The Daily Devo with Steve

It is interesting to me how direct Jesus is with these guys.  I mean, He is telling them repeatedly what the deal is, and they just don’t understand...and largely because they don’t WANT to understand.  Jesus is actually giving them the ‘gospel’ message right here in this text.  This is a passage that I just know John is writing about and reflecting on and thinking, “Oh, NOW I get it...NOW I understand what He was saying!”.  John got it (at least in hindsight), but many of these Pharisees didn’t.  But one thing I picked up on this morning was the last sentence of this passage: “As he was saying these things, many believed in him.”

Jesus is here talking to a group who has been verbally abusing Him, has maybe had a little physical abuse dealt to Him, and that He knows will ultimately be responsible for His unthinkable torture and death.  He is continuing to go back to them and to try to reach those that are open to His message.  There may have been just a few in this group that even had a shot at ‘receiving’ what He was teaching and saying, but He went anyways.  He was resolute in His faith and in His mission and it didn’t matter how many times someone gave up on Him or pushed back, He kept coming.

I think that’s an encouraging word this morning...this reminder that we should be resolute, that we should persist, and that if only one person were to be saved by our faith, that would be a victory for God.  That could be my mission...I don’t know.  So that’s my challenge today...to illustrate my faith in a clear and visible way to someone, not as an ‘in your face’ type of a thing, but a subtle and obvious act of faith that clearly discloses what I believe in a manner that is also inviting to another.  I don’t know what that looks like, but that’s my calling today.

A word about our country and this election...

Before getting into this story, I will recognize that this story isn’t in the earliest manuscripts of John’s Gospel.  Now, that DOES mean that it was later added.  That DOESN’T mean that it isn’t a true story.  Since I believe that Jesus lived, died, and was resurrected as substitute for the punishment that I deserved, I also believe and trust that God orchestrated the gathering of these readings and materials and that this was all part of a bigger miracle He was doing in giving us the Bible.  In that context, I believe that this story probably belongs here.  And, in the sense that it really does illustrate things about Jesus that we already know from other parts of scripture, it seems completely logical that this is a true story that people later recalled and decided to include into this text.  Frankly, it doesn’t matter all that much to me how or why it is here...it is just fun to speculate and it is interesting.

As for the reading itself, this is the famous story of the woman caught in adultery.  Jesus positions himself, just as in the story of the woman at the well, to be encountered by a group of scribes and Pharisees.   And they pose a challenge to him, almost a riddle, and we don’t know if they literally brought a woman to Him or if they and Jesus are acting metaphorically...we don’t even know that this actually happened.  But I am going to read this really quickly and then comment.

Here is the takeaway for me - though we don’t know if this episode happens, it certainly reinforces ideas authentic to the gospels.  I am thinking of Luke’s gospel, in Luke 6:37, or in Romans 12:17-19.  A big part of our faith journey is learning to own our part of our sin.  Sure, bad things happen to good people.  Bad things happen to all people.  But, we all point to that to make ourselves feel better really.  More often, bad things happen because of sin...sometimes it is our sin, sometimes it is the sin of others.  But, most often it is our sin that leads to our hurt and our pain.  And I think Jesus is trying to make sure we focus our energy and our attention on the one thing that we CAN control...what we choose to do in our daily lives.  Look how He ends this passage...by telling this woman that she’s forgiven, now go and do right.

It is so simple.  Today, my takeaway is also going to be so simple...today I really want to focus on doing right with each decision.  With each decision today I will simply ask, “God, is this what you would have me to do in this moment?”  Simple and straight forward.

I love that John records that not everyone was immediately swept off their feet and followed Jesus...that’ the stuff of fairy tales, and that’s not what this is.  John tells us that some people believed Jesus, and others didn’t.  That’s what we would expect to have happened.

My favorite part of this though is the officers...the Pharisees had sent officers to capture and bring Jesus back to them so they could interrogate Him (I don’t think they were trying to kill him yet...not positive though).  But the offices returned empty-handed.  They were convinced, having drawn closer to Jesus personally, that Jesus was whom He said He was.  And Nicodemus, who spent one-on-one time with Jesus as well, was also certainly a little more skeptical of the whole process the Jewish Pharisees were employing...and they got onto Nicodemus about that.

