Look Closely

  • Print

I heard a story recently that goes back to the 1940’s. Korea had been invaded and occupied by the Japanese. A Korean Christian at that time was given a magazine with a picture of what an artist thought Jesus’ face might have looked like.
The Korean was fascinated for a number of reasons. Firstly, he had never heard of someone painting a picture of Jesus’ face; and secondly, the picture was made up of a myriad of little dots (pixels). This put the thought in his mind: could he make up a picture of Jesus’ face, but instead of using dots, using the words from John’s Gospel? The Korean language uses characters for words so each word would be a single character, the equivalent to a dot.
He worked painstakingly on the venture. By the end, every word from John’s Gospel was used in order. With varying degrees of light and dark, the face of Jesus was obvious to all who saw it.
Why do we read the Gospels? The hope of each of the writer’s – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, was that as we read, we would see Jesus.
Look more carefully. Read more closely. Take a bit more time. Look for what you can learn about Jesus. Look for Jesus’ face as you read.

A Heavenly Party

  • Print

There are three well known parables in Luke 15 – the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son. But there’s always been one part I could not work out. Why did Jesus close each parable with everyone having a party?
Let me explain why. The chapter begins with ‘the tax collectors and sinners … all gathering around to hear him’ (15:1). They loved Jesus’ company. They loved being round Him. It was a party atmosphere – and the Pharisees hated it!
The Jewish belief was that the two halves of God’s creation, heaven and earth, were meant to fit together. Earth was meant to reflect heaven. (When Jesus taught His disciples to pray “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” He was following this principle). If you discover what’s happening in heaven, you’ve discovered what’s meant to be happening on earth.
The Pharisees believed the closest we could get to heaven was in the Temple. The Temple required strict purity from the priests and the closest anyone who was not a priest could get to copying heaven was in maintaining a strict purity in every part of life.
But Jesus was telling them in these parables that when a fallen person of any kind comes back to God, (shown by following the God-man, Jesus), heaven celebrates. If those on earth really wanted to copy heaven, they would celebrate in a party atmosphere every time a sinner saw the light and began to follow God’s way.
Do you want God’s will done on earth as in heaven? Then learn to party in His presence.

Walking Miracles

  • Print

Ask the average person on the street if they think genuine miracles occur today, and the vast majority will say “no.”
Ask a real Christian if genuine miracles occur today, and the vast majority will say “yes.”
Why the difference? A Christian is a miracle – a walking miracle. A Christian is someone who God has lovingly confronted about the wrongness or emptiness of their lifestyle, and who has experienced God’s supernatural intervention. They know the God who was once somewhere way out there has now become their God. Jesus is no longer a swear word to them; nor is He just another religious figure. This man who lived two thousand years back is as alive to them today as He was when He walked the streets of Israel.
Human nature hasn’t changed over thousands of years. Our hearts haven’t changed. But when God steps in, He changes the human heart. He begins to change its values and even its desires.
Do miracles happen today? Every time someone becomes a real Christian, and that’s about 45,000 people a day throughout the world, God does a miracle.
Jesus died on that terrible cross just outside Jerusalem two thousand years ago, to make a way for us to come to God. Jesus took our sin and the rightful punishment for that sin in our place – on our behalf, as our substitute. Faith in these truths creates a miracle in us – a miraculous spiritual birth.
Have you experienced your miracle yet?

Salvation Faith

  • Print

In John 4 Jesus heals the son of a royal official. We read these stories so quickly that we easily miss some detail that John was careful to include.
The royal official went through three stages in his faith, each relating to how he saw Jesus.
In verse 47 he is frantic to have Jesus come and heal his son. ‘When this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee, he went to him and begged him to come and heal his son, who was close to death.’  He has a measure of faith but it’s a faith that Jesus is a healer, who performs miracles by actually being there with the sick person and praying for them. Jesus has to be present for the healing. Many non-Christians come to meetings where the sick are prayed for with a faith like this. They honestly believe that at these “healing-meetings” people are prayed for and can be healed.
But Jesus reacted with a rebuke. ‘Unless you people see miraculous signs and wonders … you will never believe’ (v.48). This is not saving faith. This faith is locked into seeing the “healer” and true faith is not dependent on sight.
The official continued to plead with Jesus to come. Instead, Jesus says to him ‘You may go. Your son will live’ (v.50). Then we read ‘The man took Jesus at his word and departed’ (v.50).This is the second stage of his faith – faith in Jesus’ power. Jesus won’t be there but he believes his son will live because Jesus has power. Again, this is not the faith that brings salvation but it is an advancement on his earlier faith.
As the father reaches home, a 25 kilometre walk, he finds not only his son healed, but that the healing happened at the very hour Jesus had said it would (v.52: the 7th hour = 1pm).
Finally we are told ‘So he and all his household believed’ (v.53). His faith has now become saving faith – faith in Jesus for who He is, and not just for what He has or even can do. This is finally faith for salvation. 

John's Gospel - LIFE

  • Print

John’s gospel really is different to the other three.
Mark’s gospel concentrated on what Jesus did; Matthew and Luke concentrated on what Jesus said. But John’s emphasis is overwhelmingly on who Jesus was (and continues to be).
John states his purpose in writing ‘Jesus did many other miracles …But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name’
John uses the word ‘believe’ around one hundred times, showing how important it was to him. He wanted his readers to not just believe that Jesus lived as an historical figure, but that He was the Messiah, the eternal Son of God, as well as the Son of Man.
John knew that by believing this, anyone could experience the ‘life’ Jesus promised. By believing this, his readers would begin to ‘live.’
In the verses above, ‘by believing’ is present tense, meaning it is an on-going action. By continuing to believe, the readers would continue to experience Jesus’ ‘life.’ John had carefully chosen his words because, as he wrote, sixty years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, many people were changing their beliefs about Jesus. They wanted a slightly different Jesus to the true Jesus. Some wanted a more heavenly Son of God and less human Son of Man. And others wanted a more human and less divine Jesus. John knew that Jesus was entirely God and entirely man and that our salvation rested on this truth. Continuing to believe this meant continuing to know His ‘life.’