OUR FATHER WHO BLESSES THOSE WHO BELIEVE HAVING NOT SEEN

The Lord Jesus stayed with the Samaritans for two days as they grappled with the possibility that the awaited Messiah had stopped by their town and many believed. He then departed for His home country of Galilee and the people of Galilee recieved Him gladly because they had been in Jerusalem and they had seen the effect of His ministry in the city.

Whereas while Jesus was with them in their midst, the people of Galilee did not fully grasp the uniqueness and value of the person  of Jesus who they had in their midst but having  having seen Him turning Jerusalem upside down, they were more receptive to His message. Jesus described the change as the phenomenon where a prophet has no honor in his hometown but when the people see the influence he has on other people, they re-evaluate the person whowas always in their midst.

The book of John chapter 4 verses 43 - 54 describes Jesusˋ return home to and the new faith people had in Him such that even the elite of that society were seeking Him out to help them.

43 Now after the two days He departed from there and went to Galilee. 44 For Jesus Himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country. 45 So when He came to Galilee, the Galileans received Him, having seen all the things He did in Jerusalem at the feast; for they also had gone to the feast.

46 So Jesus came again to Cana of Galilee where He had made the water wine. And there was a certain nobleman whose son was sick at Capernaum. 47 When he heard that Jesus had come out of Judea into Galilee, he went to Him and implored Him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. 48 Then Jesus said to him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will by no means believe.”

49 The nobleman said to Him, “Sir, come down before my child dies!”

50 Jesus said to him, “Go your way; your son lives.” So the man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him, and he went his way. 51 And as he was now going down, his servants met him and told him, saying, “Your son lives!”

52 Then he inquired of them the hour when he got better. And they said to him, “Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.” 53 So the father knew that it was at the same hour in which Jesus said to him, “Your son lives.” And he himself believed, and his whole household.

54 This again is the second sign Jesus did when He had come out of Judea into Galilee.

The supernatural power that Jesus demonstrated to that family in reviving a son from near death ignited a belief in the Jesus by the nobleman himself and his whole household.

In this case, it took the manifestation of miraculous power to make people believe as Jesus pointed out in verse 48;

 Then Jesus said to him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will by no means believe.”

But there is a special place in Godˋs heart for those who believe in Jesus with no physical proofs except that their own internal witness assures them that Jesus is the Christ. Jesus said it this way in the book of John chapter 20 verse 29 which says;

Jesus said to him, “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Amen.

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OUR FATHER WHO GAVE GIFTS TO MEN

The book of John chapter 4 verses 39 - 42 records the reaction of the Samaritans in the town to what the woman who met Jesus at the well, had told them.

The people believed in Jesus because of the earnest testimony of the woman and also because they heard Him with their own ears and were persuaded by His words and because of His manner of love towards the people of a small town whom He, a Jew, would normally have no dealings with, and yet He stayed with them in their homes and shared the good news of the kingdom of God with them. 

39 And many of the Samaritans of that city believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, “He told me all that I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans had come to Him, they urged Him to stay with them; and He stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of His own word.

42 Then they said to the woman, “Now we believe, not because of what you said, for we ourselves have heard Him and we know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world.”

The Lord established a model of winning the lost people. 

• He engaged them in conversation
• He shared with them the gift of the Spirit (word of knowledge about her life)
• He entwined His life with theirs as he stayed among them as a guest

Amen.

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OUR FATHER WHOSE WORD IS OUR NOURISHMENT

The book of John chapter 4 verses 27 - 38 continues with the story at Jacobˋs well when Jesusˋ disciples returned from buying food.

The disciples were surprised to see that Jesus had broken an taboo and engaged a woman in conversation however they did not speak up about it because they knew that Jesus did not conform to cultural taboos.

The woman, having been bowled over by her encounter with Jesus went back to her home town and told everyone about the experience of Jesus telling her the hidden details of her life.

The spiritual hunger in the woman was revealed in the brief interaction with Jesus and she, knowing that people in her town had the same yearning, told them that she may have stumbled on the Christ for whom they had all been waiting.

