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JOHN’S GOSPEL… SHOW US THE FATHER – 25

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John 14:8 NLT
[8] Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”

Really, Philip, after all this time, do you still not know the Father?

John 14:9 NLT
[9] “Jesus replied, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and yet you still don’t know who I am? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father! So why are you asking me to show him to you?”

Imagine Jesus’ frustration! After years of painstakingly revealing the nature of the Father, doing and saying whatever the Father showed Him, constantly referring to the Father as His source, and witnessing to His unity with the Father, Philip still naively whined…
“Show us the Father.”

Philip, where have you been all this time?

How true of human nature! How blind to truth when hearts are born in unbelief and blocked by beliefs and traditions cemented into the soul by years of exposure to the world and its ways!

Paul commented that the person who does not have the indwelling Spirit to awaken the dead human spirit, will never understand or accept God’s truth.

1 Corinthians 2:14 NIV
[14] “The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.”

Jesus made the same observation in his conversation with Nicodemus.

John 3:10, 12 NIV
[10] “You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things?…
[12] I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?”

The sad reality is that God’s truth is only foolishness to those who have never been awakened by God’s Spirit to spiritual truth. It takes a miracle of grace for a person who is born dead in sin to understand and believe the gospel. It’s no wonder that worldly people are God’s enemies, hating the truth and strongly resisting the message of Jesus, however compellingly it is presented.

Paul, writing to the Ephesian church, people who were once steeped in pagan beliefs and behaviour,

Ephesians 2:1, 4-5 NIV
[1] “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins…
[4] But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, [5] made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.”

Was Philip revealing, by his question, that he and his fellow disciples were still in the realm of darkness where the truth was veiled to them?

Only at the moment when the Holy Spirit came in power, raised them from spiritual death, tore off the veil of unbelief, and transferred them into the kingdom of God, did they recognise the truth of what Jesus had come to reveal.

When the Holy Spirit fell on them on the day of Pentecost, the world of the disciples turned right side up. All their confused misunderstanding and muddled beliefs were obliterated by the miracle of new birth. This was a profound “aha” moment for them. They started life all over again with a clean slate of spiritual understanding.

Thus Peter could proclaim with utmost confidence, linking experience with Scripture…

Acts 2:14-17, 22-24, 32-33, 36-39 NIV
[14] “Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. [15] These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! [16] No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: [17] “ ‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams…
[22] “Fellow Israelites, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. [23] This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. [24] But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him…
[32] God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it. [33] Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear…
[36] “Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.” [37] When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” [38] Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. [39] The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.”

In a flash, all they had heard and experienced in their years with Jesus fell into place. New birth happened, and with the new birth, they finally understood the nature of the Father.

He, the Father, and Jesus are one. Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God. Jesus is God’s glory on display. Jesus is the God-man in whom all the attributes of the invisible God are revealed to us…in whom all the fullness of God dwells in a real man who came to earth to be… Immanuel – God with us.

Jesus is still, and will always be …in heaven… our mediator,

1 Timothy 2:5-6 NIV
[5] “For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus…”

So, Philip, here is the truth. The Jesus you only knew as a man, or even perhaps God’s Messiah, is in true far more than a holy man.

Hebrews 1:1-3 NIV
[1] “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, [2] but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. [3] The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.”

And the Father, whom they longed to know, was as real to them at last as the Son whom they had seen, touched, and walked with on earth.

WHY DID JESUS COME? – 1

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WHY DID JESUS COME? – 1

Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”  Jesus answered, “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me?” John 14:8-10a.

Were I to ask 100 people why Jesus came, I would probably receive 100 different answers, probably all more-or-less correct. At the same time, all those answers would be an expansion of the real purpose for His coming. Yes, He came to save us; yes, He came to give us eternal life; yes, He came to die for our sins etc, but all of these reasons flow into something much greater which was made known to us from the beginning of time.

Why did God create Adam and Eve? He made the first man and woman and instructed them, within the love-bond of marriage, to multiply so that He could have a family of people made in His image to love Him, and to be loved by Him. Things went horribly wrong because man used God’s gift of choice to go his own way.

