John 14:1-14 Some Assurances For A Troubled Heart

My commentary noted the troubled hearts of the disciples at Jesus’ announcement that He was going and that they could not follow right then, and then it set about explaining how Jesus calmed those troubled hearts, mentioning “six wonderful assurances to lay hold of … and thus enjoy untroubled hearts.”  Three of them are included in what I read today:

1)       You are going to Heaven – He gave a clear promise of His return for His people in verse 3.  Thomas then wanted to know “where He was going and how he himself would get there.  The Lord made it clear that He was going to the Father, and that He was the only way to the Father… Jesus did not simply teach the way or point the way; He is the way …Our Lord’s statement (in verse 6) wipes away any other proposed way to heaven – good works, religious ceremonies, costly gifts, etc.  There is only one way, and that way is Jesus Christ.

2)      You know the Father Right Now – My commentary spoke of different levels of knowing and intends to describe them in the next section I’ll read, but said “when Jesus said that knowing Him and seeing Him was the same as knowing and seeing the Father, He was claiming to be God.”

3)      You Have The Privilege of Prayer – “One of the best remedies for a troubled heart is prayer.  However, if God is going to answer our prayers and give us peace in our hearts, there are certain conditions that we must meet.  We must pray in faith .. Both love and obedience are part of effective prayer. ‘If I regard [see and approve] iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.’ (Psalm 66:18).  We must pray in Christ’s name – “means to ask what Jesus would ask, what would please Him, and what would bring Him glory by furthering His work … Any request that does not glorify God’s name should not be asked in His name.”  We must pray in loving obedience – “When you love someone, you honor his or her name, and you would never use that name in a demeaning manner.”

Father, when my heart is troubled, remind me of where I’m going, and that my Savior – Your Son – is the only way to You.  Thank You for allowing me to approach You in prayer and for hearing my prayers when I pray them in faith and obedience.  Help me to know what pleases You and what will bring glory to You so that I pray in Your will.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

John 13 -- What He KNEW

Wish I’d had more time to write this morning!  So much great stuff here!  God zeroed me in on the words “knew” and “know” this morning.

“Jesus knew that it was time for him to leave this world and go back to the Father … Jesus knew that the Father had given Him power over everything and that He had come from God and was going back to God … ‘I know those I have chosen.’”

It just really hit me how He must have longed to be with his Father again.  Some 33 years had passed since He’d seen home – the throne-room of Heaven.  But He so loved His Father that He’d remained on that heavenly timetable and now knew that He was on countdown to departure.  It was bittersweet in that He knew suffering must come before His glory was once again revealed and magnified by what He’d do.  And He knew that His father would get even more glory from what Jesus was about to endure, and it would be well-deserved for the offer of salvation He was extending to the world.

Knowing the destination is near quickens the heart.

Father, I’m so thankful for what You’ve allowed me to know about You and Your Son, and I so look forward to the day when my faith will become sight.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

John 12:20-50 A Message Worth Hearing

Jesus was closing out His public ministry before He was to die on the cross.  He likened His death to the process a seed goes through to become a plant.  My commentary noted these spiritual truths:  “There can be no glory without suffering, no fruitful life without death, no victory without surrender.  Of itself, a seed is weak and useless, but when it is planted, it dies and becomes fruitful.  There is both beauty and bounty when a seed dies and fulfills its purpose … the only way it can achieve its goal is by being planted.  God’s children are like seeds.  They are small and insignificant, but they have life in them, God’s life.  However, that life can never be fulfilled unless we yield ourselves to God and permit Him to plant us.  We must die to self so that we may live unto God.”

God also spoke to me about the quote from Isaiah in verse 40.  My commentary said, “When a person starts to resist the light, something begins to change within him, and he comes to the place where he cannot believe.  There is judicial blindness that God permits to come over the eyes of people who do not take the truth seriously.”  How important it is, then, that we help those we love to see their spiritual blindness developing, in order that we may help prevent it from taking over their lives.

Father, I know that I struggled with judicial blindness for a time as I chose to move away from You.  How I wish that someone had been there to tell me what I was doing.  Don’t let me fail to say what I need to say to others.  In the same vein, help me to show them the incredible truth You revealed here about the fruitfulness of dying to self, and the blessings it brings.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

John 12:1-19 Seeing With His Eyes

A week before His death, Jesus returned from Galilee to Bethany, just 2 miles from Jerusalem, to share an intimate meal with those He loved.  Martha, as usual, ministered by preparing and serving the meal.  Mary, in her own act of worship, anointed Jesus’ feet with very expensive perfume and wiped His feet clean with her hair (a woman’s glory according to Scripture).  Judas hated that the value of the perfume was lost by her act.  He wanted the money the perfume would have brought if sold, for he often stole from the funds he was charged with keeping.  Even some of the other disciples agreed that the poor could have been fed with the funds.  Knowing what was coming, though, Jesus praised her for anointing Him for burial.

Lazarus was there, too, and many had come to see him – hearing that he’d been raised from the dead by Jesus.  “So the leading priests made plans to kill Lazarus, too.  Because of Lazarus, many of the Jews were leaving them and believing in Jesus,” Scripture says.  They were making plans to kill a man that God had raised from the dead!

The next day, “the only public demonstration that our Lord allowed while He was on earth” occurred, my commentary said.  “His purpose was to fulfill the Old Testament prophecy in Zechariah 9:9 … It was part of His obedience to the Father’s will … They proclaimed Him the ‘King of Israel’.  But while they were doing this, Jesus was weeping!” my commentary said.  In Luke 19, Jesus foresaw the destruction of Jerusalem and the scattering of her people, and at what would have been the high point in the life of any normal man, He wept in sorrow.