27 And at this point His disciples came, and they marveled that He talked with a woman; yet no one said, “What do You seek?” or, “Why are You talking with her?”

28 The woman then left her waterpot, went her way into the city, and said to the men, 29 “Come, see a Man who told me all things that I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” 30 Then they went out of the city and came to Him.

31 In the meantime His disciples urged Him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.”

32 But He said to them, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.”

33 Therefore the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought Him anything to eat?”

34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work. 

35 Do you not say, ‘There are still four months and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest! 36 And he who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. 37 For in this the saying is true: ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored, and you have entered into their labors.”

As this was happening, the disciples urged Jesus to have something to eat but He told them that his nourishment came from doing the will of the One who sent Him and completing the work that He was given to do.

Jesus then explained to His disciples that spiritual wages and the fruit for eternal life are gained by participating in the harvesting of the fields by winning souls for the kingdom of God.  The tasks of taking the crop are divided so that some people sow and others reap and in this symbiotic interdependency, everyone who joins in, benefits and rejoices together.

Amen.

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OUR FATHER WHO KNOWS US

The book of John chapter 4 verses 1 - 26 records an encounter that Jesus had while travelling  from Jerusalem back to Galilee.

The route took Jesus through an area named Samaria and as He paused to rest by a water well that the patriarch Jacob had dug centuries before. His disciples went off to a nearby town to buy food and while they were gone, a woman came to the well to get some water.

Jesus initiated the conversation with her by asking her for a drink and our passage captures the interchange between them that followed;

1 Therefore, when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John 2 (though Jesus Himself did not baptize, but His disciples), 3 He left Judea and departed again to Galilee. 4 But He needed to go through Samaria.

5 So He came to a city of Samaria which is called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. 6 Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied from His journey, sat thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour.

7 A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.” 8 For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.

9 Then the woman of Samaria said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.

Breaking the cultural norm of Jews keeping separate from Samaritans, Jesus asked the woman to get Him a drink of water. 

The woman, fully knowing the taboos being contravened, asked Jesus why He, a Jew, would be asking her, a Samaritan and a woman no less, for water. 

This societal pattern had formed when northern Israel and  Judah in the south politically split apart centuries before and their spiritual pratices veered away from each other resulting in the people in Judah considering the people in the northern part of the country to be unclean heretics.

For Jesus to engage the woman in conversation would have been a surprise to her and t anyone else who would have witnessed it. In this setting, Jesus set a universal pattern for us to see that there were no people from any religion or tribe who Jesus would not be willing to connect with and form friendships with.

10 Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”

In response to the womanˋs point, Jesus gave her a glimpse into who He actually was by telling her that He was a gift God to her and that He was able to offer living water to anyone who asked him.

11 The woman said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water? 12 Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock?”

13 Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”

15 The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.”

The woman was skeptical of Jesusˋ claim because to her eyes, he was just a random man sitting by the well, failing to observe expected norms and who had no visible apparatus to retrieve water of any kind. She questioned whether He had the status to make promises to provide better water than what their common anscestor, Jacob, was able to provide for them when he dug the well centuries before.

Jesus responded that the water He provided to those who asked was better than the water provided by Jacob because, while Jacobˋs water would need to be drank over and over when thirst returned, the water He provided would perpetually bubble up within the person as a fountain that was a spring of eternal life.

The woman was intrigued by the possibilities and asked Jesus for the kind of water that would save her the frequent trips to the well for drinking water. 

16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” 17 The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.”

Jesus said to her, “You have well said, ‘I have no husband,’ 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in that you spoke truly.”´

With the woman interested in the promise of the eternal life that Jesus was proposing, He pivoted to the matter of her personal life that He knew needed to be addressed as part of the exchange between her temporal life in the flesh and the eternal life of the spirit.

19 The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.”

The profound and detailed insight into her life that Jesus described shocked her and she immediately discerned that Jesus was a prophet. 

The first things that came to her mind when she realised that Jesus was a genuine spiritual authority was to ask Him to settle an issue of religious contention related to the validity of the Jewish claim that Jerusalem was the only legitimate place of worship while her people worshiped on a mountain in their own territory instead. 

Jesus settled the question unequivocally and permanently by telling her that God the Father, because He is spirit, would seek to be worshiped in spirit and truth and this would make the requirement to worship in the physical temple in Jerusalem or on the Samaritan mountain, obsolete.

21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. 24 God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

25 The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When He comes, He will tell us all things.”

26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.”

Jesusˋ masterful exposition of the nature of worship did not persuade the woman that He had the rank to make such an assertion so she said to Jesus that she would rather wait for the expected Messiah to settle her question for her and it was here that Jesus asserted that the awaited Messiah for whom the generations yearned to see, was right there with her at that well.

Wow. Amen.

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OUR FATHER WHO SENT A HEROLD TO PREPARE THE WAY OF THE LORD

The followers of John the Baptist were concerned about reports that another person was  baptizing people and gaining a large following among the people.

They asked John the Baptist about this situation and John clarified for them that the one of whom He testified was the Christ would increase while John the Baptist decreased.

The book of John chapter 3 verses 22 - 36 records this interaction between John the Baptist and his followers.

22 After these things Jesus and His disciples came into the land of Judea, and there He remained with them and baptized. 23 Now John also was baptizing in Aenon near Salim, because there was much water there. And they came and were baptized. 24 For John had not yet been thrown into prison.

25 Then there arose a dispute between some of John’s disciples and the Jews about purification. 26 And they came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, He who was with you beyond the Jordan, to whom you have testified—behold, He is baptizing, and all are coming to Him!”

27 John answered and said, “A man can receive nothing unless it has been given to him from heaven. 28 You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, ‘I am not the Christ,’ but, ‘I have been sent before Him.’ 29 He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is fulfilled. 30 He must increase, but I must decrease. 

John the Baptist testified that he was not the Christ but that he was sent ahead of the Christ and now that John had seen the One for whom he was sent to herald, he was thrilled to have had a role in connection with one so great as Jesus.

Speaking further on Jesus, John explained that Jesus was from heaven and was speaking to the people about heavenly things that He was a witness of but the people were not receiving his testimony. To recieve the testimony of the One sent from heaven would be receiving the words of God directly because the Christ only spoke the words of God. To receive the words of God would assure the believer of everlasting life as John the Baptist taught his followers.

31 He who comes from above is above all; he who is of the earth is earthly and speaks of the earth. He who comes from heaven is above all. 32 And what He has seen and heard, that He testifies; and no one receives His testimony. 33 He who has received His testimony has certified that God is true. 34 For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God does not give the Spirit by measure. 35 The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into His hand. 36 He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”

In this passage, John the Baptist said that God does not give the Spirit by measure. This means that to believe in the Christ and to then be given the Spirit, one is given the same Spirit that was given to Jesus in totality.

We are given the Spirit and we can grow in the Spirit as much or as little as we desire.

Therefore, we can expend our life in the pursuit of the Spirit in order to increase to the extent that the Spirit provides.

Amen.

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OUR FATHER WHO SENT HIS SON TO BRING MANY SONS TO GLORY

As Jesus was gaining noteriety around Jerusalem, the religious classes were debating His teachings and were trying to assess what He was up to.  Within the religious class called the pharisees was a faction that had concluded that the miraculous signs that Jesus was doing made it likely that He was from God and so they sent a representative to meet with Him incognito to interview Him in order to gain some understanding of His position.

The book of John chapter 3 verse 1 - 21  recorded the meeting between the emissary named Nicodemus and Jesus;

1 There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 2 This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.”

3 Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

4 Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?”

5 Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

Nicodemus  said to Jesus that he and some collegues in the Sanhedrin ( the Jewish religious council ) believed that He was sent by God because of the miraculous signs they were seeing Him doing.

To this statement by Nicodemus, Jesus replied that knowing that He was from God and learning His teachings was not enough for a person to gain access to the kingdom of God but rather, a person would have to be ˋborn againˋ. 

Nicodemus was baffled by the reference to being spiritually reborn because he had interpreted Jesusˋ words to mean a physical rebirth that required a re-entry into the womb. 