The important takeaway today though, for me, comes from these couple of verses 41 and 42.  What jumps out at me is that these Pharisees were right, that the Messiah was to come from the line of David...and Jesus WAS from the line of David.  Further, Jesus WAS from Bethlehem, not Galiliee.  The Jews were so hungry to make their point and to seize their power and control that they missed a clear sign.   Jesus was exactly the person they were seeking.  Of course, they never investigated that...they weren’t really interested in the truth; only the status quo.

So, as I have taken away before, the reminder here is to be a truth-seeker, not a point-maker.  The idea is to remain curious, not hell-bent on making a point.  Today, my prayer is that God would reveal to me an area of my life that needs a little attention in this way, an area where I have been less open to having Him intervene.  I pray that He would reveal that to me and then help to soften me in this area.

Short reading today, as I have to get into a few other things early this morning.  But there is a huge lesson and a great reminder in these few verses this morning.

In the first section, v25-31, we see the Jewish leaders, the Pharisees, watching as the locals are trying to figure out if this Jesus is in fact the long-awaited Messiah.  They seem to be on the fence about it, but the consensus ends up being that this can’t be because they know where Jesus came from and they won’t know that about the Messiah, and they are wondering if He has done enough miracles to really be Jesus.

Think about that for a minute...isn’t that a little funny, in a sad way?  I mean, how much ego do you have to have to take that position?  And yet, we all do this all of the time.  We all presume to know what God would or wouldn’t do, and we try to make judgements about God based on what we see in the world around us.  That is just ridiculous.  God would never use a human man to save the world, and God would never let that man be tortured and hung on a cross to die...He would never do that, until He did.

And then the next short section, 32-36, shows us that the Jews were piling onto this and they were really not interested in the truth...they wanted their influence and their order restored.  I mean, they “know” that Jesus isn’t the Messiah, they don’t need to investigate it any further...no matter what happens, they aren’t interested in hearing, they are only interested in teaching people what they want people to know.  And we are the same in this way too.  How often do we fail to be curious, and instead look for justification?  How often are our minds made up, our eyes shut, and mouths open to declare what we ‘know’?  I have lived long enough to know that I talk too much and listen too little, and that I don’t carry enough curiosity around in life with me.  I hold my opinions too firmly.

God is God...and I am not.  I believe God can and does do what He wills.  There is no reason to hold firmly to all of the things I think I know in the world, or about this world.  I can live in curiosity.  I can enjoy what comes to me.  Heck, that sounds WAY more fun that constantly trying to confirm and re-affirm what I think I already know anyways.  Today I pray that God helps me fully embrace a curiosity about life and faith...that I would see, hear, and appreciate twice as much as I judge, speak, and justify.

Now that Jesus has called everyone to the mat, that is time for things to ‘real’, we see a shift occur.  Now the Jews are in a mode of seeking to kill Him, and Jesus starts the process of actually sending His disciples out to do some of the heavy lifting...it is time for them to get into the game and to get personally invested.  This is a cool chapter and there is a lot happening, but as always, I want to focus on something that caught my attention as I was reading this.  Looking down at verses 15-24, we see Jesus in an interaction with the Jews, and we see Him making an argument about working on the Sabbath, which is something the Jews loved to attach him on.  Jesus addressed them about the Jewish practice requiring circumcising newborn boys on the eighth day, regardless of whether that day was a Sabbath...this was a widely-accepted Jewish practice.   Here we see Jesus is arguing from the “lesser to the greater”, a common rhetorical style in Jewish tradition and in modern logic as well.  His point is that if breaking the Sabbath was allowed for circumcision (involving part of the body), how much more should healing on the Sabbath be allowed when it involves the entire body?  He is making a great point...and a fantastic argument, and there really isn’t anything you can say about this if you are a Jew.  Jesus, in a way, trapped them in their own logic and rules.  Keep in mind, these are Jewish rules, not God’s...so, Jesus is also illuminating the fact that they have extended their reach beyond what God handed down through Moses and have leveraged their own rules to the benefit of their own power and influence.  So, they were obviously not excited about being called out like this, but they were definitely exposed.

