented a person’s perspective on life. To have an ‘eye of light’ indicated that the person had a heart that was one (echad) with God with an unselfish and generous disposition. To have a dark or evil eye meant that the person was selfish and greedy, unable to see beyond his own nose.

People who believe that Jesus is the Son of God and have responded to His invitation to take His yoke, follow and learn from Him, have been relocated from the dominion of darkness into the kingdom of light. They have had a change of master and a change of disposition. They are no longer ruled by greed. They have become generous givers, not only of their resources but also in attitude towards other people.

Jesus used this as the test of a person’s true response to Him. When Zaccheus received Him, his first action was to overturn his old life by being generous to the poor and by making restitution for his dishonesty. This, to Jesus, was evidence of a truly changed life.

That kind of life cannot be lived in secret. Just as there is no value in putting a light under a bed, there is no value in hiding your new life. A changed and generous disposition is intended to be a witness to God’s grace, setting the person free from the greed that brings judgment and replacing it with the joy of giving.

In his letter, James made a case for the futility of faith without good works. Good works in themselves cannot save, firstly because anything ‘good’ we try to do comes from polluted hearts, and secondly, because God is not impressed by our best self-effort. But when our sins have been removed and our hearts changed by God’s power, we are free to express the new life in us by a changed attitude to other people. We can now see them through God’s eyes and feel their need in our hearts.

God’s way of involving us in His government of mercy is to meet the needs of others through us. He provides for us through others so that, in turn, we can give away to those in need. In this way we create a current of resources which keeps circulating as long as we keep giving. What we hoard stops the flow of that current and shuts down the joy that comes from doing life God’s way. ‘Keep the current flowing,’ said Jesus, ‘and your life will be lit up with God’s presence and joy.’