Jesus steered Nicodemus towards a more spiritual understanding of what He was saying by establishing that there were two types of births one of which was the physical birth and other being a spiritual birth and it was the only spiritual birth that needed to be repeated and that this rebirth that is the work of the Spirit of God was the means by which such men would be able to live within the confines of the physical world while at the same time being able to move about in the spiritual world.

This explanation that Jesus gave completely confounded Nicodemus who could not even conceive of such things.

9 Nicodemus answered and said to Him, “How can these things be?”

10 Jesus answered and said to him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things? 11 Most assuredly, I say to you, We speak what We know and testify what We have seen, and you do not receive Our witness. 12 If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven. 14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. 16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

Jesus marvelled that a religious leader in Israel, with all his learning in the books of the law and the prophets, could not understand the basic things being explained.

He assured Nicodemus that the things He was teaching and testifying about were not guesses but rather things that He knew directly and had personally seen because He was from heaven and could therefore ascend to heaven. This was a reference to the book of Genesis Chapter 28 (that Nicodemus would have been very familiar with) which reads;

12 Then he dreamed, and behold, a ladder was set up on the earth, and its top reached to heaven; and there the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.

13 And behold, the Lord stood above it and said: “I am the Lord God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and your descendants.

This dream of Jacob revealed the exchange program between heaven and earth that permitted the movement of beings between the physical realm and the spiritual one. It was the reality of the interpolation of these two realms that Jesus was explaining to Nicodemus but being rigidly trained in the things of the physical world, Nicodemus had a difficult time grappling with the possibilities of a new spiritual life.

Jesus went on to explain to Nicodemus that believing in the only begotten Son of God was the only way to acquire the righteousness that was needed to separate from the kingdom of darkness and ascend into the kingdom of God.

18 “He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. 21 But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.”

The words of Jesus in this passage gives us a view into the mechanics of salvation where our faith in Jesus releases us from condemnation and we are given a new spirit and we are counted as righteous because of the new spirit within us.  Living from the spirit yields righteous deeds and we can come to the light.

Such is the unfathomably priceless gift that Jesus gave us. We are translated from the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of light by the work He finished on the cross.

Amen.

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OUR FATHER WHOSE SON DID NOT BREAK A BRUISED REED

At the onset of Jesusˋ public ministry in Jerusalem during the Passover, many people were drawn to Him and believed in His name when they saw the miraculous works He was doing.

The book of John chapter 2 verses 23 - 25 records the people of Jerusalemˋs initial positive reception of His ministry and the passage also records Jesusˋ reserved reciprocation to that response. 

23 Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name when they saw the signs which He did. 24 But Jesus did not commit Himself to them, because He knew all men, 25 and had no need that anyone should testify of man, for He knew what was in man.

Even though the people of Jerusalem, upon seeing the supernatural works Jesus was doing in their midst saw Him in a favourable light, Jesus was reticent about basing His ministry on the wave of popularity that was rising in the city.

He was fully aware of the fickle hearts of men who could, on one hand, be attracted to the novelty of a sincere and authoritative religious leader and then turn against that leader at the drop of a hat if the trends and fashion dictated so.

Jesus, the one for whom, and by whom and through whom all existance was created, was there at the beginning during the creation of mankind and therefore knew, without needing to hear from anyone, what was in man.

He was cool toward the reception He got in Jerusalem knowing that it was only the protracted exposure to His mission would reveal the true hearts of men.

Jesus did not run roughshod over the weak embers of faith that were igniting in some people of Jerusalem but He was gentle and gave room for their faith to quietly take hold and indeed some people were truly persuaded of the validity of His mission.

The book of Isaiah chapter 42 verses 1 - 4 says this is the One who was sent;

1 “Behold! My Servant whom I uphold, My Elect One in whom My soul delights!

I have put My Spirit upon Him; He will bring forth justice to the Gentiles.

2 He will not cry out, nor raise His voice, Nor cause His voice to be heard in the street.

3 A bruised reed He will not break, And smoking flax He will not quench;

He will bring forth justice for truth.

4 He will not fail nor be discouraged, Till He has established justice in the earth;

And the coastlands shall wait for His law.”

Amen.

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