The Jewish leaders, watching the procession, “were quite sure that Jesus had won the day … How little they really understood the mind and heart of the Master!  What they did not realize was that Jesus was ‘forcing their hand’ so that the Sanhedrin would act during the feast.  The Lamb of God had to give His life  when the Passover lambs were being slain,” my commentary explained.

Father, as usual we humans don’t see things with Your eyes.  We complain about worship, we assign wrong motives, and we only see things in light of how they affect us.  Enable my mind and heart to see what You see instead.  Give me Your eyes.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

John 11 -- Four Things To Consider

The story of the death and resurrection of Lazarus is familiar, but I loved some things my commentary pointed out that we might not often consider:

1)       Jesus had sent word back to the sisters that He was coming.  It appears that Lazarus must have died before the messenger returned to them.  “Jesus was urging them to believe His word no matter how discouraging the circumstances might appear.”

2)      Jesus could have kept Lazarus from dying, even from a great distance.  “God’s love for His own is not a pampering love; it is a perfecting love … We must never think that love and suffering  are incompatible.  Certainly they unite in Jesus Christ.”

3)      Jesus wept.  “Our Lord’s response was to groan within and ‘be moved with indignation.’ At what was He indignant?  At the ravages of sin in the world that He had created.”

4)      After seeing Lazarus brought back to life after four days in the grave, some of the witnesses “went to the religious leaders and reported what had happened … These informers were so near the kingdom, yet there is no evidence that they believed.  If the heart will not yield to truth, then the grace of God cannot bring salvation.”

Father, thank You for reminding me just last week that I trust You, no matter the circumstances, knowing that You are in complete control of my life, and that nothing surprises You and nothing confounds You.  You use it all to glorify Yourself!

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

John 10:22-42 He SAID It!

About two and a half months passed between verse 21 and verse 22, my commentary said.  It was now December and the Feast of Hanukkah was underway.  The Jewish leaders surrounded Jesus in the Temple, demanding that He clearly tell them whether or not He was the Christ.  He said, “I told you already, but you did not believe.”  The reason?  “You are not My sheep.”  Jesus knew that the men surrounding Him had not been chosen by God to be saved!

My commentary discussed this mystery:  “ …why they did not understand His words or grasp the significance of His works:  they were not His sheep.  From the human standpoint, we become His sheep by believing, but from the divine standpoint, we believe because we are His sheep.  There is a mystery here that we cannot fathom or explain … God has His sheep and He knows who they are.  They will hear His voice and respond.  The lost sinner who hears God’s Word knows nothing about divine election.  He hears only that he may receive the gift of eternal life by trusting the Savior.  When he trusts the Savior, he becomes a member of God’s family and a sheep in the flock.  Then he learns that he was ‘chosen in Him [Christ] before the foundation of the world’ … In the Bible, divine election and human responsibility are perfectly balanced, and what God has joined together, we must not put asunder.”

It went on to show us our security as God’s sheep – “We have eternal life, and that cannot be conditional and still be eternal.  Second, this life is a gift, not something that we earn or merit.  If we were not saved by our good works, but by His grace, then we cannot be lost by our bad works.” 

So did He give them the plain answer they were seeking?  In verse 30, He said, “The Father and I are one.”  You can tell that they knew that He was saying that He is God, because they considered such a confession to be blasphemy, and they immediately picked up stones to kill Him.

Why did they not instead immediately believe?  He’d already told them.  “You are NOT My sheep.”  They had not been predestined by God to be saved, so they could not and would not believe.

Father, how that thrills my heart!  You tell us here that we cannot believe unless You preordained it.  And I believe, so that means that before the foundation of the world, You chose me, warts and all, to be Your child.  Thank You for that gift, Father, and thank You for making it possible through Your Son.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

John 10:1-21 NOW I See It!

It’s pretty easy to see how the people became confused by Jesus’ words here.  For us, this very Middle-Eastern imagery is even tougher to fathom, but my commentary really fleshed it out.

First, it said to keep in mind that “this sermon grew out of our Lord’s confrontation with the Jewish leaders, following the excommunication of the beggar.”  The man born blind who was healed on the Sabbath was kicked out of Judaism.

The sheepfold was usually a large rock-walled enclosure where one or more flocks of sheep were kept during the night.  A porter slept in the gateway to keep the sheep in.  In the morning, the shepherd would come and call out to his flock and only his sheep would come at the sound of his voice and follow him out to pasture. 

It continued:  “Jesus made it clear that the fold is the nation of Israel (v. 16).  The Gentiles are the other sheep not of the fold of Israel.”

Jesus describes Himself as the Door.  “He is the Door of the sheepfold and makes it possible for the sheep to leave the fold (the religion of Judaism) and to enter His flock.  The Pharisees threw the beggar out of the synagogue, but Jesus led him out of Judaism and into the flock of God!  But the Shepherd does not stop with leading the sheep out; He also leads them in.  They become a part of the ‘one flock’ (not ‘fold’), which is His church.”

Jesus then contrasted Himself as the Good Shepherd with the hireling shepherd (the Pharisees) who was only concerned about himself and not his sheep.  As the Good Shepherd, He died for the sheep, He knows His sheep, He brings other sheep into the flock, and He takes up His life again (resurrection) after giving His life for His sheep.

This explanation certainly helped me to understand His words at the first of this chapter.

Father, thank You for caring enough for Your sheep to not simply lead us, but also to help us know You and Your Son better.  In these verses, Jesus says, “And My sheep know Me, as I know the Father.”  That’s what I continue to want to do, Father – to know You more.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford