John 21:15-25 More Than These

Yesterday, I read about the first of three pictures of the believer and the responsibilities attached to those pictures:  Fishers of Men and Obeying Him, according to my commentary. 

The second, it says, is the picture of shepherds and the responsibility to love Him, while the third is the picture of disciples and the responsibility to follow Him.

It noted that “Peter and his Lord had already met privately and no doubt taken care of Peter’s sin (Luke 24:34; 1 Cor. 15:5), but since Peter had denied the Lord publicly, it was important that there be a public restoration.  Sin should be dealt with only to the extent that it is known.  Private sins should be confessed in private, public sins in public.”

Three times Jesus asked Peter if he loved Him.  The first time, He added “more than these.”  My commentary said the question probably meant “more than these other disciples love Me.”  After all, Peter had earlier said, “I will even die for You,” and “I will never be offended.”  Perhaps, it says, Peter believed that he loved Jesus more than the other disciples when he originally said it.

Jesus, in talking about sheep, changed the picture from fisherman to shepherds, which my commentary suggests includes not just evangelism but pasturing.  I liked this that I read about it:  “While it is true that the Holy Spirit equips people to serve as shepherds, it is also true that each individual Christian must help to care for the flock … to help protect and perfect the flock.”

My commentary saw the three repeated questions as denoting the importance of something:  “The most important thing the pastor can do is to love Jesus Christ.  If he truly loves Jesus Christ, the pastor will also love His sheep and tenderly care for them … A pastor who loves the flock will serve it faithfully, no matter what the cost.”

The third picture really spoke to me, for it mentioned something I’d overlooked while reading verse 20.  Peter was talking to the risen Christ, and being restored to apostleship and leadership, and Jesus was instructing him.  “Peter turned …”  Peter had, after the first great catch of fish, taken his eyes off the Lord and looked at himself (Depart from me, for I am a sinful man).  He’d taken his eyes off the Lord while walking on water to look at the wind and the waves.  This time, he heard John behind them and looked back.  He asked about John.  Jesus told him that was none of his business.

“The Lord rebuked Peter and reminded him that his job was to follow, not to meddle into the lives of other believers … To be distracted by ourselves, our circumstances, or by other Christians is to disobey the Lord and possibly get detoured out of the will of God.  Keep your eyes of faith on Him and on Him alone,” my commentary said.  “God has His plan for us.  He also has plans for our Christian friends and associates.  How He works in their lives is His business.  Our business is to follow Him as He leads us.”

Father, thank You for these wise and timely words.  Help me to apply them to my life and my relationship with You.  And thanks for showing me that You will take care of others.  Mine is simply to follow.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

John 21:1-8 The First of Three Pictures of Believers and the Responsibility Attached To It

My commentary sees three pictures of believers in this last chapter and a responsibility attached to each picture.  The first is that we are fishers of men.  The responsibility is that we must OBEY Him.

Jesus had sent word to His disciples that He would meet them in Galilee.  He hadn’t set a definite date or time.  I’m reminded of something Henry Blackaby said in Experiencing God – when you feel you haven’t heard from the Lord, keep doing the last thing He told you to do.

Jesus had called many of His disciples away from the fishing industry into evangelism.  There were qualities of fishermen that were well-suited to their new occupation, my commentary noted:  “They know how to work, they’ve got courage and faith to go out into the deep.  They have much patience and persistence, and they will not quit.  They know how to cooperate with one another, and they are skilled in using the equipment and the boat.”  Those are qualities every Christian could use in getting along with other Christians and in fulfilling the Great Commission.

But He had called them away from fishing, yet Peter said, “I am going out to fish.”  Six others followed him out to fish.  Was he wrong?  If he was, he was a believer leading other believers astray.  We can only say that they caught nothing after fishing all night.  If our responsibility is to obey Him and to keep doing the last thing He told us to do until He issues new instructions, then perhaps they were.  My commentary added, “Pet was sincere and he worked hard, but there were no results.  How like some believers in the service of the Lord.  They sincerely believe that they are doing God’s will, but their labors are in vain.  They are serving without direction from the Lord, so they cannot expect blessing from the Lord.”

