Merry Christmas!

Hey there,

Just want to say a big Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to everyone out there. If you could have anything for Christmas, what would it be? Oh, and try to keep it realistic, like this is something someone would (hopefully!) give you for Christmas.

"Picking Fights" John 8 - Part 1

One of the side effects of teaching big groups is offending some people in that group. Jesus is waaaay past that by this chapter. Now the Pharisees start intensely trying to make him slip up by putting him in difficult situations. Jesus' reacts by saying "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." Man, Jesus sure is a wise and patient man.

The following part gets a little confusing. The Pharisees are really trying to make Jesus say something stupid so the crowds will figure out that he's just a crazy, demon-possessed guy. He says some awesome things, like that he is the light of the world... SO true. Wherever Jesus is, even today, "darkness" is not and "light" (spiritual light) is.

One thing I've noticed when I've been involved or watching an argument is that I usually don't really like the person who wins the argument, even if they are right. I always seem to cheer for the little guy, you know what I mean? Even after Jesus finishes defending himself beautifully, and likely humiliating the Pharisees once again, the people still like him. Maybe in their minds, Jesus was the underdog who was standing up "to the man." Whatever the case may be, many people put their faith in him!

"If It Looks Like A Duck..." John 7 - Part 2

There's an old saying:

"If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it must be a duck."

But what if you grew up with this duck? What then? This is what's going on in the last part of this chapter. The higher-ups can't stand what Jesus is teaching (see last post), but by now, it's pretty obvious to the crowds who Jesus is:

"When the Christ comes, will he do more miraculous signs than this man?"

(note: Christ isn't Jesus' last name, it means "Saviour" or "Messiah".)
Even the guards are convinced! They can't arrest Jesus when asked because of his amazing teaching. (Kinda reminds me of Luke Skywalker at the beginning of "Return of the Jedi", but that's another topic...) But the "church leaders" think Jesus can't possibly be the Christ because he isn't from the right town. Amazing that Jesus kept his birth town secret... But I guess he wanted people to believe because of what he said and did, and not just where he was from.

"Getting it Right" John 7 - Part 1

It's easy to take for granted that Jesus had a hard life, not just a hard death. His own people loved him, then hated him, (repeat...). This is probably because of the awesome miracles he performed (popular) and the incredibly hard teachings he gave after (extremely unpopular). Many years of doing the right things for the wrong reasons (AKA legalism) had kinda got the Jews in a rut, and that's why they needed Jesus to save them. They made judgements based solely on doing the right thing, even if it resulted in something bad. To this, Jesus says:

"Stop judging by mere appearances, and make a right judgment."

God judges by the heart and not appearances. Our faith needs to take us further: we need to do the right things with the right reasons in the right way. If anything you do doesn't measure up to each of these three things, stop doing it!

"Flesh Eaters & Blood Drinkers" John 6 - part 2

So let me get this straight. Jesus escapes a crowd after feeding all of them because they want to make him king. But when he tells them that the work of God is to believe the one He sent, they clam up:

"What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'"

AH!!! DIDN'T HE JUST FEED 5,000??? Actually, how many times have we done this? We come back from an awesome retreat, camp, or other sort of meeting and we're SO excited about serving Jesus. But the conviction we had during that time fades so quickly. Jesus gives the solution to this at the end of this part: We need to constantly live on Jesus. Every breath, meal, beverage needs to be done for him and through him. We need to be so consumed with him that we eat his flesh and drink his blood. He doesn't want part of our lives, he wants all of it!

Random Poll

Hey there, just wondering if anyone still watches the Ranger DVD, and if anyone's actually printed any pictures off of it!

"Oh Hungry?" John 6 - Part 1

What a strange situation; 5,000 people following Jesus around and only one of them brings a meal. I wonder why it was such an emergency for these people to eat. I'm sure it wasn't like they were going to starve or anything! But Philip is operating on the assumption that they need to eat (ulterior motive: Philip already knew what Jesus would do; this implies that this wasn't the first mass feeding Jesus had catered.)

So Jesus feeds everyone, and the crowd figures out that he's miraculously provided for them yet again, they try to force him to be king, but Jesus gets out of it.

Hey, wait a second... why didn't Jesus want to be king? Couldn't he do much more as a king than just a teacher? Doesn't a Prime Minister have more power and influence than the pastor from your church?

Suicide doesn't solve anything

I ran across an interesting perspective on suicide the other day while reading Kreeft's book on heaven.

If Heaven exists and is so great, why not escape earth right away and get there as quickly as possible? First of all because you don't get there that way. The God who revealed Heaven also forbade suicide, and all the medically dead and resuscitated patients who had committed suicide and had seen something of the next life reported hellish rather than Heavenly experiences. They saw that suicide was a disastrous mistake, that all the problems they had tried to escape followed them, but after death they could no longer do anything to change them... [Suicide is] like trying to get into college from elementary school by burning down the high school.

When you look at it like this, suicide doesn't solve anything. Why on earth would we ever consider it as an option?

"Seriously!" John 5 part 3

It's pretty crazy if you think about it: God coming to earth so He could be even closer to us. But, when he gets here, the people that claim to know him hate him! Jesus did a lot of good things: healing people, teaching, and (my personal favourite) feeding people. Plus John (see chapter 1) was respected by the Jews, and he said Jesus was the Messiah. You'd think that this is enough evidence that Jesus is who he says he is, but the Jews still reject him.

Jesus isn't a prophet, he's who the prophets talked about. He isn't a guy who did some good things, everything he DID was good. This is who Jesus is. Maybe it's time for all of us to take him a little more seriously.

"Judge Jesus" - John 5 part 2

Many people believe that judging others is in general a bad thing. But really, it's impossible not to judge people or situations. We can be less critical, but that won't change the fact that we are critical. I love Jesus' rationale on his good judgment:

"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."

If we want to be like Jesus, our judgement MUST be godly. That is, it must occur not to please ourselves (gossip, rude joking, teasing, pride) but rather God.
So here's my question: What does it look like when we judge someone like Jesus does? What are the results? Is it possible?