Restless Wonderer

Very truly I tell you, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man. ‘Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out – those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned. By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.   In John 5 we see Jesus healing a man who had been paralysed for 38 years.   The miracle took place at a pool in Jerusalem called Bethesda.   When the Jewish leaders heard about it they were incensed because the healing took place on the Sabbath.   This is one of several occasions when Jesus’ actions c...

My food,’ said Jesus, ‘is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. ‘Don’t you have a saying, “It’s still four months until harvest”? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying “One sows and another reaps” is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labour.’ John 4 recounts Jesus’ encounter with a Samaritan woman at a well in her hometown of Sychar.   The woman is amazed at the insight this Jewish traveller has into her life and at the words he speaks about God.   She runs to tell her neighbours about this amazing man, wondering if he might even be the Messiah God had promised.   The disciples, seeing   the approaching Samaritan crowd and disapproving of Jesus’ conversation with a...

Towards the end of John’s Gospel Jesus commissions His disciples to go into the world on mission.   The incident the aged John chooses to recount is different from those recorded by Matthew and Luke.   Matthew, whose record of Jesus’ commissioning words is the most famous, describes Jesus’ words on a mountain top in Galilee.   He sends the disciples out, confident in His universal authority and enduring presence, to make disciples from all nations through teaching and baptising (Matthew 28:18-20).   Luke, meanwhile, tells of an occasion in Jerusalem when Jesus opens the disciples’ minds to see how his life and death fulfilled the Old Testament and then commissions them to be His witnesses.   To fulfil their task of preaching forgiveness of sins in His name, they must wait for the power that will soon be given from heaven, a reference to the coming Holy Spirit (Luke 24:44-49).   There is also a version of the ‘Great Commission’ in the so-called long ending...

This series has followed a journey through salvation history by considering references in the Bible to God’s writing.   We have seen how God wrote intelligence into our nature in creation, both through DNA and in our conscience.   We saw that God remains intimately involved in our world and in our lives in His providence.   We considered how He has revealed Himself in words in Scripture and how He records our deeds as the righteous Judge.   We have also encountered the forgiveness inherent in the not guilty verdict that is ours in Jesus and the transformation that the Spirit brings about as He writes God’s Law on our hearts.   In this episode we reach the end of the story, or perhaps the beginning of the new story, as we reach the book of Revelation.   In last week’s post, I emphasised that the gospel is not just about us being saved to go to heaven – it is also about our transformation so that we can serve God on earth.   It is important to remember...

The gospel has sometimes been truncated in an unhelpful way.   It is sometimes told as if it ends with the forgiveness of our sins, the cancelling of our debts, and declaration of our acceptance by God.   All of this is true, but it isn’t everything!   It leaves the impression that we are saved and ready for Heaven so we might as well just sit back and wait for the next bus.   It rightly emphasises that we were in the wrong, in debt to God, and that this dishonourable past is now blotted out, but it fails to describe the riches that are credited to us on account of Jesus.   The gospel is not only about forgiveness – it is also about transformation.   So far in this series we have seen God writing in creation, in providence, in revelation, in judgement and in forgiveness, but we need to see that God writes in transformation.      In the first post of this series I discussed the conscience and the moral standard that is written on our he...

So far in this series we have seen God writing in creation, in providence, in revelation and in judgement.   God’s standard of justice is written in our hearts, it was written on tablets of stone and it is written in the books that record our actions, just as God’s verdict was written on the wall in Belshazzar’s feast.   If this was the whole story of the Bible, there would be no good news and no hope.   Yet to understand the message of the gospel we must understand the justice of God and His righteous wrath because of human sin.   God will not and cannot ignore our sin – it is not only a violation of the laws of morality; it is a personal offence against God.   When we measure ourselves against the standard of perfection described in the Ten Commandments, we inevitably find ourselves, like Belshazzar, seriously lacking.   What hope is there, then, for us? As we come to the next occasion of God’s writing in the Scriptures, a word of caution is in order. ...

Readers of the Bible might be forgiven for thinking that Israel was at the centre of history in the centuries before Christ, but in reality for most of their history the people of Israel were under the dominance of other great powers.   Only in the time of David and Solomon (around 100 years before Christ) did Israel make its mark on the world stage.   Before that, Egypt was the mega-power and other local enemies, including the arch-enemy, the Philistines, continually threatened the tribes descended from Jacob.   After Solomon the united tribes fractured into two kingdoms and their power was gradually eroded in the face of the growing power of kingdoms to the northeast – first the Syrians (or Arameans), then the Assyrians and lastly the Chaldeans (or neo-Babylonians).   Eventually the two kingdoms of the people of Israel fell – the northern kingdom to Assyria in 722 BC and the southern kingdom of Judah to Babylon in 586BC.   From a purely historical persp...