For what it is worth, in doing some research, Jesus also uses this method in 10:34–36, and the writer of Hebrews uses it extensively (see Heb 1:4; 2:2–3), and later rabbinic tradition (e.g., the Talmud) also relied heavily on this form of reasoning to apply legal precedents.  In fact, we do this a lot even today.  One of my favorite lines of reasoning in Christian apologetics uses this in relation to the resurrection - if the resurrection didn’t happen, the rest of the Bible doesn’t matter.  In that light, we should focus our attention on the resurrection until we agree as to whether or not THAT is true, because if we don’t agree on THAT, the rest of our discussion is a waste of time.

At any rate, thinking through Jesus’ logic...I feel my own life is called into question in this way - “Where am I adopting God’s principles and ideals into my life, and leveraging them for my own benefit?”.  And, the more important question, “Where am I ignoring them, where am I looking for loopholes and justifications for behavior that God would condemn, and how can I take a step in the direction of getting those aligned today?”.  That’s a hard question and thought.  But, I guess that’s the point, right?  So that’s the thought today...the prayer is that God would show my one place where my obedience as created momentum in my life, that I would be encouraged in that way.  And, I also ask that He would show me an area where I am yet to leverage His teaching and instruction, that I would see an opportunity to grow in that way.

I really love this section of John’s letter, and one question specifically.  But before we get to that question, there is something almost a little funny to me.  There are records from historical writings about the Jesus followers being vampires, blood-suckers, and cannibals almost.  It is a section of scripture like this, taken without context, that really leads to that misunderstanding.  I say I find it a little funny because I KNOW when I am reading it that Jesus isn’t talking about any of that kind of stuff, that He is using that language in an illusory way.

To my favorite question though...Jesus has just gone through this long diatribe against these guys, accusing them of free-loading on his miracles essentially, and now He is ready to hold their feet to the  fire, to make sure they know that following Him is great and is beneficial and is the plan, but that it also should be expected to cost something.   Connecting back to what He said when He called several of the disciples, He told them that He would make them “fishers of men”.  When we read that, we said that we all followed Jesus, in all likelihood, for personal reasons, for personal gain, for what’s in it for us...not to actually become fishers of men.  Well, Jesus was telling them that now it is time to grow up.  It is time to become spiritual men.

And I love that...I love that because even though I have been a Jesus follower for probably 17-18 years now, I have a lot of these same tendencies in me.  I tend to follow when it is easiest and when the blessings are flowing, and then I still tend to retreat a little when times get hard.  That’s part of the development process.  Today serves as a little shot in the arm, reminding me that I need to continue towards growing up.  And the question that I love - Jesus asks then, “Do YOU want to go away as well?”...probably annunciating it similarly, and Peter responds with the only appropriate response: “Lord, to whom shall we go?”...or, in other words, “Jesus, we have seen what you’ve done and are starting to understand who you are...and we can’t unsee that.”  Today we have people turning from the faith, and is always for the same reasons and never for the right reasons (or at least I haven’t had anyone I know leave for the right reason.  They leave because of the church, the people in the church, how they were treated, or how they felt, or in an act of self-preservation and attempt to reclaim autonomy (which isn’t the church’s fault); I don’t ever hear someone say, “I just don’t believe in the resurrection anymore”.  They leave, then they work to justify it in their minds...and if you look around for reasons NOT to believe, you can find them.  There are plenty of reasons to doubt if that’s what you want to find.  You can find reasons to support terrible things, unthinkable things in the world.  But, you can’t unsee things.  And, I believe, probably in an almost romantic fashion, that once you understand the resurrection and that you place your faith in Christ, that there is something in you that never goes away...just like seeing something that can’t be unseen.

Today we are reading the famous “Jesus Feeds Five Thousand” story, and we also get a quick mention of the walking on water incident from John.  Knowing what is ahead in tomorrow’s reading, I feel that I clearly see a point that John is trying to make in this section...Jesus is really setting the disciples up for a test.  He isn’t baiting them into anything in a negative way, but He is giving them every reason He can to get them to really buy into what He is teaching, and Who He is.   I won’t spoil it, but for the sake of the discussion today, tomorrow’s reading is where Jesus teaches the truth of what His identity means, and that following Him means sacrifice and change...it isn’t all sunshine and rainbows and miracles that help you with your day...in other words, Jesus isn’t a “prosperity God”.  Jesus is about the drop the hammer on them, so He is trying to get them ready.