It’s interesting that 153 large fish were just feet away from the net and they didn’t know it.  “We are never far from success when we permit Jesus to give the orders, and we are usually closer to success than we realize,” my commentary added.

Father, if I am serving without direction from You, please help me to know it and to humbly seek Your will.  Don’t let my impulsiveness and self-confidence stand in for Your direction upon my life.  Show me regularly what You would have me doing and who You want me to impact for You.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

John 20:19-31 Unbelief

“Jesus did not rebuke Thomas for his doubts.  He rebuked him for unbelief:  ‘Stop being an unbeliever and believe!’  Doubt is often an intellectual problem we want to believe, but the faith is overwhelmed by problems and questions.  Unbelief is a moral problem:  we simply will not believe.  Doubt says, ‘I cannot believe!  There are too many problems!’  Unbelief says, ‘I will not believe unless you give me the evidence I ask for … Thomas’s testimony did not come from his touching Jesus, but from his seeing Jesus … Thomas reminds us that unbelief robs us of blessings and opportunities.  It may sound sophisticated and intellectual to question what Jesus did, but such questions are usually evidence of hard hearts, not of searching minds,” my commentary said.

Father, thank You for removing my unbelief and my hard heart years ago.  Help me to show others who similarly struggle the way to belief.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

John 20:10-18 Written In Missouri Yesterday

“Then the followers went back home.”  Mary stayed, crying.  She stayed where she would encounter the risen Christ, without even knowing it!  Her problem:  “They have taken away my Lord.”  She even saw Jesus standing there but did not recognize Him.  Talking to Him like He was a stranger, she asked where Jesus was.  Jesus did one thing in reply.  He called her name.  That was all it took.

Though she hadn’t even recognized Him, He also said, “I am going back to My Father and your Father, to My God and your God.”  He affirmed that they were both part of God’s family.

Father, I’m about to go back home as well.  Joseph is to stay where he too can encounter Christ again.  Hamlin has almost taken You away from him, but You’ll never let go.  Call out his name this morning and every morning from that place.  Let him know that You will be with him there as he grows in You and becomes a man after Your own heart.  Soften the heartaches we each will feel with this temporary separation, knowing that if we are in You and You are in us, then we are together.  I love him more than he will ever know – enough to leave him there with You for awhile.  Hold him when I can’t, Father.  Tell him often that I love him.  Hold me, too.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

John 19:38-20:9 The Burial

It was getting close to sunset on Friday.  In a few hours, Passover Sabbath would begin, and missing the Passover meal was something no Jewish believer desired to do.  My commentary wonders therefore, if Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus didn’t spend a considerable amount of time and resources preparing for Jesus’ death.  After all, if they waited until Jesus had died to do anything, they’d most likely have run out of time.  Pilate had to be petitioned to release the body.  A tomb had to be located and purchased, if already hune out of the rock.  There’d certainly not be time to create a new tomb!  Merchants selling the spices to be used in burial would probably be shutting down early to insure that they made it home before sunset, and likely the great influx of people who’d come to Jerusalem for Passover would have greatly depleted supplies.  They may have even transported the spices and aloes to the tomb in anticipation of Jesus’ death once His crucifixion began.

This allowed them to move quickly when Jesus’ actual death occurred.  Nicodemus waited with the body on the cross while Joseph secured permission from Pilate to remove the body for burial.  They’d selected a tomb nearby, allowing them time for a rushed and somewhat incomplete burial preparation.  But in doing this, both men became ritually unclean for the Passover meal by handling a dead body.  It mattered not the least.  They’d just prepared their Savior for burial and secured His body within the tomb.

They’d thought it out, not caring about the risks.  Their reputations didn’t matter.

My commentary also noted that in the phrase secret disciple describing Joseph, the Greek word for secret “is a perfect passive participle and could be translated ‘having been secreted,’ or ‘have been kept secret.’  In other words, Joseph was God’s secret agent in the Sanhedrin!  From the human standpoint, Joseph kept undercover because he feared the Jews, but from the divine standpoint, he was being protected so he could be available to bury the body of Jesus.”