Over many centuries God revealed Himself to His chosen people through His Law and by His word through the prophets, but they persisted in rebelling and reaping the consequences of their foolish ways. Instead of enjoying God’s love, they felt His wrath for their disobedience until they believed that God could only be satisfied by ritual and sacrifice. They perceived Him as an angry God who thirsted for blood to appease Him. They had completely obliterated their understanding of His desire for a family and corrupted their faith into a religion of rules.

How could God get them to understand how He really felt about them? Since they refused to listen to His word or recognise His kindness and goodness to them, He had only one alternative and that was to come in the person of Jesus to show them by His compassion and to teach them by His words, what the Father is really like and what He yearned to be to them, a loving Father in a loving family.

Throughout the gospels, and especially in John’s gospel, Jesus insisted that He was acting on the Father’s instructions and that everything He said and did was to reveal the true nature of the Father. As an authentic representative of the Father who was sent by the Father, He loved, healed, and forgave the people so that they would be in no doubt as to the Father’s intentions for them. God wanted them free to live under His authority and not to be bound by a suffocating religious system that misrepresented Him.

His message was rejected, and He was executed as a blasphemer, but the resurrection finally authenticated what He had come to do. Jesus is the mirror image of the Father.

THE TRUE TEST

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THE TRUE TEST

“Phillip said, ‘Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.’ Jesus answered: ‘Don’t you know me, Phillip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father?’ Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing His work.

“Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.'” John 14:8-11 NIV.

More of Jesus’ unforgettable words uttered in response to a question!

Would the disciples ever forget these last hours with Jesus in the Upper Room? The Passover meal had been eaten, the ceremonies observed that had reminded them of the first Passover meal their forefathers had eaten in Egypt. It was eaten in haste while they were poised for flight from the wrath of Pharaoh when his own firstborn son lay dead at the hands of the angel of death.

Egypt lay in ruins, systematically destroyed as God hit the land and its people with plague after destructive plague. Pharaoh had stubbornly resisted God’s command until this! It was the last straw and he ordered the Israelites out of the land before their God did anything worse to them.

Now Jesus had introduced a new ceremony infused with a new meaning for His followers to observe from then on – a ceremony deeply rooted in the events of the Passover but symbolizing a deliverance far greater than the deliverance from slavery in Egypt. In the simple symbols of bread and wine they, would never forget the death of God’s Passover Lamb who would lay down His life to set His people free from slavery to sin.

In the symbolism of the Passover lambs killed and eaten by each family, they were to recognize that they were protected from death by faith in the blood of a lamb. No animal blood could protect them, but there was a lamb, God’s Lamb who would be put to death in a few hours, the efficacy of whose shed blood would atone for the sins of all people for all time.

Jesus savoured the precious moments with His disciples before it was time to hand Himself over for the sacrifice. What would be the subject of His final words to them? There was nothing more meaningful for Him to talk about than the Father, and to prepare them for the greatest of all gifts they were to receive — the gift of the Holy Spirit who would come in His place as His representative to live within them.

First of all, though, He had to make sure that they knew that there was unity between Father, Son and Holy Spirit so intimate that the Holy Spirit who would come to indwell them would be to them exactly as He had been, and would say and do in them exactly the same as He had said and done. Just as Jesus had perfectly represented the Father, so the Holy Spirit would perfectly represent Him.

In response to Thomas and Phillip’s questions, Jesus assured them that it was His intention to show them the way and to take them to the Father. They would easily recognize the Father because Jesus was an exact replica of Him. In every way, He perfectly resembled the Father; all they had to do was to listen to His words and look at His works and they would know the Father just as they had known Him.

Jesus could not have explained it more clearly. In future days, when He was no longer with them in person, they had a standard by which to measure the words and works of those who were claiming to be representatives of God and, of course, of their own activities in His name. True sons resemble their fathers. One only has to watch and listen to the son to know what his father is like.

Not the claims but the works are the true test.

Acknowledgement

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.