It makes me think...I wonder if God does this with me?  I wonder if God provides and blesses and does miracles in my life partly because He knows that there will be times where He needs to let me work through something a little more ‘by myself’?  Of course, He never ‘leaves me’, it is just that there are seasons of life where God is a little less tangible, and those are the seasons where my faith is stretched, challenged, and subsequently grown.  It seems like this is kind of a microcosm of that kind of interaction, with Jesus doing the same thing with the disciples.

For today, I am going to take some time and reflect on how blessed I am; on how God has shown up in my life; on how I am certainly not alone and without God.  I am going to finish my journal entry and go into 10 minutes of silence, with a cup of coffee, and just sit and list blessings in my life.  I want this to be a time when God becomes really evident to me, really obvious, and where I can be sure I am truly prepared and aware of His presence and blessing.  I never know when another season of testing might come, but I want to be prepared, and I also know it is always a great idea to reflect on how wonderful God is anyways!

Today we are getting to peek into a conversation Jesus is basically having with the Jews who have challenged what he has just done with this man from yesterday’s reading; healing him on the Sabbath.

What is interesting about this, at least to me, in reading this morning is the way both Jesus responds and the way these Jews actually challenged him.  Remember from yesterday, what they DIDN’T claim was that Jesus didn’t heal this man.  In fact, they don’t ever claim that Jesus’ miracles or actions weren’t true, or at least I can’t recall any times when they do this.  They never attack anything Jesus has actually done, but they attack his methods, his timing, his claims.  That is actually very interesting...let’s think about that for a moment.  Here is a group that is highly motivated, perhaps more than anyone else in history, to discredit Jesus.  If people were alive to recount the stories of Jesus 15-20 years after his death, and to record these events that we are reading almost 2000 years later, why weren’t there some equally as influential writings to discredit these claims?  There was ample motivation, evidently, to produce those writings...where are they?   We have no shortage of other writings that popped up that history has shown to be only partially true and that lack some of the corroborative support that the gospels mustered, but we don’t have anything that I am aware of that truly attacks these claims.  There aren’t famous writings that are historically supported that discredit these miracles from eyewitness accounts that would say, “No, that water was never turned into wine”, and “No, that man didn’t get up and run out of the temple after Jesus healed him...I saw him laying there the next day”, and “Wait, that’s not true, I was there and Lazarus wasn’t ever dead, that was a trick”.  We don’t see these claims.  There was plenty of motivation from the Jews to discredit Jesus, obviously...why don’t we see them?

And then, looking at how Jesus responds to the Jews in the reading today...Jesus is going right at them.  He is making very clear claims as to His identity, and He is holding nothing back.  And they had to be furious...Jesus is making claims that clearly place Him in a context that the Jews were very uncomfortable with, and Jesus did with several times throughout His ministry.  His identity, or at least His claimed identity, was so clear to them that they finally figured that they couldn’t do anything but just get rid of him.

Today reminds me that it is so important to think critically about the attacks our faith gets.  We can feel like our faith is undermined by science with a simple statement that we hear on the news like, “Scientists discover a bone that is 10,000,000 years old, placing us one step closer to understanding the human history and the process of our evolution”; and I feel that way sometimes too!  So, I am not declaring victory over doubt!  But, we have history on our side.  I can’t tell you anything about that bone, but I can tell you that there have been plenty of motivated people that could and would have produced something over the last 2000 years to refute the clear claims of scripture as to Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.  There were plenty of motivated people to refute what Jesus did in terms of miracles and signs...and for some reason they have nothing.  We should be confident that history is on our side.  We should be confident that God will reveal a story, in time, that somehow ties all of this science and history together in a nice, neat, fashion.  Until then, we can just live in awe of what we know, what we don’t, and what’s to come.  Curious Christianity...that’s a healthy place to be in our faith.