Father, help me to always be ready to tell people about Your Son.  Thank You for giving me the awesome privilege of teaching youth what You want to show them about their Savior.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

John 19:17-37 What He Said

“No Roman citizen could be crucified,” my commentary said.  “It was reserved for the lowest kind of criminal, particularly those who promoted insurrection.”  Of course the Jewish leaders had tried to use that as their real excuse for having Jesus killed.  They even told Pilate he was no friend of Caesar’s if he tried to release Jesus!  As much as they hated Roman occupation of their land, they hated Jesus all the more for upsetting their little fiefdom within Roman territory.  They’d come to treasure their traditions, and those traditions trumped even their Messiah!

Pilate could see all of this, and when he wrote out the placard to be placed on the cross, he wrote, “This is Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.”  Oh, how the religious leaders hated that!  Pilate used it intentionally to insult and embarrass them, but God used it as a gospel tract that almost everyone could read in Aramaic, Greek, and Latin.

When Jesus was ready to dismiss His Spirit and die, he cried out, “It is finished!”  My commentary said the Greek word was tetelestai and the tense meant, “It is finished, it stands finished, and it always will be finished!”  In everyday life, it said the world would be used by a servant reporting to his master, “I have completed the work assigned to me.”  “When a priest examined an animal sacrifice and found it faultless, this word would apply … When an artist completed a picture, or a writer a manuscript, he might use it.”  “The death of Jesus on the cross ‘completes the picture’ that God had been painting, the story that He had been writing, for centuries … Perhaps the most meaningful sense was that used by the merchants:  ‘The debt is paid in full!’”

Jesus, thank You for being fully in charge of that situation, for completing Your Father’s assignment, for being the spotless Lamb of God, and for completing the picture of salvation for us.  Thank You most of all for paying my debt in full!

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

John 19:1-16 The Worst Sinner

Pilate probably despised the Jewish leadership, who were trying to rule the Jewish citizenry with what little power Rome allowed them, despite Roman occupation of the land.  At first, their bringing Jesus to him seemed an inconvenience.  There had been no sedition or rebellion by Jesus and His followers, and Pilate could see this.  Yet this “inconvenient” demanding of a trial by the Jewish leadership on the eve of the Jews’ own high holy day could certainly result in a reprimand from Rome if not handled expeditiously.

My commentary said Pilate first tried sympathy.  Surely when the crowd saw a man barely alive from a scourging, they’d cry, “Enough!!”  But they instead cried, “Crucify Him!!”  Three times, Pilate had announced that he’d found no fault in Jesus.  The Jewish leadership had already run all their traps and knew what their response would be to every excuse Pilate could come up with.  This time, they said, “We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because He said He is the Son of God.”

(I don’t know what they’d have ever done if someone had come along, splitting the sky as Jesus will one day do.  Their very words disallowed the thought of anyone in human form claiming to be divine!)

In fact, Jesus told Pilate that the man who turned Him over to Pilate was guilty of a greater sin.  My commentary said that would have been Caiaphas, the high priest!  “He knew the Scriptures and had been given every opportunity to examine the evidence.  He had willfully closed his eyes and hardened his heart.  He had seen to it that Jesus was not given a fair trial … Caiaphas was a Jew who had a knowledge of Scripture.  Therefore, it was Caiaphas, not Pilate, who had the greater sin.”

Despite all this, the fact remains that Jesus died on the cross for one reason, and it wasn’t because of Caiaphas’ maneuverings.  It was for my sin.  God had a plan to bring me back to Him, and it involved the death of His only Son in my place, to pay the price for my sin.  Caiaphas and Pilate were merely facilitators.

Father, Your mercy and grace and love for me, sinner that I am, are all too astounding.  Thank You for giving up Your wonderful Son in such a hideous way for me.  Help me to understand fully the magnitude of what You’ve done.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford